The Church of True Spirituality
We can practice a form of Christianity that is technically correct yet spiritually empty. It knows the right answers. It can defend the right doctrines. It can recite the right verses. But it lives as though God is far away. When you pray it’s just a formality. Worship is a routine. Something you go to. This kind of Christianity believes God exists, but it rarely behaves like He is actively present.
When that happens, we still have faith in God, but you know what? It’s not really practiced is it? Faith isn’t. Our spirituality lacks any sense of the truly spiritual. The sense that God is truly among us isn’t there. We talk about God more than we walk with Him.
You know what Francis Schaeffer called this? “Dead orthodoxy.”[1] I think that’s a good word for it. He said that while Christian truth must be propositional, “the end of the matter…is to be in relationship to Him,” and that “a dead, ugly orthodoxy, with no real spiritual reality must be rejected as sub-Christian.”[2]
Over the last two weeks we have been walking with the church at Antioch. In Week One we saw a people formed by sound doctrine. The Word shaped them. Christ became publicly credible among them. In Week Two we saw a people who listened to God’s warnings and responded with sacrificial care. They met real need with honest care. Now, open to Acts 13. Acts 13 shows us a church that actively, truly lived out what they believed.
This is what Schaeffer called the first reality: True spirituality. This is living moment by moment in relationship with God in such a way that it truly shapes everything.
A living church is united by a shared life in Christ, not merely a shared background. (13:1)
“Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.”
Luke opens with a phrase that’s easy to overlook. “In the church at Antioch.” This wasn’t some special movement or platform. This was the local church. That’s what we’re talking about here. “The church after God’s own heart.” What is the local church? First and foremost, it is a people. And Luke gives us a list of people that tells us so much.[3]
Barnabas, who was a Levite from Cyprus.
Simeon, called Niger, who was likely a Black man.
Lucius of Cyrene, who was from North Africa.
Manaen, who was raised in the household of Herod Antipas.
Saul, who was a Pharisee and former persecutor of Christians.
True spirituality creates real unity, not just ideological alignment.
Think about this group of people. These men don’t share a background. They don’t share a culture. They don’t share a class. They share a Lord and Savior. They share a baptism.[4] They share a heavenly citizenship.[5] The Holy Spirit has formed a community that can’t be explained sociologically.[6] Antioch becomes the first truly multiethnic community we see in all of Acts. This is where true spirituality begins to clarify itself. Nothing binds them together except for their shared faith in Jesus.
Y’all, it’s the same with us. It’s easy to gather people who think alike, who look alike, who act alike. It’s far harder to hold together people who would never choose each other apart from Christ. Dead orthodoxy can coexist with division. Living faith cannot. Real unity is a sign of true spirituality, which we will see more of next week. It actively forgives faults because Christ has forgiven much.[7] It lives out horizontally the vertical reality that is ours in Christ.
True spirituality makes Christ more central than culture or class.
Think about this. Barnabas doesn’t outrank Simeon. Manaen doesn’t overshadow Saul. Their pedigrees don’t define them. Christ does. Antioch isn’t a church that just agrees about doctrine. It is a church that lives in the reality that they are created in the image of God, redeemed by the Son of God, and knit together as one by the Spirit of God.
Can we same the same thing about ourselves? To answer that for yourself (or ourselves), think through these questions: Do my relationships reflect these grand spiritual realities or merely shared preferences? Would someone watching your relationship with other church members conclude that Christ is truly alive among us? Is the unity you possess rooted in Christ or in similarities you have with people?
Luke now moves us from who these leaders are to what these leaders do. Verse 2 says, “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting…” That line is easy to skip over. But it is really the spiritual center of the passage. Notice what Luke doesn’t say. He doesn’t say while they were planning. He doesn’t say, while they were strategizing. He doesn’t say while they were reacting to a crisis. He says they were worshiping and they were fasting.
A living church orders its life around worship and reliance on God.
This wasn’t a special event. It was their normal rhythm. And the Spirit speaks while they are worshiping and fasting. Think about it this way: direction flows out of devotion. God directs your path when you are already seeking and following Him. There’s no emergency in the text. They aren’t fasting because something’s gone wrong. They’re fasting because they believe God is present with them and that He’s worth seeking. This is what true spirituality looks like.
You know what? A church can be very active and still be spiritually dead and cold. Lots of activity can become a substitute for actual relationship with God. We can fill our calendars and empty our hearts. Antioch does the opposite. They don’t make decisions and then pray over them. They pray and then receive direction.
