Chapter Eight: The Transforming Work of the Holy Spirit
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Transforming Work of the Holy Spirit
We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the LORD who is the Spirit.
2 CORINTHIANS 3:18
The transformation process the Bible describes is much more than a change of conduct or improved human morality; it is actually a work of the Holy Spirit in the very core of our being. In the only two instances in Scripture where the word transformed is used, it occurs both times in the passive voice. We are being transformed (see 2 Corinthians 3:18), and we are to be transformed (see Romans 12:2). In both instances, we are the object, not the agent, of the transformation process; the agent is the Holy Spirit.
We do have an active role to play in this process. All the moral exhortations and commands in the New Testament assume our responsibility to respond to them. We will look more at our responsibility in the next two chapters, but for now we want to focus on the role and work of the Holy Spirit. We need to do this for two reasons. First, just as we are naturally inclined to depend on our own performance for our day-to-day relationship with God, so we are also inclined to depend on our own willpower and our “try harder” way of thinking to effect change in our character.
So just as we must look outside of ourselves to Christ rather than our own performance for the assurance of our acceptance by a holy God, so we must look outside of ourselves to the Holy Spirit to work in us and enable us to work. In chapter 1, I related how, in my early stages of pursuing holiness, I simply assumed I would read in the Bible what God wanted me to do and do it. I knew nothing of my actual dependence on the Holy Spirit to enable me. I suspect that a majority of Christians intuitively believe as I did because they have not been taught differently.
The second reason we need to consider the role of the Holy Spirit in our transformation is that some of the extreme, erroneous teaching about Him has made many of us very cautious of His work in our lives. But we neglect the work of the Holy Spirit to our detriment. After all, He is the resident member of the Trinity in us. As incredible as it may seem, our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit (see 1 Corinthians 6:19). Think of that! The Holy Spirit, one of the three persons of the Trinity, actually dwells within you. And Christ Himself dwells within you through the Holy Spirit (see Ephesians 3:16-17).
In Christ, “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9). All that God has for us and all that He has purposed for us is in Christ. He is the vine; we are the branches (see John 15:5). But it is the role of the Holy Spirit to apply the life and power of Christ to us. As someone has so aptly said, “the Spirit applies what Christ bestows.” We cannot experience one drop of the life and power of Christ apart from the work of the Spirit in our lives.
In the matter of our transformation, the writers of Scripture sometimes spoke of God’s working in us, at other times of Christ’s working in us, or even make an indefinite reference to “Him” as in “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). But in all cases, it is the role of the Holy Spirit to apply and work out in our lives that which comes to us from God through Christ. So though the persons of Christ and the Holy Spirit are distinct, in our transformation experience they are indistinguishable. So we may speak of the power of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit as interchangeable expressions. But because it is the role of the Spirit to apply to us what the Father has purposed and what Christ has obtained for us, we will focus in this chapter on the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.
THE AUTHOR OF SCRIPTURE
As we begin our study of the work of the Spirit, we should see Him first as the author of Scripture. We speak of the Bible as the Word of God, and so it is, for as Paul wrote, “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16). But God did this through the Holy Spirit. As Peter wrote, “Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). That means that the Holy Spirit infallibly guided the minds of the human writers of Scripture so they wrote exactly what He wanted them to write. That is why we find such expressions as “The Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David” (Acts 1:16; see also 4:25; 28:25-27; Hebrews 3:7-11; 10:15-17).
So just as God created the universe through the eternal Son of God (see John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2), so He gave us His Word through the eternal Spirit. In a subsequent chapter, we will see that Scripture is the primary instrument of the Holy Spirit as He works to transform us. That is why we stress the importance of the Scriptures in our spiritual growth (see chapter 11). But we must keep in mind that it is the Holy Spirit who gave us the Scriptures, it is the Holy Spirit who enables us to understand the Scriptures, and it is the Holy Spirit who directs us and enables us to apply the Scriptures to our daily lives.
