2. God Revisits His People— The Spirit as the Renewed Presence of God
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God Revisits His People—
The Spirit as the Renewed Presence of God
The outpouring of the Spirit meant for Paul that God had fulfilled his promise to dwell once again in and among his people.
Presence is a delicious word—because it points to one of our truly great gifts. Nothing else can take the place of presence, not gifts, not telephone calls, not pictures, not mementos, nothing. Ask the person who has lost a lifelong mate what they miss the most; the answer is invariably “presence.” When we are ill, we don’t need soothing words nearly as much as we need loved ones to be present. What makes shared life—games, walks, concerts, outings, and a myriad of other things—so pleasurable? Presence.
God has made us this way, in his own image, because he himself is a personal, relational being. The great problem with the fall is that we lost not only our vision of God (that is, his true character has been distorted) but also our relationship with God, and thus no longer knew his abiding presence. For Paul the coming of Christ and the Spirit changed all of this forever.
At the heart of things Pauline is his understanding of the out-poured Spirit as the coming of “the promised Holy Spirit” (Eph. 1:13; Gal. 3:14). While this promise especially included the renewal of the prophetic word, for Paul it also meant the arrival of the new covenant, anticipated by the promised “circumcision of the heart” in Deuteronomy 30:6 and prophesied explicitly in Jeremiah 31:31–34: “I will make a new covenant . . . and I will write it on their hearts” (NRSV). This prophecy was shortly thereafter picked up by Ezekiel, who expressly linked it to the Spirit, whom God was going to “put in you” (36:26–27; 37:14). Above everything else, as fulfillment of the new covenant the Spirit marked the return of the lost presence of God.
Here, then, is one of the more significant areas where the Spirit represents both continuity and discontinuity between the old and new covenants. The continuity is to be found in the promised renewal of God’s presence with his people; the discontinuity lies in the radically new way God has revisited them—indwelling them individually as well as corporately by his Spirit.
The Presence of God in the Old Testament
The theme of the presence of God is crucial to both the Old and New Testaments, serving in fact as bookends to the Christian Bible. It begins in Genesis 2–3 with the creator of heaven and earth being present in the garden with those he has created in his own image; it concludes with the marvelous pictures of the renewed heaven and earth and the renewal of Eden in Revelation 21:1–22:5, in which John says expressly, “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb” (21:22 NRSV). Whatever else, the people of Israel understood themselves to be the people of the Presence, the people among whom the eternal God had chosen to dwell on earth.
The Tabernacle and Temple
The most prominent way God’s presence is experienced in the Old Testament is in the tabernacle and the temple. Such a presence motif, culminating in God’s glory descending on the tabernacle, is the structural key to the book of Exodus. In the incident of the burning bush (Exod. 3), the living God first shows himself present to Moses at Sinai. Then he instructs Moses to bring the people there to worship him. When Israel arrives at the holy mount in chapter 19, they come to the place of God’s “dwelling,” the place they are forbidden even to touch on penalty of death. Only Moses is allowed into God’s presence.
But God plans to move from the mount and dwell among his people by means of a tabernacle. So after the giving of the Book of the Covenant (Exod. 20–24), Moses receives the instructions for the tabernacle’s construction (chaps. 25–31). But between the instructions and the construction (chaps. 35–39), the disastrous episode in the desert occurs (chap. 32), followed by God’s announcing to Moses: “My presence will not go with you”; an angel will go instead (chap. 33). Moses recognizes the inadequacy of this solution and intercedes: “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” (33:15–16 NIV).
This is followed by the further revelation of God’s character (“compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness,” Exod. 34:4–7) and the construction of the tabernacle, all of which concludes with the descent of God’s glory, which “filled the tabernacle” (40:35). With that, they are ready to journey to the place that “the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name” (Deut. 12:11 and passim), led by the presence of God symbolized by the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire.
The Deuteronomy promise was finally fulfilled in the construction of Solomon’s temple, where the same glory as in Exodus 40 descended and “filled his temple” (1 Kings 8:11). Thus Jerusalem and the temple are regularly described as “the place Yahweh chose for his name to dwell”; and the temple became the focal point of Israel’s existence in the promised land.
Even more than the law, therefore, or other identity markers such as circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath observance, God’s presence with Israel distinguished them as his people. They well understood that the God who created the heavens and the earth could not be contained by an earthly structure (e.g., Isa. 66:1–2); nonetheless, because God chose to have his presence concentrate there, the tabernacle and the temple became the primary symbols of God’s presence among his people.
