Skriv
ut sidan. The holy Spirit and his gifts
"Now this is the true Christian faith:
We worship one God in three persons and three persons in one God, without mixing the persons or dividing the divine being....
So the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God; yet they are not three Gods, but one God."
With these words the Athanasian Creed summarizes the Bible's teaching about God.
As I am sure all of us here today believe and confess, the Holy Spirit is true God in every way equal to God the Father and God the Son.
In Biblical times names were chosen for their meaning.
Abram's name was changed to Abraham, father of many, and Sarai became Sarah, mother of nations.
There was Isaac (he laughs),
Esau (hairy), and Jacob (he grabs the heel).
Or think of the beautiful names for our Lord Jesus.
Jesus means Savior.
Christ
means the Anointed One.
Immanuel means God With Us.
In the same way the names the Bible gives the Holy Spirit are filled with meaning, telling us about him and his work.
The third person of the Trinity is called in English Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost.
These are interchangeable translations without any intended difference in meaning.
Both teach that the Holy Spirit is a real being, but one who is not confined to a particular place or trapped in a physical body.
Spirit and ghost are translations of the Hebrew word
jWr
(ruach) and the Greek word
pneu`ma
(pneuma).
Literally these words mean breath or wind.
The picture of the Holy Spirit as breath is brought out in John 20:22 where we read:
Jesus "breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.’"
The Spirit is life going forth from God in a personal form to give us life.
When the Holy Spirit is in our hearts, the life and breath of God himself dwells in us.
Paul uses this same picture for the Holy Spirit at work when he writes:
"All Scripture is God breathed."
Ezekiel 37:1-14 is an expanded illustration of the Holy Spirit as the breath of God's mouth breathing life into spiritual dry bones.
Jesus also paints the picture of the Holy Spirit as wind.
"The wind blows wherever it pleases.
You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.
So it is with everyone born of the Spirit" (John 3:8).
In this verse the same Greek word
pneu`ma
(pneuma) is first translated wind and then Spirit.
Like the wind the Holy Spirit is sovereign.
You cannot dictate to the wind.
It does as it wills.
In the same way, we cannot dictate to the Spirit.
"He gives them [his gifts] to each one, just as he determines" (1 Cor 12:11).
Like the wind the Spirit is invisible but none the less perceptible and real.
We don't see the wind, but we see its effects.
No one questions the reality of the wind for we can see the dust and the leaves blowing; we can see the sailboat driven along.
In a similar way, although you cannot see the Spirit, you cannot question his existence for where he is at work spiritual corpses believe and become new creatures.
Like the wind, the Holy Spirit is powerful.
Consider the awesome power of a tornado or hurricane.
In the same way the Spirit's power breaks the hold of sin and Satan and brings us into the Kingdom of God.
Another of the significant names for the third member of the Trinity is
paravklhto"
(parakletos).
This Greek word is taken over into English and translated Paraclete.
Before he left this world, Jesus promised his disciples: "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor [Paraclete] to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth" (John 14:16).
Paraclete is usually translated counselor or comforter.
It means much more than that, however.
The Greek word means a person who is called or summoned to one's side.
In classical Greek a paraclete was a defense attorney in a trial.
In later Greek paraclete referred to anyone who takes one's side, pleads his cause and speaks a good word for him.
The Paraclete is one who remains at our side to help us.
For the disciples Jesus had been such a paraclete.
After Ascension the Holy Spirit takes Jesus' place at the believer's side.
The Spirit comforts us, guides us and protects us.
Counselor is an okay translation.
Helper, sustainer, vindicator, adviser, protector, prompter are other translations which would work just as well.
The Holy Spirit stands beside us.
As true God he is omnipresent, and therefore with all Christians wherever they are to be found.
As true God he is omnipotent, and therefore has the almighty power to bestow his gifts on us as he sees the need.
Gifts for all believers
"Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple, and that God's Spirit lives in you?... God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple" (1 Cor 3:16-17).
Our imagination runs wild when we meditate on what it is like in Heaven, God's perfect dwelling place, his holy temple.
