The Holy Spirit & Indwelling (iv)

“I myself will be a wall of fire around it,” declares the Lord, “and I will be its glory within.”

(Zech.2:5)

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives among you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.

(I Cor.3:16-17)

You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the Spirit he has caused to dwell in us?

(James 4:4-5)

The question of the Spirit’s relationship with the Church in the Old and New Testaments is a difficult one to navigate. If we have an evolutionary model of ‘progressive revelation’ we may end up suggesting that the people of God did not know God was Trinity, or that there was a Spirit (or, I suppose, a Son). They (thought they) experienced God as merely One. When people read the Bible with these assumptions you hear them talking about how the Spirit wasn’t around much in the OT. He rests on perhaps a handful of prophets, priests and kings, but the majority of the Church had no direct experience of Him.

Over against this more recent way of handling the Bible, we have a very different view. For example, George Smeaton declares: ‘The same Spirit filled the heart of believers whether they lived before or after the advent of Christ (II Cor.4:13). The Trinitarian relations were the same, the Divine perfections in the matter of salvation were inhabited in the same way’ (274). Smeaton argues that we could construct and entire theology of the Holy Spirit solely from the writings of Isaiah the prophet (36). Perhaps when we get to Isaiah in our Bible Read Through (July), we can keep a pen and paper handy and see if he is right![1]

Paul suggests that the covenant with Abraham included the promise of the Holy Spirit (Gal.3:14); and indeed it is difficult to imagine how anyone can have the faith by which the righteous shall live without the operation of the Holy Spirit. And yet there clearly a sense in which the Spirit is given in the NT in a way that He wasn’t in the Old. John’s side note in John 7:39 is a case in point: ‘By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified’.

Although the Spirit is dwelling within the OT Church (through the covenant of Abraham, not that of Moses), and though He is known and experienced in many of the ways we see in the NT, there is also a sense of discontinuity. Something new is happening. And it is linked to the Ascension of Jesus. The dynamics of Jesus’ own relationship with the Spirit seem to change at this point. He shifts from being the One who receives the Spirit, to the One who gives Him. This is not to say that the Spirit hadn’t been given before. But now He is being given to facilitate the global mission of the Church. There seems to be the expectation that the Spirit’s influence within creation will change again at the return of Christ and the regenerating of Creation (e.g. Is.32:15). Apart from these changes in role, the Church’s experience of the Spirit remains constant.

The Spirit’s indwelling the life of the Church (Eph.2:22; I Cor.3:16; II Cor.6:16), is the means by which the Father and Son come to us, and through which we are able to come to Them. He is the Spirit of Adoption who enables us to call God Father (Gal.4:6), and to participate in the communion with God that Jesus Himself experienced as the Son. These are staggering claims, and it is no surprise that throughout the Apostle’s writings this relational proximity of God by His Spirit is the grounds for several appeals to reverence, dedication and purity, as well as a carefulness in our dealing with the Church. That we could rediscover the sense of this nearness of God. It is in many ways a reclaiming of what was lost in the Fall. In Gen.2:7, we see the LORD God breathing the Breath of Life into humanity. In our redemption we become home again to the same Spirit, whose intimacy is as uncompromising as it is unrivalled (Ps.139:7; Rom.5:5 etc.).

Question:

In the ‘further reflection’ section I talk about times when the nearness of God becomes evident. What aspects of Christian experience do you think come to the fore in such seasons? What would it be like to live through a revival? What do you think would be the effects in the Church? … in the surrounding community?

After this discussion you might want to stop and pray….

Read John 14:15-27

How can we cultivate the sense of the Spirit living with us and being in us, and through Him the Father and the Son (vv.17 & 23)?

What do you make of Jesus saying the world does not know the Spirit, and cannot accept Him? What does this mean for other religions and the spiritualties of people who aren’t Christians? Are you comfortable with drawing such hard lines?

In the light of what Jesus says here (e.g. v.18), how do we make sense of periods when God seems absent; of what is sometimes known as the Dark Night of the Soul, or the Eclipse of God?

Why is our love for Jesus linked so closely with our obedience to His teaching (v.15; 21; 23, and negatively in v.24)? Does this coupling make you feel threatened? Do you think it is meant to?

Another aspect of the Spirit’s indwelling is His teaching and reminding us of everything Jesus has said (v.26). How does this work in your experience?

Why doesn’t Jesus show Himself to the world (v.22)?

Memory Passage:

Through [Christ] we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Eph.2:18-22

For further reflection:

There have been seasons in the history of the Church when the indwelling of God has become more immediately apparent, an undeniable reality. These times have come to be known as ‘Revivals’. Older theologians have seen them as intrinsic to the life of the Church. Jonathan Edwards, who himself ministered trough several Revivals captured this sense of rhythm when he wrote: ‘It may be observed that from the fall of man to our day, the work of redemption in its effect has mainly been carried on by remarkable communications of the Spirit of God. Though there be a more constant influence of God’s Spirit always in some degree attending His ordinances, yet the way in which the greatest things have been done towards carrying on this work always has been by remarkable effusions at special seasons of mercy’ [JE, History of Redemption, Period 1, part (i)]. Such a season, Edwards went on, ‘is God coming near His people a visitation of His Spirit, giving them a glance of His everlasting glory…’

“The coming of the LORD amongst us has been with such majesty, glory and irresistible power that even his avowed enemies would be glad to hide themselves somewhere. It is an easy and delightful thing to preach the gospel here in these days… Divine truths have their own infinite weight and importance in the minds of the people. Beams of divine light, together with irresistible energy, accompany every truth delivered. It is delightful indeed, to see the stoutest heart bended and the hardest melted down with fire form God’s altar. For the word comes in power and in the Holy Ghost, and is made mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. Thomas Charles, Bala, North Wales, 1791

[1] Helpful references relating to the HS in the OT (not from Isaiah!) include: Gen.1:2; 6:3; Ex.31:3; Num.11; Jdgs 3:10, 6:34 etc.; I Sam.10; II Sam.23:2; Neh.9; Job 33:4; Ps.139:7; Ezek.3; Micah 3:8 etc. see also Acts 1:16; 4:25; 7:51; I Pet.1:11 etc.