Thus, even though the temple also served as a place for sacrifices, the Old Testament people of God saw it primarily as a place of prayer and a reminder that God’s presence was with them. This comes out over and over again in Israel’s hymn book, the Psalter. Take, for example, the great enthronement hymn in Psalm 68, which pictures God’s presence on Zion as the hope of his people and the envy of their neighbors:
The mountains of Bashan are majestic mountains;
rugged are the mountains of Bashan.
Why gaze in envy, O rugged mountains,
at the mountain where God chooses to reign,
where the LORD himself will dwell forever? (Ps. 68:15–16)
Of the “enthronement,” the psalmist sings:
The chariots of God are tens of thousands
and thousands of thousands;
the Lord has come from Sinai into his sanctuary.
When you ascended on high,
you took many captives;
you received gifts from people,
even from the rebellious—
that you, LORD God, might dwell there. (vv. 17–18 NIV)
This same theme is repeatedly picked up by individual Israelites throughout the Psalter, as they reflect on the glory of being in God’s presence:
How lovely is your dwelling place,
O LORD Almighty,
My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God. (Ps. 84:1–2)
I have seen you in the sanctuary
And beheld your power and your glory. (Ps. 63:2)
But Israel’s failure caused them to forfeit God’s presence. This is what makes the fall of Jerusalem and the exile so full of pathos for them. The temple in Jerusalem, where God had chosen to dwell, was destroyed; and not only were the people carried away captive, but the captives and those who remained were no longer a people distinguished by the presence of the living God in their midst. The poignancy of it all finds its ultimate, symbolic expression in Ezekiel 10, where, just as with the ark of the covenant in 1 Samuel 4, the “glory of the LORD” departs from the temple in Jerusalem.
The Promise of the Renewed Presence
But all was not lost. Central to the prophetic hope was the promised return of God’s presence. Through Ezekiel, for example, God promises, “My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God and they will be my people” (Ezek. 37:27); and Malachi prophesies, “Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple” (Mal. 3:1). This hope continues into intertestamental Judaism among the apocalyptic writers, as, for example, in Testament of Dan5:13: “And Jerusalem will no longer undergo desolation, . . . because the Lord will be in her midst.”
In keeping with Israel’s earlier history, the motif of the renewed presence is tied directly to the hope of a restored temple. The motif finds its most powerful metaphorical expression in Ezekiel’s grand vision (chaps. 40–48) but its most memorable moment in the oracle of Isaiah 2:2–3 (repeated in Mic. 4:1–2), where the inclusion of the gentiles is also a primary motif (cf. Zech. 14:16–19):
In the last days
the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established
as chief among the mountains;
it will be raised above the hills,
and all nations will stream to it.
Many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
The second temple, however, does not live up to all these expectations. Thus it evinces mixed feelings among the people. In light of Solomon’s temple and the promised future temple of Ezekiel, Haggai complains, “Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing?” (Hag. 2:3). In many circles, therefore, the hope of a rebuilt, grand temple still awaited the people of God.
The Presence Equated with the Spirit
For Paul the most crucial matter regarding this motif lies with the fact that in Isaiah 63:9–14 the divine presence in the Exodus narrative was specifically equated with “the Holy Spirit of the Lord.” In recalling Israel’s past, the prophet says:
He became their savior in all their distress.
It was no messenger or angel
but his Presence that saved them.
In his love and mercy he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them
all the days of old.
Yet they rebelled
and grieved his Holy Spirit.
Therefore he became their enemy;
he himself fought against them.
Then they recalled the days of old,
of Moses and his people.
Where is he who brought them through the sea,
with the shepherds of his flock?
Where is he who set
his Holy Spirit among them,
who sent his glorious arm of power
to be at Moses’ right hand,
who divided the waters before them,
to make for himself an everlasting name,
who led them through the depths?
Like a horse in the desert,
they did not stumble;
like cattle that go down to the plain,
the Spirit of Yahweh gave them rest.
This is how you guided your people
to make for yourself a glorious name.
This connection is one with which Paul is thoroughly familiar, as is confirmed by his deliberate echo of the language of verse 10 in Ephesians 4:30: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”
The Spirit as the Renewed Presence in Paul
When we turn to Paul from these (especially) Old Testament antecedents, it is clear that he understands the Spirit’s coming as fulfilling three related expectations: (1) the association of the Spirit with the new covenant; (2) the language of “indwelling”; and (3) the association of the Spirit with the imagery of the temple. By fulfilling both the new covenant and the renewed temple motifs, the Spirit becomes the way God himself is now present on planet earth.
