from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and Congregational and Ministry Studies at Calvin College

Posts Tagged ‘Holy Spirit’

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Spirit at Work: The Transformer’s Instruments

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

The previous two articles addressed the Holy Spirit’s crucial work of “writing us into the story of salvation,” as Eugene Peterson puts it, and shaping us into fully mature saints—persons who aspire to live in, with, like, and for Jesus Christ. In this article we shall focus on the means the Spirit employs to achieve that goal.

God’s Word teaches that the Spirit employs four principal means for shaping Christians: Scripture, the sacraments, a person’s life experiences, and time. Furthermore, the Spirit puts these four to their optimal intent and use within the fellowship of Christ’s church—his worshiping, witnessing, and serving body.

A brief word about each of these instruments of the Spirit.

Growth in spiritual maturity begins with God’s Word. For healthy growth to occur, the Bible must be read properly, of course. Simply to read it in a rote, mechanical manner does the reader little spiritual good. Scripture must be read in line with its God-intended purpose—namely, to announce the Triune God’s earnest campaign to restore sinful, rebellious human beings to their place within God’s family. “The written Word,” says John Stott, “points to the Living Word and says to us, ‘Go to Jesus.’” Failing to recognize that would be to misunderstand the entire purpose for reading the Bible. But when a person dwells in God’s Word—reads it, memorizes it, studies it, and meditates upon it with an eye eager to see God at work rescuing his children from Satan’s angry jaws—he grows in God’s way.

Sacraments, too—baptism and the Lord’s Supper—are God’s gifts to help Christians grow. The Spirit uses common elements—water, bread, wine—to accomplish what is breathtakingly uncommon: through them believers are bound more closely to Jesus, and the gospel is impressed more deeply and permanently into their hearts.

A person’s life circumstances also serve the Holy Spirit’s high purposes. For it is precisely there—amid the sometimes messy and often mysterious events of one’s life—that the Lord intends the gospel’s promises and commands to be heard and obeyed. God pledges to superintend and guide all of those events in such a way that they can work toward growing a person into Christlikeness (cf. Romans 8:28-39; 2 Cor. 2:14). Thus, a person’s joys in life, her seasons of sorrow and sadness, even her times of wandering and wrongdoing, can serve as soft clay in which the Spirit’s hands can sculpt features of holiness, can etch deeper and clearer lines of saintliness.

Time, too, is the Spirit’s tool. Growth is a lifelong process. John Calvin was correct: Only at death does a person “graduate” from the school of Jesus Christ.

And we must say what has become a mantra these last few articles: these instruments of the Spirit work best together within the fellowship of Christian pilgrims who are enroute together. The Spirit uses the church to unite believers more fully as family, and to encourage them to support one another toward their common goal of becoming like Jesus.

To illustrate what I mean, let’s put these elements into something of an equation. What follows is my attempt to present visually the thoughts I heard from Howard Hendricks at a Dallas Seminary conference years ago. Granted, the formula is much too simple to account for all that goes into the complex divine/human process of moving people toward maturity in Christ. But perhaps it might prompt us to think about the means the Spirit uses in our lives to encourage our growth in godliness.

To explain:

  • God’s Word and sacraments together serve as fuel to live obediently amid life’s events.
  • Obedience, practiced over time, will yield holiness.
  • The church functions as catalyst for this process to happen. (Worshiping and fellowshipping together, Christians are encouraged to “make every effort to add to [their] faith” (2 Pet. 1:5), and to mature in Christ.)
  • The entire process depends upon the Holy Spirit, without whose energy nothing happens.

Some Jewish children once asked their rabbi: “Where did Enoch go?”
Rabbi: “He went to be with God.”
Children: “How do you know?”
Rabbi: “Because the last time people saw him, he was walking that way.”

A journey of lifelong obedience begins by taking the first step.

Spirit at Work: The Transformer’s Aim

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

In the last article we pointed out the Holy Spirit’s crucial work of “writing us into the story of salvation,” as Eugene Peterson puts it, and prompting us to trust Jesus’ promises and obey his commands. In this article we shall focus on the Spirit’s specific mission to make us saints—persons who aspire to live in, with, like and for Jesus.

Let’s start at the end—a very good place to start. The Spirit’s aim is to give people aim in life. He seeks to direct them along a path which shall enable them, at their life’s close, to have marked progress in learning Christ’s deeper ways, in growing to love him more and more. Jesus’ own goal in life, of course, was focused upon doing his Father’s will (cf Heb. 10.7) and thus bringing his Father delight. The Spirit aids Jesus’ followers to make that their aim, too—their laser-sharp aim.