THE AGENT OF THE NEW BIRTH
As descendents of Adam and because of his sin in the Garden of Eden, we are “born dead.” As Paul said in Ephesians 2:1-2, “You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.” But a few sentences later, he wrote, “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (verses 4-5). When we were dead, God made us alive. How did He do this? Jesus’ answer in John 3:5-8 is that we are born again by the Spirit. And Paul wrote that God saved us “by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). The word regeneration means “born again,” so our new birth is again ascribed to the Holy Spirit.
Peter said that we are “born again … through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Peter 1:23). So we are born again by the Spirit and by the Word of God. But remember, the Spirit is the ultimate author of the Word, and so it is the instrument He uses to bring about the new birth in our lives. But apart from the renewing work of the Spirit, the Word remains lifeless.
I grew up hearing the message of the gospel regularly. I knew I needed to ask Christ to be my Savior, but because of a disappointing circumstance when I was about thirteen, I held back. In one sense, I wanted to be a Christian, but there was this obstacle from the past I couldn’t get over. I lived this way for five years. Finally one night at the age of eighteen, I prayed, “God, whatever it takes, I want Jesus to be my Savior.” Immediately the Spirit bore witness with my spirit that I was a child of God (see Romans 8:15). The Word of God by itself was not enough. I knew the gospel, but because of that issue at age thirteen, I held back. What happened at age eighteen? The Spirit of God so worked in me that I was willing to deal with that obstacle. I was born again by the Spirit of God.
THE WITNESS TO OUR ADOPTION
In Ephesians 1:4-6, Paul wrote, “In love [God] predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace.” What did Paul mean by adoption in this passage? He meant that God not only has justified us, He has also brought us into His family as His own sons and daughters. Justification describes our legal relationship with God; adoption describes our family relationship with Him. Through our union with Christ, God sees us as righteous — as righteous as His Son. And also through our union with Christ, God sees us as His adopted children. This means, among other things, that God loves us with the same love He has for His Son because we are united to Him.
It is important that we realize that God relates to us no longer as a sovereign judge but now as our heavenly Father. A judge punishes to satisfy justice, but Jesus has already satisfied God’s justice on our behalf. A father disciplines through love to grow his children’s character, and this is the way God relates to us as His adopted children.
A necessary part of the Holy Spirit’s transformation work in us is to enlighten our minds to progressively see and become more sensitive to the sin still remaining in us, either sinful attitudes and actions we need to put off or fruit of the Spirit traits we need to grow in. Because of this, we need the assurance that despite our continual sinfulness, we still stand righteous before God every day. But we also need the assurance that God is for us, and this is where the Spirit’s witness to our adoption is so important.
In Romans 8:15, Paul wrote, “You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” Here Paul calls the Spirit “the Spirit of adoption.” It is the Holy Spirit that witnesses to our spirit that we are God’s children. It is the Holy Spirit by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” Abba was the Aramaic address of small children to their fathers; thus, it was a term of intimate relationship and confidence. The modern English equivalent to Abba is daddy. If that seems too chummy and maybe irreverent to you, I suggest you address God as “dear Father.” That will maintain the sense of reverence while at the same time give you more of a sense of loving intimacy than simply “Father.”
Far too many Christians view God as a stern, aloof Father ready to pounce on them when they sin. If this is your view of God, I encourage you to pray that the Holy Spirit will witness to you of the joy and comfort that should be yours as God’s adopted child. And the deliberate practice of addressing God as “dear Father” will help you. As you grow in understanding your adoption, you will be motivated by God’s love to deal with your sin.
THE AGENT OF SANCTIFICATION
The word sanctification is not common in our Christian vocabulary today, especially among younger believers. And even when it is used, it is generally used as another word for transformation or spiritual growth. In fact, that is the most common way it is used. But the Bible relates sanctification to our salvation. Notice how it is used in the following two Scriptures:
We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 2:13-14)
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you. (1 Peter 1:1-2)
Note in both texts the reference to “sanctification by the Spirit” (2 Thessalonians) or “the sanctification of the Spirit” (1 Peter). The New International Version helpfully renders both texts “the sanctifying work of the Spirit.” But notice that this sanctifying work of the Spirit is in conjunction with our salvation. Why is this true?
