Christian hope
3
The ministry of the Holy Spirit
We looked in the Introduction at four or five different attempts to summarize the leading features of evangelicalism. Each began with the supremacy of Scripture and the majesty of Christ, particularly of his cross. Some continued with the lordship of the Holy Spirit. Others added one or more of the following five distinctives: the necessity of conversion, the priority of evangelism, the importance of fellowship, the longing for revival and the search for holiness.
My own concern is to establish a firm trinitarian base for the evangelical faith, and then to add the other five concerns relating to conversion, evangelism, fellowship, revival and holiness not as extras but as aspects of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, for they are all certainly his concerns. Thus the Bible, the cross and the Spirit become the fundamental triad of evangelical essentials. Or, put differently, in such a way as to honour the three persons of the Trinity, the evangelical faith focuses on the revelation of God, the cross of Christ and the ministry of the Spirit. Further, alluding to a distinction made in the Introduction, the Bible and the cross belong to the category of the hapax (‘once for all’), while the Spirit also belongs to the mallon (‘more and more’). It is he who enables us to enter ever more fully into what God has said and done in Christ.
The Holy Spirit has sometimes been referred to as the ‘neglected’ member of the Trinity. But, at least among evangelical and Reformed people, this is not an altogether accurate judgment. Evangelicals have always sought to honour the Spirit. Calvin has been called the theologian of the Spirit. And two of the finest and fullest treatises ever written on the work of the Spirit were Pneumatologia: A Discourse concerning the Holy Spirit (1674) by the great Puritan leader John Owen and The Work of the Holy Spirit (1900) by the Dutch Reformed theologian and statesman Abraham Kuyper.
The twentieth century, however, witnessed an unfortunate disagreement among evangelical Christians about the work of the Holy Spirit, with the rise of modern Pentecostal churches at the beginning of the century, and of the charismatic movement in the mainline churches since the 1950s. Evangelical leaders have been divided over these phenomena, and in consequence it has become a very sensitive subject. On the one hand, there is the recognition that Pentecostalism is today the fastest-growing Christian movement in the world, providing abundant evidence of God’s blessing upon it. On the other hand, there is genuine anxiety that it is often growth without depth, so that there is much superficiality everywhere. My personal conviction is that what unites evangelicals in our doctrine and experience of the Holy Spirit is considerably greater than what divides us, and my concern in this chapter is to concentrate on the former while not concealing the latter.
I see that in the previous paragraph I have used the two adjectives ‘evangelical’ and ‘charismatic’ without defining them in relation to each other. The purpose of this book is of course to define the word ‘evangelical’; but what does ‘charismatic’ mean? In a general sense all Christians are charismatics, inasmuch as the church is the charismatic body of Christ, each member of his body having been endowed with a spiritual gift (charisma) or gifts (charismata). In particular, however, the term ‘charismatic’ is applied to those members of mainline denominations (a) who claim a ‘charismatic’ experience, subsequent to conversion, which is usually called ‘the baptism of the Spirit’, (b) who lay special emphasis on three supernatural gifts, namely tongues, healing and prophecy, and (c) who develop a style of public worship which is exuberant, spontaneous, participatory and demonstrative.
It will be seen, therefore, that not all evangelicals are charismatic (since some emphasize the new birth rather than subsequent experiences, and point out that the gifts mentioned in the New Testament number more than twenty, not all of which are supernatural), while not all charismatics are evangelical (since some are Anglican Catholics or Roman Catholics for instance). It is important to remember in the rest of this chapter that ‘evangelical’ and ‘charismatic’ are not synonyms.
We begin with the statement that all evangelical Christians firmly believe in the Holy Spirit, the gracious and glorious third person of the Trinity. We believe that he is God, and therefore worthy of worship. We also believe both that he was active in creating all things (Gen. 1:2) and that he is active in sustaining, animating and renewing all things (Ps. 104:30). We believe that in Old Testament days he was both regenerating the people of God, for otherwise they could not have loved God’s law (cf. Ps. 119:97, 103; Rom. 7:22; 8:7), and equipping special people for special tasks (e.g. Exod. 35:30ff. and 2 Pet. 1:21). As for New Testament days, in which we are privileged to live, we strongly affirm that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is literally indispensable, since no aspect of our Christian faith, life, worship, fellowship, service or mission would be possible without him, as this chapter will seek to demonstrate.
Another introductory emphasis which needs to be made is that we should avoid any tendency – voluntary or involuntary – to separate the Holy Spirit from the Father or the Son. We declare again that the evangelical faith is the trinitarian faith, and the more we learn to think and act as trinitarian Christians, the more authentically evangelical we shall be.
Although it is impossible for our finite minds to understand the precise relations between the three persons of the Trinity, it is essential to remember that they enjoy both equality within the Godhead and distinct roles. For example, the Holy Spirit loves to efface himself in order to honour the Father and the Son – which is not surprising since he is called both ‘the Spirit of God’ and ‘the Spirit of Christ’ (e.g. Rom. 8:9; Gal. 4:6). Thus, it is he who, when we pray, enables us to cry, ‘Abba, Father’, and so to appreciate our filial relationship to him (Rom. 8:15–16). It is also he who enables us to cry, ‘Jesus is Lord.’ Indeed, ‘no-one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit’ (1 Cor. 12:3). This truth that the Spirit delights to witness to the Son is much stressed in the New Testament, not least by Jesus himself. He said, ‘He [sc. the Spirit of truth] will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and make it known to you. All that the Father has is mine, and that is why I said, “He will take what is mine and make it known to you”’ (John 16:14–15, reb).
