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<h1>INTRODUCTION</h1>
<p>This book is an attempt to present. the Christian  understanding of the Holy Spirit in ordinary language. It is recognised that  the whole idea of the Holy Spirit is strange to many people in our  materialistic generation, and that most ordinary folk, even within the  Christian fellowship have a concept of the Holy Spirit which is vague because  it is uncertain and often ill-defined. The effort is here made to outline the  doctrine of the Holy Spirit in fairly bold and simple terms, and not to argue  the pros and cons of the historical development of the idea.</p>
<p>My aim throughout is for clarity and brevity. I am fully  aware that the kind of clarity sought involves the risk of giving offence to  the more philosophical reader by failing to wrestle with all the peripheral  implications of saying &ldquo;I believe in the Holy Spirit&rdquo;. I recognise, too, that  the brevity selected in the interests of the non-theological reader is bound to  leave many questions unanswered.</p>
<p>It is my strong conviction that a clearer concept of the  Holy Spirit, which can be made far more central to the daily faith of ordinary  Christians, is essential, if we are to experience the Living God in our lives,  and not worship only the memory of a Christ in the past, or take our  inspiration only from the institutions of the Church, valuable as these are.</p>
<p>The experience of the Holy Spirit was a warm, vitalising,  and central feature of the life of the early Church, which communicated the  gospel in its hostile environment with astonishing effectiveness. That this is  not true of the present day Church on the whole is both an expression of our  deviation from the New Testament and an explanation of our ineffectiveness in  society.</p>
<p>If the Church makes much of the birthday of Christ,  overlaying it with much that is superficial though pretty, and sings lustily of  the Resurrection at Easter time, yet fails to live in the radiant confidence of  Pentecost, as the conscious possessor of this living Christ by His Spirit, it  must not be surprised if it fails to communicate a living faith to a secularist  world.</p>
<p>If this book is read by those on the fringe of the Church&rsquo;s  life, I hope they will see—at the very least—that the Christian notion of the  Holy Spirit is not just a piece of semi-magical mumbo-jumbo, but a very vital  part of the Christian&rsquo;s experience of the Living Christ.</p>
<p>If the Holy Spirit is retained in our thinking only as an  important intellectual doctrine in orthodox Christian theology we will never  know the reality of His presence and power. He must be retained in our thinking  and living because His influence and power have been recognised by us, and have  become real to us.</p>
<h1>THE PLACE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT</h1>
<p>In the thinking of many present-day Christians the Holy  Spirit has no real place. He is an adjunct or addendum to their faith and is  not integral to its meaning or to its expression in daily life. This, to say  the least, is in marked contrast with the Church of the New Testament. There  the Holy Spirit was the indispensable source of the Christian life, mission,  and witness.</p>
<p>Indeed in the Bible as a whole, the Holy Spirit, or the  Spirit of God, has a place which may surprise many of us. He is not an addition  to the Christian faith, invented to satisfy a later theology. Those who argue  that we should simply get back to Jesus, His life, teaching, influence, even  His death and resurrection, and that we should regard other things, even ideas  like that of the Holy Spirit, as incidental, must think again. It was Jesus who  said to His disciples,</p>
<p>It is for your good that I am leaving you. If I do not go,  your Advocate (the Holy Spirit) will not come, whereas, if I go, I will send  him to you . . . When he comes who is the Spirit of truth, he will guide  you  (John 16: 7, 13 NEB)<br>
  If the Holy Spirit was meant by Jesus to be as central to  the life of Christians in the world as this suggests, is it not strange that we  should have relegated him to the sidelines of life?</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h1>The Old Testament</h1>
<p>When you turn the pages of the Old Testament you will be  surprised at how frequently the Spirit of God appears. The idea appears in the  majority of its books. The word used for spirit—ruach—is a word which means  &ldquo;wind&rdquo;, or breathe&rdquo;, or breeze&rdquo;. We cannot be sure how it came to be used to  describe God, but we can be sure it was widely used to indicate God at work.  Perhaps the idea of &ldquo;the wind of God&rdquo; or &ldquo;the breath of God&rdquo; was used to  describe His unseen, and inexplicable, but obviously living power. Certainly  the Spirit of God was thought of as being as much a part of Him and His life as  a man&rsquo;s breath is part of a man.</p>
<p>The word was used in the Old Testament to indicate various  things. Fox instance, the word &ldquo;wind&rdquo; or &ldquo;spirit&rdquo; was used to refer to the  principle of life as in Job 17: 1 &ldquo;My mind is corrupt&rdquo; where the word for mind  is <em>ruach.</em><br>
  Again, it refers to human emotions as in Judges 8: 3 their  anger died down&rdquo;. &ldquo;Anger is <em>ruach. </em>It  can refer to intelligence or ability, as in Exodus 28: 3, with its talks of  those &ldquo;. . . endowed with skill <em>(ruach) </em>.  .<br>
  The spirit of God was as much part of God as breath is part  of a man. The idea was in no sense a departure from the Jewish insistence on  one God. Yet the spirit of God was distinctive in function. In Genesis 1: 2 the  Authorised Version says, &ldquo;The Spirit of God moved on the face of the water, and  God said, &lsquo;Let there be light  Here is  diversity of function, but no conflict.</p>
<p>The oneness of God and His Spirit is seen in Psalm 139 where  the Psalmist prays. &ldquo;Where can I escape from Thy spirit? Where can I flee from  Thy presence?&rdquo; The Spirit of God in the Old Testament was thought of as part of  God, going forth from him in action. He is thought of as giving power to men or  equipping them for action and service. The Spirit of God is said to have come  upon Othneil and he judged Israel (Judges 3: 10); upon Bezaleel, giving him  wisdom to construct the tabernacle (Exodus 31: 2-4); upon the prophets to  .inspire them, as Ezekiel testified (Ezekiel 2: 2).</p>
<p>A significant saying is in Isaiah 31:3 (NEB) &ldquo;The Egyptians  are men not God, their horses are flesh not Spirit  The difference appears between the physical  and the spiritual, the first bing lesser and mortal, the second being strong  and enduring&rdquo;.  The Spirit is the power  of God working in human history, especially in the history of Israel.- and in  individuals, to serve  God and His  people. See Isaiah 63: 11-14.</p>
<p>God spoke, acted, and endued with power through His Spirit.  Always it was God who was at work. There is never any conflict. A. B. Davidson  wrote, &ldquo;. . . we have to start from the idea that the Spirit of the Lord <em>IS </em>the Lord—not an influence from Him,  but the Lord Himself . . . we may say the <em>beginnings </em>at least of the distinction between the Lord and His Spirit are to be seen,  in the Old Testament&rdquo;. This blend of identity of God and His Spirit and specialisation  of function is surely the seed-bed for the much more clearly defined concept of  a triune God which emerged in the New Testament and the early Church.</p>
<h1>The New Testament</h1>
<p>In the New Testament the Greek word for Spirit is <em>Pneuma, </em>which comes from the verb &ldquo;to  breathe&rdquo; and has a similar significance as the Old Testament term. The Spirit  in the New Testament appears in many roles, some of which must be considered  further. He is the progenitor of Christ (Matthew 1:18). He was active in the  baptism of Jesus (Matthew 3: 16, Mark 1: 10), His temptations, driving Jesus  into the desert (Mark 1:12), and was present in His ministry (Luke 4:14). He is  the helper or advocate of the disciple, acting in the life of the believer, and  acting for him (John 15: 26).</p>
<p>He is the guide of the Church and the Christian (John 16),  the source of spiritual power, the enabler for Christian witness (Acts 2).<br>
  The Church, as the New Israel, is the creation of God&rsquo;s  Spirit, and is the fellowship of the Spirit. So the letter to the Ephesians  urges the readers to &ldquo;spare no effort to make fast with bonds of peace the  unity which the Spirit gives&rdquo; and points out that &ldquo;There is one body and one  Spirit&rdquo;.<br>
  He is the life giving Spirit (1 Corinthians 14: 25); He  gives gifts to men (1 Thessalonians 5: 19f); He is the source of Christian  character (Galatians 5: 22.23, Ephesians 5:16). He is indispensable to the life  of the Christian. Without Him there is no Christian faith or experience (Romans  8)<br>
  He lives within the Christian, bringing the life of Christ  into human life, and transforming the lower by the higher (Galatians 5 and 6).<br>
  These facts, and many others .which we could elaborate to  strengthen them, show that the idea of the Holy Spirit is central to the Bible,  and basic to the life of the Church of the New Testament. Of themselves, they  may give the impression that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Bible is  what many people suspect, a cold, impersonal, doctrine arising out of a  Trinitarian view of God which is no more than a theological exercise, and that  the religion of the New Testament is the acceptance of doctrines which are hard  to understand, and which are irrelevant to life. Nothing could be further from  the truth. </p>
<p>The early Church based its belief in the Holy Spirit, not on  some creed it had inherited, nor on a bare philosophy which it made essential  to salvation. It believed in the Holy Spirit as a living, warm, powerful,  reality because of its experience. Stanley Jones wrote a book called &ldquo;The  Christ of Every Road&rdquo;. That is what the Holy Spirit is. He is Christ sharing  every road, every path, every experience of the Christian life. The early  Christians believed in Him because their experience at Pentecost and after  could be explained in no other way.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Acts&rdquo; tells us that as they waited in Jerusalem for  Christ&rsquo;s promise to be fulfilled, suddenly &ldquo;. . . there came from the sky a  noise like that of a strong driving wind (notice the word &lsquo;wind&rsquo;), which filled  the whole house where they were sitting . . . And they were all filled with the  Holy Spirit and began to talk in other tongues,, as the Spirit gave them power  of utterance.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Now these words speak to some people of an odd emotional  experience, and are not attractive. E. S. Jones says, &ldquo;I know of no call so  urgent as the call to get down beneath the phenomena to the facts of Pentecost  .<br>
  Pentecost meant . . . they had found God. And God not as a  floating idea, but as a living fact of experience; God, no longer magical and  vague, but focal and dynamic; God no longer coming to them in awful Sinais and  in the stern prophetic word, but God tender, intimate, face to face …a doctrine  of the Trinity grew up, not out of formal thought, but out of the realities of  experience.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Now this is important. The early Christians believed in the Holy  Spirit because they could explain their experience of the living Christ in no  other way. Christ was still with them. At Pentecost, and afterwards, they saw  and experienced His power at work. Yet He had gone physically. They knew He was  still with them, not only setting them an example from alongside them, but  giving them an altogether new boldness and power inside them. </p>