Now, let’s go back to the beginning. Sin causes disarray in human lives. Satan jerks people around, and deviously conspires to make them go astray. (Cf Ezekiel 48.11; I Cor. 6.9) Persons without the Spirit are as undirected as a litter of young beagles on bungee cords. Within every sinful person’s heart, says Thomas Kelly, there exists a “whole committee of selves,” each jockeying for position and prominence. “Each self..…is a rank individualist, not cooperative, but shouting out his vote for himself when voting time comes. And even when a consensus is reached, the disgruntled minority agitates on the streets of the soul.”

So, when God’s Spirit sets out on his mission to transform a person, that soul is desperately wandering and lost.He feels unfulfilled and empty. Jesus’ followers must plead continually:

“O Lord, grant me heavenly wisdom that I may learn, above all things, to seek thee and to find thee, to relish thee and to love thee, and to order all things as they are according to thy purpose.” (Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ).

They must pray regularly, too, for the Spirit to guide them—to direct their heart’s deepest affections and allegiances aright, and to empower them to live as God intends. Continually they must make the Psalmist’s cry their own:

“Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths.
Guide me in your truth, and teach me. (Psalm 25.4-5a)

Saints also implore the Spirit for the discipline necessary to help them maintain their life’s direction by careful intention. For:

“As our purpose is, so shall our progress be, and there is need for much discipline for him who wisheth to advance much.” (The Imitation of Christ)

Christ-imitating, Father-glorifying, Spirit-prompted discipline is practiced best in the company of fellow Christians assembled for worship. Why? Because two facts are incontrovertibly true:

First, no Christian ever walks optimally alone. She needs fellow pilgrims to help her stay on the right path, to encourage her along the way.
Second, In the sanctuary of God’s presence—that is, in corporate worship—the Spirit pours energy into human hearts for acts of obedience, acts of praise along the way.

In worship believers’ hearts get set on pilgrimage again; their lives and loves become reoriented toward giving the Triune God due adoration and thanks, appropriate praise and glory

During Sunday worship many Christians use their hands to make the sign of the cross upon themselves. With this gesture they are declaring again what the entire Trinity once said about them when they were baptized. They touch their heads for the Father, in whose mind they were first conceived and whose thought gave them birth. They touch their hearts for the Son, whose love for them led him to Calvary and whose heart instructs their own hearts. They touch their shoulders for the Spirit, who, as Greg Kendra says, “gives us strength,…carries us on his shoulders…and enables us to be God’s arms, working on earth.”

CS Lewis once said: “The church exists for nothing else but to draw [people] into Christ, to make them little Christs.” I would add: The Spirit aims to make them icons—visible expressions—of the Trinity.

What a way to go at living: to aim daily to live like Jesus did, and thus to bring delight to God.

Similarly, what a way to head toward dying: to look back with joy upon a life lived carefully in trust and obedience toward God.; and to look forward with hope to joining the company of saints triumphant whose chief aim—“in a nobler, sweeter song”—is to bring the Triune God ever richer praise, ever purer devotion.

Spirit at Work: Transformer

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

Eugene Peterson, in his book The Pastor, writes, “The Holy Spirit is writing us into the revelation, the story of salvation. We find ourselves in the story as followers of Jesus. … Our task is to obey—believingly, trustingly obey.” These simple words reveal astonishing truth about the Holy Spirit’s critical role in the Trinity’s campaign to rescue God’s children from sin and bring them safely home again. God the Father mapped out the strategy (cf. Eph. 1:3ff). Jesus the Son, by his death and resurrection, invaded the dungeon of evil, delusion, and despair, and made the rescue. God the Spirit now applies the truth to believers’ hearts and empowers them to live and dance in the fresh air and bright sunlight of God’s good freedom again.

There’s no question about it: to transform a forgiven sinner into a saint is, from beginning to end, divine work. The chains of sin are too strong for us to free ourselves; the chasm too deep for us to make it out on our own. Not a single human being is a match for the power of evil that holds humanity in its grip. That’s what St. Paul had in mind when he prayed, “May the God of peace sanctify (read: “transform”) you entirely, and may your spirit, soul, and body be kept sound and blameless until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this” (1 Thess. 5:23-24).

But the Spirit also empowers us to play our own role in the drama of redemption. Our first duty is to believe the Good News; the second, to trust our Savior’s promises and obey his commands. To do both daily demands our intense focus and diligent effort. In both the prompting to belief, trust, and obedience, and the applying of Jesus’ redemption to human hearts, the Spirit works to transform humans into saints. The Spirit plants us in Jesus; the Spirit brings us into close fellowship with Jesus; the Spirit empowers us to live more and more like Jesus; the Spirit equips us to live for Jesus. In, with, like, for—four vital prepositions which describe the Spirit’s vast work of making believers teleios—that is, mature and Christ-like in every square millimeter of their lives. “And all of us,” says St. Paul, “seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory into another.” This entire process, he adds, takes place “[through] the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).

