15. Where to from Here? The Spirit for Today and Tomorrow
15
Where to from Here? The Spirit for Today and Tomorrow
If we are going to count for much in the postmodern world in which we now live, the Spirit must remain the key to the church’s existence.
In light of the preceding pages, we must candidly admit that the experience and life of the Spirit were more radically central for Paul and his churches than seems to be true for most of us. The Spirit was more genuinely experienced as well. That awareness has led to the title of this final chapter. Proper humility will also acknowledge that the most appropriate answer to the question is “I don’t know.”
Rather than try to give answers, therefore, I propose to end (1) by identifying the central features of Paul’s approach to the Spirit, (2) by pointing out the frequent distance between Paul and ourselves on these matters, and (3) by offering some brief suggestions about bridging that distance. What is said here assumes the truth of the Reformation principle: the church must be both “reformed and always reforming.” Historically, the most important ingredient of true reformation and renewal is for the church to become more intentionally biblical in its thought and actions.
Paul’s Understanding of the Spirit: A Summary
The following are what I see to be at the heart of Paul’s approach to the Spirit, given now in slightly different order from the way they appear in the preceding chapters:
1. The Key to Christian Experience. The most obvious point has been repeated in a number of ways throughout, namely, the crucial role the Spirit plays in Paul’s Christian experience and therefore in his understanding of the gospel. In the final analysis, in every aspect of his theology—at least what is basic to his theology—the Spirit plays a leading role. To be sure, the Spirit is not the center for Paul—Christ is, ever and always—but the Spirit stands close to the center, making Christ known and empowering all genuinely Christian life and experience. For this reason, the Spirit must play a much more vital role in our thinking about Paul’s theology than tends now to be the case.
2. God Breaking into Our Lives. Equally crucial to Paul’s perspective is the dynamic, experiential way the Spirit comes into the life of the individual and into the ongoing life of the believing community. This reality lies behind everything Paul says; it is a point Paul presupposes and thus argues from, not for. The Spirit as an experienced reality lies behind both the Corinthian abuse and Paul’s correction of Spirit life in that community (1 Cor. 12–14); it is basic to his reminding the Thessalonians about the reality of their conversion (1 Thess. 1:4–6); it serves as primary evidence that life in Christ is based on faith and apart from Torah (Gal. 3:1–5; 4:6–7); it is the assumption lying behind the commands in 1 Thessalonians 5:19–22 (cf. 2 Thess. 2:2); it serves as evidence confirming Paul’s own ministry as an apostle (1 Cor. 2:4–5; 2 Cor. 12:12; Rom. 15:18–19); it is the basic truth on which Paul can argue for the sufficiency of life in the Spirit (Gal. 5:13–6:10); and it is essential to his reminder to Timothy to fan Spirit life into flame in order to receive the necessary power and courage for ministry in Ephesus (1 Tim. 1:18; 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6–7). Both Paul’s direct and passing references to the work of the Spirit everywhere presuppose the Spirit as an empowering, experienced reality in the life of the church and the believer.
3. End-time Evidence and Guarantee of Glory. Pivotal to the Spirit’s central role is the thoroughly eschatological framework within which Paul both experienced and understood the Spirit. The Spirit had played a leading role in his—and others’—expectations about the end times. Along with the resurrection of Christ, therefore, the outpoured Spirit radically altered Paul’s eschatological perspective. On the one hand, the coming of the Spirit fulfilled the Old Testament promises and was the sure evidence that the future had already been set in motion; on the other hand, since the final consummation of God’s kingdom had not yet taken place, the Spirit also served as the sure guarantee of the final glory. It is impossible to understand Paul’s emphasis on the experienced life of the Spirit apart from this eschatological perspective that dominates his thinking.
4. God Dwelling in and among Us. Related to the critical eschatological framework are several converging facts which demonstrate that for Paul the experience of the promised Spirit meant the return of God’s personal presence to dwell in and among his people. The Spirit marks off God’s people individually and corporately as God’s temple, the place of his personal dwelling on earth. Brought together here in terms of fulfillment are: (a) the theme of the presence of God, expressed in the Old Testament tabernacle and temple; (b) the presence further understood in terms of the Spirit of the LORD (Isa. 63:9–14; Ps. 106:33); and (c) the promised new covenant of the Spirit from Jeremiah and Ezekiel, wherein the Spirit would indwell God’s people and cause them to live and to follow in his ways.
