The redeemed community of the New Testament is dynamically related to that community of the Old. There can be no true understanding of the Church of the New Testament apart from the realization that the new community has a definite continuity with the past. It is more important, however, to recognize that the community of God was completely transformed by the coming of Christ. This was the decisive event of revelation which forever separated the new community from the old. In the words of Jesus, it was the new wine that could not be poured into old wineskins.
The transition between Israel and the Church had not been understood clearly by the disciples of Christ. The transformation which provided the living link between the promises of God and their fulfillment in the new community was effected by the coming of the Holy Spirit.
In order to develop a sufficient grasp of this situation, we might recapitulate the circumstances which led up to it. Only after much misunderstanding on their part had God been able to reveal to the disciples that the humble and lowly Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah. So fixed had become the expectation of a mighty and exalted deliverer, and so persistent was the expectation for a terrestrial kingdom, that the passion and death of Christ actually served to shatter the initial faith of the disciples. Only the appearance of the risen Christ sufficed to restore their confidence. With the re-establishment of faith, the anticipation of an earthly theocracy became even stronger. The question of the disciples recorded in Acts 1:6, “Dost thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” indicates this hope. The ascension, however, decreeing the end of the physical presence of Jesus, may have placed this whole expectation in doubt.
FULFILLMENT OF PROMISE
The fulfillment of Christ’s promise of the Holy Spirit provided the means for removing all this confusion. In the experience of Pentecost the disciples realized that they had been reconstituted as the redeemed community of promise. God had fulfilled the hope of Israel. Only because Jesus had been exalted at the right hand of the Father was he able to send forth the Spirit according to his own promise. Thus God declared by the resurrection and ascension that Jesus was both Lord and Christ, the Son of God with power (Acts 2:36; Rom. 1:4).
In the death and resurrection of Christ the remission of sins had been accomplished (Acts 2:36; 5:31). Salvation was now a reality (Acts 2:38); the New Covenant, the new theocracy foretold by Jeremiah and Joel, was now in full effect (Acts 2:16; 3:24). Realization of these facts brought decisive changes in the understanding of the disciples. One of these was the recognition that there were two advents between which intervened the time of the new community of the redeemed. The divine timetable now was made clear. First, there had been the time of the past age, the time of Israel. Next was the climactic revelation of God in the earthly ministry and passion of Jesus which culminated in the Resurrection. This introduced the present age—the messianic exaltation of Jesus who now reigns in heaven at God’s right hand and on earth through his Spirit in the community of the redeemed. Finally there would be the restitution of all things when Jesus Christ would appear in his glory. All things would then become subject to him, and he would reign until every knee should bow and every tongue should confess him as Lord. Then would come the end when the kingdom of the Son would be delivered up to the Father.
Insofar as Christ was now seated victoriously at God’s right hand, the decisive victory over sin and death had been won. Judgment now had passed into the hands of the Lord Christ. Henceforth the disciples would believe through him, pray through him, preach through him, live through him. Moreover, the presence of the Spirit gave assurance that Christ was himself present in the midst of his followers. “We know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he gave us” (1 John 3:24; cf. 1 John 4:13). To the extent that he was present through his Holy Spirit the promises made to Israel of Old (Acts 2:39), to Abraham (Acts 3:25), to Moses (Acts 7:17), to David (Acts 13:33), and to all the prophets (Acts 10:43) were being fulfilled. The messianic community of the New Covenant was now in operation.
A REDEEMED COMMUNITY
The means of entrance into this community of the redeemed is the possession of the Holy Spirit. The believers on the day of Pentecost were all filled with the Spirit; there was no distinction between male and female, between young men or old, between slaves and freemen. Receiving the Spirit brings the assurance that sins have been forgiven and that salvation has been received. It is the inward reality which corresponds to the outer symbolism of baptism, and is the supreme proof of belonging to Christ (Rom. 8:9).