The Heidelberg Catechism, a 16th-century Christian confession, points out both dimensions of the process of growing in holiness—that is, both the Spirit’s initiating and our responding. Answer 114 states: “In this life even the holiest [persons and communities] have but a small beginning of this obedience”—a bracing reminder of human feebleness and an underscoring of the vital need for God’s Spirit. However, immediately thereafter the creed adds, “Nevertheless, with all seriousness of purpose, they do begin to live according to all, not only some, of God’s commandments,” thus underscoring the active role we [must] play in the process of learning to live as God intends.

William Temple, former Archbishop of Canterbury, pointed out the two sides in this way:

It is no good giving me a play like Hamlet or King Lear, and telling me to write a play like that. Shakespeare could do it; I can’t.

And it is no good showing me a life like the life of Jesus and telling me to live a life like that.  Jesus could do it; I can’t.

But if the genius of Shakespeare could come and live in me, then I could write plays like his. And if the Spirit of Jesus could come and live in me, then I could live a life like his.

Persons need radical transforming. So, too, do congregations. The pews of a church—any church—are filled with people whose hearts, though redeemed, keep pumping out both lovely good and venomous evil. Sinfulness and saintliness lie close to each other within the heart of even the holiest person. What is more, sin often disrupts relationships between fellow believers. It’s no small challenge to get along with fellow congregants—especially when they rub us the wrong way. ‘Tis true—often and everywhere:

To dwell above with saints we love. O that will be glory.
To dwell below with saints we know—that’s another story.

It takes the Spirit’s empowering, therefore, for the fellowship of the church to live together as saints. Jesus delights to call the church his bride. But the Spirit must continue the task of teaching the bride to keep dressing daily in her wedding gown, the clothing of holiness (cf. Col. 2:19; 3:12-17; Rom. 11:20).

On Sundays Christians gather to plead for the Transformer’s energy to work in their lives and in their life together as a church. For

God gives his grace and Holy Spirit
only to those who pray continually and groan inwardly,
asking God for these gifts
and thanking him for them. (Heidelberg Catechism, Answer 116)

“Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25).

Spirit at Work: Guide

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

With “two hands,” said St. Irenaeus, third-century bishop of Lyons, God teaches and guides his people—with the Word and the Spirit. Not one only, nor the one acting separately from the other; rather, both, and working together. God’s Word teaches Jesus Christ’s followers his will. God’s Spirit leads them as they strive to interpret the Word and apply its meaning to their lives. The entire process—both the attentive reading of the Word and the careful listening to the Spirit’s guidance in applying it—is called discernment. Discernment is vital to followers of Jesus as they heed his call to learn and to love their Lord’s deeper ways.

In the last column we focused on the Spirit’s role in writing the Word. In this column we look at the Spirit’s work in guiding God’s people as they read and apply it.

History keeps moving on; life keeps changing. God’s people must be on the move, too, ever open to responding to new opportunities and challenges, ever keenly alert to their present circumstances. These opportunities, challenges, and circumstances are—to state the obvious—vastly different from when Scripture first was written. How then to keep their boat on course as wave after wave of change swells and crashes around them? How to steer their craft true to God’s Word? Those are the questions which Christians of every generation must keep asking and answering.

To discern what God’s Word is saying to Christians today is anything but easy—that, too, is obvious. Throughout the church’s 2,000-year history, not seldom have honest believers honestly disagreed about Scripture’s meaning. Not seldom have disagreements turned into debates, and debates into full-blown controversies.

However, the church’s task of discerning, though complex and difficult, is not some stab-in-the-dark guessing game, a willy-nilly act of private and undirected conjecturing. While he was with them on earth, Jesus promised the disciples that his Spirit “will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13). And Jesus’ promise covers every succeeding generation of followers, our own age and generation not excluded (cf. John 17:20f). Jesus has not failed on his promise. Accordingly, with glad confidence Christians confess that the risen Jesus has sent his Spirit to lead them as they strive to discern what God’s Word is saying to them.

Throughout the church’s history, the Spirit has been employing numerous means to help God’s people learn and apply the Word. Among these means are the canon, the definitive list of books which belong in Scripture; creeds, timely confessions of what the church affirms (and rejects); and bishops and pastors, trustworthy leaders who teach and guide. These three together—canon, creed, and bishop—have helped to mark out and illuminate for believers appropriate paths of faithful Christian pilgrimage. They have served as the Spirit’s instruments to guide God’s people.

The Bible’s favorite tense is not the past, but the future. Everything in the Bible breathes future. God’s Word continually beckons the church to stand on tiptoe and with white-hot longing to keep hope for what awaits her: fellowship with her Savior and Lord, finally and fully. The call to practice that hope requires the church to stay spiritually healthy and robust, to renew and refresh herself again and again, and to plead for the Spirit’s help as she seeks to do so. Thus, the church must—yes, she must—keep changing. Jesus’ bride must live by the motto Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda secundum Verbum Dei: “A renewed church ought always to be renewing herself according to the Word of God.” Her life in the present demands it. Her anticipation of the life to come, when she shall be with her beloved Savior and Lord forever (1 Thess. 4:18)—that, too, demands it.