So then, a reliable test of the genuineness of every person and movement claiming the endorsement of the Holy Spirit is whether they honour the Lord Jesus Christ, draw attention to him and promote his glory. Several recent authors have illustrated this by calling the ministry of the Holy Spirit a ‘floodlight’ ministry. The essence of good floodlighting is to illuminate a building, while keeping the lamps concealed. Just so, the Holy Spirit witnesses to Christ while himself remaining hidden.
Perhaps the best way to grasp the indispensability of the work of the Spirit is to consider in turn the six main stages or aspects of Christian discipleship, beginning with the new birth and ending with the Christian hope, and to show how each would be impossible apart from the operation of the Holy Spirit.
Some Christian historians and commentators, as we have seen, regard ‘conversion’ or ‘conversionism’ as one of evangelicalism’s main distinctives. Some even talk about ‘an evangelical conversion experience’, as if there were a stereotype – probably like that of Saul on the Damascus road – to which everybody is expected to conform. We must emphatically reject this. Although every true conversion includes a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, several aspects of Saul’s conversion (e.g. the blinding light, the fall to the ground, and the voice speaking Aramaic) were atypical.
My decided preference, when thinking about Christian beginnings, is to refer to regeneration as an evangelical essential, rather than conversion. Although the two may coincide, they are fundamentally different, in that conversion is a human work (although possible only by the enabling grace of God), whereas regeneration is entirely a work of God. Conversion denotes that turn from sin and idolatry which we call repentance, together with that turn to God and to Christ which we call faith. The resulting equation is that repentance plus faith equals conversion.
Regeneration or new birth, however, is different. Unfortunately the subject has recently been trivialized, especially in the United States, so that statistics are now published of those claiming to be ‘born-again Christians’. Yet the birth metaphor gives us several important clues, leading to a correct understanding.
First, the new birth is a work of God. As with physical birth, so with spiritual birth, nobody has ever given birth to himself. Regeneration is not self-generated. So the new birth is not merely a moral reformation, although it leads to one. In his night-time conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus twice spoke of being born anōthen, an adverb which could mean either ‘from the beginning, again’ or ‘from above’ (John 3:3, 7). The latter is regarded as more probable in this context. In this case Jesus was referring not to a new beginning from below by human effort, but to a new birth from above by the power of God. In fact, the new birth is birth of the Spirit (John 3:5–8).
Secondly, the birth metaphor also indicates that the new birth is sudden. For although human birth is preceded by nine months of gestation, and is followed by years of development into maturity, yet birth itself is a more or less instantaneous event. So with the new birth. Months may precede it, in which the Holy Spirit is convicting of sin (John 16:8–11), pricking the conscience (see Acts 26:14) and illumining the mind. And years of Christian growth will follow. But the actual new birth (or passage from death to life) is instantaneous.
Thirdly, the new birth is not necessarily a conscious experience, although it is for some. Conversion, the turning process, is likely to be conscious, but not the moment when God puts life within us. Again the birth metaphor demonstrates this. We were not conscious of our own birth experience. We would not know our birthday unless our parents had told us; we were not aware at the time what was happening. Similarly, many Christians do not know their spiritual birthday.
Fourthly, the new birth is not identical with baptism. To identify them is a mistake often made by Catholics (both Anglican and Roman) who imagine that, because they have been baptized, they must have been born again.
Now baptism is very important. Jesus himself instituted and commanded it (Matt. 28:19). So evangelicals do not (or should not) minimize it. But we strongly insist that baptism must never be confused with the new birth. Indeed, if Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus was historical (as we believe it was), then his reference to being ‘born of water and the Spirit’ (John 3:5) cannot possibly have been an allusion to Christian baptism, since at that time it did not exist. It is more likely to have alluded to John’s baptism and call to repentance, since at that very time John the Baptist was himself making the distinction between water and Spirit (Matt. 3:11), between his baptism with water and Jesus’ baptism with the Spirit.
So then, although baptism is a sign (or ‘sacrament’) of the new birth, we must not confuse the sign with the thing signified. The new birth is a deep, inward, radical change, worked by the Holy Spirit in the inner recesses of the human personality, by which we receive a new life, a new heart, a new beginning. Baptism, however, is a visible and public dramatization of this inward and secret reality of the new birth.
Further, baptism does not automatically effect what it signifies. Evangelical Christians reject a mechanical view of either of the two gospel sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The administration of water in baptism does not convey the new birth, nor do the bread and wine of Communion convey the body and blood of Christ. True, the Council of Trent pronounced an anathema on anybody who ‘shall affirm that grace is not conferred by these sacraments . . . by their own power [ex opere operato]’. But this is exactly what we do affirm. As Richard Hooker put it later, ‘all receive not the grace of God who receive the sacraments of his grace’. For if the sacraments are to benefit us, they must be received ‘rightly’ (see Articles XXVI and XXVII), and ‘rightly’ means ‘by faith’. It is important for members of free and new churches to understand that, for Anglican evangelicals, baptism (whether of infants or of adults) lacks efficacy if it is not accompanied by faith. I do not know anybody who has put this more forcefully than James Ussher, who became Archbishop of Armagh in 1625:
As baptism administered to those of years is not effectual unless they believe, so we can make no comfortable use of our baptism administered in our infancy until we believe . . . All the promises of grace were in my baptism estated upon me, and sealed up unto me, on God’s part; but then I come to have the profit and benefit of them when I come to understand what grant God, in baptism, hath sealed unto me, and actually to lay hold on it by faith.