Though everyone receives the Holy Spirit individually, the fact still remains that the Spirit is in a unique sense the possession of the community. This fact differentiates the New Testament community from the Old, where the Spirit was bestowed only on particular individuals for specific occasions.
The essence of the existence of the Church is life in the Spirit. “The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power,” Paul writes to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 4:20). The preaching of the disciples is “not in persuasive words of wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor. 2:4). The Galatians’ experience of the ministration of the Spirit in miracles and gifts (Gal. 3:5) led Paul to conclude: “Since we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25). The Spirit empowers the Church (Acts 1; 2), accompanies the witness of the disciples (Acts 5:32), and directs their missionary work (Acts 8:29; 10:19, 20; 13:2; 16:6–8). The united possession of the Holy Spirit explains the “togetherness” which the Church experienced, the willingness to have all things in common, and the bond of fellowship which marked their gathering. They could not be other than one in the Lord.
The implications of this power of the Spirit are incalculable. The early Church possessed a dynamic directly from God which resulted in the conversion of souls, the opening of prison doors, the judgment of sin within the Church, the ability to withstand opposition and persecution; a dynamic, in short, which the gates of hell could not withstand. Sadly enough, this dynamic is missing in great measure from our churches today. As Brunner expresses it, “In any event, we ought to face the New Testament witness with sufficient candor to admit that in this ‘pneuma,’ which the ekklesia was conscious of possessing, there lie forces of an extrarational kind which are mostly lacking among us Christians of today.”
The Holy Spirit’s relation to the Church was not simply an external power coming from without, “shaking” or filling the Church. The Spirit baptized every member of the Church, with the result that each one became specifically endowed or equipped to perform special service. As Paul states to the Corinthians: “To each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit to profit withal” (1 Cor. 12:7); to one is given a “word of wisdom; and to another the word of knowledge … to another faith … to another prophecy … but all these worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as he will” (1 Cor. 12:8–11). “But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the measure of the gift of Christ … for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:7–12).
The gifts of the Spirit are a direct challenge to the ecclesiastical temper of our day with its distinction between clergy and laity, as if the clergy possessed the gifts of God and the laity were dependent upon their administration of the gifts. Rather, all members in the same body, irrespective of what official capacity they may or may not be called to fill—all members are called to minister to the body “till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). Through the recognition and exercise of these individual endowments, the human tendency toward separation within the body of Christ is overcome. Because each possesses a full share of the Holy Spirit, and because each in turn is directed by the Holy Spirit according to his apportionment, envy, malice, or jealousy need not and should not exist. He who has received the Holy Spirit will walk in the confidence of His love, will speak in love, and will submit to another for Christ’s sake. Only where this mutual subordination exists, and where the church, in turn, is subject to Christ, can the Holy Spirit “fill” the church and make manifest the unity of the Body of Christ.
During the Wheaton College centennial Oxford University Press on January 9 will publish The Word for This Century (Merrill C. Tenney, editor). It is refreshing, a century after its beginnings, to find a Christian college dedicated still to spiritual priorities that marked its founding, and gratifying to find its faculty and alumni distinguished still by their world witness to the faith of the Bible. Contributors include Dr. Kenneth S. Kantzer, on “The Authority of the Bible”; Dr. Stuart C. Hackett, on “The Person of Christ”; Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, on “Man’s Dilemma: Sin”; Dr. T. Leonard Lewis, now deceased, on “Redemption by Christ”; Dr. Billy Graham, on “Christ in the Believer”; Dr. Glenn W. Barker, on “The Church of God”; President V. Raymond Edman, on “Christian Ethics”; and Dr. John F. Walvoord, on “The Hope of the World.” CHRISTIANITY TODAY prints a portion of Dr. Barker’s essay, simultaneously with the appearance of the centennial volume, by permission of the publishers.
We Quote:
ECUMENICAL IDOLS: “The National Council is fast becoming Protestantism’s Sacred Cow, and, in the minds of many, to attack it is close to blasphemy.”—The Rev. THOMAS N. LEIBRAND, First United Presbyterian Church, Lexington, Ohio.
