If baptism speaks of humility, then receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit speaks of God’s gracious act of ‘crowning’ us with His life as He did to Jesus at his baptism —and it is an observable and felt event.
God inhabits eternity in the three persons of
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God’s
desire to share His life (referred to as ‘abundant life’ or ‘eternal life’) led
Him to implement a plan to bring that life to the people whom He created but
who had willfully decided to
go their own way.
First, the Father gave that life to us in
the form of a man — Jesus of Nazareth.
This man lived for thirty years to show us how a human can live in
relation to God. His life before his
resurrection is a picture for us of life in the Spirit. Jesus was not born ‘filled with the Spirit’ —
that came later, as it does for the rest of us.
The things he did as recorded in the gospels
were done because he was a man filled with the Spirit! That’s how come he could say that the things
he did we would do also, and even greater things (see John 14:12) – because he
promised the gift of the Holy Spirit.
In this section of John, Jesus shows us how that is
possible: “...because I go to the Father.” The significance of that statement is that
unless Jesus went from the earth and from the disciples whom he had made and
called to be apostles, the Spirit would not come. “If I do not go, the Helper shall not come
to you; but if I go, I will send Him.”, said Jesus (John 16:7).
He then lived for another forty days after his
resurrection to show us what a glorified, transformed human is like.
Second, the Father gave that life to us in
the form of “another, like Jesus” who would, He promised, be with Jesus’ disciples
for ever. As Jesus in human form could
only be in one place at one time, the Holy Spirit (the Spirit of Jesus; the DNA
of God) could now be with all
his disciples at all
times, wherever they
may be in the world.
Jesus ascended back to his Father so that they together could give the gift of
this “God-life” to all; implant the DNA of eternal life in all. This they did in giving the Holy Spirit whom
Jesus referred to as “another like me”.
How
Receiving the Holy Spirit Fits
We’ve seen that repentance and faith is our
participation in the actual death and resurrection of Jesus. We’ve seen that our baptism is our appeal to
God concerning the reality of our sharing in his death and resurrection — and
therefore it cannot be taken lightly.
Now we see that God seals all that He
has done in us by the good news of Jesus:
And you
also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the good news of
your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with
a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of
those who are God's possession — to the praise of his glory. Ephesians 1:13-14
God's theology is simple: if you repent towards
God, put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ alone, and submit to baptism, you
will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
If we do not receive Him, either God is a liar or our repentance, faith
or baptism are faulty — which is it? The story of 12 Ephesian
disciples recorded in Acts 19 is well worth reading and contemplating.
Some
New Testament Principles
The New Testament shows us some important
things about the giving and receiving of the Holy Spirit.
·
Luke writes: “If you then, being evil, know how to give
good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the
Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” (Luke 11:13) – we need to ask.
·
Luke also writes: “Repent, and each
of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your
sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38) – we need to repent
and be baptised.
· Apostle Peter’s letter is addressed to those: “who are chosen according to the
foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey
Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood.” (1 Peter 1:2) – we need to
be obedient to the good news of
Jesus.
·
Luke’s record in Acts 8 demonstrates that faith, baptism,
asking and laying on of hands are needed.
·
Luke’s record in Acts 10 & 11 further
demonstrate that faith, baptism and repentance
are needed.
The full
dimensions of repentance, faith and baptism in a person’s life demonstrate the
desire to be obedient and the desire for whatever God wants. This is the context in which God’s gift of
the Holy Spirit becomes active. There
is, however, no indication of any importance attached to the order in which
these elements of normal Christian birth are experienced. We must be wary of insisting on an order of
progression, and wary of those who do so insist.
The important issue
is:
þ
That
we understand and participate in the ‘real thing’ in relation to these
elements.
þ
That
our wills are set in a course of submission and obedience to Christ.
þ
That
our desire is set on receiving and passing on to others the full dimensions of
Spirit life (including Titus 2:11-13).