<p>He had promised them a helper, a comforter, an advocate, a  guide—His own Spirit. How else could they begin to describe what they experienced  but in terms already familiar through the Old Testament and through the words  of Jesus, but now known in a new intimate way. They had received. the Holy  Spirit.</p>
<p>If the present day Church—and present day Christians like  you and me—really believed in the <em>presence </em>and <em>power </em>of such a living Spirit  of God, and did not only pay lip-service to His existence as a doctrine, the  whole impact of our Christian witness might be transformed. Professor Barclay  writes in his study on Acts &ldquo;. . . if ever a doctrine needed to be rediscovered  it is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit . . . In the first 13 chapters of Acts  there are more than 40 references to the Holy Spirit. The early Church was a  &lsquo;Spirit-filled Church and precisely therein lay its power.&rdquo;</p>
<p>If all this is true, then the implications for us are  tremendous. In the remainder of this book we will try to spell out some of the  basic implications. Suffice it here to say that if we are to recapture the  verve and vitality of first century Christianity, whether in our preaching, or  our group evangelism, or our social action, this concept of God as a living  Spirit must be basic and controlling. It implies that all our efforts will be  quite useless unless the Holy Spirit is speaking in and through them. It is not  enough to be clever, or slick, or contemporary: we must see to it that in all  our activity we expect the Holy Spirit to be at work. If you were blasting a  roadway through rocks, you might bore holes for your explosive charges in a  hundred strategic places. But until you inserted the charges and let them do  their own work, your toil would be quite ineffective. And for the witness of  the Church we have been promised the power of God&rsquo;s Spirit, and upon Him  depends the effectiveness of our efforts.</p>
<h1>THE PERSON OF THE HOLY SPIRIT</h1>
<p>Is the Holy Spirit a person or an influence? He is both. In  the Bible the language used of the Holy Spirit sometimes denotes a person,  sometimes it is neuter. The Holy Spirit is God at work convincing men, guiding  them, leading them into all. truth. He is, then, living as God is living, and  personal as God is personal.</p>
<p>The Holy Spirit is more than an influence or principle. He  is the living activity of God, bringing Christ to men in every generation;<br>
  It is perhaps necessary to discuss the person of the Holy  Spirit in the context of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Here I must ask  you to think carefully with me for a little.   No doctrine of the Christian faith is more difficult, or more frequently  challenged, than the doctrine of the Trinity. It is often regarded as the basic  inconsistency of the faith, and is cited as evidence of illogicality and  intellectual unreliability. This critical attitude of course sets up <em>intellectual acceptability </em>as the final  authority and sanction for truth. </p>
<p>It suggests that there is no truth <em>which cannot be understood. </em>It claims—albeit unwittingly—infinity <em>for the human mind. </em>It begins honestly  enough by seeking truth: it ends dishonestly by affirming that anything which  cannot be squared with the human intellect is not true, thus limiting truth to  the bounds of human comprehension.</p>
<p> But to do this is  manifest pride. To suppose that we, who are so small, and recent, and immature,  in the history of the world, <em>should  discredit </em>what we cannot fully understand or explain to our own  satisfaction, is to elevate ourselves and our &ldquo;laws&rdquo; to a place of final  authority in a universe about which we know so very little, It is to claim  deity for ourselves, and is to become blinded by our own self-confidence. </p>
<p>The child who will not trust what he sees of his father&rsquo;s  love because he does not fully understand yet, will become resentful,  introverted, and delinquent, And the man Who, in the face of the unmistakable  love of God in Christ, shrugs it off because he cannot talk his way round it,  will likewise become a moral and spiritual pigmy or delinquent.</p>
<p> We want to tie God  down, or up, as if He were an object we could put in a box, or subject to our  control, . and manipulate with our minds. If He will not submit, then we shall  reject Him. If He defies our understanding we shall discredit Him. And yet it  does not seem to occur to us that, if we could control Him as we wish, and  comprehend Him as we might a geometric theorem, then we would be his master,  and not He ours.</p>
<p>But why has the doctrine of the Trinity arisen? Why should  the Church, in trying to win the world, involve itself in such difficulties?  Let me say at once that the presence of tension and difficulty is an indication  of truth rather than falsehood. It is the way of the world to smooth the  difficulties, to avoid snags, and make things palatable. But truth cannot be  treated that way. </p>
<p>It has to be faced, and reckoned with, even when it disturbs  our preconceptions. Let me suggest some reasons for the existence of the  doctrine of the Trinity. The Church came to its belief in the Trinity through  the World of God mediated through the Scriptures, and through experience it  could not otherwise explain. In this context, the Doctrine of the Trinity has  two sides to it.</p>
<p>(1) It is an attempt to describe Mystery. God, if He is as  far above us as the heavens are above the earth, is bound to be beyond our  ultimate comprehension. He is mystery. The assertion of the Christian faith is  that this God has come from the shrouded and veiled habitation of mystery, and  has revealed Himself to us in human form. But because He has made Himself  visible, we must not try to force Him to be completely subject to our minds.  Emil Brunner writes in his book, &ldquo;Our Faith,&rdquo; &ldquo;Anyone who speaks of God as  though He were a cousin, about whom, naturally, one knows everything, really  knows nothing at all of God. The first and most important fact that we can know  about God is ever this: WE know nothing of Him, except what He Himself has  revealed to us. God&rsquo;s relevation of Himself always occurs in such a way as to  manifest more deeply His inaccessibility to our thought and imagination. All  that we can know is the world. God is not the world. Therefore He is also  exalted above all our knowledge. He is mystery. Not simply a riddle, for  riddles can eventually be solved—some sooner, some later. </p>
<p>That God is mystery means that WE cannot solve the enigma.  &ldquo;Cans&rsquo;t thou by searching find out God?&rdquo; To man&rsquo;s proud &ldquo;Not yet&rdquo; the Bible  replies &ldquo;Not ever&rdquo;. Such majesty is like a profound abyss, whoever looks into  it becomes dizzy. &ldquo;From everlasting to everlasting&rsquo; &lsquo;—who can understand that?  He who was in the beginning when there was as yet nothing, and through whose  will all things that are have arisen—who can ever conceive of such a thing? To  think of the mystery of God makes us feel vain and petty, we remember that we  are dust&rdquo;.</p>
<p>Of course there is mystery about the Trinity, and about the  Holy Spirit. A man came to Jesus one night and quizzed Him about eternal life.  Jesus told him that he must be born again by the Spirit of God. He did not  understand. So Jesus told him that the Spirit of God is like the wind (the  Greek word is the same), and He reminded Nicodemus that, although he may often  have experienced the wind in his face, he did not know where it came from or  where it was going. That part was mystery. Says J. G. Riddell in his book &ldquo;What  We Believe&rdquo; (p. 159), &ldquo;All he knows is that it is there. So, Jesus says, those  who have received the Spirit of God know how mysterious His coming is and yet  are sure, beyond all doubt, of the reality of His presence&rdquo;.</p>
<p>(2) The second thing about the Trinity is that it is an  attempt to describe experience. The reason for postulating a complex doctrine  of God rather than a simple one is just this, that man&rsquo;s experience of God had  demanded some such expression. The incarnation, i.e. the coming of Christ, has  complicated the issue, and yet without it no hope of salvation could exist. It  is indispensable, but immediately you grant it, you are faced with plurality in  the Godhead. </p>
<p>The experience of Christ led the early Christians to ascribe  deity to Him. How else can you explain a supernatural resurrection? Their  experience of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost forced them to some explanation of  such Divine power. They had known God in Christ and through the Spirit, and,  without any concern about intellectual difficulties, they formulated the  doctrine of the Trinity. This is perfectly legitimate, and the same phenomena  have still to be explained in our day. You gain nothing by saying that because  difficulties exist you reject the whole thing, as if you were the final  authority yourself, nor do you alter the realities such doctrine seeks to  explain or describe.</p>
<p>The late Dr. H. R. Mackintosh, in his monumental work &ldquo;The  Person of Jesus Christ&rdquo;, writes (p. 509), &ldquo;The doctrine of the Trinity found in  Scripture, however, is naive and experimental . . If God is in Christ, not  figuratively but in reality, and if the Spirit gives a renewing Divine life, these  central facts must somehow be gathered into a conception of Godhead. The  intuition, then, that God is Triune is <em>born  of experience.&rdquo;</em></p>
<p>The early Church used a Latin phrase to try to capture the  nature of God. He is, they said, &ldquo;una substantial, tres personae&rdquo; i.e. &ldquo;one  being, three personal expressions</p>
<p>We may put this in one or two phrases.<br>
  The three expressions of God, as Father, Son and Holy  Spirit, are <em>three </em>living expressions  of <em>one </em>life, As the breath, the words  and the actions of a man are three expressions of one life, so are the persons  of the Godhead expressions of one God.</p>
<p>Or put it another way. They were three personal appearances  of one being. The same God comes to us as the Creator/Father, the Redeemer/Son,  and the Comforter/ Spirit. 1~hey are not three separate or opposing forms, as  if in competition with one another. They are the three ways in which God  reveals Himself.</p>
<p>If you reject them you reject, for example, the deity of  Christ. The early Christians believed that because Jesus Christ did what only  God could do, such as overcoming death, He must be God. In the same way, when  they discovered, alter Christ had left them physically that they could do  things they knew perfectly well they could not do by themselves, they realised  that God had come to live inside them, and to give them His power, a power like  Christ&rsquo;s. They sensed, in their new-found powers to witness, the presence of  Christ, and realised that this was none other than God at work in them. He had  given them His Spirit, as Christ had promised &ldquo;to abide with them for ever.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The fact that we cannot rationalise or explain the mystery  of God or the Spirit of God does not affect the reality. The late C. S. Lewis  put it in these words, &ldquo;In God&rsquo;s dimension, so to speak, you find a being who  is three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while  remaining one cube.&rdquo; <em>(Mere Christianity, </em>p.  138.)</p>
