7. Conversion: Getting In (Part 1)— The Spirit and the Hearing of the Gospel
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Conversion: Getting In (Part 1)—
The Spirit and the Hearing of the Gospel
Although the goal of salvation in Christ is a people for God’s name, people enter this community one at a time. Almost every aspect of getting in is the work of the Spirit, beginning with the proclamation and revelation of the gospel.
In the late eighth century, Charlemagne, king of the Franks, became a Christian; through his “persuasion” the whole Frankish nation became “Christians” and were baptized en masse. The question: Were all of these people saved? Again I would answer: Only God knows; but probably not all, for such “salvation” also lies totally outside the New Testament frame of reference. After all, it is not baptism that identifies one as a believer in Christ but the presence of the Holy Spirit in one’s life.
If the goal of salvation in Christ is a people for God’s name, in continuity with the former covenant, discontinuity lies with how the people are now constituted, in two significant ways: (1) through the death and resurrection of Christ and the appropriating work of the Spirit; and (2) by entering individually, including people from every “tribe and nation.”
Christ’s saving work begins in the heart of the individual believer, as the appropriating work of the Spirit makes clear. After all, this emphasis on the individual is not the product of the Renaissance and Reformation—although at times these have resulted in an unfortunate and unbiblical focus on the individual. The significance of the individual before God is already in place in the Old Testament, as anyone who has lived long with the Psalter well knows. In Paul’s case, the new place for the individual, as the way one “gets in,” arises primarily from his altered eschatological perspective that includes Jew and gentile alike on the same grounds. We now turn our attention to this individualized aspect of salvation in Christ, what it means for the believer to enter the people of God; and here the work of the Spirit looms large in Paul.
We should also note that for Paul salvation in Christ includes both getting in, the concern of this chapter and the next, and staying in, the concern of chapters 9 and 10. That is, getting saved has to do with faith in Christ that also includes faithfulness to Christ. One’s whole life involves trusting in Christ, who by the Spirit continually transforms us into the likeness of God. One gets in to stay in, and salvation for Paul includes the whole process, not simply the beginning point.
Thus these four chapters (7–10) belong together as one chapter in God’s story, which is the reason for the deliberate use of the word “conversion” in the title of each. For too long the church has understood “conversion” as having only to do with the beginning point. Biblically understood, conversion has to do with making disciples of former pagans like ourselves (even if we were born into Christian homes, we need to be “converted” in this sense). Our Lord did not say, “Go and make converts,” but “Go and make disciples.” In the long run, only disciples are converts.
But conversion has a beginning point, and that is our present concern. In this chapter we look at the role of the Spirit that is more external to the believer (although nothing is so totally); in the next chapter we look at the believer’s own experience of this beginning point.
The Spirit and Getting In
Several components make up one’s experience of salvation: hearing the gospel, faith, various images of conversion, the gift of the Spirit, and baptism in water. The Spirit plays the central role in most of the process—except for baptism, which is understandable since Paul (apparently) understood baptism as the human response to the prior divine activity.
Hearing the Gospel
For Paul Christian life begins with hearing the gospel, which both precedes faith (Rom. 10:14) and is accompanied by faith (1 Thess. 2:13; 2 Thess. 2:13–14; Eph. 1:13). “How,” he asks, “can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?” (Rom. 10:14b–15a NIV). This view of hearing the gospel accounts in part for Paul’s own missionary urgencies. Our interest is in the role of the Spirit in this hearing of God’s good news.
Two things are involved here: the gospel as God’s very word (1 Thess. 2:13) and therefore the truth that must be believed/trusted (2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Tim. 2:4), revealed as such by the Spirit; and the dual act of preaching and responding, which are also the work of the Spirit.
The Spirit and Preaching
In 2 Corinthians 3:8, Paul contrasts his own ministry with that of Moses, and indirectly with that of the “peddlers of another Jesus.” In doing so, he refers to his own ministry as “the ministry of the Spirit,” meaning the ministry of the new covenant, which is empowered by the Spirit and results in others’ receiving the Spirit. Such ministry, he insists, despite the earthenware vessel through which it comes, is accompanied by far greater glory than that which accompanied the ministry of Moses in the former covenant. The far greater glory, it turns out in this context, is the work of the Spirit, who brings us into the presence of the living God. He does so by removing the veil that keeps people from beholding God’s glory in the face of Christ Jesus and consequently from being transformed into his likeness.
Paul refers frequently to his own effective ministry as a direct result of the work of the Spirit. This work included not only conviction concerning the truth of the gospel but also signs and wonders, all of which resulted in changed lives. Indeed, the first reference to the Spirit in Paul’s writings (1 Thess. 1:5–6) strikes this note. Paul begins his encouragement of this new—and suffering—Christian community by reminding them of two Spirit-experienced realities: his ministry among them, and the nature of their conversion.
