Bible Text: John 15:5-8 | Preacher: Sandeep Thomas | Series: Confessions of the Mennonite Church | Today we are going to talk about Article 18 which addresses another dimension of discipleship, Christian Spirituality.
If you look up the definition of Spirituality you will get something like this “the quality of being concerned with religion or the human spirit”. As you can see, this term spirituality is actually an extremely general and broad term that means very little. Christian spirituality on the other hand means something very specific and is spelt out well in Article 18. Article 18 opens with these words, “We believe that to be a disciple of Jesus is to know life in the Spirit”. Spirit is the capital S Spirit which means the Holy Spirit. In other words, it is saying, we believe that to be a disciple of Jesus is to know life in the Holy Spirit”.
Now, to summarize Article 18’s take on “life in the Spirit”, in one sentence, I would say, “to know life in the Spirit of God is to have an extraordinary relationship with the Savior of the world”. While we have focused the meaning of the word “spirituality” considerably by this point, we are still speaking in broad terms here. To get us even more focused, I will address just two aspects of a disciple’s relationship with their Savior that Article 18 brings to our attention.