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.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: So there are four, four areas, four departments in which in the Old Testament we read of the Spirit of the Lord at work, Creation, revelation, empowering and the evoking of godliness, the empowering for service and the evoking of godliness.
But now when you come to the New Testament, while all of that goes on, and we're to understand that the Spirit is still active upholding the created order, and we're to understand that the Spirit is still active in general revelation as well as special revelation, wherever any awareness of the Creator comes through to men, that's the result of the ministry of the Spirit.
While we are to understand that all ability to do anything well, all empowering for achievement, is still the work of the Holy Spirit.
I should have spoken when I was referring to the Old Testament about the artistic gifts which God gave to Bezalel and Aholiab in Exodus, according to Exodus 31 to do the artwork on the tabernacle. Do you remember that God said to Moses, I put my Spirit upon Bezalel and Aholiab for this artwork?
Genesis 30, sorry, Exodus 31, opening verses. I've called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. And I filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence and knowledge and craftsmanship to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver and bronze, etc etc, etc. That's for the building of the tabernacle. And similarly we should say today, whenever artistic gifts appear or scientific capacities, any powers of mind or heart, anywhere in the human race at all, these good things are works of the Holy Spirit. We should say that. We should say it without hesitation. What he was doing in Old Testament times still goes on. He does bestow gifts for the achieving of artistic value and the developing of cultural forms. Sure he does.
And similarly, sorry. And with this we should also say in general terms, of course, that the Spirit of God is the author of all spiritual life or response to God in any shape or form, anywhere.
But over and above those general statements which mark the continuance in New Testament times of what the Spirit was doing in Old Testament times, there is something new, something added, something extra, something momentous.
And Jesus in the 16th chapter of John is talking about the new thing, the extra thing, the momentous thing which was in fact to begin at Pentecost.
The Spirit is going to come, says Jesus, that is, he's going to start doing something in your midst which he hasn't been doing before.
The point of the word come is not that hitherto the Spirit has been entirely absent from the world, as I've just been saying. The point is only that something new is going to start, which the Spirit comes to do something additional to everything that he's been doing up to this point.
You say, what is the new thing? Well, in verse 14 of John 16, Jesus defines it very precisely, he witnessing to the Spirit's personhood. He will glorify me by taking what is mine and showing it to you.
Now if you look at the next chapter, chapter 17 and verse five, you see the word glorify used in another connection. Jesus prays to the Father, father, glorify me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was made.
And for the Father to glorify the Son.
That sense was for the Father to take him back to the throne via the cross, via the resurrection, via the ascension. The Father took him back to the throne and so fulfilled the prayer that he the Son's prayer that he might once again be glorified with the glory that he had with the Father before the world was made.
I bring this in because in fact it's presupposed in what Jesus is saying about the Spirit's ministry.
The Father glorified the Son by taking him back to the throne, giving all authority to him, making him Lord of the universe, as indeed he is today, and will be until his coming again.
That's how the Father glorified the Son. Now the Spirit, Jesus is saying, will glorify me by taking what is mine and showing it to you.
That is, he will glorify me before your eyes of your understandings, by enabling you to see all that is mine in the presence of the Father, to acknowledge that I am for real and my glory is for real, and that it's all for you, you believers.
That's how the Spirit glorifies the Son. He glorifies the glorified Savior.
He glorifies the Savior by enabling us to see that he is indeed Christ on the throne and the triumph of his saving work, and now in the glory of his kingdom.
When Jesus writes a Footnote in verse 15 to the phrase what is mine that he used in verse 14, he's looking forward to his kingdom. He says, all that the Father has is mine.
He's thinking not only of personal deity, he's not only expressing the thought that he is God in as full and complete a sense as His Father is God.
He's thinking also of the kingdom to which the Father is very shortly going to exalt Him.
All authority is going to be given him in heaven and earth. He knows that.
And when he says all that the Father has in mind, that's one of the thoughts that he has in mind.
And so he means his readers to his hearers and us the readers to understand that when the Spirit takes what is his and shows it to us, well, it's full Deity and full dominion and marvelous glory of which he's speaking.
The Spirit will show you all these things. He says the Spirit will take all that is mine and show it to you.
How does he do it?
Here, let me tell you what happened to me. One night years ago, I was walking to Knox Church, Toronto to preach at a midweek sermon.
Preach at a midweek service, I should say, on this very text. John, chapter 16, verse 14.