Finally, before we leave the topic of Christian beginnings, we note that the lesson most emphatically taught by Jesus in his conversation with Nicodemus was the indispensable necessity of the new birth. Nicodemus was a Jew (belonging to God’s covenant people), a Pharisee (committed to righteousness), a leader (a member of the Sanhedrin), a teacher (a person of culture), and polite and appreciative in his evaluation of the ministry of Jesus. He was religious, moral, educated and courteous. Yet it was to him that Jesus said, ‘You should not be surprised at my saying, “You must be born again”’ (John 3:7).
Evangelical Christians have always tried to be loyal to this teaching of Jesus, and to insist both that the new birth is indispensable if we are ever to see or enter God’s kingdom, and that baptism is no substitute for it.
The Holy Spirit does not bring about the new birth and then abandon us. He knows, as all parents know, that newborn babies need careful nurture. So he stays with us. Better still, he dwells in us. In consequence, birth of the Spirit is followed by life in the Spirit.
We now consider some of the blessings of this new life, and in particular the blessing of Christian assurance.
During his last evening on earth, surrounded by his apostles, Jesus said:
Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate [or ‘Counsellor’, niv] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.
(John 16:7, nrsv)
Here is Jesus’ plain statement that the ministry of the Holy Spirit would be more advantageous to the apostles than his own earthly ministry had been. Many people are utterly astonished by these words. How could it possibly be to the apostles’ advantage, or in their best interests, that he should go away and leave them behind? We look on the apostles with envy. If only we could have been with Jesus, as they were! If only we could have seen the beauty of his face and heard the music of his voice! If only we could have watched him feed the hungry, heal the sick, still the storm, and raise the dead! If only we could have sat at his feet like Mary of Bethany or leaned on his breast like John the beloved disciple! What can Jesus have meant?
Well, the apostles experienced two major disadvantages during Jesus’ earthly life, which would be overcome by the arrival of the Spirit. First, while Jesus was with them on earth, his presence was localized. In consequence, they were sometimes separated from him, for example when he was in Jerusalem and they were in Galilee, or when he was praying on the mountain and they were in the boat. They could not enjoy uninterrupted fellowship with Jesus. His presence was limited to one place at a time. But what the Holy Spirit has done is to universalize the presence of Jesus, to make him available to everybody everywhere.
The apostles’ second disadvantage, while Jesus was with them on earth, was that his presence was external to them. He was not able to enter their personality and change them from within. He could not get at the source of their thoughts, motives and desires. But later he would, he said. For ‘he lives with you, and will be in you’ (John 14:17). Thus the Holy Spirit internalizes the presence of Jesus, so that now he dwells by his Spirit in our hearts (Eph. 3:16–17) and our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19).
This indwelling of the Holy Spirit is the most marvellous privilege. It has always been emphasized by evangelical Christians, and it is also the chief difference between his Old Testament and his New Testament ministries. Although the Old Testament people of God were regenerate, it does not seem that the Spirit indwelt them. At least they looked forward to the messianic age as the time when God would fulfil his promise, ‘I will put my Spirit in you’ (Ezek. 36:27). It is this promise which Jesus confirmed.
I think all evangelical Christians agree and affirm that the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit is the chief distinguishing mark of the people of God today, so that ‘if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ’ (Rom. 8:9). Paul also urges us not to grieve the Holy Spirit, with whom we have been ‘sealed’ for the day of redemption (Eph. 4:30). Thus, the Holy Spirit within us is God’s seal, branding us as belonging to him.
This emphasis on the inwardness of the Spirit’s work enables us to say that evangelical religion is heart religion. ‘The fourth leading feature in Evangelical Religion’, wrote Bishop J. C. Ryle (after the supremacy of Scripture, the depth of human sinfulness and the salvation of Jesus Christ), ‘is the high place which it assigns to the inward work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of man.’
There is of course a place for externals in religion. But throughout history there has been a constant tendency for religion to degenerate into an empty show. God complained through Isaiah, ‘These people come near to me with their mouth, and honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me’ (Isa. 29:13). And what Yahweh said to eighth-century Israel, Jesus reapplied to the Pharisees of his own day (Mark 7:6), and we need to reapply to ourselves today. Too much of our religion is ritual without reality, the mouth without the heart, ‘having a form of godliness but denying its power’ (2 Tim. 3:5).
One of the main ministries of the indwelling Spirit is to give God’s people an assurance of their saving relationship to him. The doctrine of assurance is, in fact, a specifically evangelical emphasis. Those of catholic or liberal persuasion tend to regard what we call assurance as a synonym for a horrid form of presumption. And, to be honest, we evangelical people do need to repent of our rather cocky, self-assured and even triumphalist attitudes. We need to heed the warnings of John’s first letter, to the effect that all our claims to know God and to be his children are bogus unless we are characterized by righteousness and love in addition to Christological orthodoxy.
