Copyright © 2006-2008 Robert D. Hosken, M.Min., D.Min.
As we have just seen, only the power of the Holy Spirit can sufficiently motivate and enable us to do the work of true ministry (diakonia). As He was preparing His disciples for His death and departure, Jesus said in John 14:16-18 - "I will pray to the Father, and He will give you another Counselor, that He may be with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world can't receive; for it doesn't see Him, neither knows Him. You know Him, for He lives with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you."
After Jesus rose from the dead, each of the four Gospels tells how He hinted that His disciples would receive the Holy Spirit, and then Jesus commissioned them to preach the Good News and make disciples: "All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Therefore go, and make disciples of all nations…" (Mat. 28:18-19a). The above passage in John identifies the Holy Spirit as the abiding presence and power of Christ, and in Matthew's version of the Great Commission He transmits this divine power to His disciples.
In Mark's Gospel Jesus said, "Go into all the world, and preach the Good News to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who disbelieves will be condemned." And later it says, "They went out, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the signs that followed. Amen" (Mk. 16:15-16 and 20). It was the Lord's abiding Holy Spirit that worked with them and confirmed their message by miracles.
In Lk. 24:49 Luke has Jesus say, "Behold, I send forth the promise of my Father on you. But wait in the city of Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from on high." And in Jn. 20:21b-22 John quotes Jesus as saying, "'As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.' When He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit!'" So both Luke and John are a bit clearer about the promise of the Holy Spirit.
Question:
1. At the end of each gospel, what did Jesus Christ promise?
But the disciples still had not actually received that power, and even at the time of Christ's ascension into heaven they couldn't quite grasp what was about to happen. Jesus told them very clearly, "Don't depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which you heard from me. For John indeed baptized in water, but you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit not many days from now" (Acts 1:4b-5). But it seems this went right over their heads, because they asked (v. 6b), "Lord, are you now restoring the kingdom to Israel?" They were still hoping that He would overthrow the Roman occupiers and restore the kingdom of David. So He told them very plainly, in the most explicit promise of the Holy Spirit, "It isn't for you to know times or seasons which the Father has set within his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth" (vv. 7b-8).
The Russian text for verse 7 is very strong: "It's none of your business to know times or deadlines!" We must cease and desist theologizing about eschatology, proudly asserting that we know the course of future events, the end times, which we can't possibly know! If the angels and Jesus Himself didn't know, how can we presume to know? So even with this most explicit promise of the Holy Spirit, the disciples were still in the dark. Until they actually experienced it, they couldn't fathom what Jesus was talking about. Until you get in the water and take your feet off the bottom, all of your theoretical instruction about how to swim remains merely theory.
On the Day of Pentecost just ten days later, however, they experienced the baptism by the Holy Spirit, the church was born and it began its rapid growth. The noteworthy thing is that Jesus' giving the Great Commission to His disciples, the transfer of authority-power (exousia) and the command to make disciples in Mat. 28:18-19, did not in itself jump-start the rapid growth of the church. It was just theory until the disciples actually received the Holy Spirit's dynamic power (dunamis) promised in Acts 1:8. The Holy Spirit is given to make us holy, sanctified, and to empower us to minister (diakoneo), as we learn in Jesus' teaching in Luke 11:5-13 -
"He said to them, 'Which of you, if you go to a friend at midnight, and tell him, "Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him," and he from within will answer and say, "Don't bother me. The door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give it to you"? I tell you, although he will not rise and give it to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence, he will get up and give him as many as he needs. I tell you, keep asking, and it will be given you. Keep seeking, and you will find. Keep knocking, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks finds. To him who knocks it will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he won't give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he asks for an egg, he won't give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?'"
This passage is central to the ministry of sanctification. The little parable at the beginning is about a man asking a friend if he could borrow three loaves of bread and the passage concludes with the teaching that we should ask the Father to give us the Holy Spirit. At first it seems more than a bit self-centered to ask for some bread and to ask for the Holy Spirit. How does this relate to ministry? But note carefully (v. 6) that the man isn't asking to borrow some bread for himself, he is asking it for another friend. So Jesus is teaching here about ministering to the practical needs of others, and He concludes by telling us that we must ask, seek, and knock to receive the Holy Spirit in order to minister effectively to others. Otherwise we will either burn out or simply give up, if we try to do diakonia-ministry on our own power.
Question:
2. What kind of power (Greek word) did Jesus give His disciples in Acts 1:8?
(Only one of the following answers is correct.)
dunamis
exousia
For the first few centuries after Christ, the person of the Holy Spirit was not fully grasped. Many thought of the Holy Spirit as simply the abiding presence of Christ after His ascension. This is because the Holy Spirit does not draw attention to Himself. Jesus said, "When the Counselor has come, Whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, Who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about me" (Jn. 15:26). So the Holy Spirit will testify about Jesus Christ. We learn further (Jn. 16:13-14) that the Holy Spirit will not speak of Himself, but will glorify Jesus: "However when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak from Himself; but whatever He hears, He will speak. He will declare to you things that are coming. He will glorify me, for He will take from what is Mine, and will declare it to you." If the Holy Spirit doesn't call attention to Himself but rather glorifies Christ, we who ask, seek and knock to receive the Holy Spirit should do so not to glorify ourselves or to experience a super-spiritual "high," but to glorify Christ by becoming the kind of disciples He intended, by doing what He taught His disciples to do: minister to the poor, lame, maimed and blind.
