Brief Thoughts on the Holy Spirit
REFLECTING ON THE HOLY SPIRIT
To hear some people talk you would think that the Holy Spirit did not work in the world until Jesus of Nazareth came along. With an open Bible we simply cannot believe that.
From Genesis 1:2 to Revelation 22 we find the Holy Spirit at work; creating, guiding and revealing while being grieved and rebelled against. No one does anything in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) without the empowering of the Holy Spirit and it does not make any difference if it was a man working with metals for the Tabernacle, a woman weaving curtains, a prophet or judge rescuing, speaking to or ensuring that justice and righteousness prevailed in Israel. The Old Testament insists that Israel’s existence, sustenance and shape was all of the Holy Spirit.
“Yes, but things are different in the New Testament when the Holy Spirit is spoken of,” someone reminds us. This is true. But what is it that is “new” about the Spirit in the New Testament – that is the question.
Are we to believe that the “fruit of the Spirit” in Galatians 5:22-23 did not exist in people before Jesus came? Are we to believe that Old Testament people showed these “virtues” without the Spirit’s enabling? Or, perhaps worse, are we to believe that Old Testament people were not meek, good, patient, loving or joyful?
It is a shallow reading of the Bible and Galatians 5 in particular that leads us to believe and teach that without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit [in a New Testament sense] people cannot be virtuous. It ignores the entire Old Testament, dismisses Cornelius who prior to the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit on him and his household was a work of moral beauty and insists that non-Christians are altogether “in the flesh” in the sense that they cannot choose or practice virtue. This is “Christian” imperialism in its worst form. “Only we Christians can be virtuous.” Can you credit that?
This not only denies the work of God in the entire human family, but it ignores people like Anna, Mary, the blessed mother of our Lord, and Joseph His righteous adopted father since these all lived before Pentecost, before and without the peculiarly Christian “outpouring” of the Holy Spirit. It would mean the apostles and the rest of the one hundred and twenty lacked virtues until Pentecost.
To use Galatians 5:22-23 to prove that without the New Testament indwelling of the Spirit a person cannot be virtuous is a manifest misuse of the section. That is not Paul’s point.
He claims that salvation in the Lord Jesus is independent of Torah observance, that is, that one does not have to come under the Sinai Covenant to be blessed in the Messiah. But such a freedom is not to lead to ungodliness [Galatians 5:13-15]. Anyone who claims his evil behavior is justified by his being free and “in the Spirit” misses the point entirely. Being in the Spirit would not produce such behavior or thoughts. If one is truly in the Spirit the result will be the fruit of the Spirit. “Show me your freedom in the Spirit?” one might ask. “Here, note my evil behavior. These evils are the fruits of my freedom in the Spirit.”
“No,” says Paul, “The Spirit does not produce such fruit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace…”
Paul is not saying that non-Christians are incapable of being virtuous. He is saying that Christians cannot claim that their vices are the fruit of their freedom in the Holy Spirit. To take this section to support Christian imperialism [“Only Christians can be virtuous”] robs God of praise for the work He does in non-Christians, it is to rob multiplied millions of non-Christians their due praise for living out costly virtues and it is to shallow work in teaching the Bible.
