The Holy Spirit: Does What We Know About Him Actually Matter? (Part 4)

Below the surface, Christians have many unofficial, unstated, and untested notions about the Holy Spirit that profoundly impact their spirituality.  These ideas casually spread from one person to another and become a de facto orthodoxy, a set of positions that are rarely taught but are nevertheless deeply embedded in the collective psyche of a faith community. In this article, I will try to uncover some of these assumptions and demonstrate that they really do matter. Try asking yourself the following questions.

1. How does the Holy Spirit bring about personal holiness?  Does he usually (a) take away our inclination to sin and make us want to obey God, or (b) expect us to struggle against the sinful nature, perhaps helping us out from time to time, until we overcome temptation and experience victory?

If you instinctively answer (a), you might develop a casual or passive attitude toward sin, waiting around until you are “healed” instead of gritting your teeth and waging war against the enemy within. On the other hand, if your answer is (b), you might end up trying to depend on yourself and live out your faith by your own effort, which is in general a losing proposition. And you might interpret others’ weaknesses as signs of spiritual failure due to lack of effort without really knowing how hard they are trying. I don’t think there is a correct answer here. It is easy to find Bible verses to “prove” either one.  Sometimes the Spirit does (a) and sometimes he does (b). But how often does he do (a) or (b)?  It seems to me that, whichever position you gravitate toward, there will be long-term implications for how you interact with God on a daily basis and how you view yourself and others.

2. How does the Holy Spirit work in evangelism? Does he usually (a) seek people and draw them into encounters with believers who can present the gospel message to them, or (b) commission disciples and send them out to vigorously declare the gospel message to an unbelieving world?

Once again, I believe that the Spirit does both. But which one does he do more often? If you tend to think (a), then your participation in evangelism (if you participate at all) might be halfhearted and passive. If you ascribe to (b), then you might look and act like a gung-ho soldier of Christ, but to what effect? In the evangelical world, there are many self-styled evangelists whose efforts prove unfruitful and even counterproductive because they preach Christ at inappropriate times and in inappropriate ways with little understanding or sensitivity.

3. How does the Holy Spirit act within the organizational structure of a church? Does he primarily (a) direct the body though its leaders and elders, whom we can safely assume are being led by the Holy Spirit by virtue of their seniority and their elected or appointed offices? Or does he (b) offer no special consideration to elders and leaders and frequently bypass them to accomplish his purposes?

The answers to this question could vary enormously across denominations and cultures. In my opinion, the most correct and healthy response is to say that the Holy Spirit does both on a regular basis. For this reason, leaders and members need real discernment to understand how the Spirit is working among them at any given time. And whether you or your church leans toward (a) or (b), I hope that you maintain an open mind and humbly allow the Holy Spirit to continually challenge your view .

4. Do the gifts given by the Holy Spirit to individual people for service in the church usually (a) coincide with their natural talents, abilities and desires or (b) represent an out-of-the-ordinary or even supernatural display, allowing them to perform in ways that they would never otherwise want to do or be able to do?

By now, you probably know what I am going to say. I think that the Holy Spirit does both. And whether you lean toward (a) or (b), there can be positive and negative implications either way.

5. What is the Holy Spirit’s relationship to Scripture? Did he (a) inspire the human authors to write down God’s word in the original Hebrew and Greek languages and then essentially stop working?  Or did he (b) continue to work down through the ages through the entire process by which the teachings in the Bible were spoken, written down, collected, canonized, preserved, translated and retranslated, studied and restudied, interpreted and reinterpreted?

In the past, I would have probably answered (a), but I hadn’t seriously thought about it. There are many who claim to hold a “high view” of Scripture who tend toward (a) because they don’t know much about the process by which the canon was established, or because they do know something about that process and it looks embarrassingly messy, controversial, and downright human. Some would like to imagine that the Bible was simply handed down to us from heaven as God handed the stone tablets to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Any hint of difficulty in the process by which the Bible came to exist would open a huge can of worms and appear to undermine biblical authority. But even if we ignore that process and just look at the text itself, we find that the Bible is a messy thing.   For example, some events are described multiple times from different points of view, and the details of these accounts do not perfectly agree. If the Bible is a perfect and infallible text, then it can only be so by definitions of perfection and infallibility that are very different from what we mean when we use those terms in ordinary language. (For example, the Bible contains a fair amount of poetry. What does it mean for a poem to be infallible?)

If you answer (a), then your main goal in Bible study will be to get back to the “original intent” and understand it from the author’s point of view. There is a lot of merit to that approach. Understanding the author’s intent is part of any serious study of Scripture. But original intent can only take us so far, and Christians do need to go beyond that, especially when we look at the Old Testament. The Old Testament is full of events, commandments, ceremonies, and imagery that we believe were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. When Christians study Old Testament passages, we find ourselves departing substantially from the author’s original intent; if we do not, then it becomes difficult or impossible to make the passages relevant to what we now believe and do. Reinterpreting the Old Testament in light of the gospel is what Jesus and the apostles did on a regular basis.

Now when we come to the New Testament, can we continue to apply that same approach? Are we free to depart from the author’s original intent and apply the scriptures in new ways to modern-day situations that the apostles never envisioned?  Once again, I think that we must do so, but with greater caution. If we refuse to try, we may find ourselves attempting to “get back to the first century” and live just like those early Christians did, which in the present world is truly impossible. Even if it were possible, it would be unwise, because the Holy Spirit is not stuck in the first century; he continues to move on and work in new ways in every generation. Yet if we do this carelessly, we might begin to tolerate beliefs and practices that depart from God’s will and are truly unorthodox. The present debate in mainline churches about homosexuality is a good example. There are many sincere (and, I think, wrongheaded) Christians of a liberal bent who believe that the Holy Spirit is truly leading the Church to embrace and bless same-sex relationships.

There are real dangers that should not be ignored if we take position (b). But if we lean too heavily toward (a), we may stifle real work of the Holy Spirit and make ourselves and our churches irrelevant.

Whatever you think about the questions raised – and I do not claim to know the answers – you have to admit that they are important. Our assumptions about the Holy Spirit shape what we think the authentic work of God looks like, how we think a church should operate, how we pray, how we worship, how we speak of our faith and how we evangelize.  The facts of Jesus’ earthly life are nailed down in the four gospels. But the work of the Holy Spirit which began in Acts is still going on today, and new chapters are continually being written.

Does what we know about the Holy Spirit matter? Yes it does. A healthy relationship to the Holy Spirit — and we cannot have a meaningful relationship with someone whom we know nothing about — enables Christians to grow and be useful instruments of God in this world. But ideas about him that are sloppy, off-balance or wrong will prevent individuals and churches from growing to maturity and stifle the work of the Spirit among them. Make no mistake: the Holy Spirit can be quenched (1Th 5:19). The Spirit can be lied to, sinned against, and blasphemed, and the consequences of doing so can be dire (Ac 5:3; Mk 3:29; Lk 12:10).