The basic meaning of the verb to sanctify is to set apart — in this case, to set apart unto God for His use. Paul wrote that Jesus “gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession” (Titus 2:14, emphasis added). Peter used identical words in 1 Peter 2:9: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (emphasis added). This sanctifying work is the work of the Holy Spirit by which He delivers us from the domain of darkness (see Colossians 1:13) and sets us apart to be Christ’s own possession. The Spirit not only gives us a new spiritual life (the new birth) but also sets us apart to be Christ’s possession. Obviously, these acts of the Holy Spirit occur simultaneously with our salvation. Remember, God’s purpose in our salvation is that we might be conformed to the image of His Son. Those whom God justifies, the Holy Spirit sanctifies.
This aspect of sanctification is often called definitive sanctification because it is an objective point-in-time event accomplished solely by the Holy Spirit. Those who are thus sanctified are called “saints” (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 1:2; 2 Corinthians 1:1; Philippians 1:1). The word saints literally means “set apart ones,” and in this biblical meaning of the word, all believers are saints.
But the status of saint is not so much a position of honor but of responsibility. Because we have been set apart by the Holy Spirit to be Christ’s own possession, we are to live as unto Him. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). This thought naturally leads us to the subject of transformation, or “progressive sanctification,” as some prefer to call it. That is, because we are set apart to be Christ’s own possession, we are to seek to live more and more in our daily experience lives that reflect this fact. We call this the pursuit of holiness, or the pursuit of Christlikeness. So at this point, we begin to transition to discussion of our responsibility in our transformation. But even as we do, we cannot leave behind the Holy Spirit because we are still dependent on Him. Remember, as we saw earlier, in both instances where the word transformed is used, it is in the passive voice.
THE AGENT OF TRANSFORMATION
As the agent of our transformation, the Holy Spirit both works in us and enables us to work. As the writer of Hebrews expressed it, “[May God] equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen” (13:20-21).
The writer prayed that God would do two things: equip us to do his will and work in us that which is pleasing in His sight. So God through the Holy Spirit equips us to do what we must do, and He also works directly in us that which is pleasing to Him. I call these two aspects of His work His synergistic work and His monergistic work. Synergism refers to two persons working together; monergism is one person working alone.
When we pray that God will change us in some area of our lives, we are asking for His monergistic work. For example, the writer of Psalm 119 prayed, “Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain! Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things” (verses 36-37). The psalmist is asking God to do for him and to him what he cannot do for himself. He is asking that God through His Spirit will work monergistically in him. We know that to some degree, we can change our conduct but not our hearts, that is, the deep inner core of our being. Only the Holy Spirit can do this, and He does it monergistically.
How does the Holy Spirit bring about these kinds of changes? He works monergistically in at least three ways:
He Brings Conviction
The first way the Holy Spirit works directly in us is by bringing conviction of, or an awareness of, specific sin in our lives. It is obvious that we cannot begin to deal with a specific issue of sin until we first admit that we have it. Only the Holy Spirit can create such awareness, and He has different ways of doing that. He may impress on our minds a particular passage of Scripture as we are reading our Bibles or listening to a message. He causes us to connect the Scripture to a specific issue in our lives in such a way that we see the application and readily acknowledge the existence of the sin in our character.
He awakens and sensitizes our conscience. The conscience is our internal moral compass, and as it is enlightened through the Scriptures, it will continually convict us of sinful attitudes and actions.
He may bring to our remembrance a series of seemingly insignificant sins to cause us to see that those individual sins are simply an expression of a pattern in our lives. Again, He does this in such a way that we readily acknowledge that defect in our character. He may even use adversity to get our attention and cause us to acknowledge we have a sin problem. Sometimes He sends a friend or relative, especially a spouse, to point out a sin issue in our lives. This is probably the most painful way to us. We don’t like to be corrected. So unless the Spirit softens our hearts and makes us receptive, we will often resent, or at least dismiss, the correction.
Above all, He gradually brings us to the realization that we are indeed still sinners, saved sinners, to be sure, but still practicing sinners every day in thought, word, deed, and motive. He brings us to the point where we say with the apostle Paul, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15). This is where change begins.