The temple imagery is especially significant in this regard, since the temple was always understood as the place of God’s dwelling, the place of his glory. For Paul the Spirit is how God presently dwells in his holy temple. Significantly, such dwelling takes place both in the gathered community, as one might well expect given the Old Testament background to this usage, and especially in the heart of the individual believer.
The Spirit’s Role in the New Covenant
In keeping with the rest of the early church, Paul recognizes the death of Christ as instituting God’s new covenant with his people (see 1 Cor. 11:25). He also sees the Spirit as the way that covenant is realized in and among them. As the result of his own—and others’—experience of the Spirit, Paul understands this role especially in terms of Ezekiel 36:26–27 and 37:14. Paul combines motifs from these two passages in such a way that in the coming of the Spirit into the life of the believer and the believing community God fulfilled three dimensions of the promise:
1. God would give his people a “new heart”—Jeremiah’s “heart of flesh” to replace that of stone (Jer. 31:31–33)—made possible because he would also give them “a new spirit” (Ezek. 36:26). In Paul this theme finds expression in 2 Corinthians 3:1–6, where the Corinthians are understood to be the recipients of the new covenant in that they were “inscribed” by “the Spirit of the living God” on “tablets of human hearts” (v. 3). Paul himself is the minister of this new covenant, which no longer has to do with “letter” but with the Spirit who gives life (vv. 5–6). This same understanding lies behind the similar language in Romans 7:5–6, as well as the “circumcision of the heart by the Spirit” in Romans 2:29, which echoes Deuteronomy 30:6 in terms of fulfillment.
2. This “new spirit” is none other than God’s Spirit, who will enable God’s people to follow his decrees (Ezek. 36:27). As is evident in Romans 8:3–4 and Galatians 5:16–25, the Spirit’s fulfillment of this theme is Paul’s answer to the question of what happens to righteousness if one does away with observance of the Torah (the Old Testament law).
3. God’s Spirit means the presence of God himself, in that by putting “my Spirit in you . . . you will live” (Ezek. 37:14). Again, Paul picks up this theme in 2 Corinthians 3:5–6. As the Spirit of the living God, the Spirit provides for God’s people the one essential reality about God. “The Spirit,” Paul says in the context of the new covenant, “gives life.”
Similarly, the language of 1 Thessalonians 4:8 is expressly that of Ezekiel 36–37. Any rejection of holiness on the part of the Thessalonians is a rejection of the God who “gives his Holy Spirit into you.” It is the presence of the holy God himself, by his Holy Spirit, whom they reject if they reject Paul’s call to holy living. We may conclude that for Paul, Christ has made the new covenant effective for the people of God through his death and resurrection; but the Spirit is the key to the new covenant as a fulfilled reality in the lives of God’s people.
The Indwelling Spirit
Intimately related to the divine presence theme and the new covenant passages in the Old Testament are the many texts in Paul that speak of the Spirit as dwelling in or among the people of God. This theme is found first of all in the texts that locate the Spirit within the believer. The Spirit is spoken of as being “in you/us” (1 Thess. 4:8; 1 Cor. 6:19, 14:24–25; Eph. 5:18 [in the imagery of “filling”]). The location of “in you/us” is the “heart” (2 Cor. 1:22, 3:3; Gal. 4:6; Rom. 2:29, 5:5). This in turn becomes the language of “dwelling in” (1 Cor. 3:16; 2 Cor. 6:16; Rom. 8:9–11; Eph. 2:22).
Two of these passages (1 Cor. 14:24–25 and 2 Cor. 6:16) are especially instructive in that Paul cites Old Testament texts that speak of God’s dwelling in the midst of his people, which Paul now attributes to the presence of the Spirit. When pagans turn to the living God because their hearts have been exposed through the prophetic Spirit, Paul speaks of this in the language of Isaiah 45:14: “Surely God is among you.”
Similarly, in the temple imagery of 2 Corinthians 6:16, which presupposes the presence of the Spirit in the life of the community from 1 Corinthians 3:16, Paul understands God to be present among his people. In making that point, he draws on the language of the new covenant promise of Ezekiel 37:27: “I will dwell among them and they shall be my people.” This latter passage points toward the ultimate expression of the language of indwelling—in the imagery of the temple.