Paul not only sees these themes as fulfilled by the gift of the Spirit but also understands the Spirit as God’s personal presence. This understanding best accounts for Paul’s general reluctance to refer to the Spirit with impersonal images; on the contrary, he regularly refers to the Spirit’s activity with verbs of personal action, used elsewhere of God and Christ. The Spirit is thus “the Holy Spirit of God” and “the Spirit of Jesus Christ”—the way God is currently present with and among his people.
5. “God Very God.” In this vein it is also important to note how absolutely fundamental to Paul’s theology are his presuppositions about the Trinity—although that is neither his language nor his major focus. What makes the Trinity foundational for him, without his ever discussing it as such, are the four ever-present realities: (1) that God is one and personal, (2) that the Spirit is the Spirit of God and therefore personal, (3) that the Spirit and Christ are fully divine, and (4) that the Spirit is as distinct from Christ and the Father as they are from each other. This modification of Paul’s understanding of the one God is in part what makes his treatment of salvation dynamic and effective.
6. Salvation Made Effective. Paul’s understanding of God as Trinity, including the role of the Spirit, is thus foundational to the primary passion of his life—salvation in Christ. Salvation is God’s activity, from beginning to end: God the Father initiated it, in that it belongs to God’s eternal purposes (1 Cor. 2:6–9), it has its origins in God and has God as its ultimate goal (1 Cor. 8:6), and it was set in motion by God’s having sent both the Son and the Spirit (Gal. 4:4–7). Christ the Son accomplished salvation for the people of God through his death and resurrection, the central feature of all of Paul’s theology. The effective application in believers’ lives of the love of God as offered by the Son is uniquely the work of the Spirit.
So much is this so that when Paul reminds believers of their conversion experience or of their present status in Christ, he almost always does so in terms of the Spirit’s activity or presence. There is no salvation in Christ that is not fully trinitarian in this sense, and therefore there is no salvation in Christ that is not made effective in the life of the believer by the experienced coming of the Spirit, whom God “poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior” (Titus 3:6 NIV).
7. A People Called Forth. The goal of God’s eschatological salvation is to create a people for his name. This people are the true succession of the old covenant people of God, and as a people are the object of God’s saving activity in Christ. But they are now newly constituted through the death and resurrection of Christ and the gift of the eschatological Spirit, though they enter the community individually through faith in Christ and the gift of the Spirit.
Formed by the Spirit, they are an eschatological people, who live the life of the future in the present as they await the consummation. They are God’s family, evidenced by the Spirit’s crying “Abba” from within their hearts; they are God’s temple, the place of his habitation on earth by his Spirit; and they form Christ’s body, made so by their common lavish experience of the one Spirit.
8. Righteousness Made Possible. The Spirit’s major role in Paul’s view lies with his being the essential element of the whole of Christian life, from beginning to end. The Spirit thus empowers ethical life in all its dimensions—individually, within the community, and to the world. Believers in Christ, who are Spirit people first and foremost, are variously described as living by the Spirit, walking in the Spirit, being led by the Spirit, bearing the fruit of the Spirit, and sowing to the Spirit. Ethics for Paul is likewise founded in the Trinity: the Spirit of God conforms the believer into the likeness of Christ to the glory of God. The Spirit is thus the empowering presence of God for living the life of God in the present.
There is therefore no Christian life that is not at the same time a holy life, made so by the Holy Spirit whom God gives to his people (1 Thess. 4:8). At the same time, life in the Spirit also includes every other imaginable dimension of the believer’s present end-time existence, including being empowered by the Spirit to abound in hope, to live in joy, to pray without ceasing, to exercise self-control, to experience a robust conscience, to have insight into God’s will and purposes, and to endure in every kind of present hardship and suffering. To be a believer means nothing less than being filled with and thus living in and by the Spirit.
9. The Key to Christian Worship. Finally, the Spirit is the key to all truly Christian Spirituality. At the individual level the life of the Spirit includes “praying in the Spirit” as well as with the mind. In so doing, the Spirit not only helps believers by interceding for them in their weaknesses but also gives them great confidence in such times of prayer since God knows the mind of the Spirit, and since the Spirit prays through the believer in keeping with God’s own purposes.