He shall glorify me, he'll take of mine and declare it to you. It was going to be a message on the Holy Spirit.
As I walked up to the church, I saw that it was floodlit.
And I realized here was the Lord giving me exactly the illustration that I needed to make my point.
The Holy Spirit fulfills a floodlight ministry in relation to the Lord Jesus.
When you floodlight a building, as many buildings get regularly floodlit here in Washington, you hide the floodlight in niches in the wall. You don't want anybody to see the floodlights. They would dazzle you if your eyes caught them, so they're hidden out of the way.
What you are supposed to look at is the building on which the floodlights are trained.
The beauty of the building will show up under the floodlights often more vividly than it shows up by day.
The background, of course, is dark and the floodlights pick out the details of the building more precisely and in a more eye catching manner than is ever the case when you look at the building by day.
The Holy Spirit, let me say again, fulfills a floodlight ministry towards the glorified Lord Jesus.
It is, let me change the picture a little. It is as if the Savior in His glory stood before us.
But we, alas, are in the dark.
We don't see Him.
He speaks. He still says to us, as he said in the days of his flesh, come to me, you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you. Take My yoke upon you. Learn of me and you'll find rest to your souls. Still he invites us to become his disciples. Still he promises us pardon, peace and new life as we do.
But just as we don't see him in his glory, so we don't hear his words of grace.
The Holy Spirit does not stand in front of us as the Savior does. The Holy Spirit stands behind us, shines the light, as it were, over our shoulders, fulfills his floodlight ministry from the rear.
But the light shines and the Savior in front of us is picked out. We see Him.
The Spirit is enabling us to see Him.
We hear his voice.
The Spirit enables us, causes us to do that.
We become aware that the Savior is speaking to us, to us individually, calling us to Himself individually.
And it's as if the Spirit whispers in our ear. You hear Him. You hear what he's saying. He says, come to me. You go to Him.
The Holy Spirit in this New Covenant ministry of his doesn't call attention to Himself. The whole of that New Covenant ministry is a matter of calling attention to the Lord Jesus, the floodlight ministry.
He causes us to see, to realize, to become aware that the Lord Jesus Christ is for real. He's the Christ who is there.
And more than that, the Spirit causes us to become aware that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Christ who is here, looking at us, addressing us, speaking to us individually, so that we find ourselves personally confronted by the Savior, personally challenged, summoned, invited by the Savior into the Christian life.
And it goes on like that as it starts. The Spirit's ministry to the Christian is essentially first to last, to maintain fellowship between him, the Christian, I mean, the sinner, and the Savior.
The floodlight ministry goes on.
The ministry of maintaining fellowship continues.
That's the distinctive New Covenant work which the Holy Spirit was promised to do. That's how he glorifies Christ, by taking what is Christ's and showing it to his people.
And that's how he fulfills towards them the ministry of being another comforter, a second parakeet.
He does it precisely by keeping us in touch with the first parakeet. Do you get it?
He doesn't call attention to Himself, but he keeps us in fellowship with Christ.
That was very clearly indicated, in fact, by the way in which in John 14, Jesus spoke of the coming of the spirit.
In verse 16 of that chapter, he said, this is his first introduction of the subject. I will pray the Father, and He will give you another counselor to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth.
And then in verse 18.
Next verse. He says, I will not leave you desolate. I will come to you.
And the juxtaposing of the two thoughts is meant to tell us that in and through the coming to us of the Holy Spirit, Christ Himself returns to us.
Returns.
Well, I'm sorry. Let me. I'm trying to say two things together, and they're getting mixed up in my mind. Christ meant the disciples in the upper room to understand that through the Spirit's coming to them, as he was very shortly to do, he, the Lord Jesus, would return to them in terms of personal presence, though physically he was going to be withdrawn from them for good.
And he means us to understand, as we read John's Gospel, that through the coming of the Spirit to our hearts, the Lord Jesus Himself draws near to us. In the way that I tried to describe just now.
This is how the second Paraclete fulfills his ministry. Let me say it again. He keeps us in touch with Paraclete Number one.
This is the new thing.
Jesus lives.
The Spirit causes us to know that the Spirit communicates communion with Christ, the glorified Savior.
We hear Christ's voice.
We respond heart to heart.
We trust him, we serve Him.
We live in fellowship with Him.