Question:
3. (a) Was the person of the Holy Spirit very clearly revealed in the first century A.D.? (b) Is the Holy Spirit simply the continuing presence of Christ after His ascension into heaven? Explain your answer.
Being filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit does not necessarily mean that you must prophesy, speak in tongues or perform miracles. I do not disallow the exercise of spiritual gifts, but neither do I insist that all must have the same gift. We have already seen how Paul teaches in Rom. 12:4-6 and 1 Cor. 12:29-30 that not every disciple has the same spiritual gift. Jesus never commanded all of His followers to speak in tongues and teach others to do so, but He repeatedly taught them to minister to the poor, lame, maimed and blind, and commanded them to teach others to do the same. This should be the most widespread spiritual gift, but it often is the most neglected. And only if we are filled with the Holy Spirit can we exercise the spiritual gift of diakonia.
How does this come about? After we ask, seek and knock we should expect to receive Him. God wants to give us the best gift of all: not necessarily tongues, prophecy or miracles, but the Holy Spirit Himself! The passage in 1 Thes. 4:3-12 starts out, "For this is the will of God: your sanctification." God's will for every Christian, every disciple (and the two are the same) is to experience sanctification, to be a saint! A saint is a holy person, and true holiness only comes from the Holy Spirit. In many of Paul's letters he addresses his audience as "saints" or "called to be saints." A disciple is a "saint-in-process." Here Paul lists several steps to sanctification:
a) Abstain from sexual immorality,
b) Control one's own body in a holy and honorable manner,
c) Do not exploit or take advantage of other believers,
d) Practice brotherly love and agape-love toward other believers,
e) Lead a quiet life, mind your own business and work with your own hands.
This last point, "mind your own business and work with your own hands" is seldom considered as belonging to sanctification. But Paul uses the same phrases to describe it as he uses for the preceding steps, writing about the Christian's "walk" (vv. 1 and 12) and "that you abound more and more" (vv. 1 and 10), another chiasm. Bruce Winter claims that Paul "is here proscribing the boisterous, political rabble-rousing behaviour by clients on behalf of their patrons."1
Then as now, people sought out patrons to sponsor them, but then they became the mouthpieces for their patrons who often used them in an effort to accumulate political power. In order to avoid even the appearance of being "bought" by outside influence, the Christian disciple must steer clear of being sponsored by those who might raise suspicions of unethical interference, and work with his own hands to support himself and other local believers who are in need.
Question:
4. How can you discover God's will for your life (1 Thess. 4:3-12)?
(one or more of the following answers are correct.)
Abstain from sexual immorality.
Control your body in holiness and honor.
Do not use and do not deceive other believers.
Stick to your own business and work with your own hands.
In 1 Thes. 5:23, after warning against both extremes of quenching the Holy Spirit by belittling spiritual gifts, but also being careful to test them for genuineness, keep the good and reject the evil (vv. 19-22), Paul writes, "May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." This is a process that includes our physical bodies, and in God's sight is already perfected but in our earthly life it is still continuing: "For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified" (Heb. 10:14). So we can be certain from these passages that God wills our sanctification, He wants us to be sanctified in spirit, soul and body, a process that will reach its completion when Christ returns.
This process is not without struggle. St. Paul teaches us in Gal. 5:16-25 that walking in the Spirit is a real spiritual battle:
"But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you won't fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, that you may not do the things that you desire. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious, which are: adultery, sexual immorality, uncleanness, lustfulness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousies, outbursts of anger, rivalries, divisions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these; of which I forewarn you, even as I also forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts. If we live by the Spirit, let's also walk by the Spirit."
Notice that there are 18 things to avoid, "the works of the flesh" but there are only nine things to strive for, "the fruit of the Spirit." Once we are led by the Spirit, we are free from the dictates of the flesh, so it is then actually easier to walk in the Spirit than to do the works of the flesh.
Finally, we read in 1 Jn. 3:2-3 - "Beloved, now we are children of God, and it is not yet revealed what we will be. But we know that, when He is revealed, we will be like Him; for we will see Him just as He is. Everyone who has this hope set on Him purifies himself, even as he is pure." This is our goal, to be transformed into the likeness of Christ, and that is why we let God purify and sanctify us! As we shall see later, it is diakonia-ministry that brings us to this transformation.
Question:
5. How does 2 Cor. 3:17-18 relate to Gal. 5:13-25?
Endnotes:
1. Winter, Bruce, Seek the Welfare of the City, op. cit., pages 48-50.