The Bible, especially in the visions given to Saint John and recorded in his book of Revelation, describes heaven as a place of perfect peace and tranquillity, of awesome grandeur and glory, devoid of all malice and evil.
Now let your imagination run for a while on the thought that already now a believer is such a wondrous dwelling place of God.
Each Christian is a place of faith, peace and tranquillity, a thing of beauty, a temple where no malice or evil is found.
At least, that is the kind of divine temple the Holy Spirit within us wants to make us!
Through the gospel in the Word and sacraments, the Holy Spirit pours into us the gifts that make us a dwelling fit for the King.
Saving faith, His prime gift
The Holy Spirit's prime work is to glorify Jesus.
Our Savior put it in these words:
“He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.
All that belongs to the Father is mine.
That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you” (John 16:14-15).
The Spirit glorifies Jesus by testifying about him and what he has done.
Listen to Jesus once again:
“When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me” (John 15:26).
It follows logically then that the Spirit’s first and foremost gift is saving faith.
The Holy Spirit causes the testimony of Jesus to take root in our
hearts and grow into faith.
In this way the Spirit brings glory to Jesus by building up his body, the Church.
"The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because
they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor 2:14).
In conversion the Holy Spirit takes a blind, dead enemy of God and calls him by the gospel.
The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ has done everything necessary for the salvation of sinners.
The gospel announces that Jesus, as true God and true man, kept the law of God perfectly in our place.
Jesus suffered the punishment we deserve for our sins when he died innocently on the cross.
Then Jesus arose from the dead to give us and all sinners the assurance that we are forgiven.
We are declared not guilty.
God no longer needs to punish us.
To bring this gospel to us, the Holy Spirit uses the Word of God and the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
Through these powerful tools -- we call them the Means of Grace -- the Holy Spirit plants saving faith.
We should not expect the Holy Spirit to fall upon us out of the clear blue sky.
We can expect him to come to us only through these means.
Notice how Peter used the Means of Grace to call the crowd to faith on the first Pentecost.
"Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.
And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off -- for all whom the Lord our God will call" (Acts 2:38-39).
The gospel was preached,
Baptism was administered, and through these means the Holy Spirit was given to them.
Saving faith involves several components.
First there is knowledge.
A person cannot believe what he does not know.
The second component is assent or acceptance as true.
A person cannot believe in something he regards as false and unreliable.
The third component is trust.
A person must place his confidence in those facts he regards as true and rely on them to help.
We can illustrate the three components of faith with an ordinary chair.
You can know that the chair is designed to hold your weight when you sit on it.
You can also accept as true that it is capable of supporting you.
But the chair won’t do you any good until you relax your leg muscles and drop your body into it.
A chair cannot support you until you entrust your weight into it.
In a similar way the Holy Spirit leads us to entrust our souls to Jesus, trusting in him alone for salvation.
Creating such faith, such trust, in us is the Spirit's main work.
Placing one's faith in the right object is the important thing.
In fact, faith in the wrong object can hurt me.
I can get up in the middle of the night with a headache and swallow some small white tablets which I firmly believe to be.htmlirins.
If by mistake I took rat poison, however, I could end up dead.
In that case, you could inscribe on my tombstone, "He died in faith."
Even in secular things what matters is not faith, but the object on which you place your faith.
Saving faith rests on the object, Jesus Christ, and relies on him for rescue.
Only the Holy Spirit can work saving faith, and he gives it freely to each Christian.
The Bible tells us that.
"I tell you that...no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit" (I Cor 12:3).
It is significant that, when Paul writes about spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12-14, he begins by speaking with the most important gift, namely faith.
This truth is captured by Martin Luther in his explanation to the Third Article of the Apostles Creed:
"I believe that I cannot by my own thinking or choosing believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him.
But the Holy Ghost has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.” In contrast to some of the misguided views regarding the Holy Spirit and his work, the Scriptures show us that the work of the Spirit is not to make the believer Spirit-conscious, but Christ-conscious.
Companion gifts of faith
With the
gift of faith come many other spiritual gifts as well -- gifts for every believer..