For the
grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say "No" to
ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and
godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope--the
glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
The
Spirit’s Presence and Vitality
Even a superficial reading of the New Testament
reveals a vast array of evidences for the presence and vitality of the Spirit. You
cannot keep the Holy Spirit under wraps, out of sight or out of hearing!
There are certain evidences one could well
expect to see in the life of one who has received the gift of the Holy Spirit:
First, God’s purpose in giving the Holy
Spirit to christians is power: power for living a holy life and power for
witnessing to the wonderful acts of God.
In light of that, we should expect to see Spirit-generated holiness and
Spirit-led testifying (“evangelism”).
Second, as a fruit tree bears fruit, the
Spirit bears fruit in the lives of those in whom he takes up residence. In light of that, we should expect to see
actual change for the better in people’s character — removal of the “warts”, so
to speak, and the growth of healthy characteristics. Galatians 5 is an excellent resource here. In the table below, I have listed the words
used by Eugene Peterson in his translation of Galatians 5:18-24.
Paul wrote to the Galatians, “Walk in
the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh… Those who
belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in
the Spirit. Let us not become
conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.”
Third, as the Spirit comes [and as a
consequence of Jesus’ resurrection], he brings with him certain gifts —
enablings or abilities. In light of that
we should expect to see Spirit-generated service; freedom and ministry
according to gift with all the parts of the body serving and the elders outfitting
and equipping the servants
Once again, there are three elements
involved. The scriptures say there are
‘gifts’, ‘ministries’ and ‘effects’ or workings or, as we might say,
out-workings. Paul says, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And
there are varieties of ministries,
and the same Lord. There are varieties
of effects, but the same God who
works all things in all persons.” (1 Corinthians 12:4-6).
Gifts
The term ‘gifts of
the Spirit’ is an English phrase adapted for our purposes because, in the New
Testament Greek, the word is simply the plural of the word for
‘spiritual’. It literally means
‘spirituals’. So, given that these
‘spirituals’ are gifts from God by the Spirit, we generally use the term
‘spiritual gifts’ or ‘gifts of the Spirit’.
And there are many listed for us in the pages of the New Testament. We should note that there is nothing in the
New Testament that allows us to say there are none besides what are listed
there. If they are gifts of the Spirit
and his work is to perfect the Body of Christ here on earth, he may well choose
to give gifts that are not listed in the New Testament.
The main New Testament
passages outlining such gifts are: 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, Ephesians 4 and
then a few miscellaneous references that indicate ‘gifts’ such as celibacy,
hospitality, martyrdom, missionary and voluntary poverty. It is not my intention here to go into the
detail of these gifts or of how one determines which gifts God has given
whom. That is for another place and
time.
Ministries
In the 1 Corinthians
12 passage above, Paul also talks about ministries. If Jesus is the Head of the ecclesia, the
Body of Christ, and that body is, as Paul says, made up of many parts, each
doing its job, there are going to be all sorts of ‘ministries’ happening when
the Body moves. That word ministries is diakonion. This is the same Greek word we transliterate
to come up with the word deacon. It
means a servant.
Paul is saying that,
while there is one Lord (Ephesians 4:5), there are many ways to serve him;
there are many different jobs of service that can and must be done. In the same way as fingers, toes, ears and
eyes perform different jobs of service for our physical bodies, each one of us
has different jobs of service to do, using our gifts, to complete the picture
of the Body of Christ, the ecclesia!
Effects
In a similar way,
Paul says there is a variety of ‘effects’, but the same God who works all
things in all people to His ends. I
believe there are two possible meanings of the term used here. The Greek word is ergon meaning
‘expressions of energy’. When energy is
present, it will be visibly expressed and evident in outworkings or outcomes.
The first thing I
believe this refers to is God’s outworking of His purposes. God has a will and that will is expressed in
the fact that God has a goal, an aim and an agenda and everything he does – all
His ergons – will be executed and carried to completion. God will finish what He starts and what He
starts is from His will, via His goal, aim and agenda.