He Creates Desire
Having brought us to the point of seeing our need for change, the Holy Spirit works in us to create the desire to change. Actually, we may desire to change for the wrong reason, either because we don’t like to feel guilty or because we don’t like to feel defeated by some persistent sin pattern. But the Holy Spirit works in us to create a God-centered desire to change. He does this through a combination of showing us our sin and at the same time enabling us to experience the forgiveness of our sins and the gift of Christ’s righteousness credited to us. Of course, one of the instruments He uses is the gospel to motivate us, but even here we are dependent on Him. We may “preach the gospel to ourselves every day,” but unless the Holy Spirit grips our hearts with the reality of that good news, we will not be motivated by it. So we should pray to Him to do this. I pray almost every day that Christ will so control me by His love that I will want to change to please Him. (You might want to reread the section “Controlled by Love” in chapter 6.)
He Creates Change
After making us aware of our need and creating a desire to change, the Holy Spirit works on our hearts to bring about change. In this aspect of His work, He works directly, mysteriously (in the sense that we cannot discern how He works), and without our awareness or conscious involvement. I cannot explain this; I can only testify to the reality of it in my life. I believe this is what the writer of Hebrews was getting at when he wrote, “[May he work] in us that which is pleasing in his sight” (13:21).
We are commanded to love one another, yet there are times when, because of the personality or actions of another person, we find it impossible to love that person. But as we pray that God will change us, we see a new, loving attitude created in our hearts. This is the monergistic work of the Spirit. I have experienced this in my life. A person I found difficult to love became a good friend. Did he change? No. The Holy Spirit changed me.
In my book Respectable Sins, I acknowledged that I am prone to anxiety in connection with airline travel. I’m not talking about a fear of flying; I’m referring to anxiety over delayed flights that will cause me to miss a connecting flight or else cause me to arrive too late for a meeting where I am to speak. And then there are times when my checked bag does not arrive on the same flight with me. Both of these situations happened to me the week I was writing these words, so I struggled with anxiety, first over whether I would make a connecting flight to my destination. Then when my bag did not arrive with me, I again struggled with anxiety. Would my bag arrive by the time I needed it?
I knew very well that we are not to be anxious. I know that God is sovereign over every circumstance of my life and that He loves me with an infinite love, yet I cannot change my feelings of anxiety. But as I prayed, the Holy Spirit enabled me to trust God, at least to a measure. This is still a growth area in my life, but I can see over time that the Holy Spirit is changing me.
I cite these instances of loving a person difficult to love and anxiety over my travel circumstances to point out that there are instances when we cannot change ourselves. We can to a degree change our conduct; we can seek to be nice to the person difficult to love, but we cannot change our heart attitude. I can quote Scripture to myself regarding the sovereignty and love of God, but I cannot still my anxious heart. Only the Holy Spirit can do both of these: create love in me toward the unlovely person and calm my anxious emotions.
I have perhaps belabored these incidents from my own life, but it is because I want us to see that the direct work of the Holy Spirit, working alone without our involvement, is a crucial part of our spiritual transformation. It is important for us to realize this, thank Him for His work, and regularly pray for it. In fact, Paul’s prayers in Ephesians 3:14-19 and Colossians 1:9-12 assume the Spirit’s direct work in us. Too often we pay so much attention to what we need to do (the subject of the next chapter) that we totally neglect the extent to which we are entirely dependent on the Spirit to do what we cannot do.
THE SPIRIT’S WORK OF ENABLEMENT
As we read the New Testament and see the many moral exhortations and commands throughout the whole of it, we must surely be convinced that there is work for us to do. But we have a problem: We have no power to do the work. So now we must turn our attention to His work of enabling us to work — that is, His synergistic work.
Jesus said in John 15:5, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Nothing? That’s right. Nothing. Picture a large electric motor designed to drive a large machine, such as a lathe. You turn on the switch and nothing happens. Why? The motor has not been connected to the source of power: the 220-volt electric current in the machine shop. That large motor has absolutely no power within itself. To work, it must be connected to an external power source (the 220-volt current). If we personify the electric current and the motor, we can use Jesus’ exact words in the current saying to the motor, “Apart from me you can do nothing.”