At the same time, the Spirit’s presence, including his charismata, helps to build up the believing community as its members gather together to worship God. In Paul’s churches, therefore, worship is “charismatic” simply because the Spirit is the key player in all that transpires. The Spirit, who forms the body and creates the temple, is present with unity and diversity, so that all may participate and be built up.
The Spirit in the Later Church: A Contrast
With no intent to be judgmental, I observe that in much of its subsequent history the church has lived somewhat below the picture of the life of the Spirit just outlined. Indeed, the general marginalizing of the Spirit by scholarship and the frequent domestication of the Spirit by the church were noted in the overture as part of the reason for this book. For example, the passage of time and the (necessary but not always helpful) institutionalizing of the church, plus the influence of Greek thought forms on its theologizing, led the church away from its fundamentally eschatological outlook (point 3 above). This meant the experience of the Spirit played a less and less crucial role in the church’s understanding of itself as living between the times—that is, between the beginning of the end and its consummation at the return of Christ (point 7). As a result, the local community of believers was less apt to maintain the balance of being in the world but not of the world, always calling it into question, not conditioned by its values and lifestyle.
At the same time, the dynamic and experienced nature of life in the Spirit was generally lost (point 2). At least part of the reason for this was the result of a matter the New Testament never addresses: How do children of believers become believers themselves? At some point in time the majority of Christians became so as the result of being born into Christian homes rather than through adult conversion. Indeed, much of the tension later believers feel between their own experience of church and that about which they read in the New Testament can be attributed to this significant factor.
An important point is that all of Paul’s letters were written to first-generation believers, all of whom—at least those addressed in Paul’s letters—were adult converts, whose conversions had included an experience of the Holy Spirit coming into their lives. That, at least, is the picture that emerges in the letters. But what happens to this experienced conversion, attended by the Spirit, for children born and raised in the homes of such converts? As much as anything, this probably accounts for the subsequent loss of the experiential nature of life in the Spirit and for the general marginalizing of the Spirit in the later church.
Again, this is not intended to be a judgmental picture, nor do I suggest that it is true at all times and in all places. But it is of some interest that the subsequent study of church history by the church itself has far more often been a history of the institution than of the life of the Spirit in the community of faith as it lived out the life of Christ in the world.
What was not lost in all this, of course, was the doctrine of the Spirit, with its properly biblical understanding of the Spirit in personal terms (point 4), which led to the more formal expressions, in the creeds, of the Spirit’s place in the Godhead (point 5) and therefore of his essential role in one’s becoming a child of God (point 6). Related to this development are two other matters: associating the reception of the Spirit with water baptism, and the (probably) eventual practice of baptizing infant children born into Christian homes. The Spirit was inevitably now no longer perceived as dynamically experienced (point 2), although he was still a central factor in the theology of salvation.
The general loss of the dynamic and experiential life of the Spirit on entrance to Christian life (conversion) also accounts for the spiritual dis-ease and feebleness in the individual believer throughout much of the church’s later history (point 8). This is not true of everyone, of course. But it does in part account for the rise both of the monastic movement and of various Spirit movements throughout church history. “Holy” and its plural noun, “the saints,” which in Paul’s Spirituality describe everyday Christian life and Christians, respectively, came to describe the special rather than the normal. So too with Spirituality (point 9). Spontaneity by the many gave way to performance by a few; prayer in the Spirit became fixed in the (often excellent) liturgy of the church; tongues did indeed generally cease, and the prophetic word was relegated to the prepared sermon.
To be sure, the church has also had its history of Spirit movements of various and sundry kinds. Some of these were absorbed into the church; others were pushed outside the church and usually became heretical and divisive; and still others became reform movements within the church. The common denominator of most of these movements has been their attempt to recapture the life of the Spirit in some form. To the degree that they succeeded they have been a source of renewal and blessing. But Spirit movements tend to make institutions nervous—for good reason, one might add, both positively and negatively. The net result has been that Paul’s perspective of life in the Spirit, as a dynamically experienced reality creating an end-time people who live for God’s glory, has not generally fared well in the overall life of the church.