Schaeffer describes how he came to this realization in his own life. After years of ministry, he noticed there was very little spiritual reality among people who were otherwise very orthodox. He realized his own spiritual life was thinner than it had been after his conversion. So he withdrew. He walked in the mountains. He paced in a hayloft. He wrestled and prayed. He went all the way back to agnosticism and asked whether he had been right to become a Christian at all. And what he discovered wasn’t less truth, but deeper, true truth. He wrote that he came to understand “the moment-by-moment work of the whole Trinity in our lives, because as Christians we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. This is true spirituality.”[8] Not merely believing that God exists. Living in the reality of His presence.
What do the rhythms of your life reveal about your reliance? Do you make decisions first and pray later? Do you plan and then ask God to bless what you have already chosen? Or is worship the environment in which direction is discerned?
True spirituality isn’t an add-on to church life. It is the life of the church. But if you live this way, you better buckle up, because you’re in for a ride.
A living church listens for God’s voice with readiness to obey. (13:2b)
Luke tells us, “The Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’” That sentence is almost dangerous to read too quickly. Who is it that speaks there? The Holy Spirit speaks. Not in ambiguity. Not in mystical fog. He speaks clearly. He doesn’t say, “Someone should go.” He doesn’t say, “Y’all should have a special missions emphasis at the church in this season.” No, He names specific names. “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul.” These aren’t people who are on the outside, either. These aren’t interns. This is Barnabas and Saul!
Barnabas is the bridge-builder of Antioch. He’s the encourager. The trusted shepherd who first believed in Saul when everyone else was afraid of him. Saul is the most gifted teacher they have. The sharpest theological mind. The one who can open the Scriptures and show Christ from every page. If you were designing a healthy church, you would keep these men right there. Do whatever you can to make them happy and keep them. Give them a 401k. Increase their pay. More vacation time! And what God says is, “Release them.”
And notice the language. “For the work to which I have called them.” God isn’t making something up in the moment. He’s revealing what He has already purposed. Think about it. The call exists before the announcement. The Spirit isn’t discovering the future. He is unveiling it to them. This is relational direction. They are walking with the God who knows where He is going.
Schaeffer’s struggle wasn’t with truth. It was with unlived truth. He didn’t doubt that God had spoken in Scripture. He doubted whether people were actually walking with the God who had spoken. Why does Antioch listen? Antioch listens because it expects God to speak. And because it is prepared to respond. A living church doesn’t treat God as a distant consultant. It treats Him as their present Lord.
Do you have that same kind of relationship with God? Are we cultivating a people who expect God to lead? Do we believe He still directs His church? Specifically directs His church? Are you quiet enough to hear Him?
A living church isn’t guided by tradition or preference. It is guided by God.
A living church forsakes all to follow the Truth. (13:3)
Luke concludes, “Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.” This is where everything becomes visible. These are their teachers, their shepherds. Their stability. And God says, “Release them.” Human wisdom says, “Keep them.” You know what faith says? “Trust God.” So what does Antioch do? They don’t argue. They don’t delay. They don’t negotiate. What they do is, they fast. They pray. They lay their hands on them. And they send them out.
This is the moment where orthodoxy becomes obedience. Dead orthodoxy protects itself. Living faith lets go of itself.
When Schaeffer was willing to go all the way back to agnosticism if Christianity didn’t prove true, he was prepared to lose everything rather than live in unreality. He wouldn’t preserve a system that wasn’t rooted in truth. And what he found wasn’t less faith, but it was deeper faith. He found real communion with the living God.
Antioch lives in that same reality. They are willing to lose what feels essential because they believe that God is real and Jesus really rose from the dead and is alive and active in the world. Their world. Their lives and their church and their town and faraway places that have yet to hear His name. A church that is alive doesn’t merely possess the truth. It continually seeks the Truth and follows the Truth.
So let’s let the Holy Spirit search us. If God were to speak clearly among us, what would we refuse to release? Our comfort? Our routines? Our control? Our best people? Our carefully ordered lives? Our traditions?
True spirituality isn’t knowing the right things. It is belonging to God deeply enough that when He speaks, we follow, no matter where He leads. That is the church after God’s own heart.
[1] Francis A. Schaeffer, “Form and Freedom in the Church,” in Let the Earth Hear His Voice: International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne, Switzerland, ed. J. D. Douglas (Minneapolis: World Wide Publications, 1975), 375.
[2] Schaeffer, 374.
[3] https://biblehub.com/commentaries/acts/13-1.htm; https://readingacts.com/2019/02/22/acts-13-the-church-at-antioch-part-2
[6] Dr. Timothy Paul Jones calls this ecclesial apologetics. (see: https://equip.sbts.edu/article/the-practice-of-ecclesial-apologetics)
[7] Ephesians 4:32; Matthew 18:21-22
[8] Schaeffer, 375.
