The Holy Spirit & New Creation (ix)

Through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope.

(Gal.5:5)

If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who lives in you.

(Rom.8:11)

He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.

(Titus 3:5-7)

It took me a while to get the structure of the Creed. Not just the Trinitarian rhythm of it, but those bits at the end. For a long time, I thought it was just four or five ‘random’ affirmations tagged on to the main body of the Creed. But then I realised that each of them are pointing us to different facets of the ministry of ‘the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life’, who we have just confessed. He is the One who unites the Church; and sanctifies her; and keeps her faithful to the Apostolic teaching; who brings the benefits of Christ’s death to us through the sacraments… and it is the Spirit who actualises the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Given the creedal nature of our belief here it is worth spending some time thinking it through!

When we think about the Holy Spirit, the temptation is to get theological ‘mushy’, as if ‘the Spirit’ is the place where things get vague and undefined. In part this is an accident of language. Our culture talks of ‘spirituality’, and it often means precisely that ill-defined sense of well-being and fulfilment, and perhaps the values we seek to live by. This is of course all very fluid, and relative. When the Bible talks of the Spirit, there is nothing of this cultural furniture in the frame. Rather, as we have seen, the Spirit is very specifically the Spirit of Christ, and is the Spirit through whom Christ is present and at work in His world bringing to fruition His own life and ministry. Far from legitimising any and every kind of spirituality, the Spirit is calling people away from such egocentric mysticism, and into a very concrete relationship with the living God through Christ. His whole focus is on Jesus and His agenda, and so it isn’t a surprise that the return of Christ is very much on the Spirit’s agenda, and with it the New Creation.

In our Creation we read of the LORD God breathing into humanity the Breath of Life (Gen.2:7; Job 33:4; Ps.104:30). We were created to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, and when we lose His presence in the in them catastrophe we call the fall, we become mere flesh, returning to dust (Gen.3:19). Yet as is so often the case, human sin becomes an arena for God’s grace and redemption, and in John 20:21-23 Jesus again breathing His Spirit into this now New Creation humanity. It is this New Creation that has just come into being through Jesus’ own resurrection. The Spirit has been involved in this, raising Jesus from the dead (I Pet.3:18; Rom.1:4; I Tim.3:16). As ‘the Giver of life’, enmeshed in the creating of this age, it is little surprise to realise that He is intimately involved in the inaugurating of the Age to come. We find this dramatized for us in the story of Noah. As the ‘new’ creation breaks forth from the waters of chaos and destruction (echoes of Gen.1:1-3), Noah send forth a Dove. Jesus Himself evokes the same image as He comes out of the waters of judgement, and the Spirit again hovers over the water, descending on a Second Noah who will at last bring true rest to a cursed world (Matt.3:16, see Gen.5:29 / Matt.11:28-30).

And as Jesus ascends, this same Spirit is now poured into the life of the Church, and the New Creation life is birthed in our experience. We mustn’t overestimate this: we are standing at the thin end of the wedge; we have only begun to taste of that life. This is a ‘first instalment’. But neither should we underestimate it: the Spirit within us is Himself the seal and pledge of our inclusion in the New Creation into which He Himself will resurrect us (II Corr.1:21-22; Eph.1:13-14).

Some of the Church’s most ancient theologians speak of the Spirit as the One who sustains life in such a way as to perfect creation, ‘to bring to completion that for which each person or thing is created’ (Basil of Caesarea). It is in this role that He sustains and preserves us, bringing to completion our experience of salvation most fully in the Age to Come. This should engender in us a posture of unshakeable optimism as we pilgrimage through this age. ‘The Spirit never departs from the soul He has once occupied (Smeaton, 237, see Rom.5:5, Eph.1:13-14).

Questions

Could God take His Spirit from a Christian? ...or cast a Christian from His presence (Ps.51:11)? Does this undermine the Spirit’s being a guarantee?

What does Jesus mean by ‘blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Mk.3:29)?

Read Eph.1:13-23

Paul links our receiving of the Spirit with our being included in Christ by believing the Gospel (1:13-14). What would you say to the idea that the Spirit is at work in / through other religions? …or that non-Christians can know the Spirit?

How would you identify the presence of the Holy Spirit in yourself (or in someone else)? How does that presence give you confidence in the future God has for you? How does that affect your discipleship (inc. within the context of Church)?

What is ‘our inheritance’ that is being guaranteed by the Spirit?

Why does Paul seem to think we are only ‘redeemed’ in the future?

The ‘Spirit of wisdom and revelation’ seeks to achieve three things in us: that we may know [God] better (v.17); that we may know the hope to which He has called us (v.18); and that we may know His power at work to realise that hope (v.19f). With this in mind, what would you think about someone who said they didn’t really understand the Bible?

What would you conclude about someone who didn’t seem to have much hope in the New Creation? What would such a hope look like?

Do you have any experience of the power of the Spirit at work to preserve you in your discipleship? Why is it significant that Paul links this to the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus?

How do you think Paul anticipates God answering his prayer?

Memory Passage:

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

II Cor.1:20-22

For further reflection:

The idea that the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit is generally under-appreciated and under-experienced is nothing new. Thomas Goodwin wrote about it in the 17th century:

There is a general omission in the saints of God, in their not giving the Holy Ghost that glory that is due to His person, and for His great work of salvation in us, insomuch that we have in our hearts almost lost this Third Person. We give daily in our thoughts, prayers, affections and speeches, an honour to the Father and to the Son; but who directs the aims of his praise unto God the Holy Ghost? He is a Person in the Godhead equal with the Father and the Son; and the work He doth for us in its kind is as great as those of the Father and the Son. Therefore, by the equity of law, a proportional honour from us is due to Him.

Or as our Creed puts it: ‘With the Father and Son He is worshipped and glorified’. But the question of our worship of the Spirit is perhaps slightly more nuanced than that of our worship of the Father or Son. The worship of any one Person is the worship of all Three. And yet the Spirit seems reluctant to take centre-stage. His delight seems to be to direct our gaze to the Son, that we might put our faith in Him. As Jesus puts it: ‘He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you’ (Jn.16:14).

Perhaps the closing thought in our studies on the Holy Spirit can be left with the aged Polycarp, one-time disciple of the Apostle John, and later Bishop of Smyrna. His last act of worship before his martyrdom in 156 AD was recorded: For this and for all things I praise Thee, I bless Thee, I glorify Thee, with the eternal and heavenly Jesus Christ, Thy Blessed Son with whom, to Thee and to the Holy Ghost, be glory, both now and through all ages to come, Amen.