Yet the constant repetition in John’s first letter of statements like ‘we know that we have come to know him’, ‘we know we are in him’, ‘we know that we have passed from death to life’, and ‘we know that we are children of God’ leaves us in no doubt that God intends us to know, in other words to have assurance, that we belong to him.
Christian assurance rests first and foremost on the cross. It is because Christ bore our sins in our place, and because his sin-bearing was finished and complete, that we may know we have been forgiven. For Christ made on the cross ‘by his one oblation of himself once offered’ what the 1662 Prayer Book calls ‘a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world’.
To this objective ground of our assurance the Holy Spirit adds his own subjective testimony. The clearest statements of it are given in Romans. In 5:5 we are told that through the Holy Spirit given to us God has poured out his love in our hearts. In 8:15–16 we are told that when we cry, ‘Abba, Father’, it is the Spirit himself who is witnessing with our spirit that we are God’s children. Thus the indwelling Spirit assures us deeply in our hearts that God is our Father and that he loves us. Moreover, the context makes it plain that this inward experience of the outpoured love of our Father is a privilege which should be common to all his children, although surely different Christians receive this assurance in different degrees at different times.
Since many have linked these experiences with the so-called ‘baptism of the Spirit’, this may be an appropriate place in which to broach the subject. It is a divisive issue. Pentecostal and charismatic Christians tend to insist that the baptism of the Spirit is a necessary second experience, subsequent to the new birth, and that it is normally validated by speaking in tongues. Non-Pentecostal people believe rather that the baptism of the Spirit is identical with the gift of the Spirit (Acts 1:5; 2:33, 38–39), and that it is given to all believers, although subsequent experiences of different kinds are often given.
Is it really necessary for evangelical Christians to be divided on this issue by an excess of rigidity? Pentecostal Christians need to ask themselves whether they must insist on a two-stage stereotype. Non-Pentecostal Christians, who claim to have received the Spirit once for all at their conversion, need to ask themselves whether they are sufficiently open to further and fuller experiences of him. Would it not be possible for both sides to agree (a) that all Christians have received the Holy Spirit; (b) that the New Testament emphasis is on this initial reception of the Spirit, associated with the vocabulary of new birth, new creation and resurrection from the dead; (c) that the process of sanctification follows this; and (d) that during this process many richer, deeper, fuller experiences of the Spirit may be granted?
I venture to close this section with a personal anecdote. I have several times been the privileged guest of the Anglican diocese of Singapore. During a visit there in 1987 I was speaking with my host, Bishop (later Archbishop) Moses Tay, a well-known charismatic evangelical. I asked him what in his view the essence of ‘renewal’ was. He replied, ‘It’s a new experience of the presence of God.’ I was immediately struck by this, because I had recently read Dr J. I. Packer’s book Keep in Step with the Spirit (1984), and had come across his expression ‘a fresh assurance of the love of God’.
There seems to me very little difference between ‘a new experience of the presence of God’ and ‘a fresh assurance of the love of God’. I found myself wondering if this could be the basis for greater mutual understanding and respect.
One of the major purposes of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling of his people is to change or sanctify them. God’s Old Testament promise, ‘I will put my Spirit in you’, continued, ‘and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws’ (Ezek. 36:27). In fact, God’s two most direct Old Testament promises were these:
I will put my Spirit in you.
(Ezek. 36:27)
I will put my law in their minds.
(Jer. 31:33)
There is no fundamental difference between these promises, since what the Spirit does when he is put within us is to write God’s law there (cf. Rom. 8:3–4).
Paul emphasized the same indissoluble link between the Holy Spirit and the holy people he indwells when he wrote that the God who calls us ‘to live a holy life’ also ‘gives [us] his Holy Spirit’ (1 Thess. 4:7–8). With the Holy Spirit holiness is essential; without the Holy Spirit holiness is impossible. So we must not underestimate what he can do in effecting real change, giving us new ambitions, new standards, new ideals and new values.
But how does such change come about? It is here that Paul introduces us, in both Galatians 5 and Romans 8, to the unrelenting inner conflict which we experience between ‘the flesh’ and ‘the Spirit’. By ‘the flesh’ he means our fallen, self-indulgent nature, and by ‘the Spirit’ the indwelling Holy Spirit himself. The secret of holiness, he tells us, lies in our adopting right attitudes to both. Our negative attitude to ‘the flesh’ is properly called ‘mortification’, the process of putting it to death. It is a much neglected practice among us. ‘I am more and more convinced’, wrote Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, ‘that most people get into trouble in the living of the Christian life because of their molly-coddling of themselves spiritually.’ That is, we pamper our selfish nature instead of executing it.
Here is Paul’s most outspoken statement of the alternative before us:
For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
(Rom. 8:13)
Here are set over against each other a kind of life which issues in death and a kind of death which issues in life. First, the alternative lifestyles are ‘living according to the sinful nature’ (which is indulgence) and ‘putting to death the misdeeds of the body’ (which is mortification). Secondly, the alternative consequences are death and life: if we indulge ourselves we will die, but if we mortify ourselves we will live. And thirdly there are alternative combatants: on our own we indulge ourselves, but through the Spirit we mortify ourselves. In other words, we are called to a radical, uncompromising rejection of everything we know to be evil in God’s sight. It is our responsibility; we are to do it. But we cannot do it by ourselves, only through the power of the indwelling Spirit.