They became followers of Christ (v. 5) not on the basis of Paul’s proclamation of the gospel alone, but because that proclamation was accompanied by the power of the Spirit, including a deep conviction (probably both in Paul as he preached and in them as they heard). Whether the power of the Spirit in this instance also included accompanying signs and wonders is moot (I think it did; Rom. 15:18–19 indicates that such was regularly the case). The Thessalonians’ reception of the gospel was accompanied by much affliction and by the joy of the Holy Spirit (v. 6), that unquenchable joy the Spirit brings to those who have come to know the living and true God (v. 9).
So also with 1 Corinthians 2:1–5. In defending his ministry in Corinth against his opponents (cf. 4:1–21; 9:1–2), Paul in this paragraph takes up the matter of his preaching when he first came to the city. Both the content (1:18–25) and the form (2:1–5) of his preaching lacked persuasive wisdom and rhetoric; nonetheless, his preaching was far more effective than wisdom or rhetoric, Paul argues. It was accompanied by a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, proved by the conversion of the Corinthians themselves (cf. 2 Cor. 3:3). And it was so, Paul adds, in order that their faith might rest in “the power of God,” not merely in human wisdom.
These passages, and the next, make clear that Paul understood Christian conversion to begin with Spirit-empowered proclamation, which by the same Spirit found its lodging in the heart of the hearer so as to bring conviction—of sin (as in 1 Cor. 14:24–25), as well as of the truth of the gospel.
But the Spirit’s role in Paul’s preaching was not limited to an “anointing” of Paul’s own words, thus carrying conviction as to the truth of the gospel. In Romans 15:18–19 he insists that his preaching all the way from Jerusalem to Illyricum was an effective combination of “word and deed,” both of which were by “the power of the Spirit.” By “word” he refers to his preaching; he explains “deed” as referring to “signs and wonders through the power of the Spirit.”
For Paul this double display of power (empowered words and powerful deeds) forms the foundation for his understanding of the role of the promised Spirit. That is, he never argues for such empowering, nor does he allow anyone to authenticate either his ministry or their faith on that basis (2 Cor. 5:13). But neither would he understand the presence of the promised Spirit without such a double expression of power. We are dealing with the Spirit of God, after all, the present eschatological fulfillment of God’s empowering presence. It would never occur to him that the miraculous would not accompany the proclamation of the gospel, or that in another time some would think of these two empowerings as “either-or.” For Paul, it is simply a matter of “of course.” Thus, speaking of his ministry as a whole, he can confidently say to the Colossians, “to which end also I labor, contending for the gospel in keeping with God’s being at work in me with power” (1:29), by which he means “by the power of the Spirit.”
What is true of Paul’s own ministry he also understands to be true of the effective preaching of the gospel in general. “And take the sword of the Spirit,” he urges in Ephesians 6:17, meaning, to “speak forth the word of God” (the truth about Christ) in a world where the powers are still at work. Thus he urges them to be involved in a Spirit-empowered proclamation of Christ.
Similarly, this understanding of the relationship of the Spirit to ministry lies behind three passages addressed to Timothy (1 Tim. 1:18; 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6–7; cf. v. 14), in which Paul recalls Timothy’s experience of “call” to ministry. Because of context, each text emphasizes a different aspect of that experience.
1. Timothy’s gift (charisma) refers first to the Spirit (2 Tim. 1:6–7) but is also broadened to refer to the gift of ministry that came by the Spirit (1 Tim. 4:14). The experience therefore is something that happened to (within) Timothy. He experienced a Spirit-directed, Spirit-given “call,” singling him out for the ministry of the gospel.
2. The experience, however, took place in a community setting of some kind, since it also came by way of prophetic utterances spoken about and to him (1 Tim. 1:18; 4:14). Indeed, in 1:18 Paul appeals to the content of these “calling” words from the Lord, which came through others in the community, as his means of bolstering Timothy’s courage to do battle in a very trying situation in Ephesus.
3. The community of elders responded to this work of the Spirit by the laying on of hands (4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6; cf. the similar sequence in Acts 13:1–3). The gift itself did not come through their laying on of hands; rather, their act was one of recognition and affirmation of the prior work of the Spirit that had come through prophetic utterances. The Spirit as an experienced reality is the obvious key to these appeals.
Revelation by the Spirit
Part of Paul’s conviction that his message was, and would be, accompanied by the Spirit’s power was his corresponding conviction that the essential content of the gospel came to him by revelation, again as the work of the Spirit. Both 1 Corinthians 2:10–16 and Ephesians 3:5–7 affirm that his own insight into the gospel came by the Spirit’s revelation.