But as she changes and moves forward, the church ought to keep her eyes and ears open to the past, too. She must continue to read and to hear God’s inspired Word. She should learn from and enjoy the treasure of wisdom that is the Christian tradition, which has been accumulating throughout the church’s history.

Where better to receive blessing from God’s “two hands” than in Sunday morning worship? There Christ’s followers gather to hear the Word and to plead for the Spirit’s presence and power to understand and obey it. In the sanctuary of God’s presence (cf. Ps. 73:17) they invoke Charles Wesley’s words and join to sing their thanks for the gifts of Word and Spirit—God’s two strong, steady hands to guide them:

Captain of Israel’s host, and Guide
Of all who seek the land above,
Beneath thy shadow we abide,
The cloud of thy protecting love;
Our strength, thy grace; our rule, thy Word;
Our end, the glory of the Lord.
By thine unerring Spirit led,
We shall not in the desert stray,
We shall not full direction need,
Nor miss the providential way;
As far from danger as from fear,
While love, almighty love, is near.

Spirit at Work: Revealer

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

Read these words slowly, meditatively, and well:

Christian theology presupposes that there is a God who can be known precisely because God has revealed the divine life to humanity through creation (general revelation), but especially through God’s redemptive acts in history that culminate in the Christ event as witnessed in scripture (special revelation). Christian scripture—the authoritative, inspired word of God—is trustworthy, because the triune God has providentially acted in such a way that the Christian church has been given a faithful and reliable account of who God is, what God is like, and how we are to live before God. … The primary check and balance for Christian theology, therefore, is the biblical narrative, the publicly accessible constitution of Christian faith, the special revelation that witnesses to the triune God, especially the incarnate Divine word—Jesus Christ. The biblical materials are the primary source and norm for knowing the identity and character of the triune God. (R. Plantinga et al., Introduction to Christian Theology, p. 76)

How do we humans know what we know (or, at least what we think we know)? The question of knowledge (epistemology) is one of the most centrally important—and vexingly complex—issues facing humankind today, and cries out for a solid, appropriate answer. With change happening all about us, and the pace of that change continuing to accelerate, thoughtful human beings increasingly are asking what—if, indeed, anything—is sure and lasting, what is certain and true.

Christians boldly claim that God is the font of all knowledge, the foundation of certitude about the nature of reality. God’s Holy Spirit makes (all) knowledge possible—knowledge about God, about the world God made, about humanity, and about God’s grand campaign through Jesus to rescue a world sadly distressed and broken by sin. Christians declare that without the revealing activity of the Holy Spirit, humans can know nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Christians make a second claim about the Spirit’s role in human ability to know: The Bible, a corpus of sixty-six books which form the Old and New Testaments, is one of the Spirit’s strategic means to instruct humans about God and the world. Though quite similar in certain respects to other ancient writings, the Bible is also unique and special. It was written by the finger of God, as it were. Thus these biblical books are Holy Spirit-infused—“God-breathed,” as St. Paul puts it (cf. 2 Tim. 3:16). The Spirit intends these books to serve as Scripture—the very Word of God to humanity. Christians receive and regard it, therefore, for what it is—an utterly holy and uncommon book. They believe that through it God’s Spirit “reveals” truth—that is, sets forth sure and certain knowledge—about God, about the world, and about God’s intentions and ways with the world.

Christians make yet another claim about human knowledge and about the Holy Spirit’s work as Revealer. They declare that though Scripture is God’s written Word and thus holy in and by itself, it will never accomplish its God-intended reach and purpose without the Spirit’s continuing work in the hearts of its readers. The Spirit must rouse them to trust and obey the Bible’s message. They must become prompted to not merely read the words, but also to “hear”—to heed—those words. “The Holy Spirit,” Jesus promised his disciples, “will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).

Christians gladly sing what they confess about the Spirit’s role in communicating God’s Word to them:

He, himself the living Author, wakes to life the sacred Word,
Reads with us its holy pages and reveals our risen Lord.

(“For Your Gift of God the Spirit”)

Regularly, too, they make the plea of the words in Charles Wesley’s hymn their very own plea:

Spirit of faith come down, reveal the things of God
And make to us the Godhead known …

These three claims, taken together, in part explain why many Christians weekly incorporate a “Prayer for Illumination” into their Sunday worship. Immediately before they read Scripture and prepare to deliver and listen to a sermon, together both preacher and congregants call upon the Spirit for help to hear God’s Word. Their joint prayer is an act of declaring that they utterly depend upon the Holy Spirit.