The second thing I
believe this refers to is what is commonly known as “the fruit of the Spirit”
in Galatians 5. When God’s power works,
His ergons – His outworkings – will include the development of His own
character in the lives of His many twice-born sons. The centerpiece of His character is love: GOD
IS LOVE (1 John 4). That love outworks
itself in joy, peace, patience, etc. as Paul lists in Galatians 5:22-23.
The receiving of the
Holy Spirit is dynamic, obvious and often noisy. The real thing will often be closed out of modern churches
precisely because it is these things — because it is not always neat and tidy,
but noisy and messy. A browse through
the New Testament looking for evidences of the Spirit’s presence will reveal a
great deal.
Every person and every group of people born
again of the Spirit of God will experience the gifts, ministries and
outworkings of God. The Holy Spirit
cannot be present and these things not be in evidence.
I recommend a
separate study of the following chapters / books of the New Testament looking
for what evidences for the presence and vitality of the Holy Spirit were reported
among the early assemblies: Acts chapters 2 to 7; Romans; 1 & 2 Corinthians; Galatians; Ephesians;
Philippians; 1 & 2 Thessalonians; 1 John.
There are two final aspects
of this gift of the Holy Spirit that I want to briefly discuss: 1) the difference between the baptism of
the Spirit and being filled with the Spirit; 2) the use of the term “in the Spirit”.
The
Spirit’s Baptism and Filling
In the New Testament, the term “receiving the
gift of the Holy Spirit” is basically the same as “receiving the baptism of the
Holy Spirit” — the baptism of Jesus we spoke of earlier. We need to understand, however, that there is
a difference between the “baptism of the Spirit” and “being filled with the
Spirit” as taught by Paul. (See
Ephesians 5:18)
In essence, the baptism of the
Spirit is something that is done to us by God, as a grace gift, sometimes
brought to us by the laying on of hands by Spiritual elders. Being filled with the Spirit is essentially
how we live our life – the extent to which we walk with the Spirit and allow
him to guide and direct our life. I love
one of the terms Paul uses in Romans 8: “according to the Spirit”
For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the
flesh, God did: sending His own
Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as
an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the
requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to
the flesh but according to the Spirit. For
those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the
flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but
the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on
the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of
God, for it is not even able to do so,
and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:3-8)
In
the Spirit
This is a wonderful idea and a
wonderful term, but it has lost most of its meaning in modern church because
certain legalists have made it mean only one thing. A friend of mine has a term for these people:
he calls them “the popes of Pentecostalism” because they populate the
pentecostal denominations of church and act as ‘popes’, ruling the roost and
deciding many things for the member of their congregations.
They are kind of like the
Pharisee sect Paul talks about in Acts 15.
“In the Spirit”, to them, always means “in tongues”. Hence, praying in the spirit is praying in
tongues; singing in the spirit is singing in tongues; prophesying in the spirit
is prophesying in tongues. It doesn’t
seem to bother them that when it comes to other things ‘in the spirit’, it
makes no sense. How does one dance in
tongues, give in tongues, love in tongues and many other acts of service the
Lord, the Head of the Body, asks us to do?
“In the Spirit” means to be (to
‘live and move and have one’s being’) in the zone of the Holy Spirit; in the
zone where God lives and moves and has his being: eternity. Unfortunately,
many don’t understand that eternity is already here in part. That is part of
Jesus’ message of the kingdom of God.
And how it works practically is
that we can live “in the Spirit” (with our head in eternity, as it were), while
our hands and our feet and all the rest of us express on earth what we are
seeing and knowing in the eternal realm.
We see the ‘unseeable’ and carry it out as an act of service to our
Lord. We hear the ‘unhearable’ and live
it out on earth now. We feel and
experience with our spirit (instead of our fingers or toes or gut) and express
those things in life today.
I believe that is how we are
meant to understand ‘in the Spirit’. And
I suggest it is how Jesus and the first apostles lived. Jesus, for instance, said “I do what I see
the Father doing”. Jesus himself said of
the Spirit, “Whatever he hears, he will speak.”
