Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: The following is a legacy recording from the archives of the C.S. lewis Institute. While the audio quality of these recordings may vary, the content remains vital to the mission of the Institute to develop disciples who can articulate, defend, and live faith in Christ through personal and public life.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: It's good to be with you again at the C.S. lewis Institute.
I said this last night to the folk who came for the study of Galatians. I say it this morning to you who have come to study the Holy Spirit.
I was allowed to choose my own subject for this set of classes, so it's entirely due to my preference that the Holy Spirit is the subject on our agenda today.
I would like to begin straight off by telling you why it is that I chose this subject, why I think it important.
I hope that you will agree with me as to its importance and come at the subject in the same way that I am going to come at the subject as being, in truth, one of the most important subjects for Christians to give their minds to in these days.
It seems to me that the observed lack of life and power in our churches today obliges us to give fresh attention to the Bible doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
The contrast between church life, church effectiveness, church impact today, and its New Testament parallels is striking and shocking.
We may say very glibly, and I dare say that we, all of us do, that we regard New Testament standards of life and testimony as the norm for the Christian church.
But when you look at the state of our congregations today, you wouldn't think that anyone believes that, for it's undeniable that we simply have not got the vitality, the vigor, the cutting edge in testimony, the passionate concern for outreach which those early Christians had.
And we don't seem most of the time to be aware of the difference between us and them.
The churches seem to be so used to being very different from New Testament churches that they're no longer aware of how different they are.
What's happened to us, it seems to be a blind spot in modern Christianity. But you cannot thoughtfully read the New Testament and then turn your eyes again to what is going on in today's churches without being very disturbed indeed.
At least I find myself very disturbed indeed as I try to make the comparison. And I don't see how any thoughtful person could avoid being equally disturbed.
I hope, frankly, that you share my sense of disturbance, because that's where these classes, these presentations of mine are coming from, from a deep sense of disturbance at that point.
I see this contrast, then, between the churches today and the New Testament churches A contrast in terms of the convictions they hold, the power they demonstrate, the impact they make. And it bothers me.
I notice the confusion in the church today concerning the Holy Spirit's ministry when the subject comes up. And that bothers me too.
I note that whereas everybody in our churches professes, when challenged, to be concerned for the renewal of the church in our time, great segments of the church, perhaps the majority, I wouldn't like to give statistics, but lots and lots of Christian people anyway, recoil, shrink back from any movement, any sphere of Christian life and activity in which it really looks as if the Holy Spirit is at work.
Because in such circles there's constant change, there's constant movement.
I mean, in the sense that structures are being altered and patterns of fellowship are being revised and, and things don't stand still in any way.
And lots of folk who profess that what they want to see is church renewal immediately seem to feel threatened when things are moving around in that way, I say, they recoil, they step back, they say, we don't want to touch that.
And that again disturbs me. I ask myself, what on earth are we doing? What is happening in our minds?
Why, in spiritual terms, does the left side of our brain seem to be so much out of touch with the right side of our brain? Why do we say that we want something and then take good care that it will never, the thing that we want will never come near us?
I wonder if you understand what I'm saying.
Let me be specific.
I guess you know that something like 20 million folk in Christendom today are thanking God for the so called Charismatic movement.
You may have problems about some of the theology that's gone with the charismatic movement and frankly, so have I.
But that doesn't alter the fact that this is a movement which has meant real renewal, divine renewal for many churches and many individual Christians.
It isn't only the charismatic movement.
It's the small group movement in our churches, which over the last 30 years or so has been very remarkably used by God in a quieter way to shake up, bring to life, wake up, you might say, folk who were cheerfully sleeping in the pews in our churches.
Small groups, cell groups, call them whatever you like. They've become real means of God's ministering to individuals in need.
And they brought life in many places. But I go around the churches where the small group movement has taken hold amongst the lay folk and I find again and again, I suppose, that I'm talking mostly to lay folk now. I ask you to hear this with patience and Christian charity.