<p>The third person, or personal appearance of God, is the Holy  Spirit. In our materialistic world, whenever you talk of a spirit, or the  spiritual, you run the risk of being considered unrealistic, mystical, and &ldquo;out  of this world&rdquo;. And when the Bible says, &ldquo;God is a Spirit, and they that  worship Him, must worship Him in Spirit and in truth (John 4: 24) men think  this is a vague idea of a bodiless, incorporeal, force you cannot see or feel.  But this is &lsquo;as far from being the New Testament emphasis as it is possible to  get. God is not to be thought of by the Christian just as a living spirit OUT  there, but known as a living Spirit IN HERE. The Christian view of God does not  arise, because of a set of doctrinal propositions. </p>
<p>It is the outcome of living experience of Him. And the  doctrine of the Holy Spirit . . . God as living Spirit, is the way in which the  disciples explained their experience of God. They thought if Jesus left them  they would lose Him. He said they would not. They discovered that,. though  unseen, He was still, with them, and they sensed His presence. That is the  meaning of the Holy Spirit. When Mary Baker Eddy said &ldquo;God is incorporeal,  supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love&rdquo; she was  perhaps being clever: but she. was not really being Christian. The children&rsquo;s  hymn which says, &ldquo;God is always near me, Hearing what I say, Knowing all my  thoughts and deeds, All my work and play&rdquo; is much nearer the Christian truth!</p>
<p>Our Lord began His teaching on God as Living Spirit by  saying something which sounded strange indeed, &ldquo;It is expedient for you that I  go away . . .&ldquo; which means literally, &ldquo;It. is to your advantage that I go  away.&rdquo; Now this must have sounded odd, to say the least. How could it possibly  be to their advantage for this to happen? Surely Jesus was mistaken. But no.  What He meant was this. They had come to take Him as an external presence. He  wanted them to know Him as an internal one. Moreover, so long as He remained  physically present, He was in some sense limited in time and space. And He said  it would be good for them if He went away and sent the Holy Spirit, because  they would learn to walk by faith, not by sight, and also His local influence  would become universal as the Holy Spirit indwelt believers everywhere.</p>
<p>Archbishop William Temple has a striking passage on this.  &ldquo;How could it possibly be true? We look back and think there was never any  privilege like theirs. They had walked with Him in the corn-fields, and sat  with Him in the boat upon the lake; they had supped with Him among His friends.  What greater privilege could there be? Yes—it was a supreme privilege. But what  became of that faith which relied upon the Lord as an external Presence to whom  they could turn at every moment of doubt or need? When the crisis came it all  went to pieces. </p>
<p>&lsquo;They all left Him and fled.&rsquo; Simon Peter did indeed  follow—&rsquo;afar off&rsquo;—to the place where he would stand and warm himself, and say,  &lsquo;I know not this man&rsquo;. Yet a few weeks later these same men are found  confronting the rulers of their nation with a calm and unruffled courage, and  rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the Name. What  explains the transformation? Of course it is that of which the Lord here  speaks; He has withdrawn from them as a visible, external Presence, to return  in the Person of the Spirit as the very breath of their lives.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Now the word Jesus uses of the Holy Spirit is of great  interest and significance. It is &ldquo;The Comforter&rdquo; in the Authorised Version;  &ldquo;The Helper&rdquo; in Moffat&rsquo;s Version, &ldquo;The Divine Helper&rdquo; in J. B. Phillips&rsquo;  Version; and &ldquo;The Advocate&rdquo; in Weymouth and the New English Bible. The Greek  word is <em>Parakletos </em>. . a forensic  term, a word from the law courts. It means the same as our legal term  &ldquo;advocate&rdquo;, a helper in the sense of one called alongside to help. The  suggestion is that God offers Himself to the Christian believer as an advocate  as one who comes alongside to strengthen and aid us in our lives.<br>
  This should be enough to show that the Holy Spirit is to be  thought of in the moss intimate and personal terms.</p>
<p>The point of Pentecost is to take Jesus out of the history  book, however valuable that may be, and bring Him into the everyday experience  of life. It saves us from isolating Christ in book or temple or sacrament or  liturgy and reminds us that He is really in us by the person of His Spirit day  by day.<br>
  Let us try to get this quite cleat. The doctrine of the Holy  Spirit has to do with our experience of God, not our intellectualising about  Him. It has always been this way.</p>
<p>Professor J. S. Stewart makes this point in <em>The Strong Name </em>(p. 251) &ldquo;. . . in its  origins the doctrine of the Trinity came, not from the dialectic of  philosophers nor out of the lecture-room or any Neoplatonic Academy, but  straight out of the experience of ordinary men and women. It did not spring  from the dextrous manipulations of abstract ideas; it sprang from the presence  of concrete facts and realities. Now that is important; for it means that this  doctrine impinges upon, and strikes home to, the experience of ordinary people  like ourselves today.&rdquo;</p>
<h1>THE PURPOSE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT</h1>
<p>It is probably true to say that a great many Christians are  not clear about why the Holy Spirit has been given to the Church. Doubtless  there are some who wonder whether He is really necessary. Is it not enough to  know that God is our Father and Christ our Saviour? Does not the concept of a  Holy Spirit, vague and uncertain, create more problems than it solves?</p>
<p>The problems are caused by the vagueness and uncertainty of  so much thinking about the Holy Spirit. The picture in the New Testament is not  vague or uncertain. It depicts a third person of the Godhead whose specific  function -is to reveal God in Christ to the heart and life of the believer. He  is not remote but near at hand, a warm, intimate, vital, personal reality. He  is the helper, the advocate, the companion of the Christian&rsquo;s way. In a word,  He brings Christ to the inner life. He is not a rival to God the Father. He is  not a competitor with Christ the Saviour. He is the Unseen Presence in every  heart which convinces us that God is our Father and Christ is our Saviour.  Without Him there would be no real and a revolutionary faith in Christ.</p>
<p>The purpose of the Holy Spirit may be described in a number  of ways, and we shall consider these simply. The following purposes can be  discerned in the New Testament. <em>He is to  make Christ universal. </em>The ministry of the Holy Spirit is centred in  Christ. Jesus said, &ldquo;He will glorify Me, for everything He makes known to you  He will draw from what is Mine.&rdquo; (John 16; 14.) </p>
<p>He is called the Spirit of Christ (as such He is sent to  make Christ real in the experience of every Christian). Jesus said to His  disciples, &ldquo;It is for your good that I am leaving you. If I do not go, your  advocate will not come, whereas if I go I will send Him to you. (John 16: 7.)  J. B. Phillips puts it this way, &ldquo;Just before He left the earth He said a  rather peculiar Thing to His followers. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s a good thing for you really&rsquo;, </p>
<p>He told them, &lsquo;that I am leaving you. For now I shall send  you my spirit who will be with you always and everywhere.&rsquo; Do you see the  point? He meant that so long as He was on this earth <em>as a man </em>He could be in only one place at a time, but if He came,  so to speak, as God the Spirit, He could and would be anywhere He was needed  and sincerely called upon to be. In other words, He was not just going to be an  inspiring figure of the past but an available power in the present.&rdquo; <em>(Plain Christianity, </em>p. 100.)</p>
<p>Look at it this way. The Apostles and the other early  Christians had followed Christ and had seen Him physically. When he left them,  He promised that he would only leave them bodily but that He would come back to  them in spirit and stay with them wherever they were. Doubtless they were  puzzled by this and for some days waited and wondered. How, could such a thing  happen? Then came Pentecost with the startling manifestation of a power far  beyond their own. With new boldness and effectiveness they communicated the  Gospel. They knew Christ was with them, living and present. This was the  fulfilment of His promise. The Holy Spirit had come. And if this means anything  today it surely means that the Holy Spirit is given to us to make Christ  present in every believing life everywhere.</p>
<em>His purpose is </em>to <em>bring men to  faith in Christ, </em>In the same passage in John 16~ Jesus said, &ldquo;When He  comes, He will confute the world and show where wrong and right and judgment  lie. He will convict them of wrong by their refusal to believe in Me. He will  convince them that right is on My side by
<p>showing that I go to the Father when I pass from your sight,  and He will convince them of divine judgment by showing that the Prince of this  world stands condemned.&rdquo; (John 16: 8-11.) </p>
<p>Here is stated the Holy Spirit&rsquo;s purpose to convince men of  their own moral weakness and inadequacy and the relevance of Christ to meet  their need. It is the Holy Spirit who persuades men in their innermost beings  of the truth of Christ and His Gospel. Once He has done this, His function is  to build the Christian in his faith in Christ. Some people are perplexed by  Paul&rsquo;s words in Romans 8: 9 &ldquo;You are on the spiritual level if only God&rsquo;s  Spirit dwells within you; and if a man does not possess the Spirit of Christ he  is no Christian.&rdquo; </p>
<p>They are afraid that if they do not have an emotional  feeling which they can identify as the Holy Spirit, they do not have Him and are  therefore not true Christians. To all such it is important to say that if you  have real faith in Christ as Saviour and Lord, then you have the Holy Spirit  because that faith is brought about by Him. He is given to reveal Christ. When  Jesus said, &ldquo;He will guide you into all the truth&rdquo; He made it perfectly clear  by what follows that all the truth the Holy Spirit could reveal would be  consistent with Christ.</p>
<p>Professor J. S. McEwan in his little book, &ldquo;Why We Are  Christians&rdquo; makes the following very helpful comment: &ldquo;The task of the Holy  Spirit is to take the revelation given in Christ and to bring it home to us  step by step as we are able to grasp it. The Christian who understands this  will not be led astray by &lsquo;freak religions&rsquo; whose founders imagine that they  have some &lsquo;new revelation&rsquo; divulged especially to them by the Holy Spirit. The  Spirit points only to Christ and reveals only what is in Christ . . . it is  important also to note that it is no part of the Spirit&rsquo;s work to make us  conscious of Himself, but rather to make us conscious of Christ. Faith in  Christ, not any peculiar emotion or feeling, is the proof that we have the  Spirit.&rdquo;<br>