This is the way we are. God has given us a new heart (see Ezekiel 36:26), and that new heart can be likened to the electric motor. It has no power of itself. The power resides in the Holy Spirit, who lives in each believer (see Ezekiel 36:27; 1 Corinthians 6:19). How do we then connect to the power of the Spirit? We do it by faith — by renouncing any confidence in our own willpower and relying entirely on the Holy Spirit to empower us.
ABIDING = RELIANCE
In John 15:4-5, Jesus made it clear that the divine source of life and power comes through abiding in Him. But how does one abide?
Most often we think of activities such as studying our Bible and praying as abiding in Christ. These are important spiritual activities that I will address in chapter 10. But these activities do not constitute abiding in Christ; rather, they belong in a subject we call communion with Christ. What then does it mean to abide in Christ? It is reliance on Him for His life and His power. By faith we renounce any confidence in our own wisdom, willpower, and moral strength and rely completely on Him to supply the spiritual wisdom and power we need. This does not mean we sit back and just “turn it all over to Him” to live His life through us; rather, we rely on Him to enable us (we’ll examine this more in the next chapter). So we can say that our salvation is by faith and our transformation is also by faith. But this does not mean that the object of our faith is the same in both cases.
In salvation, the object of our faith is Christ and His finished work for us. When He uttered those memorable words “It is finished” (John 19:30), it was a cry of triumph that the salvation which He had earned for us in His sinless life and sin-bearing death had been completely accomplished. There was nothing more for Him to do. And in trusting Him for our salvation, there is nothing for us to do except receive Him by faith.
By contrast, the object of our faith in spiritual transformation is Christ and His ongoing work in us through the Holy Spirit. In our transformation, then, there is something for us to do. In salvation, we are passive except to believe. In transformation, we are active as we seek to pursue holiness in relying on the Holy Spirit to apply the power of Christ to our hearts and enable us to do His will.
You will no doubt have noticed that I have devoted more emphasis in this chapter to the direct monergistic ministry of the Spirit in us as opposed to His synergistic work of enabling us to work. There are two reasons for this. First, we are going to devote the entire next chapter to His work of enabling us. Second, I believe we have tended to pay too little attention to His direct, monergistic ministry. We tend to think so much of what we need to do that we seldom think of our dependence on the Spirit to even enable us, let alone work monergistically and directly in our hearts to change us.
Dependence on the Holy Spirit has been a growing process for me. In chapter 1, I recounted how I had embraced for a time a totally passive approach to spiritual growth, with its slogan “Just let Jesus live His life through you.” As God rescued me from this thinking, I began to understand the biblical principle of dependent responsibility, meaning I am responsible for my pursuit of holiness but am dependent on the Holy Spirit for His enabling power. Because of my previous bad experience with the totally passive approach, my concept of dependent responsibility put the emphasis on my responsibility. Written out, it would look like this: “dependent RESPONSIBILITY.”
Over time I came to realize more deeply how utterly dependent on the Holy Spirit I am for every bit of my spiritual growth. Gradually, my concept of the relationship of dependence and responsibility came to look like this: “DEPENDENT RESPONSIBILITY.” But even at this stage, I was not so aware of the necessity of the Holy Spirit’s working directly in me to change me in ways I cannot.
You might ask, “How does He work in us, either monergistically or synergistically, to enable us to work?” The answer is, we do not know, as the Bible never addresses that question. Paul wrote, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:16), but he never tells us how the Holy Spirit interacts with our human spirit to create this assurance. He simply says He does this. And as we will see in the next chapter, He does work in us to enable us to work, but the Scripture never tells us how. How He works in us remains a mystery, but the fact that He does work is not a mystery. It is a fact, as we will see in the next chapter, “Dependent Responsibility.”
FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
1. What role does the Holy Spirit play in our transformation? How is this role distinct from that of the Father and the Son?
2. What is the monergistic work of the Holy Spirit? How is it different from His synergistic work?
3. The object of our faith in spiritual transformation is Christ and His ongoing work in us through the Holy Spirit. How is this different from the object of our faith for salvation?