And not to make it a kind of.
Not to make capital out of what you hear me say, to cause distress to others.
I find that clergy and elders, quite frankly, I'm talking about clergy and elders in our churches, they're dead scared of the small group movement. They don't like it one little bit. They feel threatened by it. They wish it would go away.
Once again, once confronted with the paradox that here are folk who say that they want to see renewal, they say that they're longing and looking for renewal. And yet when anything that looks like a movement of the spirit of God comes near them, they get frightened and they want to run away.
And there's confusion here, confusion compounded with fear.
And once again, as I look and as I see these things, I am very bothered.
I would suppose that if you and I were honest with each other, we would acknowledge and perhaps readily acknowledge that the cry of all our hearts, the longing of all our hearts, is for more of the life of God, more of the power of God in our own personal lives, in our churches, in the Christian circles where we move.
This is what we, all of us as individuals want to see.
Well, here I think of the movement of the Spirit of God in Wales.
Wales. You know where Wales is? On the left hand side of England, as you look at the map, little country, but it's known, it's gone down to history as the land of revivals. And in Wales, in the years 1904 and 1905, there was a great movement of the Spirit of God among the human leaders. Perhaps the chief of the human leaders was a young man named Evan Roberts. And Evan Roberts, from the pulpits in the churches where the revival had taken hold, was constantly saying over and over again, honor the Holy Spirit.
That, he said, is the secret of life from God coming. And that is the secret of life from God remaining.
We must learn to honor the Holy Spirit.
Well, I think that too.
And that's where I'm coming from. In this set of presentations, the lack of life and power in the churches recalls us to the theme of the Spirit.
The current quest for church renewal directs us to the theme of the Spirit.
The cry of our hearts draws us to this theme.
I think we all of us know in our hearts that this is an inescapable theme for serious Christians today.
Now, I don't want you to mishear what I've just said as if I were giving blanket approval to any of the movements I've mentioned, or for that matter, speaking words of blanket disapproval of all the rest of The Christian church. I've been trying to focus something which is real, and I've spoken in categorical terms in order to do it.
But I know that in many places where the surface judgment would be. There's no divine life here.
If you scratch the surface a little and you will find quite a lot of divine life.
I know that.
I'm not writing off congregations which aren't identified with the charismatic movement or aren't identified with the small group movement as being absolutely dead and hopeless. You would mishear me if you thought I was saying that.
I remember that John Calvin and his famous institutes, still one of the greatest Christian books ever written and still very good. I won't say bedtime reading, but very good reading for anyone who takes his faith seriously.
You've got Calvin saying very emphatically that the church of God everywhere will be found on inspection to be like a heap of chaff mixed with wheat and wheat mixed with chaff.
You mustn't suppose that any part of it is wholly dead. You mustn't write it off. Absolutely.
And my experience over 30 years of ministry has taught me that that also is true.
One of the glorious things about our God is that he doesn't ever leave himself completely without a witness.
There are very few places where the name of Christ is named and there isn't any spiritual life at all.
And as I said, you mustn't mishear my opening remarks as if I was implying that I thought there are.
Nonetheless, we, all of us need, in our personal lives and in our churches, more of the life of God, more of the ministry of the Holy Spirit than in fact we are seeing. That's the point that I'm concerned to make.
And as I say, I'm not dealing in blanket votes of censure or blanket votes of approval. I am simply trying to underline this point and rub your noses in it.
Specific judgments on things that go on in the charismatic circles, specific judgment on things that go on in the world of the small groups.
Specific judgment on all the specifics that do have to be judged at some time or other. This can wait until sessions number two or three.