But what does this mean? It is pious, orthodox language, no doubt. But how in everyday experience does the Holy Spirit work within us? I have found it helpful, in my own thinking and struggling, to spell out a ‘5-D’ formula, that is, five steps or stages in the sanctifying activity of the Holy Spirit. He operates first in our mind, enabling us to discern the will of God; secondly in our conscience, enabling us to distinguish between right and wrong; thirdly in our heart, enabling us to desire God’s way ardently; and fourthly in our will, enabling us to determine resolutely to follow God’s will. The fifth ‘D’ (do) can only then take place.
The apostle also writes of holiness as ‘the fruit of the Spirit’, nine graces which together constitute ‘Christ-likeness’ of character and conduct. As ‘fruit’ they ripen naturally, under the indwelling influence of the Spirit. Christian holiness is not a Christmas-tree phenomenon, whose decorations are tied on artificially; it is fruit-tree holiness, that is, natural development, provided that we ‘walk in the Spirit’ (Gal. 5:16, av), responding to his promptings and living under his control.
There has been a long-standing emphasis on holiness in the Catholic tradition, so that evangelicals cannot in any way claim a monopoly of it. We can say, however, that the history of evangelicalism has been a history of the search for sanctification. We find it in every century – in the Reformers, the Puritans, the Pietists, the Methodists and, more recently, in such movements as that associated with the Keswick Convention. No one type of holiness teaching has predominated among evangelical Christians.
Sometimes a perfectionist movement has developed, promising the ‘eradication’ of our fallen nature or ‘entire sanctification’ or ‘perfect love’. And one can only admire the resolve to take seriously those New Testament passages which either command perfection (e.g. Matt. 5:48; 2 Cor. 7:1) or state that those born of God ‘do not’, even ‘cannot’, sin (1 John 3:6, 9; 5:18). John Wesley wrestled long with such texts and wrote his conclusions in A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (definitive edition, 1777). The tradition continues today in the Free Methodist, Nazarene and Pentecostal churches.
But most evangelicals, interpreting ‘perfectionist’ texts in their context, are convinced that neither the eradication of evil nor the possibility of sinless perfection is promised in the New Testament for this life. Rather, we are on a journey, pilgrims heading for the celestial city. Like Paul we have not yet arrived, nor ‘been made perfect’, but we are pressing on ‘to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of [us]’ (Phil. 3:12).
Handley Moule, who was the first Principal of Ridley Hall in Cambridge, and who later became the evangelical Bishop of Durham, succeeded in maintaining a biblical balance in his little book entitled Thoughts on Christian Sanctity (1888). Under the heading ‘Aims’, he wrote:
We aim at nothing less than to walk with God all day long; to abide every hour in Christ; to love God with all the heart and our neighbour as ourselves . . . to ‘yield our selves to God’ . . . to break with all evil, and follow all good . . . We are absolutely bound to put quite aside all secret purposes of moral compromise; all tolerance of besetting sin . . . We cannot possibly rest short of a daily, hourly, continuous walk with God, in Christ, by the grace of the Holy Ghost.
Under ‘Limits’, however, Bishop Moule went on to write:
I hold with absolute conviction, alike from the experience of the church and from the infallible Word, that, in the mystery of things, there will be limits to the last, and very humbling limits, very real fallings short. To the last it will be a sinner that walks with God.
With these ‘aims’ and ‘limits’ in mind, and seeking the continuous fullness of the Spirit (Eph. 5:18), evangelical Christians ‘hunger and thirst for righteousness’ (Matt. 5:6).
Evangelical Christians have the reputation of being rugged individualists, and so of having an inadequate doctrine of the church. It is certainly true that, since the Reformation, we have insisted both on ‘the right of private judgment’ (the privilege of making up our own mind from Scripture) and on ‘the priesthood of all believers’ (the privilege of an immediate, individual access to God through Christ).
But we also know that the New Testament has a very high doctrine of the church; that the church is at the centre of the eternal and historical purpose of God; and that the church is part of the gospel. The church also enjoys a direct continuity with Old Testament Israel. It is not therefore strictly correct to refer to the Day of Pentecost as ‘the birthday of the church’. For the church as the covenant people of God came into being some 2,000 years previously with Abraham. What happened at Pentecost was that the people of God became the Spirit-filled body of Christ. It is also called ‘the fellowship of the Holy Spirit’ (2 Cor. 13:14; cf. Phil. 2:1) because it is our common participation (koinōnia) in him which constitutes us the church. The term koinōnia does not occur in the Gospels. Its first appearance is in Acts 2:42, Luke’s description of the Jerusalem church, because there could be no koinōnia before the Spirit came.
There has always been a degree of disagreement and tension within the evangelical movement about the nature of the church. Some affirm that it is essentially a visible and geographical community, consisting of all those in each locality who profess and call themselves Christians.
Other evangelicals stress that the church is a gathered community, consisting only of those who are judged to be born again, and who have subscribed to a full evangelical confession of faith.
These two visions of the church are not entirely incompatible, and we should avoid a neat polarization. There are at least two significant convictions which we share.
First, all evangelicals accept the difference between the visible and the invisible church. It becomes specially important when we are thinking and talking about church membership. We agree that God reserves as his prerogative the right to admit people into his true (invisible) church, and he does so when they exercise faith in Christ. But he delegates to pastors the responsibility to admit people by baptism into the visible church, and they do this on the profession of faith.
