You must be in fellowship prior to your Bible study, so that the spiritual information you receive can become a source, of blessing to your soul and produce spiritual growth.
8 For [hoti] he that soweth [speiro] to [eis] his [heautou] flesh [sarx] shall [therizo] of [ek] the flesh [sarx] reap [therizo] corruption [phthora]; but [de] he that soweth [speiro] to [eis] the Spirit [pneuma] shall [therizo] of [ek] the Spirit [pneuma] reap [therizo] life [zoe] everlasting [aionios]. KJV-Interlinear
8 For the
one who sows to his own flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption, but the one
who sows to the Spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life. NASB
The word for sow, ‘speiro,’ means to scatter as in seed or investment, to seed, to receive as in acceptance or belief. And there are only two things in this life that you can invest in and those are the flesh or the spirit.
The flesh represents all non-spiritual things. The spiritual represents all things that are from God.
The word for reap, ‘therizo,’ means to harvest, to receive.
And there are only two possibilities for harvesting, which are corruption or life.
Corruption, ‘phthora,’ means decay, ruin, destroy, perish.
Life, ‘zoe,’ means life in the greatest and fullest possible sense imaginable. Which means no loss, no decay, no failure, no insecurities, and so forth.
The things of the flesh come from the world. It is all that you pursue or indulge in regardless of their nature. More important it does not include those things that are mandated by or designed by God.
To invest in the flesh, or the temporal things of life, you simply need do nothing with respect to the Bible and especially do nothing that God mandates and expects of you.
And that is exactly what most of the world does, which is to say, they do nothing expected of them in the spiritual sense. They do not study daily, they do not confess daily if not more often, they simply pretend spiritual things as they float their way through life, or they disregard the spiritual side of life altogether for lack of interest. Anything that you invent or self-define is the same as doing nothing.
To invest in the spiritual, you have to wake up and learn what it is that God wants and expects of you, and then use and live by those principles. But of course you have to learn first.
You have to want to learn before you can learn. You have to engage in a learning activity before you can expect any benefits. Then you have to use what you learn in order to reap the benefits of what it is that you have learned.
Disregard your spiritual life or pretend that you know what you are doing when you really do nothing, and you will get nothing but failure, loss, and corruption out of life. That means your life is nothing more than historical filler.
Make the changes within yourself and pursue your spiritual life as God has defined that pursuit, not you, by first having believed in Christ for only Christians can have a functioning spiritual life, then confessing often enough so that you live in fellowship, also defined by God, and then participate in a daily study, under instruction, so that you can invest in and capitalize from the phenomenal blessings that God has prepared for you. And then have a greater life that you will never have from this world.