We verify and demonstrate that as preachers love to say, Christianity is Christ, not just a doctrine, not just an orthodoxy, but a living person whom we know and love.
And thus the reality of the Spirit's New Covenant ministry is demonstrated in your life and mine.
And that, we might say, is what it's all about.
There is more, of course, to the New Covenant ministry of the Spirit, but not less. And this is the heart of it.
There's more in terms of transformation, the Holy Spirit making us Christlike, and more of that. If you can be with us on Wednesday evening for our study of Galatians, Chapter 5.
There is the ministry of the Holy Spirit giving spiritual gifts to the Lord's people.
That's a theme about which very much is said these days. And yet we don't always go to the heart of the truth about it.
What is a spiritual gift?
A spiritual gift is the capacity in one way or another to express and communicate Christ.
Not everybody who talks about spiritual gifts seems to see that. But that's the basic New Testament idea, the capacity to express and communicate Christ either by speech.
Many gifts are gifts of speech or by action.
Many gifts are different forms of Samaritanship, love and care and ministry in practical ways to other people.
But one way or another, it's a spiritual gift that's operating For Christ is being expressed and further thought, which again, not all of those who talk about spiritual gifts seem to see.
When a spiritual gift is being used and Christ is being expressed thereby, it is the Lord Jesus Himself who is ministering through us, his servants, as his hands and his feet and his mouths.
It isn't that we are ministering on behalf of the Lord Jesus. It is that the Lord Jesus is ministering through us. We are his hands, his feet, his mouths, his. Let me say it again.
That's a biblical thought form. It breaks surface a number of times.
In, for instance, the second chapter of Paul's letter to the Ephesians, you've got him saying of the risen lord. It's verse 17, I think of the chapter that he came following his triumphant work of atonement on the cross. He came and preached peace to you who are far off and to those who are near, who were near.
You who were far off are the Gentile converts to whom the letter to the Ephesians was written. They lived in the Lycus Valley in Asia Minor, many hundred miles from Jerusalem. Those who were near are, I suppose, the Jews, many who were based on Jerusalem.
Well, you ask in what sense did this Paul telling us that the Lord Jesus came and preached peace to Gentiles in the Lycus Valley and at Ephesus, the port town on the coast?
He certainly didn't do it in the flesh. No, he didn't.
He did it through the lips of those whom he sent as his messengers who preached the gospel in his name.
But when they preached the gospel in his name, Christ was coming to preach peace to those who heard. It's still so, of course, in Christian ministry in all its shapes and forms, when spiritual gifts are exercised, when our capacity to express Christ is being actualized, it is Christ Himself who is coming, acting, speaking, showing himself, expressing himself in what we do always think about spiritual gifts in those terms.
Nothing less comes up to the reality of New Testament teaching.
But we haven't time, I'm afraid, to say any more about gifts or any more about the Spirit's transformation of our character at of our characters at present.
One final point about the biblical theology of the Holy Spirit.
This has to do with the meaning of Pentecost, when this New Covenant ministry of the Spirit began to be fulfilled.
9:00 clock on Pentecost morning was the time when it began.
When you read Acts, chapter two, realize that the tornado sound of the wind coming. You can see now, by the way, why God chose that auditory impression of the wind Ruach and pneuma mean wind, that tornado sound of the wind. And the tongues, literal, physical tongues, picked out in flame, as it seemed on the heads of the apostles. And the gift of languages which they were given, those things, though marvelous, must be understood as trimmings. The essence of what began at 9 o' clock on Pentecost morning had to do with the realization that the first comforter, the Lord Jesus, was back with them, the realization that they were in his presence and he was with them to stay.
It had to do with the joy, with the sense of boldness, freedom from any sort of inhibitions which the knowledge of Christ's presence with them brought.
It had to do with the understanding of the gospel that suddenly clicked in Peter's mind and I guess in all of their minds now they could see how it all fitted together. And what you see, you can say so straight away. They're out there and Peter preaches his sermon and he sees it very clearly, and he says it very clearly.
And the work of Christian evangelism begins.
All of this is the real essence of the New Covenant ministry of the Spirit. This was the heart of what happened on Pentecost morning.
And I'm not wishing to minimize the reality or the thrill of the trimmings.
Oh, sure, it was glorious. But I am wanting to make sure that we realize what was central on Pentecost morning as distinct from that which was trimmings, secondary to what was primary. What was primary was that this new Covenant ministry of the Spirit began in the hearts of the disciples. They showed it straight away by their witness, by their boldness, by their joy, by the altogether new quality of their lives about which Acts two of course, itself has a great deal to say.
