Many of us are convinced that it is impossible to reform the social order apart from personal redemption of individuals. We will be wise if we carry the same line of reasoning into our concept of the work of the Holy Spirit in individuals and in the Church.
We are inclined to think of his work in general and impersonal terms. We pray for an “outpouring of the Holy Spirit,” as if he worked in some nebulous way apart from the lives of people. True, he may use things and events for his glory and the advancement of God’s Kingdom; but he possesses and fills people and works through them.
The very heart of the Christian faith is man’s personal relationship with God. Man stands before God as an individual, and as an individual he is redeemed. The work of the Holy Spirit is personal. It is he who effects the new birth, who brings spiritual life from spiritual death. It is he who comes into the hearts and lives, wooing, speaking of the things of Christ, and instructing in spiritual truth.
When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, there were supernatural manifestations that immediately became personalized. The “tongues of fire,” we are told, were “distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit …” (Acts 2:3, 4, RSV). And because this experience was personalized, these unlearned Galileans went out transformed.
The phrase “a Spirit-filled Church” can be misleading. It is the persons making up the Church who must be filled with the Spirit, and we cannot avoid this necessity by thinking or hoping that God works in some other way.
There is no doctrine more neglected than that of the Holy Spirit. Much is said about God the Father, and about his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and of course none of us can fully understand or exhaust these subjects. But about the Holy Spirit there is abysmal ignorance and often a strange indifference. Yet it is he by whom alone we can believe in Christ and be prepared to witness for him. It is through the Holy Spirit that the Bible becomes an open book. The Holy Spirit is not an accessory to Christian faith and work; he is a necessity.
Most churches are today confronted with a depressing fact: the spiritual birthrate increasingly lags behind the biological. In desperation we turn to new programs and new methods. Some even attempt to jettison basic parts of the Christian faith in favor of ideas more acceptable to the unregenerate. How foolish can we get?
If there is to be a change—and there can be—we must search our own hearts for the cause of the trouble. Is there concrete evidence of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in us? There can be no improvement in the general situation in the Church until there is a change in the lives of individual Christians, in the pulpit as well as in the pew. An answer to the problem is a personal one; it affects you and me.
Confronted as we are with spiritual deadness in the Church, let us honestly admit that this deadness lies within us as individuals. The Church’s state is an elongated shadow of the state of its members. And the great omission in its members’ lives is the failure to recognize the absolute necessity of a personal experience with the Holy Spirit—an experience that transforms and quickens, not the organization, but the people who make up that organization.
We thrill at the story of Pentecost and perhaps are inclined to look on it merely as a phenomenon in history. But the coming of the Holy Spirit in mighty power in the lives of Christians should be a continuing experience within the Church.
The significance of the manifestation at Pentecost was not that rude fishermen were suddenly able to speak in other languages. Rather, it was that they were transformed into something they had not been previously. Only a few days before they had been scattered, and one of their number had denied his Lord before a mere servant maid. Then, when filled with the Spirit, this same man stood fearlessly before the Sanhedrin, who had condemned Christ, and boldly denounced them for their sin while pleading with them to repent. Even these enemies of our Lord recognized that the disciples had been with Jesus and, at this time, dismissed them with nothing more than a threat.
Obviously, the Holy Spirit changes the person in whom he lives. It is by his presence that men become “new creatures” in Christ. But how often do we see any vital change today? The lack of evidence of transformed lives rests as a dead weight on the Church and discredits the validity of the Christian faith in the eyes of an unbelieving world.
The change that takes place is a tremendous one. The fruits of the indwelling Spirit, enumerated by Paul in Galatians 5:22, 23, are the result of a supernatural work, contrary to man’s natural behavior. Do we by our own lives show these fruits to others? Do we have a consciousness of love, joy, and peace within?
These are questions we need to answer in all honesty. In the answer, either spiritual health or sickness—even to death—is indicated.
Our Lord described the work of the Spirit to Nicodemus as something to be felt. We cannot see the wind, but we feel its effect. So it is with the Spirit of God. There must be an effect of his presence in our lives, felt by us and seen by others.
This change and empowering is a constant work of the Holy Spirit, renewed day by day in the hearts and lives of those who turn to him. It is through such persons that the Christian witness is made effective.
Recently I heard a successful young minister speak about “communicating” the Gospel. He wisely observed, “I cannot communicate the Gospel, nor can any one else. It is the Holy Spirit alone who makes the Gospel intelligible to people.”
Perhaps many of our failures stem from misapprehensions about this vital matter. We are prone to depend on personality, education, organizational structure, and programs as the primary means of leading people to believe. Important and useful as all of these may be, they are useless unless surrendered to the leading and power of the Holy Spirit. God has used some very unlikely people and methods, while some grandiose, expensive, and sophisticated methods have failed miserably. The word of the Lord to Zerubbabel holds good today: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 4:6).
The Holy Spirit is no longer the dominant reality in many churches because he is no longer the dominant reality in the members’ own personal lives. This is a serious spiritual situation, the cause of weakness and ineffectiveness.
Things do not have to continue as they are, however. There can be a tremendous change, a new surge of power and understanding, a new sense of urgency for a world that has gone far down the road to destruction.
This change must take place in a person’s heart and mind, and it is possible only by the in-filling of the Holy Spirit. God has promised to give his Spirit to those who ask him. His presence will open up an entirely new concept of what it means to be a Christian. We, and the Church, can then become filled with life and power—God living in us.
It will make all the difference!