Depend on the Holy Spirit we must—and not only during a worship service. We need help daily to put into practice some of the central Scriptural truths worth living and dying by: the Triune God is God alone; God is our Creator and Savior; God makes good—always—on his pledge to sustain us along our life’s journey; and, our earthly journey ended, God will bring us safely home.

Spirit at Work: Protector

Friday, August 5th, 2011

During the Pentecost season of the church year, Christians direct their attention to the important role that the person and work of the Holy Spirit plays in their own lives and in their life together as the church. Thus, in recent columns during this season we have been taking special note of the several dimensions of the Spirit’s work in the church. Each dimension reflects a unique aspect of what Christians are confessing each Sunday morning when they declare together the six words of the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” In this week’s column we focus on the Spirit’s work of protecting the church until the day Jesus returns to take her home to live with him forever, safe and secure.

Let’s face it: This world is no friend to Jesus Christ. Nor is it any friendlier to Jesus’ followers. Satan unleashes his most violent furies, his deadliest attacks, against those whose aim is to live with, like, and for Jesus, their Savior and Lord.

Aware of the evil one’s power marshaled against them and also of their own weakness to withstand his malignant, diabolical attacks, Christians (must) plead to God continually for help to withstand their deadly enemy. Regularly they (must) cry out to God with such words as are found in the venerable Heidelberg Catechism, a sixteenth-century confession of faith:

By ourselves we are too weak
to hold our own even for a moment.

And our sworn enemies—
the devil, the world, and our own flesh—
never stop attacking us.

And so, Lord,
uphold us and make us strong
with the strength of your Holy Spirit,
so that we may not go down to defeat
in this spiritual struggle,
but may firmly resist our enemies
until we finally win the complete victory.

(Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 127)

But Christians do not endure Satan’s attacks only as individual believers. The entire community of Christ, Jesus’ dearly loved bride, his church, also finds herself under relentless threat from a “world with devils filled” whose chief sworn purpose is to “undo” her. “Nowhere is the power of hell more strongly aimed than against the church where the aroma of Christian holiness fills the air,” to paraphrase St. Hereticus. Thus, the church, too, stands in urgent need of a strong shield to protect her, a fortress so sturdy and impregnable that only God can build and provide it.

Here the Spirit of the resurrected Jesus comes to the rescue. It is the Spirit who erects an armor and defense around believers and around the church. Thus, no matter how ferociously and relentlessly Satan keeps mounting assaults against Christians and the church, Jesus’ Spirit keeps them safe. The bride of Christ is secure from anything that can do her harm, from anyone bent on defiling her and tearing her away from him who cherishes her.

Knowing they are safe, Jesus’ followers can have steadiness of spirit. The words of St. Cyprian, third-century bishop of Carthage who was martyred for his faith, reflect the poise with which Christians of every age have been able to face heavy oppression:

This seems a cheerful world, Donatus, when I view it from this fair garden, under the shadow of these vines. But if I climbed some great mountain and looked out over the wide land, you know very well what I would see. Brigands on the highways, pirates on the seas; in the amphitheatres men murdered to please the applauding crowds; under all roofs misery and selfishness. It is really a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. Yet in the midst of it, I have found a quiet and holy people. They have discovered a joy, which is a thousand times better than any pleasure of this sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are the Christians … and I am one of them.

The source of this sturdy confidence, this quiet tranquility and hope? It is anchored in the confident trust Jesus’ community puts in his promise to them: “Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”

Each Sunday when the Christian community gathers to worship God and to fellowship with one another, it hears that promise declared again. It listens anew to Jesus’ invitation to believe his promise. When believers reckon their lives—and their life together as a church—upon the trustworthiness of that promise, they discover that the fiercest, most hellish torments of the evil one are nothing. His rages cannot tear them from the Spirit’s strong embrace, nor banish them from their secure, Spirit-given sanctuary.

Having thus received weekly assurance from their Lord on Sunday morning, Jesus’ followers find hitherto undiscovered, untapped sources of strength to live boldly in the world. They discover anew, as they make their way through frequently confusing, often ominous and threatening happenings during the week, that he is holding them fast. They receive power to live out the bold words William Temple, then Archbishop of Canterbury, declared during the darkest days of World War II to his fellow believers:

When we worship God and serve him, Christ reigns;
When we know success or taste defeat, Christ reigns.
When we live, when we die, Christ reigns.
When history goes, and time shall be no more, Christ is king forever and ever.

And all of this because, until Jesus returns, his Spirit is serving as the church’s Protector, her Safety and her Strength.

Spirit at Work: Illuminator

Monday, July 18th, 2011

The event is as clear today in my mind’s treasure of memories as when it happened almost forty years ago.  Our first-born—and yes, remarkably precocious!—daughter Karen toddled toward the full-length mirror hanging on our closet door. Standing before it, she stared intently at the image of the little girl looking back at her. Then, with a look of excitement and satisfied joy only a child’s face can display, she pointed her finger and exclaimed: “That’s Karen!”