There are some who think that when in the 20th chapter of John, where the events of the first Easter evening are recorded, where we find the Lord Jesus in verses 22 and 23 of that chapter, having commissioned his disciples to go in his name, he then breathed on them, puffed literally a lungful of air over them, breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit.
Some suppose that that was the moment when the Spirit was actually given.
I think, however, that the right way to take those verses must rather be as an acted prophecy of what was to happen in their lives very shortly, namely on Pentecost morning.
You can understand the puffing of the lungful of air over them. Yes, that was an acted prophecy of the coming of the Spirit.
And the words receive the Holy Spirit according to the way that the imperative mood in Greek works, those Words could very naturally be taken as a promise that very shortly the Spirit will be given them that gift which the puff of the Savior's breath in their direction was signifying. I think that that must be how John wanted us to read these verses, because this same John, John the Apostle, back in verse 37 through 39 of chapter 7 of his gospel, had already made this observation about Jesus reference to the Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive.
John comments in verse 39 of John chapter 7 as yet the Spirit had not been given because Jesus was not yet glorified.
Do you see that on Easter evening, though he was risen from the dead, he'd not yet ascended to the Father's right hand.
He wasn't yet glorified in the John 17, verse 5 sense.
And surely John must mean us to understand that the Spirit's ministry of glorifying the Savior could not begin until the Savior had thus been glorified.
So in the light of John 7:39, I take John 22 as an active prophecy pointing forward to Pentecost. And I suppose that it was as the Christian church has always believed, at nine o' clock on Pentecost morning that it all began to happen.
Thus the doctrine of the Holy Spirit lies before us in the pages of Holy Scripture.
Time, I see, is running out on me, and some of the things that I'd hope to get in this morning just won't get said. Well, never mind. Some of them come back for treatment tomorrow morning, and I shall, so I can afford to leave them until then.
Let me give, as I close, one final illustration to try and make plain how I understand the relation of the New Testament and the Old Testament witness to the work of the Spirit.
If you will allow me to be egotistic for a moment and use myself as an illustration, I would like to tell you this.
Once upon a time, back in the 1960s, I was the sole member of faculty in a study center in Oxford, England that had been designed to carry a permanent faculty of two.
There was going to be a person called the warden. And it wasn't a penitentiary, by the way, let me hasten to say, in England, where we haven't yet learned to speak good American, I'm afraid you can call them the person in charge of any educational institution the warden. There was going to be a warden at this study center, letter house, it was called, and there was going to be a librarian.
I had been appointed librarian. As librarian I had certain responsibilities. They were defined for me in the job description.
I sought to Fulfill them. But at first there wasn't any warden.
And then came the day when they upgraded me and made me warden. But I was still the only person on the faculty.
And so I had to keep going all the tasks that I'd been engaged on as librarian. There was a library to look after, and I had to maintain that and see that all the study facilities that were supposed to be provided were provided and so on. But as warden, I had additional responsibilities, responsibilities for publicity and public image and public relations and all that kind of thing.
So at that point, my responsibility was increased without being in any way diminished.
And that's the illustration.
The Holy Spirit's responsibilities. That is the work that the Holy Spirit, as the agent of the Father and the Son, was charged to do. That work increased in scope at 9 o' clock on Pentecost morning and thereafter.
And so it continues until the Lord comes again. It increased in scope without in any way being diminished.
Everything that the Spirit was doing before, he continues to do.
But now, since Pentecost, he is doing more still.
Well, time has gone, and there we shall have to stop.
I hope that on the basis of that overview of the Bible doctrine of the Holy Spirit, we are in a position to do the detailed thinking, which I'm going to invite you to accompany me through in study sessions tomorrow and the next day.
But for the moment, I'm afraid we have to call it a day because it's quarter after 10.
Let me ask Mike Cromarty, who's in charge, whether we are simply to leave the matter of questions and close the session now, Mike. Or whether we should have a few minutes of questions before we wind down.
Okay, I'm game for questions. We will go on with questions then until 10:30. But if anyone does want to leave now, please feel free to do so.
Well, that's very gratifying, isn't it?
All right, question session begins. Your question session.