This revelation involved a twofold unveiling of God’s mystery. First, in 1 Corinthians 2:6–16 the Spirit is understood to have revealed what was formerly hidden—and is still hidden to those without the Spirit. Only by the Spirit (v. 10) could he and his converts understand what the human mind could not conceive (v. 9), namely, that God in his own wisdom had chosen to redeem our fallen race through the crucifixion of Christ. Thus Paul’s preaching of the cross came with “words taught by the Spirit” (v. 13), which included “explaining Spiritual things by Spiritual means” (= the things taught by the Spirit with language appropriate to the Spirit). To have the Spirit in this way means not to be subject to merely human judgments; rather, it means to have the mind of Christ (vv. 15–16; cf. 7:25, 40).
Pivotal to Paul’s argument is that this revelation should be the common experience of all who have received the Spirit. Paul’s problem with the Corinthians was that they considered themselves to be people of the Spirit, and yet they were abandoning the cross for human wisdom and rhetoric. Hence the vital role of the Spirit, who reveals to those who love God what was formerly hidden (1 Cor. 2:9–10), namely, what God in Christ has freely given us (v. 12).
It is not some obscure secret wisdom that has been revealed by the Spirit, but it is the content of the gospel, God’s “mystery.” The need for revelation by the Spirit at this point is considerable since it requires an understanding that merely human wisdom could never penetrate. The gospel at its profoundest point stands in utter contradiction to human wisdom: God has redeemed our fallen race by means of the ultimate contradiction in terms, a crucified Messiah. Without the Spirit, who alone knows the mind of God, human beings do not stand a chance to penetrate this “hidden mystery,” which “eye has not seen nor has it entered into the heart of human beings.” The Corinthians should have recognized this, precisely because they, too, had received the Spirit that they might be taught, by means of the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. But they were caught up in a false “spirituality” that was leading them in “all-glory-now” directions, thus sidestepping discipleship marked by the cross (see chap. 12 below).
Second, in Ephesians 3:2–13 this mystery, God’s hidden wisdom now revealed by the Spirit, includes the fact that “Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus” (v. 6 NIV). Since these words reflect the primary focus of the argument of Galatians and Romans as well, it is not surprising that Paul here speaks of these matters in terms of “revelation” that came “by the Spirit.” Therefore, for Paul both the revelation of the inclusion of Jews and gentiles together in Christ and their actual inclusion (1:13–14; 2:18, 22) are the work of the Spirit. Such inclusion in the present time obviously needs the revelation that only the eschatological Spirit can bestow, since most Jews were looking for this fulfillment at the End, and in terms of “nations” rather than “individuals.”
What required revelation was not that gentiles were to be included in the promised end-time blessings of God—that was commonly accepted by all—but that they would be included Torah-free (that is, free from the observances of the Jewish law) and on equal grounds with Jews, so that God in Christ had formed one new humanity of the two peoples (Eph. 2:14–15). Such an understanding could have come only by the Spirit’s revelation, both through Jews’ and gentiles’ common experience of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13) and through a conscious understanding of what Christ and the Spirit had done (Eph. 3:5).
A further aspect of revelation connected with the hearing of the gospel occurs in 1 Corinthians 14:24–25. Here the revelation comes by means of prophetic utterances within the believing community when unbelievers are present. What is revealed in this case are the secrets of the unbelievers’ hearts, leading them (apparently) to repentance and conversion.
We should pause here to note that in the present overview of Paul’s theology, focusing as we are on the role of the Spirit in that theology, there is no mention of the human predicament that made salvation a necessity. This is because Paul sees not the Holy Spirit, but the evil spirit, Satan, as at work in those whose minds he “has blinded so that they cannot behold the light of the gospel in the face of God’s glory, Christ himself” (2 Cor. 4:4). Believers can see the glory because the Spirit has removed the veil, in this case the “blindfold.” The 1 Corinthians passage indicates in part at least how the Spirit removes the veil—by means of a prophetic utterance that penetrates the unbeliever’s heart and lays it bare before all.
The “revelation” in this case has probably to do with the unbeliever’s sinfulness, which in turn leads him or her to hear the greater revelation that has taken place in Christ. Such revelation by the prophetic Spirit serves for believers as the sure sign of God’s favor and presence among them (1 Cor. 14:22). All this is the work of the Spirit.
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It is clear from all this that the conversion of the individual believer begins with a sovereign act of God, carried out by the Holy Spirit. As Paul put it, “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?” (Rom. 10:14–15 NIV). God’s action is clearly the prior one.
In the divine mystery of things our “believing” (or “trusting”) is the hinge point between our “calling on God” and our “hearing the gospel.” Our trusting, which is the point at which what is external to us becomes internal, is in some mysterious way the working of the Holy Spirit as both cause and effect. That is, the Spirit appears both as the one who initiates our faith and as the one who is received by that same faith; and that is the starting point of the next chapter.
Reflection Questions