In order for God’s Word to achieve its Divinely intended purpose and effect, such an “Aha! That’s me!” response must happen within the hearts of those who read and hear it.  Without that response, one has not heard God speaking. Scripture’s testimony will be flat and unimportant; its string of words and sentences will matter very little to one’s own life and destiny. “Those who are without the Spirit do not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. Such things are foolishness to them; they cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14).

But when that “Aha!” happens—when the brilliant and penetrating light of Jesus’ resurrection Spirit floods in upon one’s spirit and illumines it—then amazing things begin to occur. The eyes of one’s heart become focused and trained to see in Scripture deep and eternal truths springing directly from God’s own mind and heart.  One’s spiritual ears become cupped and attuned to hear the Lord’s voice. One becomes eager to trust the Lord’s promises and to obey his commands. Only then can a person become fully human and fully alive spiritually, and receive that fresh and daily supply of strength which is vital to living as God intends.

Given how necessary God’s Spirit is to one’s ability to hear and read Scripture aright, the psalmist pleads, “Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things in your law,”  (Ps. 119:18). That prayer underscores two important, incontrovertible facts:

1.  God’s Word—God’s declared will, God’s “law”—does contain promises and commands that are glorious to behold. Its power to change human lives is profound. It can guide one along the path toward becoming Christ-like. Heeding Scripture’s words, God’s children can enrich themselves, can bless others, and can bring delight to their Lord. Hence the psalmist has deep awe and respect for God’s Word. He calls it “wonderful.”

2.  Not one of us is able, on our own and without Divine help, to mine Scripture’s vast riches or to enjoy its beauties. Our vision is too dim and blurred. Hence, the psalmist’s plea: “Open my eyes ….”

Given these two hard-as-nails facts—how wonderful the truths contained in God’s Word, and how weak our ability on our own to learn them—God’s people must pray regularly for the Spirit to help them read and hear God’s Word for all that it’s worth. During those times of solitude and quietness that they dedicate to meditate upon God’s Word, they must “seek God’s face” (cf Ps. 27:4). They must begin their time of personal devotions by declaring dependence upon God’s Spirit—with something like the words used by the psalmist to rouse his mind and heart to attentiveness: “My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my expectation is upon him” (Ps. 62:1).

Christians (must) also declare that dependence when they’re congregated as Christ’s Body and gathered on Sunday morning to read God’s Word and hear it proclaimed. Christ’s Body, the Church, needs Christ’s Spirit to become alive—to be able to respond. His Spirit must flood her communal life with light so that she can read that Word aright. The Spirit must clean out her ears to hear what he longs to say to her. Thus, in a worship service, before the Bible is read, before the preacher proclaims, and before the congregation turns its ear to listen, collectively the entire Body of Christ directs to God a “Prayer for the Spirit’s Illumination.”

One too few times—always one too few—have we pleaded for God’s Holy Spirit to be present as we take up the Word. Whether we’re studying and meditating upon that Word personally, or whether we’re congregated on Sunday morning to listen to the Word together, the presence of God’s Breath is vital to our hearing that Word.

And also to obeying it.

Exceptional

Friday, June 17th, 2011

Starting with the previous column, we are directing our attention for several weeks to the work of the Holy Spirit. I hope to highlight the Spirit’s special role when, in concert with the Father and the Son, he worked both to create and to redeem the world. Today we focus on the Spirit’s work in creation—more specifically, on his act of creating each human being as a mirror of God himself.

Scripture teaches that when God created the universe, the Spirit was present. He hovered over the formless void of the physical world (Gen. 1:2), and by his mighty wind (Hebrew ruach = wind, spirit) he gave shape to the vast expanse of the creation. “When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth” (Ps. 104:30). Thus, the physical universe has its origin and receives its form through the presence and activity of God’s Spirit.

And in an extraordinary manner God’s Spirit is active in creating human beings—each one unique and fashioned with exquisite care. Job’s friend, Elihu, confesses: “The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life” (Job 33:4). The Holy Spirit breathes into each human being that which makes her or him a mirror image of God himself. “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). About this entire process the psalmist rhapsodizes: “You have made [human beings] a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor” (Ps. 8:5).

Human specialness needs declaring nowadays, given how pervasive and influential the philosophy of naturalism has become. Naturalism—and a sizeable contingent of evolutionary scientists who pay tribute to it—claims that human beings are of a piece with all other physical creatures. Nothing sets humans apart from anything else that exists. Writing in Harpers (June, 2011) to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, contemporary novelist Benjamin Hale expresses his bitter disgust at what he calls the Bible’s teaching on “human exceptionalism”—the notion that humans are set off from all other beings. The words of Psalm 8:5, says Hale, are nothing other than “beautifully written poison … [and] enrage me more than anything else in the Bible.” And why? Because, says Hale, “The psalm echoes Genesis 1:26, in which God makes man in his image … and puts all mortal creation beneath his feet.” This “anthropocentric ordering of the Judeo-Christian universe,” he claims, “… has fostered an attitude dominant in our culture that uncompromisingly divides ‘man’ from ‘beast.’”