  This simple statement has a profound implication for the  Christian and we shall refer to it again. Let us look a little closer at these  two concepts we have seen in this section, namely that the Holy Spirit brings a  man to faith in Christ<br>
  and leads him into the truth of Christ. As the giver of  faith, the Holy Spirit is the creator of spiritual life and the evidence of  that life is a living faith which, as Paul says in Ephesians 2: 8 is &ldquo;. . . the  gift of God&rdquo;. This faith is not to be confused with an intellectual set of  propositions. You can work that up superficially without the Holy Spirit, but  real faith is a vital and vitalising factor involving a simple, but complete  trust in Christ on the one hand and a real and meaningful recognition of His  sovereignty in life on the other hand, and taith of that kind though it may be  helped to clarification by intellectual processes is really brought into being  through the working of the Holy Spirit. Let me ask you if you are a Christian,  why do you believe? Is it for intellectual reasons?</p>
<p>You are probably convinced of the veracity of the  resurrection of Christ on historical grounds. I believe anyone who studies the  evidence should be so convinced. You may be persuaded by the inner logic of the  Christian faith. You may recognise the dynamic results of real Christianity in  history and so on. But behind all that is there not an inner consciousness that  the claims of Christ ring true? The chances are that they did ring true before  you were as intellectually clear about your faith as you now are. You were  persuaded, not by intellectualising or rationalising or intuition. </p>
<p>The New Testament teaches that your persuasion was brought  about by the Holy Spirit. I. have been convinced of Christ since boyhood.  Subsequent facing of the challenges to the Christian faith and questioning of  its presuppositions and teaching have led me to much clearer understandings,  till now I believe it is possible to defend the Christian faith and its  precepts intellectually against all comers. The original persuasion, however,  and the experience which has been the anchor of life ever since is, I believe,  the work of Christ by His Holy Spirit.</p>
<p>When Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would be the guide  of the Christian into all truth, He was reminding us that Christian wisdom and  discernment are not dependent on the intellectual capacity of the individual,  but upon the inspiration and ministry of the Holy Spirit. If this were not so,  Christian growth and maturity would only be possible to the intellectually  advanced. In fact, it is available for all Christians, since all Christians  have the Holy Spirit. This Spirit is given to every believer, not just as a  guarantee of our acceptance by God, but as the guide of our lives. This does  not in any sense deny the value of using our minds to the limit of. our  capacity, It is an assertion that intellectual acumen, without the Holy Spirit,  will not lead a man to growth in the truth of God.</p>
<p>Now this is a very practical point, If the Holy Spirit is to  be our guide, we must learn to depend and draw upon His guidance daily. It is  thus Christ indwells and leads us by His Holy Spirit which He has given to  guide us in our living.</p>
<p>The Holy Spirit, however, is given not only to bring us to  faith in Christ and then to lead us into truth concerning Him, but to direct  the course of our lives. The Apostle Paul puts it very directly in Romans 8: 4  where he describes Christians as those &ldquo;. . . whose conduct, no longer under  the control of our lower nature, is directed by the Spirit.&rdquo; In verses 14 and  is he expands this by saying, &ldquo;For all who are moved by the Spirit of God are  sons of God. The Spirit you have received is not a Spirit of slavery leading  you back into a life of fear, but a Spirit which makes us sons enabling us to  cry Abba, Father.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Here the Apostle makes it very clear that God&rsquo;s purpose in  giving us the Holy Spirit is to bring Christ into our everyday lives so that we  may experience God&rsquo;s leadership. When he calls that Spirit the Spirit of  adoption, he clearly indicates that now we are meant to live under God in the  relationship of children to a father. We are, as it were, living under His roof  by His provision and in obedience to His will as provided by the Holy Spirit  within us. </p>
<p>The word translated &ldquo;move&rdquo; in verse 14 of Romans 8, when  Paul says, &ldquo;For all who are moved by the Spirit of God are sons of God&rdquo; is a  Greek word which means &ldquo;to lead along&rdquo;, &ldquo;to guide&rdquo;, &ldquo;to steer&rdquo;. Now this is a  startling suggestion. So many Christians seen to be quite happy to live their  lives on general principles like decency, church-going, saying their prayers,  not being <em>too </em>selfish and the like,  without any real reference to God as a living, present, spirit within. Paul  speaks sternly to such when he says, &ldquo;If a man does not possess the Spirit of  Christ, he is no Christian.&rdquo;<br>
  <em>He is given to make us  like Christ. </em>We have just seen that He is called &ldquo;the Spirit of Christ&rdquo;. If  this is so, then the character He seeks to produce in us will be a character  like Christ&rsquo;s. Schleiermacher in the 19th century said, &ldquo;The fruits of the  Spirit are the virtues of Christ.&rdquo; It is therefore inconceivable that the Holy  Spirit should make us other than Christ-like. This is important in the light of  the tendency among some Christians so to stress certain of the gifts of the  Holy Spirit that they overlook this central purpose of the Holy Spirit&rsquo;s  ministry in the Christian, namely to make him like Christ; for many find some  of the gifts of the Spirit particularly attractive and desirable. Unless their  experience of the Spirit creates in them a character like Christ&rsquo;s, then their  experience is deficient.</p>
<p>When Paul spells out the fruits or the harvest of the Spirit  in Galatians 5: 22, 23 as &ldquo;love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,  fidelity, gentleness, and self-control,&rdquo; he describes characteristics. of  .Christ. The man who grows in these virtues grows in Christ. The only power  able to lead us into such growth is the Holy Spirit. In Galatians 5: 25, Paul  concludes his logic simply, &ldquo;If the Spirit is the source of our life, let the  Spirit also direct our course.&rdquo; That course will always lead us nearer to and  make us more like Christ. Nothing can take the place of this, It is so  consistent with what Jesus Himself said, &ldquo;He who dwells in Me as I dwell in him  bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.&rdquo; It is clear that we  dwell in Christ as His Spirit dwells in us.</p>
<p><em>He is given </em>to <em>equip us for service and witness, </em>Jesus  is recorded in Acts 1: 8 as saying, &ldquo;You will receive power when the Holy  Spirit comes upon you and you will bear witness for me . . .&ldquo; It is quite clear  that the Holy Spirit was given to the first Christians to strengthen them for  their witness in the world. The fact that He was to lead men into &ldquo;all truth&rdquo;  has sometimes led some Christians to believe that the sole or main purpose of  the Holy Spirit is doctrinal, to keep from error, or to give understanding of  the teaching of the Bible. Of course this is part of His function. The  Reformers were doubtless right in insisting in the inner witness of the Holy  Spirit—&rdquo;Internum testimonium spiritus sancti&rdquo;—as essential to a real  understanding of the Scripture, but all such understanding and experience of  the Holy Spirit are given for the express purpose of bearing witness to Christ.  Indeed, our Lord linked the witness of the Spirit and our witness to Christ  together when He said, as recorded in John 15; 26, 27 &ldquo;But when your advocate  has come whom I will send you from the Father—the Spirit of truth which issues  from the Father—He will bear witness to me. And you also are My witnesses .</p>
<p>First, the Spirit bears witness to Christ within the  Christian and inspires the Christian to bear witness to Christ in the world.  Indeed wherever you look in the Bible, Old or New Testament, the filling of the  Holy Spirit is always connected with witness and service, e.g. it is written of  Bezaleel in Exodus 31: 3 &ldquo;I have filled him with divine spirit making him  skilful and ingenious . . . for workmanship of every kind.&rdquo; There the Spirit  was given for service. In Numbers 24: 2 it is said of Balaam, &ldquo;The Spirit of  God came upon him and he uttered his oracle.&rdquo; </p>
<p>Again, the Spirit is given for witness and service. It is  written in Judges 6: 34 &ldquo;Then the Spirit of the Lord took possession of Gideon;  he sounded the trumpet and the Abiezarites were called out to follow him . . .&ldquo;  Again the Spirit equipped him for service. In the account of the anointing of  David in 1 Samuel 16 when he was commissioned to serve as King, we read (v 13)  &ldquo;Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon David and was with him from that day  onwards.&rdquo; In Ezekiel 11: 24 there is the testimony, &ldquo;And the Spirit lifted me up  and brought me to the exiles in Chaldea . . . I told the exiles all that the  Lord had revealed to me.&rdquo; </p>
<p>Again, the Spirit is given for service. In the New Testament  the emphasis is the same. It is typified in Acts 2:18, when an Old Testament  Scripture is taken as the promise of God fulfilled in the gift of the Spirit to  the Church, &ldquo;I will pour out upon every one a portion of my Spirit, and your  sons and daughters shall prophecy, your young men shall see visions and your  old men shall dream dreams.&rdquo; Here again, the Spirit is given for witness and  service.<br>
  This needs to be emphasised also because of the common  errors of thinking the really important thing is to experience the  &ldquo;charismatic&rdquo; gifts of the Holy Spirit that is the special gifts of His grace.  Often gifts of healing and tongues and the like are desired as ends in  themselves or as &ldquo;proofs&rdquo; of the Spirit&rsquo;s presence. Now in a proper setting  these are legitimate and right. In fact, however, they have no spiritual value  unless they are instruments of witness and service to Christ. If they testify  to Christ and communicate Him to others they are valid. If they are merely  expressions of some alleged spiritual superiority over other Christians, they  are spurious. The Holy Spirit is not given to place us a cut above others but  to enable us to be effective witnesses to our living faith in our living Lord.</p>
<p><em>He is given </em>to <em>unite us in fellowship. </em>In Philippians  2: 1 Paul writes, &ldquo;If then our common life in Christ yields anything to stir  the heart, any loving consolation, any sharing of the Spirit, any warmth of  affection or compassion, fill up my cup of happiness by thinking and feeling  alike . .<br>
  Christian fellowship is not simply the result of common  interest, It is not like the friendship that exists between members of the same  club, It is a fellowship deep and rich and lasting which is spontaneously felt  between Christians who share a common faith in, and love for, Christ, It is  &ldquo;the sharing of the Spirit&rdquo;, </p>