This distinction leads us to insist that church membership does not guarantee salvation. Paul warns the Corinthians not to imitate the Israelites in the desert. They had all been ‘baptized into Moses’, and had all been partakers of the same spiritual food and drink. In other words, they were the Old Testament equivalent of baptized, communicant members of the church. ‘Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them.’ Their church membership did not ensure their immunity to his judgment (1 Cor. 10:1– 5).
Secondly, all evangelicals regard the purity of the church (doctrinal and ethical) as a proper, God-appointed goal. We differ in our methods of securing it. Some resort to almost Draconian measures, and are quick to excommunicate even mild offenders. Others acknowledge New Testament teaching about church discipline, but they also remember Jesus’ parable of the weeds and the wheat, and that ‘in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good’ (Anglican Article XXVI). They are therefore reluctant to resort to excommunication or secession.
It is within this discussion of the purity of the church that a mention of the concept of ‘comprehensiveness’ belongs. The Church of England has been much to blame in boasting of its so-called ‘glorious comprehensiveness’, without recalling that from the beginning a clear distinction was made between ‘principled’ and ‘unprincipled’ comprehensiveness.
Bishop J. C. Ryle, in his introduction to Principles for Churchmen, had lamented the ‘universal toleration’ which he saw in the Church of England at the end of the nineteenth century. He wrote with a touch of sarcasm, ‘What more likely to provide peace and stop quarrelling, than to declare the church a kind of Noah’s ark, within which every kind of opinion and creed shall dwell safe and undisturbed, and the only terms of communion shall be willingness to come inside and let your neighbour alone?’
The authors of The Fulness of Christ (1950) wrote similarly, ‘there are limits to the principle of comprehension in the Church . . . The truth of God revealed in Christ may be flexible, but it is not infinitely flexible.’ Then in 1957 Dr Alec Vidler rejected ‘an unprincipled syncretism’ in favour of ‘the principle of comprehension’ by which ‘a church ought to hold the fundamentals of the faith and at the same time allow for differences of opinion and of interpretation in secondary matters . . .’
In 1973 Dr J. I. Packer clearly distinguished between ‘the virtue of tolerating different views on secondary issues on the basis of clear agreement on essentials’ and ‘the vice of retreating from the light of Scripture into an intellectual murk where no outlines are clear, all cats are grey, and syncretism is the prescribed task’.
Having reflected on evangelical views of the nature of the church, we are ready now to consider how the Holy Spirit equips the church for her ministry. I begin with the ordained ministry. Evangelicals are agreed from their reading of the New Testament that episkopē, pastoral care of some kind, is God’s provision for his people. So Paul exhorted the elders of the Ephesian church to keep watch over themselves and over all the flock of which the Holy Spirit had made them overseers (episkopoi, Acts 20:28). Thus the Holy Spirit had delegated to them the pastoral care of the church.
‘Pastors’ is therefore the biblically correct name for the leaders of the local church, while ‘priests’ is incorrect and misleading. It is never used of them in the New Testament. To be sure, the English word ‘priest’ is harmless, because it is only a contraction of the word ‘presbyter’ (meaning ‘elder’). That is why the Reformers retained the word. But few people can manage the mental gymnastic of saying ‘priest’ while meaning ‘presbyter’. It would be much clearer for all Anglicans to follow the wisdom of the churches of South India, North India and Pakistan, which have a threefold ministry of ‘bishops, presbyters and deacons’. We should also be consistent in all the language we use. Catholic priests may offer a sacrifice on an altar; evangelical pastors serve a supper from a table.
Although in practice some evangelical leaders have been extremely autocratic, in theory they have rejected a ‘clericalism’ which reserves all ministry to the clergy and denies responsibility to the laity. On the contrary, evangelicals have always believed not only in the priesthood of all believers, but in the ministry of all believers as well. And recently, partly through the influence of the charismatic movement, the Pauline vision of the ‘every-member ministry of the body of Christ’ has become widely accepted.
Evangelicals are not altogether agreed which of the charismata (spiritual gifts) are available today, or which are more important than others. But it should be possible for us to agree (a) that the nature of the gifts is very varied (some being quite prosaic, like sharing our money and doing acts of mercy); (b) that the purpose of the gifts is the common good, to build up the church in both size and depth; and (c) that the criterion for evaluating the gifts is the degree to which they build the church. As Paul wrote, ‘try to excel in gifts that build up the church’ (1 Cor. 14:12).
Mission has always been an evangelical preoccupation, not least the worldwide mission of the church. Evangelicalism and evangelism, as the words themselves indicate, are inevitably interlocked. And one of our evangelical emphases in evangelism is that the Holy Spirit is the chief evangelist. He is a missionary Spirit, and Pentecost was a missionary event.
John V. Taylor, when he was Bishop of Winchester, began his book about the Holy Spirit (entitled The Go-Between God) with these words: ‘The chief actor in the historic mission of the Christian church is the Holy Spirit. He is the director of the whole enterprise.’
Then the Manila Manifesto, produced during the Second International Congress on World Evangelization in 1989, included this paragraph headed ‘God the Evangelist’:
The Scriptures declare that God himself is the chief evangelist. For the Spirit of God is the Spirit of truth, love, holiness and power, and evangelism is impossible without him. It is he who anoints the messenger, confirms the word, prepares the hearer, convicts the sinful, enlightens the blind, gives life to the dead, enables us to repent and believe, unites us to the body of Christ, assures us that we are God’s children, leads us into Christ-like character and service, and sends us out in our turn to be Christ’s witnesses. In all this the Holy Spirit’s main preoccupation is to glorify Jesus Christ by showing him to us and forming him in us.