If what has preceded paints too bleak a picture or sounds like a belittling of the subsequent work of the Spirit in the church, let me say again that this is not my intent; nor do I think that if we could turn the clock back, all would be better. To the contrary, I not only recognize that the clock cannot be turned back but also find cause for much rejoicing in the church’s history. The creeds, the liturgies, the theologizing, the institutional life are not only with us, but for many, myself included, are seen to be the work of the Spirit in the subsequent life of the church. The plea of this study, therefore, is not that of a restorationist, as if we really could restore “the primitive church,” whatever that means and whatever that would look like. Rather, it is a plea for recapturing Paul’s perspective of Christian life as essentially the life of the Spirit, dynamically experienced and eschatologically oriented—but fully integrated into the life of the church.
From my limited perspective, such a recapturing has three dimensions. First, we need the Spirit to bring life into our present institutions, theologies, and liturgies—in contrast to tearing down these barns and building different ones, which all too often has been the history of Spirit movements, especially of the restorationist type. The Spirit not only inspires a new body of songs in every renewal within the church but also makes the best of former hymns come to life with new vigor. “Can these dry bones live?” the LORD asked the prophet. “You know,” he replied, and then watched as the Spirit brought life to what was already there. Too much water has passed under the bridge for us to believe that somehow we will be miraculously unified in terms of visible structures, liturgies, and theologies. But time and again, when the human factor is not getting in the way, the Spirit has given God’s people a greater sense that they are one across confessional lines. The church is with us—indeed, we are it—in its present shape(s) and structures. May the Spirit of the living God be poured out upon us afresh for our life in the present world until Christ comes again.
Second, a genuine recapturing of Paul’s perspective will not isolate the Spirit in such a way that Spiritual gifts and Spirit phenomena take pride of place in the church, resulting in churches that are either charismatic or otherwise. Rather, a genuine recapturing of Paul’s perspective will cause the church to be more vitally trinitarian, not only in its theology but in its life and Spirituality as well. This will mean not the exaltation of the Spirit but the exaltation of God; and it will mean focus not on the Spirit as such but on the Son, crucified and risen, Savior and Lord of all. Ethical life will be neither narrowly, individualistically imagined nor legalistically expressed, but it will be joyously communal and decidedly over against the world’s present trinity of relativism, secularism, and individualism, with their thoroughly dehumanizing results. And the proper trinitarian aim of such ethics will be Paul’s own aim—to the glory of God, through being conformed to the image of the Son, by the empowering of the Spirit.
Recapturing the dynamic life of the Spirit will also entail the renewal of the charismata, not for the sake of being charismatic but for the building up of the people of God for their life together and in the world. What must not happen in such a renewal is what has so often happened in the past: holding the extraordinary charismata in such awe that they are allowed to exist untested, undiscerned, and ungrounded in the local body of believers. Every form of extremism, which is often the expressed or hidden fear over a renewed life of the Spirit in the church, is ultimately the result of failure to heed Paul’s key injunction (1 Thess. 5:19–22): “Do not quench the Spirit by despising prophesying. But test all things; and in so doing, hold fast to what is good and be done with every evil form.” The failure to test the spirits has led to lack of responsibility and accountability, which in turn has often led to failure on the part of some who were in prominence, as well as to pain and hurt by those who were the recipients of prophetic words that were either false or impossible.
Third, a genuine recapturing of the dynamic life of the Spirit will result in more effective evangelism in a lost, isolated, individualistic world. As evidenced already in some good ways through current charismatic traditions and by traditional Pentecostals, the visibly dynamic work of the Spirit—where God is less an item in the creed and more obviously at work in the world—has frequently manifested itself in drawing people to Christ and into his church. Our task is not to share our “good views” about God but to offer his great and glorious “good news,” which includes his presence as reality in people’s lives and in the life of the church.
In summary, I think Paul’s perspective has the better of it; and I also believe that that perspective can become our own—dare I say, must become our own, if we are going to make any difference at all in the so-called post-Christian, postmodern era. But this means that our theologizing must stop paying mere lip service to the Spirit and recognize his crucial role in Paul’s gospel; and it means that the church must risk freeing the Spirit from being boxed into the creed and getting him back into the experiential life of the believer and the believing community.