<p>It is the result of our &ldquo;common life in Christ&rdquo; mediated to  us by the Spirit, and so long as the Church keeps Christ central to its life,  the sharing of the Spirit, the fellowship of the Spirit, will be real. When the  Church gets off-centre and does not build its life around Christ, fellowship  wanes because the Holy Spirit is not free to do His work of testifying to  Christ and leading us into the truth as it is in Christ.</p>
<p>There is a difference between human friendship and Christian  fellowship. True Christian fellowship finds its centre in Christ and you can  tell the presence of the Holy Spirit by the place Christ has. Such fellowship  transcends all barriers, social, racial, cultural, as nothing else can, because  the Holy Spirit makes men of all races and classes and cultures members of one  household and brothers in one family.</p>
<p>The reality of this fellowship is described by Paul in  Ephesians 2, when he says that Christ has broken down the biggest known barrier  in the history of mankind, the barrier between the Jew and the Gentile. Now he  says, &ldquo;Through Him we both alike have access to the Father in the one Spirit.  Thus you are no longer aliens in a foreign land but fellow citizens with God&rsquo;s  people, members of God&rsquo;s household . . In Him you too are being built with all  the rest to a spiritual dwelling for God.&rdquo; (Ephesians 2: 18-22). The Authorised  Version renders this phrase &ldquo;An habitation of God through the Spirit&rdquo;. It is  the Spirit that makes us one in this sense.</p>
<p>Or take another picture in Ephesians. Ephesians 4: 4 says,  &ldquo;There is one body and one spirit . . .&ldquo; You can see the implication quite  clearly. Christians belong together in the same way as different parts of one  body belong together. They are united by one spirit, In another passage in  Galatians 4: 6 Paul says, &ldquo;To prove that you are sons, God has sent into our  hearts the spirit of His son, crying Abba, Father.&rdquo; Now the description of  Christians as sons of God by the Holy Spirit is yet another illustration of the  fellowship which exists between those who belong to the same father. All of  this is the work of the Spirit. The practical implication of all this is that  the Holy Spirit could make the Church the biggest force for peace in the world.  As we are united through the Holy Spirit in a oneness which exists in Christ,  we ought, by the expression of that oneness, to be a constant challenge to, and  influence in, society.</p>
<p>That this is so seldom the case in modern Westernised  Christianity is an indictment on our over-identity with human &ldquo;systems and  structures&rdquo; and our reticence to stand, with Christ, over against society, or  to go with him, &ldquo;Outside the camp . . . bearing this reproach&rdquo;, if need be.</p>
<p><strong>THE POWER OF THE HOLY  SPIRIT</strong><br>
  <strong>A </strong>great deal of  Christian thinking about the Holy Spirit is academic, It is possible to believe  all the right things about the Holy Spirit and yet to be ignorant of His real  influence. Without question, one of the key words in the New Testament relating  to the Holy Spirit is the word &ldquo;power&rdquo;. In his second letter to Timothy 1: 7  Paul writes, &ldquo;For the Spirit that God gave us is no craven Spirit but one to  inspire strength . . .&ldquo; The Authorised Version justifiably renders the meaning  that &ldquo;God has not given us the Spirit of fear, but of power . . .&ldquo; The word is  accurately translated thus. The gift of God&rsquo;s spirit is the gift of power.<br>
  Our Lord confirms this in His promise to the disciples  before His ascension recorded in Acts 1: 8 &ldquo;But you will receive power when the  Holy Spirit comes upon you The coming of the Holy Spirit and the receiving of  power were intimately bound up together in the teaching of Jesus. On another  occasion He said to His disciples, &ldquo;Apart from me you can do nothing.&rdquo; This was  said in the context of a statement about dwelling in Christ and having Christ  dwell in us. The point is plain. The Christian and the Church will lack power  unless it is received from the Holy Spirit. Now in a number of places the  nature of the Spirit&rsquo;s power is described simply.</p>
<p><em>He gives the power to  confess Christ. </em>Jesus said, &ldquo;You will receive power when the Holy Spirit  comes upon you; and you will bear witness for Me . . .&ldquo; Between the ascension  of Christ and the day of Pentecost the Church remained behind closed doors. It  was with the coming of the Holy Spirit with His gifts to the Church that new  power was experienced. Stanley Jones has this to say, &ldquo;You might have told that  band of disciples behind closed doors for fear that since Jesus had arisen from  the dead there was nothing to be afraid of. But that would not have taken them  out from behind those closed doors. </p>
<p>There was only one way to get them out and that was to raise  the tone of the inner life so that they were inwardly a match for outward  circumstances. Pentecost gave them that inner adequacy. Inner<br>
  life became adequate for outer life, henceforth nothing  could stop them. Fears fell away as irrelevancies. Out of that upper room which  had been the place of fears they burst with the glad news, they smiled at  poverty, rejoiced under stripes, were elated at their humiliations, sang in  midnight prisons, courted death and shame of every man everywhere in their own  abundant life. God had matched them against that need and they were spiritually  adequate.&rdquo;</p>
<p>That happened at Pentecost. The power they lacked themselves  came through the Holy Spirit. Many people find practical difficulty in confessing  their Christian faith. The Holy Spirit has been promised to us, however, and  His power is ours as we trust His living presence. A simple but impressive  illustration of this in the New Testament is in Acts 8, where Philip, whom we  are told was &ldquo;full of the spirit&rdquo;, witnessed to the Ethiopian on a desert road.  We read, &ldquo;The Spirit said to Philip, &lsquo;Go and join the carriage&rsquo;<br>
  .&lsquo;&lsquo; It was under the impulse and the direction of the Holy  Spirit within that Philip exercised a convincing witness to his companion.</p>
<p><em>He has power to  convince. </em>Jesus said of the Spirit, When He comes He will confute the world  and show where wrong and right judgment lie. He will convict them of wrong by  their refusal to believe in Me; He will convince them that right is on My side  . . . and He will convince them of divine judgment      (John 16: 8-11 NEB). Now this is  sometimes hard to grasp. We are tempted to believe that the way to convince men  of anything is by cold irrefutable logic. That may be the way to defeat them.  It is seldom the way to convince them. The Apostle Paul&rsquo;s simple statement in 1  Corinthians 4: 20 is significant, &ldquo;The Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk  but of power.&rdquo; Of course there is a place for Christian apologetics, argumentation.  exposition and &ldquo;defence of the Gospel&rdquo;. </p>
<p>The Early Church believed, however, quite clearly that it is  the Holy Spirit and not these other factors who convinces men. A mother does  not convince her child of her love by argumentation. She might say to her  child, &ldquo;I love you and you know it because I buy you ice cream and I provide  your clothes, I cook your food, I make sure you have a comfortable bed, I care  for you when you are unwell and so on.</p>
<p>These arguments would not convince the child. Nor could the  would-be suitor hope to make much impression if he had to resort to arguments  about the reality of his love. No, in both cases the conviction lies deeper  than words and is a matter of spirit communicating with spirit. So the Holy  Spirit is given to the Christian. Paul testifies, &ldquo;. . . I have been Christ&rsquo;s  instrument to bring the Gentiles into His allegiance by word and deed, by the  force of miraculous signs and by the power of the Holy Spirit.&rdquo; (Romans 15: 19  NEB). And when he wrote his first letter to the Thessalonians he testified  &ldquo;when we brought you the Gospel, we brought it not in mere words but in the  power of the Holy Spirit and with strong conviction as you know well.&rdquo; It is  evident from these passages that the New Testament&rsquo;s understanding is that men  are convinced, as the indwelling Spirit exercises His power by creating in us  lives which commend Christ to the unbeliever, and which convince him of the  truth of the Gospel. <em>He gives the power  to communicate. </em>Although this idea is closely linked to the last, I want to  hold it separate in our thinking for a very simple reason. It seems to be that  the story of Pentecost lays great stress on this particular point and that one  of the lessons we must learn from that story is that the Holy Spirit enables us  to communicate the Gospel effectively. Not only does He penetrate the hearts  and consciences of other people, convincing them of Christ, He gives to the  Christian Church and individuals a capacity and ability beyond their own,  enabling them to communicate the Gospel effectively.<br>
  Much discussion has taken place on the nature of the gift on  tongues in Acts </p>
<p>2. The resolving of the issue as to the exact nature of the  gift of tongues as recorded in Acts 2 is really incidental. Whether we conclude  that the Apostles were given the ability to speak other languages as Acts 2: 4  says very explicitly, or that the Holy Spirit by equally supernatural action  affected the hearing of the listeners, the end result is the same. The  disciples in the midst of a cosmopolitan, sometimes curious and often hostile  crowd, received the power to communicate the Gospel. I think that is the heart  of the lesson. The Christian individual or Church may devise all manner of  media of communication but it is axiomatic to Christian thought that if we  depend on &lsquo;method&rdquo; for effective communication and fail to draw on the inner  presence and promised power of the Holy Spirit who resides in us we may  communicate words but we will not communicate faith.</p>
<p>The importance of communication is also underlined in 1  Corinthians 14: 13 ff., where the gift of tongues appears, The Apostle says &ldquo;I  would rather speak five intelligible words, for the benefit of others as well  as myself, than thousands of words in the language of ecstasy&rdquo;.<br>
  <em>He gives power to  conquer. </em>The Holy Spirit is the source of Christian morality. As Paul puts  it in Romans 8: 26, The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness.&rdquo; He teaches  that the only way to overcome our lower nature is by the Holy Spirit. In  Galatians 5: 16 we read &ldquo;. . . If you are guided by the Spirit you will not  fulfil the desires of your lower nature. That nature sets its desires against  the Spirit while the Spirit fights against it.&rdquo; He then contrasts the life of  the &ldquo;lower nature&rdquo; and the life of the &ldquo;Spirit&rdquo;, the first including impurity,  indecency, idolatry, quarrelling, rage, orgies and the like, and the life of  the Spirit being marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,  fidelity, gentleness, and self-control. It is the Spirit who gives moral power.  Paul describes these virtues as &ldquo;the fruit of the Spirit&rdquo; or &ldquo;the harvest of  the Spirit&rdquo;, implying that where the Spirit is a controlling factor in the  Christian life these characteristics will emerge. Like seed coming to harvest  they will grow slowly and often imperceptibly, but they will be more and more  apparent, and increasingly mature. This formation of character and imparting of  moral power is a principal function of the Holy Spirit.</p>
