[Re]Connected Planter

The new covenant also has its rites; of that we shall speak in a minute. But the true contrast drawn here as elsewhere is not of circumcision with baptism, but of circumcision in the flesh made by hands, with circumcision of the heart – the work of the Holy Spirit.

When the Church ceases to be one, or ceases to be missionary, it contradicts its own nature. Yet the Church is not to be defined by what it is, but by that End to which it moves, the power of which now works in the Church, the power of the Holy Spirit who is the earnest of the inheritance still to be revealed. To say that the deadlock in the ecumenical debate will be resolved in a perspective which is missionary and eschatological is not true unless it is understood that that perspective means a new obedience to, and a new possession by, the Holy Spirit. It is a perspective inseparable from action, and that action must be both in the direction of mission and in that of unity, for these are but two aspects of the one work of the Spirit.

Freedom, sonship and hope – these are the marks of life in the Spirit. And when these are present, the Spirit bears his own witness to Jesus and to his coming reign.

We HAVE received the Spirit and this gives us our assurance. We are saved. We know that God is our Father and all will be well. But we are saved in hope. The Spirit is the assurance of something yet to come, something we long for. And this ‘something’ is not just something for ourselves. It is something for ‘the whole creation’. It is not just that we who are saved will be rescued from this world; it is that we are saved as the first-fruit of a new world, and so we long and pray and labour for the new world which God has promised. The Gospel is not just about changing individuals, it is also about changing the world. As those who have received the Spirit we are engaged in the struggle for a new world, and this struggle is one of the marks of our life in the Spirit. But our struggle is not a bitter or impatient struggle; it is a patient and believing struggle. We hope for what we do not see; yes, but we know that God has promised it and we know that he has given us the first- fruit of it, so we wait for it with patience.

Any system or teaching that promises a safe, packaged life is promising more than what Christ promised His followers. Actually, it would be promising the opposite. Jesus, in no unspecific terms, told his disciples that if they followed Him, their lives would be anything but safe. If He was trying to teach a prosperity gospel, He failed epically. He promised torture, tribulation, hatred from others, abandonment, ridicule, and all kinds of fun things. But He also promised abundant life, blessings, and intimacy with the God-who-is-love. He never promised ease and safety, but He did promise it would be worth it. I am very suspect of any teaching that promises the opposite of what Jesus Himself promised.

When you say ‘I belong to Luther’, or ‘I belong to Wesley’, or ‘I belong to Brother Bakht Singh’ or ‘I belong to Brother Daniel’, or ‘I belong to Brother Lawrie’ – are you not following the flesh instead of the Spirit? In the presence of the cross, how can we use such boasting and rivalry?’ The wisdom of men looks foolish in the presence of the wisdom of God which is displayed in the dying of Jesus.

It is the “good news” aspect [of the story of the tower of Babel in Genesis 11] that is picked up in an interesting way in Acts 2 with the tale of the Holy Spirit’s coming upon the gathered faithful: “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages…. ‘We hear, each of us, in our own native language’” (2:4, 8). Sometimes read as a “reversal of Babel” in anticipation of the new creation, it is better to read Acts 2 rather as a “fulfilling” of the promise of human scattering. It is not that the church will represent a new humanity where all finally get to speak the one language profitably for humankind before God, but rather that the church will enact the new reality so that the ways of God can indeed be lived and shared in every local tribe and tongue. Only a handful of chapters later, in Acts 8:1, we read that “a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered… throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria.” Again, what seems like the dark workings of judgment turns out to “people the earth,” not in this instance with the human race but with the beginnings of the global church. The goal is not to return to the way things were before the persecution, but to learn to discern the ways of God in the new reality that results. One suspects that much of what happens in the life of the church needs to be seen in this way.

It is only when the proud ‘I’ at the centre of all our lives has been crucified with Christ that the Spirit can reign in us. The disciples could only be sharers with Jesus in the anointing of the Spirit when they had been made sharers in his cross.

The Bible certainly teaches us that all those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and have become members of his body the Church have also received the Holy Spirit. It teaches us that God gives his Spirit freely to those who ask. And it teaches us that all those who belong to Jesus are joint partakers in his many gifts. But the Bible also shows us that there can be obstacles to the free working of the Spirit, and misunderstandings about his gifts. It is the duty of every Christian pastor to try to remove these obstacles and clear up these misunderstandings.