Hale levels a final furious charge against the biblical testimony: “I read the Bible with fascination, awe, terror, and joy. Of all its poetry and philosophy, its darknesses and silences, and its great many gorgeous offenses, what I hate in it the most is its helping establish, in the Western philosophical tradition, the claim that [humans are special].”

This noxious cloud of naturalism heavily blankets our entire culture and threatens to choke from us an awareness of our God-conferred special calling and status. How refreshing and life-giving to be able to enter the “sanctuary” of the Lord’s presence on Sunday (cf. Ps. 73:17)! There the air is rich with the presence of God. There God’s Spirit brings fresh oxygen to our gasping souls. There we become reminded again about who we really are: (nothing less than) imagers of God himself and bearing ineradicable features of the Divine likeness. There we hear again of our incalculably high status and worth. There we hear Pope Benedict XVI’s prophetic message spoken directly to us: “We [humans] are not the product of some casual, arbitrary evolution. Each of us is a result of a thought of God. Each of us is loved. Each of us is willed. Each of us is necessary” (inaugural mass sermon, April 24, 2005). Reminded of this cardinal truth about ourselves, we begin to breathe deeply and freely again. We get something of a “second wind” to run the next leg of our journey.

It is in church—in the sanctuary of God’s presence and among fellow followers of Jesus—that we hear the Holy Spirit, our Creator, declaring to us: “You are exceptional.”

And in response we sing to the Triune God who made us—and to the Spirit, in particular—our prayer of acclamation and longing:

Creator Spirit, by whose aid, the world’s foundations first were laid;
Come visit every pious mind, come pour thy joys on humankind;
From sin and sorrow set us free and make thy temples worthy thee.

Spirit at Work: Power to Make Our Lives Anew

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

When, as part of their Sunday worship, Jesus’ followers join to declare, “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” they’re saying a mouthful—a large mouthful. They’re making confession about who the Spirit is: third person of the Trinity, co-equal with the Father and the Son. But they’re saying even more too: they’re affirming that the Spirit is ceaselessly active, carrying on the Trinity’s work.

In the next several columns, under the heading “Spirit at Work,” we shall focus attention on the several activities of the Holy Spirit. We begin by highlighting one of the Spirit’s central workings: his making Jesus’ resurrection energy present to us, supplying us with “power to make our lives anew,” as hymn writer Margaret Clarkson put it.

Let’s be clear: On Easter morning history made a dramatic turnaround. God the Father pronounced, once and for all, his “Well done!” upon the mission of his Son. As a result, the entire universe—heaven and earth—became recreated, made new, set in a different—and right—direction. Jesus Christ had the final word—he was the final Word!

Let’s be equally clear: The application of that astonishing change to people’s lives—to Peter at Cornelius’ house, to Paul on the Damascus road, to a Philippian jailer, and to countless millions since who have believed that Jesus is risen—is ongoing work. Old habits die hard. Says John Calvin, “This restoration [to new life as God intends] does not take place in one moment or one day or one year; but through continual and sometimes even slow advances God wipes out in his elect the corruptions of the flesh, cleanses them of guilt, consecrates them to himself as temples, renewing all their minds to true purity that they may practice repentance throughout their lives” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. I, chpt. III).

If they are ever to be changed, fully and forever; if, as he calls them to do, they are to turn their lives into fitting sacrifices of thanks and praise (Rom. 12:1-2); if they are to live out their Lord’s promises and commands amid the concrete and fine-print circumstances of their lives (Col. 3:1ff.)—then Jesus’ followers shall surely need a fresh and inexhaustible supply of his resurrection presence and strength. Jesus Christ’s Spirit is the pipeline for that supply.

In a recent interview with Bob Abernethy, former NBC News reporter, Rev. Eugene Peterson (translator of The Message and author of some 30 books) offered trenchant comment on the sad state of religion in the western world and, more particularly, of Christianity in America. His words:

A lot of the language in the church—well, not just the church, in religion itself, has to do with trying to figure out the truth of things. What’s true? What’s true? And I’m not really interested in what’s true. I want to know if I can live it. I want to test it out…. A pastor in personal relationship is not just trying to find ways to make people feel good, loved, whatever. This is a kingdom life we are living. It has to do with salvation. It has to do with justice. It has to do with compassion…. We [pastors] are called to have people follow Jesus. We’re called to have people learn how to forgive their enemies. We’re called to show people that there is a way of life which has meaning beyond their salary or beyond how good they look.

