3.2. The Gift of the Spirit
3.2. The Gift of the Spirit
Although the New Testament people of God were constituted on the basis of Christ’s death and resurrection, the Spirit, who appropriated that work to their lives, was the key to their present existence as that people. The Spirit is both the evidence that God’s eschatological future had dawned (Acts 2:16-21) and the guarantee of their own inheritance at its consummation (Eph 1:13-14).106
The Spirit is that which marks off God’s people from the rest, whereby they understand the wisdom of the cross, which the world counts as foolishness (1 Cor 2:6-16). Their common experience of Spirit, both Jew and Gentile, plus their continuing experience of the Spirit’s activities among them, is that to which Paul appeals in Galatia as evidence of the new expression of being God’s people (Gal 3:2-5); and the Spirit by whom they walk, in whom they live, and by whom they are led is the reason they no longer need Torah (5:16-28). Not only has Christ brought an end to Torah but by belonging to him believers have also crucified the flesh (Gal 5:24) that was aroused by Torah (Rom 7:5). Through the Spirit they fulfill the whole Torah as well as the law of Christ by loving one another (Gal 5:13-14; 6:2).
Moreover, the Spirit is the key to their existence as a people. Through Christ both Jew and Gentile together “have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Eph 2:18). By their common, lavish experience of Spirit the many of them in Corinth, with all their differences and diversity, became the one body of Christ (1 Cor 12:13); by the Spirit’s abiding in/among them they form God’s temple, holy unto him — set apart for his purposes as his alternative to Corinth (1 Cor 3:16-17).
Finally, the Spirit serves as the key to their new view of ministry. Ministry lies not in individuals with inherited offices, nor even in individuals with newly created offices. Ministry lies with the gifting of the Spirit. God through his Spirit has placed ministries in the church; and since the Spirit is the eschatological Spirit of Joel’s prophecy, all of God’s people are potential prophets — Jew/Gentile, male/female, home owner/slave. The Spirit is unconscious of race, sex, or rank. He gifts whom he wills for the common good (1 Cor 12:7-11).
Thus the Spirit, as available to all, and gifting various people in diverse ways as he wills, is the crucial ingredient of their new self-understanding — and thus of their discontinuity with the old.