Our Lord Jesus himself, during his ministry on earth, clearly taught the missionary nature of the Holy Spirit, notably in John 7:37–39. It was the last and greatest day of the Feast of Tabernacles. Jesus stood forth in a prominent place in the temple, and said in a loud voice (to emphasize the solemnity of his words): ‘“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” By this he meant the Spirit [John commented], whom those who believed in him were later to receive.’
Notice his two distinct references to water – first to drinking-water (verse 37, ‘If anyone is thirsty . . .’) and secondly to flowing water (verse 38, ‘streams of living water will flow . . .’). Indeed, the two pictures are fused in a remarkable combination. It is only if we take water into us that it will then flow out from us. When we drink, we take in only small sips. But by the extraordinary operation of the Holy Spirit within us, these sips are transformed into rivers, and drinking-water becomes flowing water. The world is likened to a barren desert, and the Holy Spirit to the irrigation which causes the desert to blossom.
Archbishop William Temple, in his Readings in St. John’s Gospel, wrote about Jesus’ words, ‘No-one can possess (or rather be indwelt by) the Spirit of God, and keep that Spirit to himself. Where the Spirit is, he flows forth; if there is no flowing forth, he is not there.’
This link between the Holy Spirit and Christian mission is indissoluble. To neglect mission is to contradict the very being of the Spirit. In consequence, an essential mark of a Spirit-filled church is both its compassionate outreach into its local community and its serious commitment to global mission. Harry Boer expressed this with considerable force:
When the church tries to bottle up the Spirit within herself, she acts contrary both to her own and to his nature. For it is the nature of the church ever to be enlarging her borders, and it is the nature of the Spirit to transmit his life to ever-widening circles. When the church does not recognise this law of her being and of the being of the Spirit, the Spirit is quenched and he withdraws himself, and the deposit of religiosity that is left becomes a putrefaction in the lives of those who have grieved him.
Before we leave this section on the Holy Spirit and mission, three further aspects of it need to be touched upon.
First, there is the question of evangelism and social action. This used to be an area of conflict in the evangelical constituency, but seems to be so no longer. The Grand Rapids Report (1982) defined the relationship between the two in the following terms:
Secondly, we need to consider evangelism and miracles. Should miracles accompany the preaching of the gospel today? During the last decades of the twentieth century a ‘signs and wonders’ movement developed, pioneered specially by the late John Wimber and his Vineyard churches. In his two books Power Evangelism (1985) and Power Healing (1986) he argued that signs and wonders were ‘everyday occurrences in New Testament times’ and should be in our time too. The theological basis of his reasoning was that, since the kingdom of God was inaugurated by Jesus, and its arrival was demonstrated by his miracles, we should also expect them regularly today. Moreover, some observers have hailed the claimed outbreak of signs and wonders as the ‘third wave’ of the pentecostal movement in this century. How should we respond to this teaching? To begin with, we should avoid the extreme and opposite reactions of scepticism and credulity.
On the one hand, to deny even the possibility of miracles, whether from theological prejudice or scientific secularism, borders on the absurd. Since we believe that God is the sovereign Creator of the universe, he is certainly able to intrude into his own world. We have no liberty either to lock him up in one of our neat little boxes or to dictate to him what he is permitted to do. One of the most brash examples of such unbelief took place in France towards the end of the eighteenth century. Because the Jansenists were claiming that remarkable miracles were being performed at Abbé Paris’s tomb, the Roman Catholic authorities first walled up the tomb and then fixed on the wall the peremptory order De par le roy défense à Dieu de faire miracle en ce lieu (By command of the king, God is forbidden to perform miracles here)! ‘Absurd’ is not too strong an epithet for such folly.
At the opposite extreme are those who, in John Wimber’s words, regard signs and wonders (especially healing miracles) as characterizing ‘the normal Christian life’. But this cannot be so, for several reasons. First, whatever our definition of ‘miracle’ may be, it must be the abnorm, not the norm. That is, it is a deviation from God’s usual activity. For the God of the Bible is primarily the God of nature, not of supernature. He is the God who gives sun and rain, sustains the world, clothes the flowers, feeds the birds, and provides his creatures with life, breath and all things. This is where the biblical revelation of God begins. Miracles neither precede nor supersede it. Their principal purpose in Scripture has been to authenticate each fresh stage of revelation – the law of Moses, the ministry of the prophets from Elijah onwards, the teaching of Jesus and the authority of the apostles.
In the second place, if (as John Wimber taught) God ‘has given us the authority to work the works of Jesus’, why should these be limited to healing? Why should we not also multiply loaves and fishes, and so solve the problem of world hunger? And why should we not also be able to still storms, and so rescue people whose lives are threatened by flood?
In the third place, reality does not fit the claims. To promise miraculous healing to all who believe is to cause disillusion, and then to attribute failure to unbelief can only be described as cruel.
To sum up, we should certainly be open to miracle (because God is the Creator), but we have no right to expect miracles with the same frequency with which they occurred in special biblical periods (because ours is not an epoch of revelation). Moreover, we are living in between times, between the ‘already’ of the kingdom inaugurated and the ‘not yet’ of the kingdom consummated.