Paul and his teams listened for the voice of eternity before venturing
out into his works of service for his King.
And certain of the gifts of the Spirit are precisely for this purpose:
gifts such as prophecy and the gifts of ‘word of knowledge’ and ‘word of
wisdom’.
Conclusion
Jesus, the first apostles, and indeed our very own bibles
have a lot to say about spiritual birth – and that it is not a ritual or a rite
or the product of someone else’s intervention.
Unfortunately, much – perhaps even most – of what churches preach and
teach largely misses the point of what Jesus, the apostles and our bibles are
saying.
Any human being today can have a perfectly good and
wonderfully intimate relationship with God our Father without what we know as ‘church’.
Church and what our bibles call ecclesia
are not the same thing. We cannot do
without ecclesia; in fact it is not
even a choice for us. When we are born
the second time (the spiritual birth) we are introduced into ecclesia and are members of it, not by
our choice but by the will of the Father; it is a construct of God. Churches we can join or not join since they
are constructs of man.
In like manner, we can have a full and complete
relationship with God without
religion: without the priests, the rites, the confessions, the catechisms, the
administered sacraments of man-made, man-led systems. The relationship with God that Jesus, by the
Holy Spirit, takes us into, is complete
and sufficient in and of itself; nothing more is needed, since, by definition,
the relationship provides all that God demands.
In like manner, we can have a full and complete
relationship with God without the
bible. The bible itself tells us
this! Under the new covenant inaugurated
in Jesus, the laws and the word of God are, according to God’s own promise,
written on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33); the writer to the Hebrews, quoting this
very promise hundreds of years later, says: “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those
days: I will put my laws upon their
heart, and upon their mind I will write them; and their sins and their lawless
deeds I will remember no more.” (Hebrews 10:16)
There is no saying this is old covenant since it is in the documents of
the new covenant as we know it. What is in the old covenant is the idea that
we need a ‘book of the law’ to guide us.
We have the author of the book resident within us and that is far
superior to carrying around with us a printed manuscript that is a tiny
fraction of God’s will for us. What
would we do if tomorrow all our bibles were confiscated and burned and all
on-line bibles removed? We would have to
rely on the Holy Spirit!
And to cap it off, we can have a full and complete
relationship with God without the
interventions of humans. There is one
mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. No other man is, or can be, or should ever be
allowed to be, a go-between in our relationship with God. Any father-son relationship that requires or
insists upon a go-between is a dysfunctional relationship. God doesn’t have dysfunctional relationships.
The relationship is this: God the Father, in Christ,
reconciling the world to Himself through the perfect and complete work of
Jesus. It is God the Father (“for whom are all things and through whom are all things”) bringing
“many sons to glory” through the sufferings of Jesus (Hebrews 2:10). It is God the Father gladly welcoming rebels
into his family as full sons by spiritual birth because they welcomed His
first-born once-born Son, Jesus Christ the Lord, as Master and Commander.
That spiritual birth (the second birth) issues from
repentance, faith and baptism and is blessed by God the Father with His
imprimatur of forgiveness, adoption and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Can anyone tell me what more is needed?
And no, I DO NOT BELIEVE one can do without ecclesia, the Body of Christ. But that is hardly an issue given that ecclesia is us twice-born sons living
with Jesus our Head, in the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit, not
according to our own will but according to His will and His perfect intent for
us. I am in ecclesia if I am born again; and together we are ecclesia. To suggest that we are somehow avoiding that
by avoiding ‘church’ is the same idea that allowed the church to murder
hundreds of saints and thousands of peasants in the name of God and still
pretend it has the imprimatur of God.
What counts to God is new
birth, because through that we are being transformed, piece by piece, into the
likeness of His once-born, well-beloved Son, through the ministry of the Spirit
of God.
Amen! So let it be!
Cheers,
Kevin.
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