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So we have come to the end of this look at the Spirit in Paul’s letters. What is obviously missing is the how-to question, which is probably the more urgent question for most people in a culture like ours. “How do I foster such a life of the Spirit within my church?” and “What do I do personally about all of this?” are the most frequently asked questions in seminars when I present this material.
On the corporate level my response is basically to the leadership, for without the leadership taking ownership of the need, little will happen. To leaders, then, I suggest three things: First, over a long period teach this material in an ongoing way. Teach the people biblically. Work hard on the texts themselves. Lead the people through Paul’s letters again and again, pointing out the crucial role the Spirit plays in his view of things.
Second, I refer back to the first paragraphs of chapter 5. I would make it my top priority to lead the people of God into a more biblical understanding of what it means for us to be God’s eschatological people in a world gone mad. Over and over again, through text after text, New Testament book after New Testament book, I would try to help them make a major paradigm shift as to what it means to be the people of God in the world. Since this is the aim of God’s saving work in Christ that the Spirit has come to bring to realization, I would make this the focus of ministry for years to come.
Third, in terms of the gathered community at worship (chaps. 13 and 14 above), leaders would do well to provide a setting and atmosphere in which people can practice. This means readiness to take risks by creating opportunities in a corporate setting to let the charismata build up the people of God—for growth in ministry within and in reaching out to the world. Take risks as leaders and then be willing to get out of the way to let the people of God function as a whole priesthood, each one bringing their gifts to God and to each other. Allow for newness, changes, and greater spontaneity within the structures God has traditionally blessed. After all, “seek earnestly the better gifts” for the edification of the body is an imperative, not a polite invitation.
At the individual level, my stock answer is admittedly not always helpful: hunger and thirst with openness. For some this puts too much emphasis on the human rather than on the divine side; and I too fear that. But my own experience in the church is that there is a clear correlation between our own hunger after God, on the one hand, and our experience of God, on the other. This does not remove the experience of the Spirit from God’s own sovereignty, nor does it imply that the one hungering and thirsting does not already have the Spirit in full measure. I simply know of no other practical solution.
Moreover, our Lord himself pronounced his congratulatory blessing on those who “hunger and thirst after righteousness,” promising that they “shall be filled.” Part of the point of this book is that hungering and thirsting after the life of the Spirit is what that beatitude is all about. And that beatitude presupposes the first one, that those who recognize themselves before God as “impoverished in spirit [S/spirit?]” are the inheritors of the kingdom.
The concern for openness is where I would emphasize the divine sovereignty. It is a way of suggesting that we need less often to tell God what we want, as though we knew what is best for us, and more often to have a stance of openness, so that we might continually be surprised by joy. Openness means seeking earnestly after the Spirit, with readiness for whatever the Spirit may want to do, not for the sake of our individual walk alone, but for what it will mean for the sake of the body. My experience over many years, including my reading of Scripture, has taught me that the one God, who lives in holy joy and love in triune relationship, delights to delight his people, and those delights are as diverse as the creation itself.
Perhaps the proper way to conclude this study, therefore, is with prayer, in this case with the aid of earlier Spirit-inspired prayers. The first is from Psalms, expressing the longing of those who already know God to know him more—and better; it assumes the attitude of the first and fourth beatitudes but is expressed in the passionate language of the soul that knows it has a God-shaped space within, which desperately needs God to fill it with himself:
You, God, are my God
earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
where there is no water. (63:1 NIV)
The second is the prayer of Moses, noted earlier as lying close to the surface of Paul’s understanding of the Spirit as God’s empowering presence. Here is that cry of desperation which should mark church and believer alike, who live as God’s redeemed and redemptive people in the postmodern era that marks the turning of the centuries—and millennia:
If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with . . . your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish . . . your people from all the other people on the face of the earth? (Exod. 33:15–16 NIV)
Finally, from Andrew Reed’s hymn, which expresses at the individual level what should perhaps most characterize the nature of our prayer for life in the Spirit:
Holy Spirit, all divine,
Dwell within this heart of mine;
Reign supreme, and reign alone.
Amen and amen.
Reflection Questions