Charismatic and non-charismatic evangelicals should be able to agree with the balanced statement of the Manila Manifesto (1989): ‘. . . we have no liberty to place limits on the power of the living Creator today. We reject both the scepticism which denies miracles and the presumption which demands them.’
Thirdly, there is the topic of evangelism and revival. ‘A longing for revival’, as we saw earlier, is another evangelical characteristic. We talk about it, tend to know about some of the great revivals in church history, and pray for it. So what does it mean? Most evangelicals would agree that revival is an altogether supernatural visitation by the sovereign Spirit of God, so that a whole community becomes aware of and awed by his holy presence. The unconverted are convicted of sin, repent and cry to God for mercy, often in large numbers and without any human agency. Backsliders are restored. The half-hearted are reinvigorated. And all the people of God, overwhelmed with a sense of his majesty, display the ninefold fruit of the Spirit and devote themselves to good works.
The Old Testament looked forward to the outpouring or gift of the Spirit as the principal, indeed the defining, blessing of the messianic age. The messianic age would be the age of the Spirit. So when the Holy Spirit came in power on the Day of Pentecost, God’s expectant people knew that the new age had dawned, and that the kingdom of God had broken into history. They also knew, however, that this coming of the kingdom was only partial; and that a final fulfilment of God’s promise was yet to come. So the gift of the Holy Spirit was both the beginning of the end-time and the divine assurance that the rest would follow at some future time. It was ‘both a fulfilment of the promise and the promise of fulfilment’.
This double perspective is expressed in the New Testament by the use of three metaphors: commercial (two instalments of a purchase), agricultural (two stages of a harvest), and social (two courses of a feast).
First, the gift of the Spirit is like the down-payment in a transaction; it is both the first instalment and the guarantee that the full purchase money will follow. For God has ‘put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit [arrabōn], guaranteeing what is to come’ (2 Cor. 1:22; cf. 5:5; Eph. 1:14).
Secondly, the gift of the Spirit is like the reaping of the firstfruits; it is both the beginning of the harvest and the guarantee that the rest will follow (Rom. 8:23).
Thirdly, the gift of the Spirit is like the first course of a banquet, sometimes called an ‘appetizer’ or (especially in the United Kingdom) a ‘starter’; it is both the foretaste and the guarantee that the rest of the meal will follow (Heb. 6:4–5).
In each case the Holy Spirit is both gift and promise, both initial experience and future hope.
We evangelical Christians do not agree with one another in the details of our eschatology, and we continue to debate questions relating to the tribulation, the rapture and the millennium. But we all believe in the personal, visible and glorious return of Jesus Christ, in the resurrection of our bodies, and in the new heaven and new earth. Moreover, of these future certainties we also believe that the Holy Spirit is God’s pledge.
For we are living ‘in between times’, between the first and second comings of Christ, between kingdom come and kingdom coming, between present reality and future destiny. And it is the Holy Spirit whose indwelling spans the gulf between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’. As the apostle Paul expressed it, ‘we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies’ (Rom. 8:23).
Here are three affirmations. First, ‘we groan inwardly’, because we share in the fallenness of the whole creation. Secondly, ‘we have the firstfruits of the Spirit’, the divine pledge of our final inheritance. Thirdly, ‘we wait eagerly’ for our bodily redemption. We also ‘wait for it patiently’ (verse 25).
All Christians find it difficult to hold these three perspectives together in balance. Some are so preoccupied with future glory and with the Spirit who guarantees it, that they never groan, never admit the incompleteness of their present salvation. Others groan all right, and wait eagerly for the glory to come, but forget that already they have its foretaste in the Spirit. Others are perplexed by the present tension between the Spirit and the pain, and forget to wait patiently until the tension is resolved.
Moreover, the waiting to which we are called is to be both eager (verse 23) and patient (verse 25) simultaneously. It is another equilibrium hard to maintain. We are neither to wait so eagerly that we lose our patience, nor to wait so patiently (even lethargically) that we lose our expectancy. Rather, both eagerness and patience are to characterize our waiting.
Many of our evangelical divisions, not least between charismatics and non-charismatics, it seems to me, are due to our failure to keep the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ in balance.
Reviewing this chapter, we have seen that from beginning to end, from our initiation into Christ until his return, the Holy Spirit has a unique and indispensable role to fulfil. Evangelical Christians remain divided in some matters, especially in our precise understanding of the ‘baptism’ of the Spirit and the ‘gifts’ of the Spirit. But we all recognize that the new birth is a birth of the Spirit; that Christian assurance is due to the inner witness of the Spirit; that holiness is the fruit of the Spirit; that the church is the fellowship of the Spirit; that the Christian mission owes its impetus to the Spirit; and that the Christian hope is kindled by the gift of the Spirit, who is the first instalment of our final inheritance.
We are immensely privileged that the Lord Jesus, who was born and died for us, who was raised from the dead and exalted to the Father, then sent his Spirit to live and work in us. The Christian life is life in the Spirit. Without his indwelling presence and power it would be both inconceivable and impossible. In this evangelical Christians are agreed.
Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Holy Spirit (IVP, 1996)
J. I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit (IVP, 1984)
J. C. Ryle, Holiness (Evangelical Press, 1979)