What I'm doing this morning, or trying to do is to give you a general sense of, first of all, our need to be studying this subject with our minds and our hearts open to what God would say to us to be studying it, I mean, as a very existential, practical matter for our concern today and then for the rest of my time having spent five minutes on that general approach point to be Laying out before you in general terms, the way that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is presented to us in Scripture and the way in which our history, I mean the Church's history, has given us resources and starting points and springboards for thinking about the ministry of the Holy Spirit in relation to specific theological and spiritual problems.
And then I shall finish this morning with some general questions arising out of what's been said. And the general questions will bring us back to this overall concern for the life of God which I've started by speaking of. And that will be our morning's work specifics. Then tomorrow and Thursday.
But generalities this morning I want you to get the overview and see the wood before tomorrow. And the next day we plunge in among the trees and get down to the details. I think that's a good way of teaching.
I really don't care whether you agree with me or not, because I shall still go on thinking it's a good way of teaching. Get the general view first before you get concentrating on the specifics. Have a good look at the wood before you plunge in among the trees.
And that's what we're going to do, I hope. Now I've already told you where I'm coming from in the.
In the area of concern, what is bugging me as I speak about the Holy Spirit.
I'd like also to tell you now where I'm coming from in the area of conviction.
I bring with me three quite specific convictions which shape all that I'm going to say to you in these studies. Here they are.
Conviction number one, the evangelical doctrine of the Spirit, that is, the understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit which has been developed in the churches of the reformation over nearly 500 years. Now that evangelical doctrine of the Spirit is a major contribution to Christian understanding.
I don't think that's always appreciated, but I believe that it's true, and I hope to make that conviction good before I finish these lectures.
My second conviction is that the evangelical acknowledgement of the Spirit, the way of honoring the Holy Spirit, which in the churches of the Reformation has been worked out over the centuries, that acknowledgement of the Spirit is a formative ingredient in Christian obedience in this or any age.
I don't believe the church can get on well without it.
I do believe that evangelicals down the centuries have learned more and now have more to share about the work of the Holy Spirit in prayer, in worship, in the quest for holiness, in practical Christian obedience than you find in other traditions of the Christian church.
I am an Episcopalian As I expect you know, that means that like most Episcopalians, I am an eclectic.
I go through Christendom and its heritage in the manner of a person going through a large department store with an unlimited charge account.
Anything good that I see, I claim as mine.
And of course I am a professor of historical theology. You've been told that. And I have to be able to introduce my students to the various heritages, traditions, styles of theology and accustomed patterns of life and witness in the different sections of the Christian church over 2,000 years. It's on the basis of the homework that I've done in that area, both as an Anglican and as a professor of historical theology, that I say to you now I believe the evangelical acknowledgment of the Holy Spirit brings riches which have not been equaled in the other traditions of Christendom by such teaching about the Holy Spirit as they have developed.
If I had said to you the evangelical understanding of justification by faith is something which we hold in trust for the rest of Christendom. It's distinctively the evangelical contribution always has been. To make that plain, then I think you would have understood straight away what I meant. Well, what I'm saying is something parallel about the Holy Spirit.
And again, I think I am probably saying something which will come as a new thought to some of us.
This isn't very often said in quite that way, but I'm saying it and I hope to make it good before these lectures are through.
And from those two convictions that the evangelical doctrine of the Spirit is a major contribution to Christian understanding and that the evangelical acknowledgment of the Spirit in life and practice is a formative element in all true Christian obedience and something which the whole of Christendom ought to be learning from the evangelicals.
From those two convictions comes my third conviction.
That the way to honor the Holy Spirit, as Evan Roberts summoned men to do, the question of how to give him his head, as it were, how to learn in our time and in our situations to follow his leading and not frustrate what he's doing in men's lives.
That, I think, is the most important theological question that faces Christians today.
That would be challenged, I know, in many circles, from the Ecumenical Caucus would come the protest. Oh no. The most important theological question facing Christians today has to do with understanding Christian mission in our time as the quest for justice and liberation and human well being on this earth.
The Ecumenical Caucus is sold on the belief that that's what we, all of us, ought to be thinking about today.