The Church as God’s Temple
It is especially with temple imagery that Paul designates the Spirit as the renewed presence of God among his people. This imagery occurs four times in Paul, three times in keeping with its Old Testament precedents (1 Cor. 3:16–17; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:22), where God dwells in the midst of the people by means of tabernacle and temple, and once in keeping with the promised new covenant (1 Cor. 6:19–20), where the “temple” is now the body of the believer, “who is in you, whom you have received from God.”
First, then, Paul specifically ties the Spirit to temple imagery in the context of the Spirit’s presence in the midst of the people of God. Here is how the living God is now present with his people, expressed most clearly in Ephesians 2:22: the church is being raised up to become a holy temple in the Lord, built up together as “a dwelling for God by his Spirit.”
Here lies the significance of 1 Corinthians 3:16–17. Paul’s introductory, “do you not know that . . .” followed by “you are the temple of God [in Corinth],” plus the argument in context, make clear that the Spirit as fulfilling the temple/presence of God motif is the rich history that Paul has in mind. In context he is arguing with those who are in the process of destroying the church in Corinth by their contention over leaders in the name of (merely human) wisdom. In response Paul moves from words about the folly of their making “lords” of merely human servants in verses 5–9 to words of warning in verses 10–15, toward those currently leading the church in this disastrous direction, and finally to words that address the church itself in terms of who they are as the people of God in Corinth—namely, God’s temple in Corinth.
Paul’s use of the temple imagery begins in verse 9 (“you [the church in Corinth] are God’s building”). Their foundation (Christ crucified) had been laid by the apostle, but at the time of Paul’s letter the superstructure was being erected with materials incompatible with that foundation (wood and straw, referring to their current fascination with wisdom and rhetoric). They must build with enduring materials (gold, silver, costly stones = the gospel of the Crucified One), imagery taken from the building of Solomon’s temple (1 Chron. 29:2; 2 Chron. 3:6). Then in verse 16 Paul asks rhetorically, “Do you not know what kind of building you are? God’s temple in Corinth!” As a gathered community, they formed the one temple of the living God, God’s alternative to Corinth’s countless pagan temples; and what made them his alternative was the presence of the Spirit in their midst.
But the Corinthians were in the process of dismantling God’s temple, because their strife and fascination with wisdom meant the banishing of the revealing and unifying Spirit from their midst. Hence this strongest of warnings: the people responsible for the destruction would themselves be destroyed by God. He will do this precisely because his temple, the place of his presence, is holy; and “you the church in Corinth are that temple.” The gathered church is the place of God’s own personal presence, by the Spirit. This is what marks off God’s new people from “all the other people on the face of the earth” (Exod. 33:16).
There is not a more important word in all the New Testament as to the nature of the local church than this one! The local church is God’s temple in the community where it is placed; and it is so by the presence of the Spirit alone, by whom God has now revisited his people. It is no wonder, therefore, that Paul sees the expulsion of the incestuous man from their corporate fellowship (they are not even to eat with him) as ultimately leading to his salvation (1 Cor. 5:1–13). Being put outside the place of God’s presence will apparently lead to his repentance, so that he may be saved, by being once more among the people of the Presence.
This emphasis on the church as God’s temple, and therefore God’s alternative to the pagan temples of Corinth, also lies behind the identical imagery in 2 Corinthians 6:16–7:1. Those in the church must come out from the idolatry of Corinth (repeating the prohibition of 1 Cor. 8–10) and purify themselves from every defilement, because they are God’s temple, the place of the eternal God’s dwelling in Corinth.
In urging his readers in Ephesians 4:30 “not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God,” Paul uses the language of Isaiah 63:10, the one certain place in the Old Testament where the concept of the divine presence with Israel in tabernacle and temple is specifically equated with “the Holy Spirit of Yahweh.” This equation is the basis of Paul’s warning. The divine presence in the form of God’s own Spirit, not an angel or envoy, journeyed with God’s people in the desert. By the Holy Spirit, God’s presence has now returned to his people, to indwell them corporately and individually so that they might walk in his ways. Paul therefore urges the Ephesians not to repeat Israel’s failure. They are not, through various sins of discord that destroy the “unity of the Spirit” (4:3), to grieve the God who is present among them by his Holy Spirit.