Hope
"May the God of hope fill you...so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy
Spirit,” so Paul prays for the Romans and in turn for us (Rom 15:13).
Hope is a side-benefit of
faith, as the Bible tells us:
"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (Heb11:1).
Christian hope can be defined as a fact in the future.
When our hope is based on the promises of our faithful God, there is nothing uncertain about it.
God keeps his promises!
Our hope is a fact; it just hasn't happened yet.
In the midst of life in this sin-filled world with its frequent troubles and heartaches, we have a sure and certain hope.
We have the hope of a better world to follow in Heaven, and we have the hope of a God who will stand by our side to bring us safely there.
This hope, this certainty, is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
"We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
And hope does not disappoint us" (Rom 5:2-4).
God’s Love
An old song heard again and again on radio stations in the United States says:
"What the world needs now is love, sweet love.
It's the only thing that there's just too little of."
The Christian knows that such lyrics are missing the point.
The love we need is there -- free and full -- for "God loves the world..."
As a gift of the Holy Spirit, the believer knows the amazing love of God and knows that love encompasses us.
"Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).
But Jesus loved us even more than that because he laid down his life for us when we were still his bitterest enemies.
"This is how God showed his love among us:
He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:9-10).
The certainty that God loves us is one of the Spirit’s gifts to all believers:
“God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” (Rom 5:5).
Sonship
The Spirit also comforts and encourages us through the assurance that we “have received the Spirit of sonship” (Rom 8:15).
"God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, 'Abba, Father.'
So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir" (Gal 3:6-7).
No longer do we tremble before the awesome majesty of the almighty creator and perfect judge of the universe; no longer do we try to hide from his all-seeing eyes.
Rather the Holy Spirit has taught us to know him as our "dear dad" (Abba) in Heaven.
You may have seen the famous picture from President John Kennedy's years.
The President sat at his imposing desk in the Oval Office of the White House in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis -- at a time when the world stood minutes away from nuclear war.
On the carpet underneath that desk the president's young son was playing peacefully and happily with his toys.
In just this way while the world stumbles in chaos toward Judgment Day, we can live our lives in peace, oblivious to all that swirls around us.
We are God's dear children.
Our heavenly Father has things under his control, and he is keeping his eye on us!
Truth
The Spirit causes us to know the truth, namely God's eternal truth.
"When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth," Jesus promised (John 16:13).
The simplest Christian armed with the Scriptures and guided by the Holy Spirit is wiser in the matters of God than the most highly educated unbeliever.
In fact, before entering school for the first time, most believers have learned the most profound truth of all:
“Jesus loves me this I know, For the Bible tells me so."
Spiritual Discernment
Paul prays for the Philippians:
“And this is my prayer:
that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best...” (Philippians 1:9-10).
We can be sure that Paul’s prayer is answered also in the saints of today.
Firmly grounded in God's truth found in the Bible, the Christian is able to make judgments on the spiritual matters that come before him.
The believer can evaluate what he sees and hears on the basis of the revealed truth of God, confident that the Holy Spirit will assist him to apply that truth correctly.
On the other hand, the worldly wise, no matter how much human education he has received, is not able to make valid judgments regarding the Christian or the truth he confesses.
Paul put it this way:
"The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment:
'For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?'
But we have the mind of Christ" (1 Cor 2:14-16).
Fruits of the Spirits
The Holy Spirit gives us faith, hope, love, sonship, truth and spiritual discernment.
These gifts flow from God and are given for us to enjoy and use.
The Spirit dwelling inside us also transforms our character.
He works in us to produce reflections of the divine in our daily dealings.
Those divine characteristics he produces are called the fruits of the Spirit or the fruits of faith.
They are produced -- in varying degrees -- in all believers and are traits each Christian strives to display abundantly in his life.
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control....
Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit" (Gal 5:22-25).
Christian Love
The love in this verse is not the same as the love we discussed earlier in this chapter.
There the love was God's love which we receive and enjoy.
In this Galatians verse the love meant is the love which God produces in us.