Well, I disagree.
And against that conviction, I set my own belief that the important thing for us is to learn afresh, to honor the Holy Spirit so that the life of the Spirit in its fullness may reappear throughout the churches, the Christian churches, quite literally around the world.
So that's where I'm coming from. Brothers and sisters, I've sketched in my point of departure in some detail.
Both because I want to level with you. I want you to know where I'm coming from and not to have to scratch your heads and guess. And also because I hope that I shall bring you with me in approaching the subject of the Holy Spirit from this point of view.
I hope that, having noted where the speaker is coming from, your minds and hearts are saying, yes, I can see what he sees. I shall be coming at the subject from the same place and with the same concerns that he brings to it. So we shall see eye to eye and walk and think together. I hope so.
And I shall proceed on the basis of my hope.
And I shall assume that you are with me in having precisely this kind of interest in the doctrine of the Spirit.
And it's from the standpoint of this interest, then, that I ask you now to look at the Scriptures and note how the doctrine lies, how it's presented to us in the pages of Holy Writ.
The Bible's a big book.
One needs a focal point in order to organize any of its teaching on any subject.
The focal point that I am going to take is found in the 16th chapter of John's Gospel, where the Lord Jesus, on the night of his betrayal, talking to his disciples about the Spirit who is coming and the ministry that he is going to fulfill when he comes.
And I would like to read to you a few verses that run from verse. Well, it's starting at verse seven and running down to verse 15, where Jesus says, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away.
For if I do not go away, the counselor, the Paraclete Parakletos in the Greek, will not come to you.
But if I go, I will send him to you.
And when he comes, he will convince the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.
Of sin, because they do not believe in me, of.
Of righteousness, because I go to the Father. And you will see me no more of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own authority. But whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
All that the Father has is mine.
Therefore I said, he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
I ask you to note first that the Holy Spirit, as Jesus speaks of him here, is most certainly a person, a divine person, not just an influence, not just a force.
The Greek word for spirit, pneuma, like the Hebrew word for spirit, ruava, is a word which in origin meant wind or breath.
You have all of you, from time to time, been presented with a birthday cake upon which grow candles, and the candles are alight. And because it's your birthday, you are the hero of the hour, and you are asked to blow out the candles.
And if you can blow them all out in one breath, you're doing pretty well.
That puff which you direct towards the candles in order to blow them out, that's ruach, that's pneuma. In the basic meaning of these words, the wind also is puff, you see, air blown, air directed with force to change things, to have an effect, to make an impact, to do something.
When in the Old Testament we read about the Spirit of the Lord, the thought is of divine force, divine power being exerted.
The distinct personhood of the Holy Spirit isn't made known in the Old Testament.
The Spirit of the Lord as a phrase meant to the Hebrew mind, God exerting energy in the manner of you or me, puffing air out of our lungs to blow out the candles on the cake, or the wind blowing to blow down leaves, uproot trees, do all the things that the wind does do when it blows in power.
So in the Old Testament, the phrase the Spirit of God means God active in his world in different ways.
But when you get to the New Testament, it's made unambiguously clear that the Holy Spirit is a person no less than the Father is a person and the Son is a person.
And that's clear in these words of the Lord Jesus in verse 14, he will glorify me.
The Greek for he is a masculine pronoun, as you would expect.
Although the word for spirit is a neuter word, that is an it word rather than he word.
In other languages than English, you regularly have two or three genders. Some words are masculine he words, some words are feminine she words, some words are neuter it words. It doesn't apply in English, but other languages have it. And Greek has It and spirit is an it word, neuter, gender.
But John reporting Jesus words breaks with the rules of Greek grammar. To refer to this it.
Well, to refer to the spirit. Anyway, this neuter word by a masculine a he pronoun, which is a way of showing that as John understands the mind of the Lord Jesus, which he's recording, Jesus meant his disciples to recognize that he was talking about us. One who is no less fully personal than he is himself.