The challenge facing American pastors is immense:

American culture is probably the least Christian culture that we’ve ever had because it is so materialistic and it’s so full of lies. The whole advertising world is just, it’s just intertwined with lies, appealing to the worst of the instincts we have. The problem is people have been treated as consumers for so long they don’t know any other way to live.

Thus Peterson pleads with pastors:

Introduce them to a living Christ, a Christ who makes life livable in the terms in which you are living—that everything in the gospel is livable, not just true.

Who can make the gospel not just worthy of being believed, but also capable of being lived? No one other than the Holy Spirit himself, the resurrected Presence of Jesus among us, Jesus’ vast resurrected Power now made available to us.

And thus every Sunday morning, in a declaration so counter-cultural to the independent spirit of the society in which they dwell, Christian worshipers say together: “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” In doing so, together they are expressing their dependence upon him. They are claiming that God’s Spirit abides in them, and that he’s there to help them go at life as God intends.

Not as Orphans

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011


When Christians gather Sunday after Sunday for fellowship and worship, together they confess: “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” Thereby they acknowledge that not all has been said when people affirm that God is Father and that Jesus Christ is God’s Son. They (must) also affirm the Holy Spirit, who, as the Nicene Creed puts it, is “the Lord, the giver of life, [who] proceeds from the Father and the Son, and with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.”

Yet it is precisely here that many Christians nowadays trip up and lose their way. They find the Spirit so difficult to comprehend and understand. To acknowledge that the Immortal God, the very Creator of the entire universe, is Father; and to affirm that this Father’s firstborn Son, Jesus Christ, once came to dwell on earth, to suffer, to die, and then to rise victoriously over death—those two claims, while not easy to get one’s mind around and to believe with one’s heart, are at least intelligible. But the Spirit? How nebulous and vague—and yes, how “windy” (cf. the Hebrew word for spirit: ruach, which means “wind, air, breath”).

Even the earliest Christians had their share of questionings and misunderstandings about the Spirit. The complete story about their theological head-scratching is too complex and lengthy to discuss here, but the comment made by Gregory of Nazianzus, fourth-century Archbishop of Constantinople, gives telltale sign of the general confusion and puzzlement: “Some considered the Holy Spirit to be an energy, others a creature, and others were uncertain what to call it, out of reverence for Scripture, which made no clear statement.”

How sad the ambiguity and ignorance of these early Christians. The Holy Spirit is no one other—nor anyone less—than the continuing presence and power of the risen, ascended, and now reigning Jesus Christ himself. The Holy Spirit is not some hazy and indistinct spirit-in-general. He is the “Spirit of Jesus Christ” (Acts 16:7; Rom. 8:9), the very One whom the risen Lord declared would bring the reality of Easter to its final crescendo, its God-ordained finale.

In the next few columns I hope to indicate several features about the person of the Holy Spirit and his all-important work. I begin this series by reflecting on Jesus’ word of promise in John 14:18, his pledge not to leave his followers as orphans. By sending them his Spirit after he had returned to heaven to be with his Father, Jesus made good on that promise.

Everyone knows the dreadful state of being an orphan. To be orphaned is
• to feel the intense sorrow, the awful pain of knowing that one’s parents are dead;
• to be severed forever from a mother and father’s counsel and advice, from their comfort and companionship;
• to be bereft of parents’ protection;
• never to be able to learn from parents, nor to depend on them for food, clothing, and life’s other daily needs.

Those who belong to Jesus are never in this state of orphaned peril or forsakenness.

In late 1953, a band of Hungarian communists, their pistols at the ready, burst in upon a small band of Christians who had gathered secretly for worship. “Number them, and then arrest them!” barked their commandant. One by one the godly women and men—their children and grandchildren, too—were counted, and then handcuffed.

“A total of 43,” reported one of the swaggering young thugs to his leader.

One of the Christians interrupted. She spoke softly, but clearly and confidently. “I’m sorry, sir, but you have miscounted. There are 44.”

The soldiers recounted their hostages. Again they tallied 43. The godly woman spoke again, but this time in loud, daring defiance, with courageous contempt: “I tell you: There are 44! Jesus Christ is here. He is present with us; we belong to him.”

Forsakenness is the most hostile idea in the whole universe. However, those who trust in Jesus are not forsaken; never are they orphaned and alone. By his Spirit’s presence the risen Lord is with them. And by his Spirit he promises to remain with them forever.

That supreme truth needs heralding. It needs remembering and recalling again and yet again. It deserves confessing together every time Christians congregate for worship. And it bears repeating by each of them a good many times during the week when they’re not together.

Alleluia! Not as orphans
Are we left in sorrow now;
Alleluia! He is near us,
Faith believes, nor questions how:
Though the cloud from sight received him
When the forty days were o’er:
Shall our hearts forget his promise,
“I am with you evermore”?

“Alleluia! Sing to Jesus,” W. C. Dix, 1866
Psalter Hymnal (Gray), p. 406

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