“The Holy Spirit lives in all those he has regenerated. He makes them increasingly Christlike in character and behaviour and gives them power for their witness in the world.”
What are we affirming in this statement?
In this article we are affirming that the Holy Spirit not only works in our conversion, but lives in all believers to transform us and enable us to live as followers of Christ. The Spirit is the gift of God’s presence with us at all times, replacing our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh so that we can actually love God and love our neighbour (Ezekiel 11:19-20). He is the first deposit and guarantee of our future salvation, giving us a taste in the present of the unmediated presence of the Lord that we will enjoy in eternity and the personal holiness that is concurrent with that (2 Corinthians 1:2, 5:5). And the Spirit is God’s empowering presence among his people by which he continues to work for the building up of the Church and the calling of the lost to salvation through her witness (Acts 1:8).
“The Holy Spirit lives in all those he has regenerated.”
The Holy Spirit comes to live in all those who believe in Jesus, when they are joined to Christ by faith. There is no such thing as a believer united to Christ who does not have the Spirit living in them; to be a Christian is to be filled with the Spirit:
“Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit […] For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink”
There are not two categories of Christians, those who have received the Spirit and those who are yet to. There is no hierarchy of ‘nearness to God’ among believers. Through the indwelling Spirit, Christ fulfils his promise to not leave us without his presence (John 14:16-18).
Some Christians may describe discernible experiences of the Spirit occurring subsequently to conversion as ‘Baptism in the Spirit,’ but evangelicals (whether or not they use this classically Pentecostal description of experiences) agree that subsequent experiences are not to be confused with actually receiving the Spirit in the first place, who is the mark of the New Covenant on all who believe.
“He makes them increasingly Christlike in character and behaviour”
The Spirit is the source and agent of all spiritual and moral progress in the Christian life. Having begun our walk with Jesus in grace by faith through the enabling work of the Spirit, we do not continue our walk by our own efforts (cf. Galatians 3:1-3). As the same Spirit who enabled our faith in the first place causes us to grow in Christlikeness, we can expect to see the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – Galatians 5:22-23) produced in our general disposition and our actual behaviour.
This is not ‘in spite of’ the practices that God sets out to form us, but just as the Spirit brings us to faith and repentance through and in concert with the preaching of the gospel, so he uses all the character forming practices ordained by God (e.g. Scripture, prayer, baptism, Lord’s Supper) to conform us to Christ’s likeness. This does not become a matter of legalistic effort on our part, but in and through these practices the Spirit directs us to delight in God and cease to delight in sin in a way that gradually transforms our character and behaviour (See Zahl, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experiences, 190).
As we ‘walk in step’ with the Spirit, pursuing holiness, we have assurance that we will grow more like Christ (cf. Romans 8:5-14). We can have confidence to pursue the holiness described in places like the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-8) because it is not out of our own inherent goodness or moral resources that we do so, but from the Spirit of holiness. This is not a call to sit back and relax, but to be active in pursuing holiness, knowing that it is by faith through the Spirit’s power that we grow.
“and gives them power for their witness in the world.”
The Spirit not only enables moral transformation, but gives us the resources to bear effective witness to Christ in the world. Jesus’ promise to his disciples in the opening of Acts is that they will receive power to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth when the Holy Spirit comes upon them (Acts 1:8). We are just as dependent upon the power of the Spirit in our evangelism today as the first followers of Jesus were in the first century. What we do and say in evangelism is empowered by the Holy Spirit, so that as we declare the gospel we are speaking as messengers of God (cf. Luke 12:11-12; 1 Peter 4:10-11).
What does this empowering for witness look like?
Firstly, this is the power of God in continuity with his power displayed on the cross. It doesn’t always look impressive by worldly standards. As we are sent out in the Spirit to be God’s witnesses, the bounds of our own abilities are often exposed and our own weakness are highlighted – it is here at the end of our ability that God’s power is made perfect (2 Corinthians 12:9, 13:4). The cross is foolishness and weakness according to worldly expectations, yet it is the wisdom and power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18-31). As often as the Spirit’s empowering in Acts is expressed in the working of miracles, it is also expressed as courageous endurance in the midst of personal weakness and external opposition to the gospel. God’s power is displayed as he uses our weakness and inadequacies to nevertheless successfully bring souls to Christ through the preaching of the gospel.
Secondly, this empowering does not work itself out normally as a solo act. The Spirit gives a diversity of gifts to the Church for her building up and to enable her witness. Even where the book of Acts focusses on a couple of key Apostles, we see them working in concert with the whole body of believers, leaning on the different giftings that God had given to see Jesus proclaimed. Paul makes this collective nature of the empowering of the Spirit clear in 1 Corinthians where he writes, “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good … All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.” (1 Corinthians 12:7, 11; see 1 Corinthians 12-14).
Wherever we land on which specific gifts God continues to give through the Holy Spirit (resources to explore that below), it is clear that the normal pattern is not for superpowered solo-evangelists, but for the body of believers with their variety of gifts from the Spirit to work alongside one-another for the building up of the church and the making of disciples.
Where is this challenged or a challenge when studying theology at university?
If the Spirit guarantees transformation into Christlikeness as we’ve affirmed above, then why do Christians – collectively and individually – often fail to exhibit the kind of moral transformation that we might expect? This, and the observation that many non-Christians appear morally superior to many Christians, is often raised as a challenge against Christianity.
Typical responses interpret the non-transformation of some believers as evidence that they are either (a) ‘problematic’ Christians who are wilfully persisting in some kind of individual failure by which they hinder their own sanctification, or (b) not really believers at all – either they never were, or have abandoned the faith even if they retain external assent. Simeon Zahl argues that an Augustinian account of affective transformation and ordering of desire in sanctification (drawn on in our description above) offers a less troubling response:
“The freedom of the Spirit means that the manner and extent and progress of sanctification in a given case are ultimately determined by God, who alone generates truly effective conditions for fostering delight in righteousness and fleeing sin.”
Transformation is not linear and mechanistic, automatically unfolding in a uniform way in the lives of all ‘true’ believers. Instead it occurs in concurrence with the real experiences and pursuits of the means that God has given for transformation as they interact with the real conditions of a believer’s heart and life. Persistent sin in a believer’s life, rather than evidence of an absence of the work of the Spirit, may be evidence that the Spirit is at work revealing and condemning such sin, making way for renewed delight in and response to the grace of God.
How does this help us do Evangelical Christian theology better?
While there isn’t space to elaborate on this in any detail, the work of the Spirit to transform us in character and empower us for witness is not incidental to theology. As far as the task of theology puts us before God’s word, it in an arena in which the Spirit’s transformation can be at work. And as we are transformed we will engage more faithfully in the theological task. And in so far as theology involves speaking truthfully about God, we are dependent upon the Spirit’s power in the midst of our weakness to do so, and in a way that is effective in bringing those He chooses to saving faith in Christ.
Next Up: The True Church of God
Taking it Further:
- Cessationism EXPLAINED: With Dr. Thomas Schreiner
- 44-1 Archives - The Gospel Coalition – Multiple Articles on the Cessation or Continuation of the Gifts of the Spirit and Tongues (including several back and forth articles between Andrew Wilson and Tom Schreiner).
- Growing in Godliness as a Theology Student