He speaks of the Holy Spirit as a parakeet, Parakletos, comforter, said the King James. Counselor, says the Revised Standard Version.
Helper, say some other modern translations.
Heraclitus, in fact, is a word which carries more meaning than any single English word will compass. You have to say helper, counselor, comforter, supporter.
The word is translated advocate as well.
You have to use all these English words to get the fullness of the idea. A paraclete is anyone who in any situation of need is brought in as helper, supporter, assistant, upholder, whatever, answers Jesus. The Holy Spirit is another paraclete.
Who was the first paraclete? Why Jesus himself.
The Holy Spirit comes to fulfill a paraclete ministry in Jesus stead. A paraclete ministry, as you can see, is in the nature of the case, a personal ministry.
Only a person can be a comforter, counselor, helper, advisor, supporter.
So the very word paraclete points to the personhood of the Spirit, as do the personal verbs that are used of the specific things that he does. His. In this passage that I read to you, he will guide you. He will speak, says the Lord Jesus. He will hear and he will speak what he hears.
He will declare things to you.
Only a person can hear and speak and declare things.
Elsewhere in the New Testament, Paul is found warning folk against grieving the Holy Spirit. Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed till the day of redemption, says Paul in Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 30.
Well, again, only a person can be grieved.
Peter accused Ananias and Sapphira of lying to the Holy Spirit. Only a person can be lied to.
Paul again in Romans 8, verse 26 tells us that the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Only a person can fulfill a ministry of intercession.
Only a person can feel such concern for another person as to issue such concern as issues in groaning which cannot be uttered. Well, I'm going through all this material to show you how clearly the New Testament Testament bears witness to the personhood of the Spirit of God and that's the first thing which jumps at us out of this particular passage in John 16. And it's a real contrast between the New and the Old Testament. It's a real advance on Old Testament revelation. In the Old Testament, the Spirit of God was God at work, God's power exercised.
But in the New Testament, where the truth of the plurality of persons in the Godhead is clearly revealed, we discover that the Holy Spirit is a distinct person, along with the Father, along with the Son.
The one God is three persons and each as fully personal as the others.
So that's the first point.
In the New Testament, the Spirit of God is revealed as a person.
Second point.
In the Old Testament, we read of the Spirit of God at work in four distinct connections.
We read of him as God's agent, God's power at work in creation.
I better bite back the word agent, because that's reading into the Old Testament. What New Testament Christians know. But what could not have been gathered simply from study of the Old Testament text.
No, the Spirit appears. Is God's power at work in creation.
Think of Genesis Chapter one, verse two. The Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters to put the created order into shape, to banish chaos and produce the marvelous harmony of integrated nature that we know, see and enjoy, and indeed are part of ourselves.
Think also in that connection of Psalm 33, verse 6.
By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth, ruach Spirit, the breath of God going forth as energy to create and shape up the whole cosmos.
Secondly, in the Old Testament we hear of the Spirit of God active in revelation.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon the prophets, and the Spirit of the Lord brings them the word from the Lord, which they then relay in God's name.
Both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, the word for prophet means spokesman, or at least one of the words for prophet in the Old Testament, the word navi and the word prophetes. In the New Testament, it's for the benefit of those who study the original languages. If you don't. Well, for.
But these words mean spokesman, someone who speaks on behalf of someone else. And that is the basic Bible idea of a prophet.
He is first and foremost a fourth teller of God's message. He's a sounding board for relaying what God has to say to men.
He passes on the message that he's been given whole and entire and intact.
And sometimes the message has to do with the future, but not always, and perhaps not most. Of the time.
We, I think, often have the wrong idea here. We think of prophets as if the essence of their ministry was to foretell.
They did foretell, because some of God's messages had to do with the future. But the basic idea is that they told forth, they were forth tellers of whatever God had to say.