[00:30:07] Speaker C: I understand you to say that the Holy Spirit gives gifts to mankind in general in terms of artistic skills and things like that.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: Yes.
I better repeat the question for the sake of the microphone. I've been asked whether I really mean that the Holy Spirit gives cultural capacities, gifts in that sense, outside the sphere of Christian faith.
I said that and I mean it.
The rule of judgment is that everything that sinful men are enabled to do, which is valuable on the cultural, artistic, moral community front, is the enabling of the Spirit of God. None of us by nature have the capacity to do anything good.
But the spirit of God in mercy doesn't allow any of us or anyone outside the Christian faith to become as bad as he could be.
There's always some restraint, and with the restraint goes some enabling for goodness.
The ministry of this ministry of the Holy Spirit lies behind the words of the Lord Jesus. If you being either know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him?
Outside the realm of faith, there are lots of parents who know how to give good gifts to their children. How is that?
Well, it's the spirit of God who maintains parental instincts of generosity and care for the children.
It's the Spirit who enables hope to be good parents.
And similarly, it's the Spirit who enables, well, politicians to be good and wise statesmen and artists to achieve music like Beethoven's or Wagner's poetry like Shakespeare's or who shall I say, Burns's or Shelleys or Keats. These are not Christian men, not in any very significant way at least, and some of them were decidedly anti Christian in their attitudes.
But they were enabled to achieve work of real esthetic value.
Christians ought to say, this is the gift of God's spirit to them.
All right?
Yes, sir. What then would be the difference?
[00:32:38] Speaker C: How would you characterize the difference between the work and the spirit in the Christian view? Is the artistic skill, music skill of worship, or whatever has overheard the non Christian? Is there a way to make some
[00:32:50] Speaker B: discrimination between the two? Further question. How do I relate to the work of the Spirit giving gifts of creativity to non Christians and giving gifts of creativity to Christians?
Is there some relation between the two?
My answer is that insofar as we are talking about gifts of creativity, gifts involving creativity, there is no integral difference.
But insofar as we are thinking of the person to whom those gifts are given, there will be a whale of a difference. Just because the Christian person will want to use all his capacities for creative action in any department of life at all to the glory of God in a way that the non Christian won't.
So that directionally, you might say creative gifts will be used very differently by the one man as compared with the other.
But ironically, it's been the case on the whole among Protestants for centuries that the best gifts of aesthetic creativity or community creativity or scientific creativity, these have been given.
Don't ask me to say why, because I don't know why. I'm just telling you the fact. These have been given for the most part to folk who weren't Christians and didn't put those gifts to use in a particularly Christian way.
And the artistic and community and political gifts that have been given to Christian folk have often been less by comparison.
And people have sometimes made fun of Christians and their second rate art and their second rate thinking about human relations and their second rate unimaginative approaches to what's it to be, parenthood, family, social life and so on. By comparison with the apparently, well, I think the genuinely greater creativity which some other folk have shown.
We just have to accept that God is sovereign and he gives the gifts that he does give in the way that he thinks good.
And if as Christians and moving around in Christian circles we have sadly to acknowledge, well, would that we were more gifted as Christian people in some say, the artistic front, the musical front, the.
Graphic art, the plastic art front, whatever, than we are, well, we just have to settle for the way that the Lord has ordained things. We have perhaps to humble ourselves that we really are pretty inferior in some of those areas.
As you know, at the present time a lot of Christians are longing that Christian artwork and cultural contribution should be greatly upgraded because the world needs it and because they're so conscious that in this field Christian contributions over the past few generations have been really rather low standard.
I don't know whether any of you read the outbursts that come from time to time from Francis Schaeffer's son Frankie. He gets very fierce about it and is fierce viva voci. And fierce in print about it, produced a book called what is it, Addicted to Mediocrity. And you can see from the very title what indictment he wants to bring against us.
He is an artist, media man, film producer, all that kind of thing.
Well, okay, I'm glad that we've got one or two prophets with fire in their belly in our midst on this subject. It will do us good. But there it is.
We are living in a situation where the greater gifts of creativity in all these ways seem to be given outside the church rather than in it. In the Middle Ages it wasn't so.
But God is sovereign and he's doing what he's doing.
And while it's not for us to make guesses as to why, it is for us just to face the facts. I think I'm trying to sketch in the overall situation as I see it. Am I giving you any satisfaction by the way I do it?