<p>What is claimed is this. Man cannot overcome his moral  weakness unaided. The Christian does not achieve moral strength simply by  accepting spiritual principles. He needs God&rsquo;s help within. Paul sets out this  teaching at the beginning of Romans 8 when he says, &ldquo;. . . In Christ Jesus, the  life-giving law of the Spirit has set you free from the law of sin and death.  What the law could never do because our lower nature robbed it of all potency,  God has done . . . So that the commandment of the law may find fulfilment in us  whose conduct, no longer under the control of our lower nature, is directed by the  Spirit.&rdquo; God has given us His spirit to make us better men, It is not for  nothing that He is called &ldquo;the Holy Spirit&rdquo; or &ldquo;the Spirit of Holiness&rdquo;.</p>
<p><strong>THE POSSESSION OF THE  HOLY SPIRIT</strong><br>
  Many people are concerned about whether or not they really  possess the Holy Spirit. Let me at once insist that the New Testament teaches  that whoever believes in Christ truly as Lord and Savior possesses the Holy  Spirit. He is not the prerogative or exclusive possession of the chosen few but  belongs to all who belong to Christ. There is no need for anxiety for the  humble believer who reads Paul&rsquo;s words in Romans 8: 9 where he says, &ldquo;You are  on the spiritual level if only God&rsquo;s Spirit dwells within you; and if a man  does not possess the Spirit of Christ he is no Christian.&rdquo; </p>
<p>Here let me recall again the simple but incisive point made  by Professor McEwan in &ldquo;Why We Are Christians&rdquo; page 43, &ldquo;Faith in Christ, not  any peculiar emotion or feeling, is the proof that we have the Spirit.&rdquo;<br>
  This is the uniform insistence of the New Testament and  should bring comfort to every Christian. Comfort not complacency however, since  those who possess the Spirit are meant then to &ldquo;walk in the Spirit.&rdquo; As the  Apostle urges in Galatians 5:16, &ldquo;If you are guided by the Spirit you will not  fulfil the desires of your lower nature&rdquo;, and a few verses later, &ldquo;The harvest  of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity,  gentleness, and self-control.&rdquo; </p>
<p>The Holy Spirit is possessed by. all believers in Christ,  but not all live under His influence so that life is molded by Him.  Consequently, many fail to demonstrate the fruits or the gifts of the Holy  Spirit. Let us consider the possession of the Holy Spirit in two ways.<br>
  <em>The method of  possession. </em>How is the Holy Spirit received, by what means and at what  time? There are two main views of this. There is the view that the Holy Spirit  is given through Christian ritual. Of course this views varies very much in its  expressions.</p>
<p>For some traditions in the Christian Church the principal  means of receiving God and His Spirit is at the Sacrament of the Lord&rsquo;s Supper  or the Holy Communion. Here, it is believed, grace is transferred and the  Spirit is promised to the participant. Of course we all know the danger of this<br>
  view—that it can, when held superficially, lead to a  religion which substitutes performance for a spirit of trust in God. At its  worst this becomes a superstitious religion. </p>
<p>Let it be noted, however, that there are many people who  value the Sacraments because they come to them with such devotion of spirit and  sincerity of purpose that they do indeed sense the presence of the Living  Christ by His Spirit. For all such, the Lord&rsquo;s Table is a very precious  commemoration and means of grace. Would that we all set as high a store by this  trusting place of our Lord as do some of the best spirits in the more  liturgically minded churches.</p>
<p>There are others, of course, who believe that the Holy  Spirit is given specifically in and through baptism. Without raising here the  question of the nature or form of baptism, we simply note the view that baptism  is taken to be accompanied by the gift of the Holy Spirit in the thinking of  many Christians, who base their view on the Pentecostal preaching of Peter who  said, &ldquo;Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus the Messiah  for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy  Spirit.&rdquo; (Acts 2: 38.)</p>
<p>There are still others who believe that the giving of the  Holy Spirit is expressed in the laying on of hands, since the New Testament has  cases of special gifts being given to the accompaniment of this rite, as in the  case of Timothy to whom Paul writes, &ldquo;. . . I now remind you to stir into flame  the gift of God which is within you through the laying on of my hands.&rdquo; (11 Timothy  1: 6). There are also those who believe that a precedent was clearly set by  Paul in Ephesus when, as Luke records, &ldquo;. . - And when Paul had laid his hands  on them the Holy Spirit came upon them . . .&ldquo; From this stream of thought comes  the practice of laying on of hands on special occasions such as confirmation,  ordination, indicating the activity and involvement and gift of the Holy  Spirit.</p>
<p>There are others who insist that the Holy Spirit is given in  a very special way in an experience variously named as &ldquo;the baptism in the Holy  Spirit,&rdquo; &ldquo;the fullness of the Holy Spirit,&rdquo; or some such expression. Those who  hold such a<br>
  view will point out the clear indication by John the Baptist  who said, &ldquo;. . . But there is one to come who is mightier than I . . . He will  baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire&rdquo; (Luke 3:16). The gift of the  Holy Spirit in this sense has been believed by some to bring about in the  Christian life a state of &ldquo;sinless perfection&rdquo; or has been regarded as &ldquo;a  second blessing&rdquo; parallel to the dramatic change associated with conversion to  Christ. Many exponents of this view look for evidence of the baptism of the  Holy Spirit in quite specific ways and particularly in the gift of tongues or  ecstatic utterance.</p>
<p>Alongside all of these is the simple insistence that the  Holy Spirit is given to all who believe and that He is the inalienable  possession of every Christian, the evidence of His presence being the existence  of faith in Christ which the Holy Spirit came to give and to cultivate. Where  is the truth to be found? Does the New Testament have a clear pattern? In reply  it should be stated at once that one of the main things which emerges from the  New Testament in relation to the Holy Spirit is that He is free. He is not  bound by our understanding or our structures or our theory. The Apostle Paul in  a passage on spiritual gifts makes it quite clear that the Holy Spirit is the  free initiator and giver of all such gifts, &ldquo;That all these gifts are the work  of one and the same Spirit distributing them separately to each individual at  will.&rdquo; (1 Cor. 12: it NEB.) Clearly, the Christian was never meant to dictate  to or direct the Spirit and we need not hope to try to push Him into channels  we have prepared. Along with this it is important to stress again that there  will always be mystery in the Holy Spirit. Remember Jesus&rsquo; words to Nicodemus, </p>
<p>&ldquo;The wind blows where it will: you hear the sound of it but  you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So with everyone who  is born from Spirit.&rdquo; (John 3: 8.) It seems perfectly clear that Jesus did not  expect us to try to master the Spirit by establishing inflexible patterns or  understandings to which He must be subject, but to recognise quite simply that  the Spirit of God is as free as the wind.</p>
<p>This being so, it becomes difficult to insist that certain<br>
  ceremonies convey the Holy Spirit. The idea that the Spirit  is given invariably or inevitably through a rite however sacred like Holy  Communion or Christian Baptism, cannot be clearly sustained by reference to the  New Testament. For example, Peter&rsquo;s words at Pentecost, &ldquo;Repent and be baptised  every one of you in the name of Jesus the Messiah for the forgiveness of your  sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.&rdquo; (Acts 2: 38.) do not make  the reception of the Holy Spirit the automatic accompaniment of baptism. He  linked repentance and baptism, faith and baptism. Surely he was saying that it  is in connection with the total commitment of the believer expressed in  repentance towards God and baptism in the name of Jesus that the Holy Spirit  was given. </p>
<p>To make His coming the automatic consequence of a rite is  certainly to go beyond the New Testament. It has been argued that the account  given from the early verses of Acts 19 suggests the giving of the Holy Spirit  in connection with baptism and the laying on of hands, &ldquo;On hearing this they  were baptised into the name of the Lord Jesus; and when Paul had laid his hands  on them the Holy Spirit came upon them . . .&ldquo; G. H. C. Macgregor comments on  this passage that these people &ldquo;cannot in any full sense have been Christians .  . . The whole account is somewhat obscure and Luke seems to have no very clear  knowledge as to who these people were. Probably the idea that it was part of  the function of the apostles to mediate the gift of the Holy Spirit has  transformed the conversion of some disciples of John to Christianity into a  story of how imperfect Christians were changed into perfect ones by the laying  on of apostolic hands.&rdquo; </p>
<p>Here, faith in Christ, baptism, laying on of hands and the  gift of the Holy Spirit are held very much together and it looks as if these  people were at this point making their total response to the Gospel. That is  the important factor and not any one of its constituent elements isolated from  the others. It is also hard to support from the New Testament the idea that,  &ldquo;baptism in the Holy Spirit&rdquo; is a separate and dramatic event bringing about a  state of &ldquo;sinless perfection&rdquo; in the Christian.</p>
<p> There is nothing to  suggest that even the apostles lived in such a state, although there are clear  suggestions that the life which is submitted to the influence of the Spirit is  kept from sin, while submission to the Holy Spirit is maintained. This is  certainly the implication of Galatians 5:16, &ldquo;If you are guided by the Spirit  you will not fulfil the desires of your lower nature.&rdquo; By the same token, Paul  made it clear in writing to those who were committed Christians in Ephesus that  it was possible to go back on their experience of the fullness of the Holy  Spirit when he wrote to them, &ldquo;And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God for  that Spirit is the seal with which you were marked for the day of our final  liberation.&rdquo; (Eph 4: 30 NEB.) </p>
<p>This is said following a passage about the kind of life the  Christian is meant to live. In other words, it is clearly taught that, however  real and deep a man&rsquo;s experience of God&rsquo;s indwelling Spirit may have been, he  can by self-will thwart that Spirit. There is no question of a once-for-all act  which gives him a new and irreversible position of sinlessness. Much more, the  picture is of constantly renewed dependence on and submission to the Holy  Spirit.<br>