Well, they did this in the power of the Holy Spirit. Revelation came to them because the Spirit of the Lord was upon them.
You remember that word From Isaiah, chapter 61, opening verses, which Jesus cited in the synagogue at Nazareth as recorded in Luke chapter four. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he's anointed me to preach the gospel, and so on and so on. God has given me the message to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
And it's precisely from the Spirit of the Lord that that message has been received for me now to relay. That's what's being said there. And of course, many, many times in the Old Testament the same thing is said.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon the prophets, giving them their word and enabling them to declare it.
So there's a second activity of the Divine Spirit in the Old Testament.
With creation goes revelation, and with creation and revelation goes thirdly in the Old Testament, empowering judges, kings, prophets who have to make political gestures, challenge kings, speak the word of the Lord to them, and so on are strengthened by the Holy Spirit for that purpose.
The Spirit of the Lord comes on Gideon, the Spirit of the Lord comes on Samson.
And we may properly call this, I think, a charismatic anointing given these men so that they may fulfill the leadership role which God has given them.
God anoints with his Spirit and empowers for service.
When Isaiah predicts the coming of God's Messiah, he envisages the Messiah as being similarly anointed.
Isaiah, chapter 11. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch will grow out of his roots, and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
In that text, in fact, it's Isaiah 11:1 3.
You have got not only the thought of the Spirit anointing God's king so as to make him a good king, equal to his leadership role, but you got also the fourth thought about the ministry or the work of the Spirit of the Lord which the New Testament sets before us, namely the thought of the Spirit as the source of all genuine Godliness, the Spirit as the author of all response to God in faith and in love and in repentance.
For the Spirit, said Isaiah, verse 2, will be the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
And that phrase, the fear of the Lord in the Old Testament means godliness in an inclusive sense.
Every element, every aspect, every ingredient in the service of the Lord. Faith, repentance, joy, worship, action, witness, and all good works. All of this is the fear of the Lord, as the New Testament uses that phrase. And the spirit that shall be upon the Messiah shall be the Spirit of the fear of the Lord.
This is the same thought that you meet in the dry bones passage in Ezekiel chapter 37, for instance, where Ezekiel is given the vision of the valley of dry bones. That's the house of Israel, says the Lord to Ezekiel.
And the dryness of the bones, of course, is a detail of the vision which is quite clear and unambiguous in its meaning. This is Israel bereft of all spiritual life.
But then the wind blows from God in the vision. It is the ruach, the breath of God, appearing as wind. But it is, of course, a vision of the Spirit of God at work.
So we are to understand it. So Ezekiel understood it.
The wind, the divine ruach, the divine spirit breathes upon the bones, and they come to life again, and they stand up an exceeding great army. What's happened?
Well, spiritual life has come to them because the Spirit of God is breathed upon them. If you go back one chapter into Ezekiel 36, you got in verses 25 through 27 a description, a theological description of the work of God in men's hearts that produces the effect of the dry bones coming to life that is presented in the vision of Ezekiel 37. Verse 25 of Ezekiel 36 says, It's God actually speaking through the prophet. The I is the Lord himself.
I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean. From all your uncleannesses and from all your idols will I cleanse you.
A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you. I'll take away out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I'll put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.
I will put my spirit within you, and that will be the result of my doing so.
For God to put his spirit within men is for God to move them to that response to him. And his revelation, for which godliness is the umbrella name the fear of the Lord.
All true faith, all true repentance, all true worship, all true desire for God's glory, All true service, all true witness has always been energized by the Spirit of the Lord. That was as true in the Old Testament as it is now in New Testament times.
[00:41:52] Speaker A: The proceeding was a presentation of the C.S. lewis Institute in the legacy of C.S. lewis, the institute endeavors to develop disciples who can articulate, defend and live faith in Christ through personal and public life. For more information, please visit our website at www.cslewisinstitute.org. thank.
[00:42:20] Speaker B: You.