[00:37:24] Speaker C: My only remaining question has to do with the work of the Spirit is to glorify Christ. In what sense does the non Christian using gifts of the Spirit, I assume is more general.
[00:37:38] Speaker B: Without repeating the question into the microphone, let me just say I did, in the way that I put it, try to distinguish between the two categories of gifts.
Gifts of general creativity, including artistic ability, which is the Spirit of God the Creator, enabling us to fulfill our role as sub creators under the Creator. That on the one hand, and then those spiritual gifts which are given only where the Gospel is preached and where Christ is known.
Gifts of ministry whereby the Savior continues to minister in divine things to his own people, to his people, through his people, without going into the borderline cases. And they do of course arise where people who are spiritually only hangers on in the Christian church nonetheless do seem, at least for a time, to manifest, for instance, preaching gifts.
You know, for instance, this guy Templeton who used to be an evangelist and was used in converting ministry quite widely and he gave it all up and has abandoned his faith and now he writes Elmer Gantry type novels and so on. He's a complete outsider now, and yet there he was, God used him.
These things do happen. But don't let's focus on that particular problem because in most cases it isn't like that.
Most spiritual gifts of the kind through which Christ ministers to his own people are given to his own authentic people.
And the special problem of gifts to the apostate needn't bother us particularly at all.
Well, what I aim to do was to distinguish between those two levels, you see on which gifts are given.
Spiritual gifts given to Christians by Christ who uses them to minister himself to others, are not to be bracketed with the gifts of general creativity which are given to Christians and even more it seems at the present time to people who are not Christians.
Is it sufficient to draw that distinction and keep it clear?
And of course it follows from that that the sort of spiritual gifts which are spoken of in the New Testament are a distinctively New Testament thing belonging to the New Covenant ministry of the Spirit and the other. The other sort of gifts were already illustrated in the Old Testament by Bezalel and Aholiab.
They were on a different level and they have been operated, operating in the world ever since. The world was okay, how are we doing? We've pursued a fascinating line of thought and it's taken us almost all our question time. Another question I'm asked to comment on the difference of phraseology.
The Spirit being with us and the Spirit being in us.
It's phraseology from John's gospel, chapter 14, verse 17 and I think no other place.
I'm asked whether that phraseology points to the difference between the Spirit's ministry under the Old Covenant and under the New Covenant.
I'm not sure whether it does or not. My mind has havered wobble to and fro on that particular question of interpretation several times in the course of my life as a teacher, and I can still argue the case both ways.
Some commentaries will say that the words he dwells with you and will be in you are really two phrases, both of which are pointing to the reality of the New Covenant ministry just about to begin.
The word dwells, present tense is what the grammarians call an inchoative present, which means a present tense expressing something that is just about to start as we've got it. Actually, in English, you yell to somebody who's yelled to you, I'm coming, which means you can expect me to come within the next couple of minutes.
You're just about to come, you see. But you say, I am coming present tense.
And it's perfectly good Greek grammar to understand the words he dwells with you as meaning he will dwell with you shortly when he comes.
And then this exegesis goes on to suggest that with you and in you are two phrases, both of which are needed to express the fullness of the relation to the Spirit which the disciples are going to enjoy from 9 o' clock on Pentecost morning onwards.
The other exegesis, the one which I think you had in the back of your mind, can also be argued on that exegesis. The two phrases are in contrast with each other. The Spirit dwells with you is then a reference to the influence of the Spirit which the disciples have already known as they've walked with Jesus and Jesus has ministered to them, and certain things have already become clear in their minds, and faith has become a reality in their hearts.
On this exegesis, Jesus is saying that faith which is yours already did you but realize it is the work of the Holy Spirit dwelling with you.
And what is going to happen at Pentecost will be an extension of that ministry which you've already begun to know.
He dwells with you, and then when he comes on Pentecost morning, he will be in you, and there'll be, well, the new thing, the sense of the Savior's presence with you, and the transforming work of the Spirit, changing your character into Christ likeness, giving you gifts for ministry and so on. All of that will be an extension, as I said, of the ministry of the Spirit as you know it already.
Both ways of understanding the words are defensible. As you see, I've been defending them, and I find it very hard to make up my own Mind, which is the better way of taking the words and understanding the Lord's meaning.
But if you ask about the thing in itself, certainly everybody who had any faith and made any response to God, engaged in any real worship, exercised any real repentance under the old covenant, that person was experiencing the ministry of the Holy Spirit in their life, whether they recognized it or not.