  It is perfectly right to desire to seek the fullness of the  Holy Spirit as the source of power for living, and as the giver of spiritual  gifts, and to do so daily as the natural means of living the Christian life:  but any attempt to relate the Holy Spirit exclusively to ritual acts or to an  inflexibly conceived experience subsequent to Christian commitment is hard to  reconcile with various passages of the New Testament. We read that after His  resurrection, Jesus &ldquo;breathed on them saying &lsquo;Receive the Holy Spirit&rsquo; &ldquo; (John  20: 23.) The Spirit was given at the word and command of Christ. Moreover, Luke  11: 13 suggests simply that God gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him  without any kind of ritual or formal obligation. It is fair to say that both of  these passages have been questioned by New Testament scholars on the basis of  what they originally meant. The record at the end of Acts 10, however, is  significant, where Peter makes clear reference to unbaptised Christians, &ldquo;who  have received the Holy Spirit</p>
<p>Just as we did ourselves,&rdquo; although this clearly suggests  that the gift of the Holy Spirit is not inevitably dependent on baptism, or any  ritual for that matter. It is also worthy of note that Peter immediately after  saying this &ldquo;ordered them to be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ.&rdquo; He did  not debase or dismiss baptism. He did, however, make it quite clear that the  Holy Spirit can be given with or without the most sacred rites.</p>
<p>Stanley Jones has some penetrating comments about the giving  of the Spirit at Pentecost, &ldquo;. . . When the supreme moment at Pentecost came  and the Spirit was received, they were undergoing no rite or ceremony of any  type or kind . . . Our Gospel uses rites and ceremonies but it is not bound up  with any of them in the sense that any rite or ceremony is essential to  receiving God&rsquo;s highest gift, Himself.&rdquo; On the question of baptism and the Holy  Spirit he adds, &ldquo;I believe in Christian baptism because I do not believe it to  be absolutely essential. </p>
<p>As a method of expressing and declaring one&rsquo;s faith before  the world nothing is more beautiful and expressive, but as a <em>sine qua non </em>for finding the Spirit,  nothing has been more disastrous, for under this conception the baptised are  supposed to keep up the idea which in many cases amounts to a fiction that they  have necessarily found the Spirit in baptism and the consequence has been that  while the rite has been thereby raised, the fact of the Spirit in the life has  been thereby lowered, lowered almost to becoming meaningless.&rdquo;<br>
  Without doubt, the most decisive passage of all is in Paul&rsquo;s  letter to the Galatians in the third chapter, verses 2, 5 and 14 are of special  importance. Here is what he says, &ldquo;Answer me one question, did you receive the  Spirit by keeping the law or by <em>believing </em>the Gospel message . . . I ask you then, when God gives you the Spirit and  works miracles among you, why is this? Is it because you keep the law, or is it  because you have <em>faith </em>in the Gospel  message?&rdquo; (v 5). And finally, ~&lsquo;. . . So that we might receive the promised  Spirit <em>through faith.&rdquo; </em>(v 14).</p>
<p>In this passage, Paul challenges the view that the Spirit is  given in response to the observation of ritual. The burden of the Galatian  letter of course was very much that of the relationship of circumcision to  faith or legalism to faith. He insists quite clearly that it is faith in Jesus  Christ which sets a man&rsquo;s feet on the Christian path and which guarantees to  him the personal presence of the Holy Spirit.</p>
<p>In his exposition on Galatians, Raymond T. Stamm, New  Testament Professor in Gettysburg, writes, &ldquo;Paul has in mind a believing kind  of hearing that welcomes the Gospel and leads the hearer to entrust himself to  Christ, In the hearing of the word which creates the faith, the Spirit is  received.&rdquo; And Professor Burton declares, &ldquo;The receiving of the Spirit here  referred to is evidently that which marked the beginning of their Christian  lives,&rdquo; and talks of &ldquo;Faith as the means by which men become acceptable to God  and that through such faith they receive the Spirit.&rdquo; (International Critical  Commentary Galatians pages 147 and 176).</p>
<p>On the basis of this passage supported by the general  teaching of the New Testament, we can therefore assert that the Holy Spirit is  given as men believe in Christ. When men accept the message of Christ, the Holy  Spirit comes to them. It was this precisely which Paul was eager to establish  as against the Judaistic elements in the Galatian Church who wanted to impose  certain rituals and to insist that they would add something to the validity. of  Christian experience. Of course these rituals were Jewish and not Christian as  in the case of circumcision, but Paul is anxious to make clear the point that  the Holy Spirit is given not on a mechanical basis in response to the operation  of any rite or ceremony, however sacred or precious, but in response to . faith  in Christ.</p>
<p><strong>THE PROOF OF  POSSESSION</strong><br>
  How can a person be sure of having the Holy Spirit? Tension  exists between those who say the evidence of possession of the Spirit is to be  seen in &ldquo;the fruits of the Spirit&rdquo;, and others who tend to the view that the  Spirit&rsquo;s fullness is demonstrated in &ldquo;the gifts of the Spirit.&rdquo; There is no  conflict in the New Testament between these views. In a word, the fruits of the  Spirit are meant to be manifest in every Christian life. The gifts of the  Spirit, as the New Testament makes clear, are God&rsquo;s to give freely to individual  men and to the Church as He wills, not as men demand. Paul makes this  abundantly clear in an outspoken passage in I Corinthians 12 from verse 4 which  is worth noting here.</p>
<p>&ldquo;There are varieties of gifts, <em>but the same Spirit, </em>there are varieties of service but the same  Lord, there are many forms of work but all of them in all men are the work of  the same God. In each of us <em>the Spirit is  manifested </em>in one particular way for some useful purpose. One man <em>through the Spirit </em>has the gift of wise  speech, while another, <em>by the power </em>of <em>the same Spirit, </em>can put the deepest  knowledge into words. Another, <em>by the  same Spirit, </em>is granted faith; another <em>by  the one .spirit </em>gifts of healing and another miraculous powers; another has  the gift of prophecy and another ability to distinguish true spirit from false;  yet another has the gift of ecstatic utterance of different kinds and another  the ability to interpret. But all these gifts are <em>the work </em>of <em>one and the same  Spirit </em>distributing them separately to each individual at will.&rdquo;</p>
<p>If it is ever insisted that one particular expression or  gift of the Holy Spirit is an essential proof of His presence, this is in  itself evidence that those insisting on such a position have taken their leave  of the New Testament. We have no right to demand either from Him or from  Christians one gift above others. To do so is to deny the Holy Spirit His  freedom to distribute His gifts as God knows to be best. This being clearly  stated in the New Testament, we must not only look for proof of the Holy Spirit  in the Christian life to the gifts ~f the Spirit as such which are indicated in  the New<br>
  Testament. If we do we must be very careful to bear in mind  these gifts are very much more than the dramatic gifts of healing, miraculous  powers, tongues, and even the impressive and persuasive gifts of prophecy  (preaching), inspired utterance, administration, or teaching, all of which are  indicated in 1 Corinthians 12 or Romans 12. The gifts which show the Holy  Spirit&rsquo;s presence and enabling significantly include (see 1 Corinthians 12:  28) the &ldquo;ability to help others or power to guide them&rdquo;. These are equally the  gift of the Spirit.</p>
<p>After all he has to say about the gifts of the Spirit, Paul  makes this simple comment, &ldquo;And now I will show you the best way of all.&rdquo; (1  Corinthians 12: 31). Immediately, in the next chapter, he proceeds to outline  the way of love indicating that it is possible to have the appearance of some  of the gifts of the Spirit but to no avail whatever because of a lack of love.  He says, &ldquo;I may have the gift of prophecy and know every hidden truth; I may  have faith strong enough to move mountains; but if I have no love I am  nothing.&rdquo; </p>
<p>At the beginning of the following chapter, he sums it up by  saying, &ldquo;Put love first; but there are other gifts of the Spirit at which you  should aim also and above all prophecy.&rdquo; But such gifts were clearly to be  sought for the benefit of the church and not for the reputation of the seeker.  So Marcus Dods comments, &ldquo;Paul has explained that these gifts were bestowed for  the edification of the Church and not for the glorification of the individual;  and that therefore the individual should covet not the most surprising but the  most profitable of these manifestations of the Spirit.&rdquo; </p>
<p>Towering above them all, however, the unquestioned proof of  the Spirit is love which is patient, kind, unenvying; never boastful,  conceited, rude, selfish, or gloating—besides which all the gifts of the Spirit  are temporary and partial. Love is eternal.<br>
  It is significant too that when Paul wrote to the Galatians  he described what he called &ldquo;the harvest of the Spirit&rdquo; (Galatians 5: 22, 23).  The first among them was love. In Colossians 3: 14 he says &ldquo;To crown all, there  must be love to bind all together and complete the whole.&rdquo; If any expression of  the Spirit proves that He is really possessed by the Christian it will be the  harvest of love.<br>
  This &ldquo;love&rdquo; is not merely affection, it is not attraction,  it is not even simply loyalty. The New Testament has several words for love,  the highest of which is the word <em>agape. </em>It  is used of the love of God and it means a love which is expressed in  unremitting goodwill regardless of the merit or lack of merit of the object  loved. Some forms of love are spontaneous, like the emotion felt between two  young people who &ldquo;fall in love&rdquo;. </p>
<p>Other forms of love are built up and reinforced by a  relationship such as the love between a mother and her child, beginning with  the spontaneous love of the mother and the natural dependence of the child and  building up into a deep bond. Another form of love is created by common  interest, as when people who love the same things care for one another.  Sometimes this love is marked more by duty than devotion, but not always so.  There is a kind of love, however, which is unique. </p>
<p>It is a love which reaches out to others regardless of what  they are and despite what they are. It is God&rsquo;s love. It cannot be created  merely by humanitarian concern, ideals or principles. The New Testament  teaches that it is implanted in the heart by God through His Spirit, It is the  love which God has for the sinner whereby He cares for the sinner and wishes  only his good despite his sinfulness, It is this love the Spirit imparts to the  Church and to Christians within it so that the Christian Jew is enabled to love  the despised pagan Gentile.</p>