The Individual Believer as God’s Temple
In 1 Corinthians 6:19–20, Paul makes the remarkable transfer of this imagery from the church to the individual believer. Thus God not only dwells in the midst of his people by the Spirit, but has likewise taken up residence in the lives of his people individually by the same life-giving Spirit.
The significance of this transfer of images should not be missed. The context has to do with sexual immorality. Paul’s concern is with the “sanctification” of the believer. Reflecting an understanding of the time that sharply distinguished between physical, material reality and the immaterial, invisible realm (Hellenistic dualism), some Corinthians were suggesting that the human spirit was not affected by what happens to one’s body, including having sex with prostitutes. But Paul will have none of that. The God who created us in his image created the body as well as the spirit, and thus pronounced the material order to be good.
In this final moment of argument with them, Paul appeals to the presence of the Spirit in their lives in the context of the saving work of Christ. In “purchasing” them for God’s glory, Christ also purchased their bodies, as evidenced by the Holy Spirit, whose temple they are because God now dwells not in temples made by human hands but in temples constructed by his own hands. Thus they are not their own, to do with their bodies as they please. They belong to the God who purchased them through Christ’s sacrifice and now indwells them by his Spirit.
In this text, as well as in 2 Corinthians 2:14–4:6, lies the secret to Paul’s personal piety and to his understanding of the Spirit in his own life. In both cases the texts finally point outward; that is, the goal of this dimension of Spirit life is not simply contemplation but the ethical life that the Spirit produces. Nonetheless, the personal dimension cannot be set aside. Indeed, the first location of God’s presence in the new covenant is within his people individually, sanctifying their present existence and stamping it with his eternity.
But as is often true of imagery in Paul, by its flexibility it can take a different turn in another context. Part of our way into a proper understanding of 2 Corinthians 2:14–4:6 is again through the combined imagery of tabernacle/temple and presence. It begins in 2:17 with Paul’s arguing regarding the validity of his ministry—in contrast to the peddlers of another gospel—that he makes his claim as one who “lives in the presence of God.”
This theme is then picked up in 3:7 and carried through to the end by the contrast of his ministry with that of Moses. This treatment evolves eventually into a kind of midrash (that is, a traditional Jewish explanation of a Bible passage) on Moses’s being veiled when he came from the presence of God, whereas he was unveiled when he entered the tent of the Presence. Believers are those who now turn to the Lord, who is here equated with the Spirit of the Lord, the key to God’s presence in the present age. As with Moses, but now by the Spirit, we are unveiled as we enter the sanctuary to behold the glory of the Lord.
It is the play on veil and Spirit that makes the argument so telling; the Spirit of the Presence has now removed the veil—most likely also alluding to the veil keeping people away from God’s presence within the temple. The result is that by the Spirit’s coming the veil is removed, both from our faces and from the Presence, so that we can behold the glory of the Lord himself in the face of God’s Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Here Paul enters the holy place. By the Spirit’s presence one is now behind the veil in the very presence of God, not only beholding God’s glory in Christ but also being transformed into God’s likeness from one degree of glory to another. Here the Abba-cry evolves into praise and adoration. Here too God’s children are transformed from the likeness of their former “father,” the god of this world who still blinds the hearts of those who do not believe (4:4), into the likeness of God himself (3:18). We now bear his image in our present “already-but-not-yet” existence. This is not the only thing Paul believes the Spirit to be doing in our present world, but it is very significant, and we miss Paul by a wide margin if we do not pay close attention to it.
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In sum: For Paul, the Spirit is not merely an impersonal force or influence or power. The Spirit is none other than the fulfillment of the promise that God himself would once again be present with his people. The implications of this are considerable, not only in terms of Paul’s understanding of God and the Spirit (the concern of the next two chapters) but also in terms of what it means for us individually and corporately to be the people of God (the concern of chaps. 6–14). The Spirit is God’s own personal presence in our lives and in our midst; he leads us into paths of righteousness for his name’s sake, he “is working all things in all people,” he is grieved when his people do not reflect his character and thus reveal his glory, and he is present in our worship, as we sing “praise and honor and glory and power” to God and the Lamb.
It is for God’s people of a later time, like ours, to once more grasp these realities by experiencing them, if we are truly to capture Paul’s understanding. Perhaps a beginning point for us would be to downplay the impersonal images (wind, fire, etc.), as rich as they are in terms of aspects of the Spirit’s ministry, and to retool our thinking in Paul’s own terms, where we understand and experience the Spirit as the personal presence of the eternal God. That is where the next two chapters fit in.
Reflection Questions