The Holy Spirit & Holiness (ii)

But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth.  He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

                       (II Thess.2:13-14)

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

(Eph.1:3-4)

It is a well worn coin of wisdom that our experience of the Holy Spirit can be (indeed inevitably is) better than our understanding / theology. We are constantly in danger of speaking of His work in ways that are off-balance, and that are ‘not true enough’ (Packer).  One of the ways this is most evident is in the spiritual sleight of hand which leads us to speak long about the Holy Spirit before we speak of His most precious work in us: His transforming us from one degree of glory to another (II Cor.3:18), until we are at last, like Jesus.

‘Every born again Christian has a passion or holiness implanted by God.  It is natural and normal for Christians to want to be like Jesus’ (Packer, 79).  This is our spiritual centre of gravity, and in past generations the quest for holiness throughout our life and character had an intensity that we might consider faintly unhealthy in our ‘creation-affirming’ generation.  We struggle to understand, let alone justify, the quaint, old idea of ‘worldliness’ as something to be opposed and strained against with all our might.  We are infatuated with our culture, even though the world cannot receive the Spirit (Jn.14:17).  There may be a connection between this and the sense of doctrinal and moral implosion that overshadows the British Church in the 21st Century.  As Winslow said almost two centuries ago: ‘Reader, have you obtained victory over the world, or has the world obtained victory over you?  One of the two is certain…’.

The battle for holiness is empowered by the holiness of the Spirit who is God and who indwells us and works in us (Ps.143:10).  He is the Spirit of the Christ who Himself lived a Spirit-inspired righteousness, and died as much for our holiness as for our forgiveness.  And such is our renewed nature that our joy and satisfaction is now found most deeply in our pursuit of the righteousness for which we have been claimed and set aside (the root meaning of ‘sanctify’).

The methods of the great Sanctifier of our souls are many and various.  He will expose the depths and complexity of our sin; strengthen the divine life of the soul, fortifying us in our battle against temptation; He will cause us to endure affliction as discipline, and will fan into flame the refiner’s fire.  He reveals the emptiness of all that sin, world and devil would offer us; He will draw us again and again to the cross of Christ; He will clothe us in Christ’s righteousness, unite our whole person to His whole Person, and instil in us a confidence in Christ’s intercession; and stirs up in us a love for Him and a desire for His likeness.  This and more until He has conquered us and conformed us again to the Image of Christ (Rom.8:29; Eph.4:24), and we have been re-gifted with all that we were created to be.  For this Christ sanctified himself (Jn.17:19; Heb.2:11), and for this the Spirit longs and labours.  Younger Christians tend to exaggerate their progress and older Christians to minimise it.  But without any such progress, all claims to the Spiritual experience are judged spurious.

This last point is significant.  Packer makes the point that we often mis-interpret the purpose of Christianity, and re-style it in a way that is focussed on us realising our potential, or having a better family life, or a deeper satisfaction in life more generally.  Much teaching in Churches can easily be pop-psychology ‘with a veneer of Bible verses to hide its hollowness’.  It is egocentric, not Christ-focussed, and can be little more than a spiritualised self-absorption.  In this context much of our talk about the Spirit focusses not on the question of Christ-likeness, but on our experiences, our giftings, our fulfilment as a Christian.  We become pre-occupied with controversy about certain spiritual gifts and focus on the extraordinary and the spectacular, rather than the question of character; and the forming of holy habits through which the Spirit slowly recreates us.

The ancients had an altogether healthier, and more Biblically informed focus.  As the Church taught her children in years gone by, Westminster Shorter Catechism Qu.35: What is sanctification?  Ans: Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.

Questions:

Robert Murray McCheyne, a Scottish minister of a previous generation (1813-43) once wrote in his journal: My people’s greatest need is my own personal holiness’.  What do you think he meant?  Do you agree?  Do you think that your greatest need is the personal holiness of your minister?  Why / why not?

What do you think Wesley meant when he wrote the line: ‘He breaks the power of cancelled sin’ (from the hymn: O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing)?  Do you think he was right?  How can we support each other towards a more consistent experience of this truth?

Read Gal.5:13-25

What place does the Law of have in shaping our vision and experience of holiness?  How does this connect with our freedom (v.13-14)?

 

What does it mean to be ‘led by the Spirit’ (v.18)?  What would that feel like?  Is it possible to be a Christian and not to live by the Spirit (v.16)?

 

What is the difference between an awareness of sin (even a sorrow for sin) and repentance?  How are these two experiences similar?  Does Paul think we can continue to sin as Christians (v.21)?

Can’t anyone be loving, joyful, patient, kind etc..?  Why does Paul think that we need the Holy Spirit to live this way?

 

Why do we not make more progress than we do in cultivating the fruit of the Spirit in our lives and character?  How like Jesus can we become in this life?

 

What does it mean to have ‘crucified the flesh’?  Is this part of your thinking about being a Christian?   How would you go about doing this?

Memory Passage:

Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.  You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.

Rom.8:5-9

For further reflection:

Much thinking about the Holy Spirit has become focussed on the ‘spectacular’ and the extraordinary.  We easily assume that a sign of the Spirit working is that what is planned, prepared, and expected is interrupted, and that something spontaneous, impulsive and unanticipated is now happening.  Bizarrely, I’ve found myself in situations where the spontaneous is being planned for, in an attempt to ensure we are being led by the Spirit. 

But the wisdom of the Church – and in this I believe we were more Biblically informed – long pointed in a different direction.  The Spirit works through agency and means.  Whilst these might provide a context for heightened experiences, they are not to be dismissed because of that.  Years of incremental development are not to be disregarded because a teenager suddenly goes through a growth spurt.  The power of the Spirit is not demonstrated by His constantly interrupting the means of grace, the spiritual disciplines, He has built into the life of the Church, but rather in His making those means effective to change us.  Being taught the Bible, breaking bread with the Church, prayer, fellowship, self-reflection, the struggle against temptation…  it is such as these that provide the arena in which the Spirit works to cultivate an increased sensitivity to the life and character of God, and to align us to His holiness.

That we might be like Jesus remains the deepest desire of healthy discipleship, and of the Spirit.  Indeed, because it is the deepest desire of the Spirit, it becomes the deepest desire of those who are Spiritually mature.