<p>Paul used this illustration and indicated that Christ has  broken down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile. If there is a love which  can break that barrier it is unique. Much more, however, its uniqueness is seen  in God&rsquo;s love expressed in Jesus Christ and pre-eminently through His Cross.  where God&rsquo;s love for the sinner leads Him to bear sin&rsquo;s pain and alienation  while the sinner still jeers at Him in His suffering and agony. It is the  creation and cultivation of that kind of love which is the proof of the Spirit  and nothing can substitute for it or in any way take its place. Paul clearly  states this is the work of the Holy Spirit when he says (Romans 5: 5) &ldquo;. . .  God&rsquo;s love has flooded our inmost heart through the Holy Spirit He has given  us. The late S. D. Gordon wrote a remarkable little devotional book many years  ago called &lsquo;Quiet Talks on Power&rsquo; in which he describes love as &ldquo;the all  inclusive passion&rdquo; (page 254 ff.). He says, &ldquo;That marvellous tender passion—the  love of God-—heightless, depthless, shoreless shall flood our hearts making us  as gentle, tender-hearted and self-sacrificing and gracious as He. Every phase  of life will become a phase of love. Peace is love resting, Bible study is love  reading its lover&rsquo;s letters, prayer is love keeping tryst, conflict with sin is  love jealously fighting for its lover,, hatred of sin is love shrinking from  that which separates from its lover, sympathy is love tenderly feeling,  enthusiasm is love burning, hope is love expecting, . patience is love waiting,  faithfulness is love sticking fast, humility is love taking its true place,  modesty is love keeping out of sight</p>
<p>Love is revolutionary. It radically changes us and  revolutionises our spirit toward all others . . . Love is not only the finest  fruit but it is the final test of the Christian life.&rdquo; Of course, there are  many other expressions of the Spirit. In his Galatian letter Paul adds to love  the following, &ldquo;joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness,  and self-control.&rdquo; These marks of Christian character are the proofs of the  Holy Spirit. Without them, no amount of eloquence or drama or ecstasy has any  spiritual significance.</p>
<p>Bishop Stephen Neill has written a book entitled &ldquo;The  Christian Character&rdquo; which is an exposition of these &ldquo;fruits&rdquo; of the Spirit.  This in itself is a reminder that, like character, these must grow. They are  not produced overnight, It is important to see this to save ourselves from the  despair of feeling that because we are not so loving, peaceful, joyous, or  patient as we ought to be that we do not have the Spirit. Consistently the New  Testament describes the Christian life as a growth. It is the growth of  character. Before fruit can be produced the seed must be sown and the seed  which is the ultimate proof that we have the Holy Spirit is faith in Jesus  Christ. There is no way of getting behind or beyond this.</p>
<p>Above all else and before all else the Holy Spirit comes to  us to make us aware of Christ and to enable us to have faith in Him. When that  faith is present we have the Spirit. In Romans 8 He is described as the Spirit  of adoption, &ldquo;A Spirit that makes us sons enabling us to cry &lsquo;Abba! Father!&rsquo; In  that cry the Spirit of God joins with our spirit in testifying that we are God&rsquo;s  children.&rdquo; The point is simple. The believing Christian who has learned in  Christ to call God Father and to trust Him as such may be sure he has the Holy  Spirit. Faith in Christ as personal Lord and God as personal Father is evidence  of the Holy Spirit&rsquo;s presence. The further evidence will come in a growing  character built upon love and in God&rsquo;s good time the Holy Spirit will be  expressed in such gifts as God considers best. While that faith is continually  exercised the Holy Spirit will always be there to aid and to build up the  Christian life. Jesus said He would come to us as a &ldquo;Comforter&rdquo; or more  accurately as our &ldquo;Advocate.&rdquo; The word used of Him as we have observed, is the  Greek word &ldquo;parakletos.&rdquo; It means &ldquo;Someone called alongside to help.&rdquo; As we exercise  the faith in Christ which God&rsquo;s Spirit has given to us, we shall find that help  to be ever present.</p>
<p><strong>THE PRACTICALITY OF  THE HOLY SPIRIT</strong><br>
  All that we have said about the nature, the function and the  purpose of the Holy Spirit as described in the Bible will be utterly without  meaning unless the Holy Spirit is a practical reality. In our materialistic  world is it still practical to talk of the Holy Spirit? I believe it is, It is  vital, however, to remember that the Holy Spirit is given not to talk about but  to draw upon.<br>
  <em>He is practical for  the individual Christian</em></p>
<p>The warning needs to be sounded that if I  spend my time arguing with myself or with others about the Holy Spirit, I may  miss completely all sense of His guidance and presence in my life. For the Holy  Spirit is given, in a word, to bring Christ to the individual, to bring Christ  from OUTSIDE the believer in history to INSIDE the believer in experience. He  has been given not to make the believer conscious of His, the Holy Spirit&rsquo;s,  presence but to make him conscious of Christ. He has been given to develop the  Christian&rsquo;s character and to impart to the Christian power for Christian living  and witness. He is not meant to be a relic of historical theology:<br>
  He is meant to be a reality in personal experience. Every  Christian who believes in Christ has the Holy Spirit. </p>
<p>The practical challenge of the Holy Spirit is that every  believer should learn to live in dependence upon Him and to draw upon His  presence and His power.<br>
  <em>He is a practicality  for the Church. </em>All too often the Church has applauded the idea of the Holy  Spirit without taking His presence seriously. Again and again, Christians have  been like the disciples between the Ascension and Pentecost. They have hidden  behind closed doors, powerless and sometimes afraid, believing in the risen  Christ but expressing nothing of His living power. </p>
<p>Thankfully Pentecost came with its amazing experience in the  early Church of the living power of God working through His people in the gift  of the Holy Spirit. that Spirit has ever since been the inalienable right of  the Christian Church and the practicality of His power may still be known.  Sadly, Church-men and theologians have frequently explained the manifestations  of<br>
  the Holy Spirit is the early Church almost as extravagances  or, at best, exceptions given for the needs of their day. Some have gone so far  as to say quite bluntly that the gifts He was alleged to have given in these  days have no further relevance at all, that they were among the things which,  like prophecy, Paul said were &ldquo;to pass away.&rdquo; </p>
<p>This kind of dismissal of the Holy Spirit as a reality in  the life of the Church is tragic because it has frequently meant that the  Church has ended by trying to generate its own power through its programmes and  its plans and &lsquo;often through mere ingenuity and wit, when all the time the  promised Spirit of God was available.</p>
<p>This does not mean that the Church has lost its faith given  to it by the Holy Spirit, If it has lost its power it is surely because, while  believing in the historicity of the living, risen Christ, it has sometimes  failed to accept that living, risen Christ into its life by dependence on His  Spirit. Let Stanley Jones bring the challenge of this in his telling words from  &ldquo;The Christ of Every Road&rdquo; (page 24) </p>
<p>&ldquo;The Church&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;is living between Easter and  Pentecost. It stands hesitant between the two, hesitant hence comparatively  impotent. Something big has dawned on its thinking—that Christ has lived,  taught, died and risen again and has commissioned the Church with the amazing  good news. But something big has yet to dawn on the very structure, make-up and  temper of the life of the Church—Pentecost. Easter has dawned; Pentecost has  not. If the Church would move up from that between state to Pentecost, then  nothing could stop it—nothing.&rdquo;</p>
<p>This is the plain truth. The Holy Spirit is God at work in  the life of the individual and of the Church. He belongs to us as we belong to  Him. He waits to fill our lives and fulfil in us His purposes. He is not mere  mysticism, though mystery. He is the source, the secret, and the supply of  God&rsquo;s life and power in human experience.</p>
<p>We, His people and His Church, are meant to know His  presence and power.<br>
  &ldquo;Let the Holy Spirit fill you,&rdquo; urged Paul (Ephesians 5:<br>
  18). The question is, will we let Him fill us? If we do, it  will be evident, in the growth of the harvest of the Spirit. It will show in  the whole direction of life. Paul wrote (Romans 8: 5) </p>
<p>&ldquo;Those who live on the level of the lower nature have their  outlook formed by it, and that spells death, but those who live on the level of  the Spirit have the spiritual outlook, and that spells life and peace.&rdquo; What,  then, is the formative influence in my outlook, my motivation? Is  it—honestly—my lower nature? Or is it the will of Christ, as I discover it by  depending on the Holy Spirit? It is one or the other But which? But how can we  practise the life of the Spirit? Let me make several suggestions.</p>
<p><em>First, by believing  that He is real. </em>The promise of Christ that He would be present with His  disciples by putting His Spirit in them is the objective assurance that He is  real. (By &lsquo;objective assurance&rdquo; I mean the certainty from outside yourself, the  real basis of your faith.) <em>Second, by  inviting Him to fill our lives. </em>Now the way this is done will vary. I  personally find it helpful to pray each morning that Christ will take control  of me and of my life throughout the new day. This He does by His Spirit within  us.</p>
<p><em>Third. hi&rsquo; trusting  Him to guide. </em>This is perhaps one of the hardest things of all. It is one  thing to believe He guided Paul to Macedonia; it is altogether another thing to  trust Him to guide me in my career, or through one day. But this is necessary.  Notice this is more than <em>asking </em>Him  to guide. It is <em>trusting </em>Him to  guide. If only we would believe that God is sufficiently interested in us and  close to us to guide us today, we would soon be conquerors over every anxiety  about the future, and would begin· to discover the hidden resources which are ours each day  through the Holy Spirit. <em>Fourth, by  listening for His word. </em>Through the Bible, through prayer. through worship,  the sacraments. and experience of a hundred different kinds the Holy spirit  desires to lead us. But too often we do not listen. And. of course, we do no  hear.<br>
  <em>Fifth. hi&rsquo; acting on  His prompting.</em></p>
<p>There is no need to fear that this might  lead us astray. If we remember that our Lord assured us that the Holy Spirit  would always lead us into truth, and bear witness to Christ, we need never  hesitate to act on the impulse we feel compelling us, when once we have sought,  and then trusted His guidance. If in such circumstances, we feel driven to  action, then, provided we know it to be consistent with Christ, and true to  Him, we may be confident to act, knowing we have the mind of the Holy Spirit.</p>
<p>No more practical Christian truth and doctrine exists than  the Holy Spirit. Yet no concept has been subjected to worse distortion, or had  to accept such blatant neglect.</p>
<p>When we honour and trust the indwelling presence of the  Spirit of Christ we shall be honouring Christ, and shall be on the way to being  adequately equipped for His service in the world.</p>[[Category:Bible]]