It is the love the Bible speaks of when it says:
"We love because he (God) first loved us" (1 John 4:19).
Motivated by God's love for us, we now become lovers.
Out of selfish, self-centered people the Holy Spirit makes saints who truly reflect Christlike love to those around them.
This is a miraculous change from our natural attitude toward others, especially our enemies.
It is a change in character worked by the power of the Holy Spirit within us.
Joy
In the midst of the troubles and heartaches of this life, the Christian has joy.
That too is a miracle.
Our mind looks at the headlines in the daily newspaper and at the problems in our lives.
It looks at the friends who disappoint us and the relatives who let us down.
It sees the disappointing results when we try to stand up for the Bible and Confessional Lutheranism.
Our mind often sees nothing to be joyful about.
But then our faith kicks in.
It sees the love of God and the hope of Heaven.
It sees the Bible’s promises that our heavenly Father rules all things for the good of us his children.
It knows that God will cause the gospel to be preached until the end of time.
The Holy Spirit empowers our faith to say to our mind: "I don't care what you say, Mind.
God rules, and I will joyfully trust in him!"
Earthly joys are at best temporary and doomed eventually to disappoint; the Spirit's joy is eternal and will never fail us.
Peace
The Spirit produces peace.
At peace in his conscience, at peace with his God, at peace regarding what the future holds for him, the Christian enjoys personal peacefulness.
Moreover, he converts that inner peace into action.
He becomes a living embodiment of Jesus' words:
“Blessed are the peacemakers" (Matt 5:9).
Patience, Kindness...
Patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are characteristics in short supply in our dog-eat-dog world.
On the other hand, all were in bountiful supply in the life of Jesus Christ.
In this he set an example for us.
Now the Holy Spirit produces these characteristics in all of Jesus’ followers.
There is something unnatural in such characteristics.
In fact, the natural mind sees them as dangerous because "people will take advantage of you and walk all over you."
The natural mind may often be right in that regard.
The Holy Spirit makes us unnatural, however; he makes us godly.
The Spirit makes us truly want to follow Jesus' example and to do what pleases God.
As for those who take advantage of us or misuse our godliness, we will let the Lord handle that.
Consider a few additional examples of the miraculous changes in character the Spirit produces.
His working is even more awesome when you consider the weak, sinful material he has to work with.
"The wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure, then peaceloving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere" (James 3:17).
"Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
Bear with each other, and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts...
And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Col 3:12-17).
Courage to Witness
Another important fruit of the Spirit is the courage to witness for Christ and through our witness to call others to faith.
At his ascension Jesus promised his disciples: "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:7-8).
While this promise was fulfilled in a spectacular way on Pentecost, it is not limited to the original 12 disciples.
That is shown us, first of all, by the parting words of Jesus we just read.
Those 12 men would not by themselves be able to witness "to the ends of the earth."
The completion of such worldwide witnessing would require many witnesses over ages of time.
The wider intent of Jesus' promise is demonstrated also in the events that followed the first Pentecost.
“A great persecution broke out against the Church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria....
Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went” (Acts 8:1,4).
Jesus gave this command to his Church:
“Go and make disciples of all nations....
And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt 28:19-20).
This Great Commission implies that the Holy Spirit will continue to make and equip witnesses in every era of time to the very end.
Conclusion
Just as an apple tree produces apples, so those who are temples of the Spirit produce the fruits of the Spirit.
Every apple tree does not produce fruit equal in quantity or quality, however.
In the same way Christians enjoy and reflect the Spirit's gifts in varying degrees.
Our goal is to cultivate the gifts and fruits of the Spirit, faithfully using the Word, Baptism and the Lord's Supper to grow spiritually.
To help us reach the goal, we have an ever-present helper.
We are reminded of his presence each time we hear the New Testament blessing in a worship service.
"The fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all" (2
Cor 13:14).
The Spirit descends with "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God" (Eph 6:17).
He uses that Word to battle the sin and weakness that hinders our full enjoyment of his gifts.
J.V.
Session two: Foundational and confirmatory gifts
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