Because in us fallen men there just isn't any godliness, any capacity for godliness at all, save as God Himself works in our hearts to draw a response to Himself out of us.
That's part of what's meant, I conceive, by Paul saying that we are dead in trespasses and sins. That's the natural state of man. And you can talk to a corpse, excuse the rough language, you can talk to a corpse till you're black in the face and you get no response whatever, because the person is dead.
Those who are dead in trespasses and sins are naturally unresponsive to God in every way.
So that if there is any response in the lives of Jesus disciples, in the days of his flesh, in the lives of Old Testament psalmists, in the lives of men like Abram, David or whatnot, well, this is the result of the Spirit at work in their lives, but not so richly, not doing so much, you see, as he's been doing in the lives of Christians from Pentecost morning onwards.
For the microphone's sake, let me say that the questioner has just expressed the hope that I will say more than I've said as yet about the difference between pre Christian experience of God through the Spirit and Christian experience that is post Pentecostal experience of God through the Spirit.
I'm just thinking, what more I have to say to you, what more I shall have time to say to you. I think it will be better if I give you a formula now, just in case I don't manage to face up to that one directly in the next two studies. Let me now say this.
In the pre Christian era, folk knew God as a God of grace, a God who gave promises, a God who forgave sins through the offering of sacrifices in the sacrificial system.
They knew him as a God to be worshiped and praised and served.
They knew him as a God who laid down standards for their lives.
They knew what faith was and what repentance was and what worship was and what joy in the Lord was.
All these dimensions of Christian experience of God were there in the Old Testament fear of the Lord.
What they didn't have was the knowledge of Christ as one who has come to be man's Savior, who's lived, who's died, who's risen, who's ascended, and who has come back in terms of spiritual presence to be friend, companion, guide, the one with whom we live, the one with whom, quite literally, we live and share our lives.
That was something which some of the Old Testament saints knew that folk who lived after them were going to know. I mean, you've got anticipations of it in various prophetic passages in the new test in the Old Testament.
But all of that is distinctive New Testament experience, post incarnation, post ascension, post Pentecost experience.
And to know that this was coming and to share Israel's hope for the days when it would be reality, which was the highest the Old Testament saints could rise to, that wasn't the same as actually getting into it, just as it's not the same for you and me to know that there are.
What should I say? There is. There is.
There are going to be some more people, I'm sure, in the future who will travel through space. Well, we know that we may be very glad that they're going to travel through space, but we're not going to be the people, perhaps. Unless you are a space traveler, I'm assuming you're not. I'm not a space traveler. I shall never travel through space. There's a difference between knowing that others are going to and being glad that others are going to and feeling good about the human race, which can do such things, all that on the one hand, and actually experiencing it on the other.
And the Old Testament saints didn't actually experience it, although they knew it was going to happen and they rejoiced it was going to happen.
That's the big difference. A difference of knowledge.
Well, that's not perhaps the clearest way to say it now.
A difference between knowing that something was going to happen for God's people someday and actually experiencing the thing and living in the. In the full power and joy it will. That formula. Does that formula bring you any light, I wonder. That, to my mind, is the heart of the matter.
Yes, they did know God.
Oh, they did know. They did know God. Sure they did.
I want to insist on that, and I hope that you will, all of you, come along with me on that.
I know that since dispensational teaching became strong in evangelical circles, it's been the custom to play down the quality of the knowledge of God which Old Testament believers had, and to maximize the thought that for New Testament believers everything is wonderfully different. And wonderfully better.
I think actually that that's been overdone. I think we ought to do more justice to the work of God maintaining spiritual life among those who had it in Old Testament times. It was quality spiritual life in the prophets. It was quality spiritual life in the Psalms in terms of the exercise of faith and repentance and adoration and joy. Those psalmists are still way out ahead of me and I would suppose of all of us.
And as I go on with the Psalms, I get more and more to admire, appreciate the quality of spiritual life which some folk, at any rate, had in pre Christian times. And I don't find myself able to go one step, really, with the people who say, well, the knowledge of God, such as it was under the Old Testament, was really such a poor, weak, inadequate thing that there's nothing in the Old Testament really, for which we Christians can learn very much.
That's not my view.
Okay, here is Mr. Cromarty just itching to declare the meeting closed.
Do your thing, sir. Do your thing.
[00:51:22] 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.
You.
