The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12.1-13; John 15.26-27; 16.12-15


“Some people say miracles don’t happen everyday, but they do!” Forrest Gump exclaimed. Miracles are signs that an all-powerful God is also immanent, that is, aware and involved in our lives. Miracles are simply God bending the rules that He made in the Creation; and on very rare occasion miracles are God breaking the rules.

But is this so unexpected? A friend just loaned me a wonderful little book called Dinner With a Perfect Stranger. The premise is this average guy gets an anonymous invitation to meet someone at a nice restaurant. Out of curiosity the guy shows up and sits down with another average guy in a business suit who, in the course of conversation, claims to be Jesus. Obviously, our guy is looking for the joke, the gag, maybe put on by the guys in his office. But no one comes out of the kitchen laughing, no one shows to take credit. What’s more, this “Jesus” turns out to be fairly knowledgeable of his life and is a pretty interesting dinner companion. Our guy suspends his disbelief, but asks “Jesus” to prove who he is. Jesus answers that with, “What could I do to prove to you that I am God?” And to be honest, the man can’t really think of anything that would erase all of his doubts. More on this in a bit.

The Nicene Creed says, “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.” And it follows that if God is God – if He is the “Lord the giver of Life,” then He can still act and He can still speak to this world.

The Holy Spirit is God still acting and speaking to us and to our world. One of the titles given to the Holy Spirit by Jesus is “Counselor.” The Holy Spirit is God counseling us and guiding. He is “the Spirit of Truth.” So in other words, in you belong to Christ, then Christ’s Spirit belongs to you. The Spirit is trustworthy. You can know that God is talking to you and that it not just something that you’re making up in your head. I mean, this is pretty crucial. But you can know the difference between God’s thoughts, your own thoughts, and the Enemy’s thoughts.

Jesus tells us that He has much more to say to us, and the disciples could take it all in at once. And we probably can’t either. So there is this mandate from the Lord for an ongoing revelation to his people. God will continue to speak. The Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth. Now, there is a caution involved here: not everything that comes down the pike in religion or psychology or any other field of inquiry is “ongoing revelation” from God. That might seem obvious to you, but it bears repeating. The Holy Spirit still speaks but there is a consistency and there is a character to the Spirit’s words.

The Spirit never tells us anything that contradicts the character of God or the continuity of His revelation in the Scriptures. The apostle Paul touched on this immediately in 1 Corinthians 12. Paul was responding to some pagans who claimed a “secret knowledge” or revelation from God that others weren’t privy to. They were called Gnostics, which means “to know.” The problem with these possessors of secret knowledge was that some of their revelation contradicted the revelation of Scripture and what the Christian community knew to be the character of a Holy God. Now, how do you tell someone you don’t believe them when they say, “God told me this.” How do you prove to someone that God didn’t say anything to them? How do you prove to someone that they didn’t hear the voice or have the dream?

It’s like the woman who woke up one morning and told her husband, “I just dreamed you gave me a diamond necklace. What do you think it means?”

“You’ll know tonight,” he said.

That evening, the man came home with a small package and gave it to his wife. Delighted she opened it to find a book entitled, The Meaning of Dreams.

It’s difficult. Maybe you don’t prove to someone their experience is invalid. But you do point to the consistency and continuity of God’s witness to us. You ask, “Does this really sound like God? Is this a dream He might give? Is this consistent with what He has spoken through the prophets, and especially what He has revealed and spoken through Jesus?”

Paul put it this way, “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.”

To give you another example: Say you have had problems with self-esteem, and you get those thoughts running in your head, thoughts of inferiority and unworthiness – it’s like a tape player in your head and it’s the same track over and over again – thoughts that say, “You are stupid. What were you thinking when you applied for that job? They’ll never hire you.” You might try to push the pause button on that player and ask yourself, “If I believe that God has purposes for my life, and I should try to listen to the voice of God in finding and fulfilling these purposes, does this really sound like “guidance” from God? Would God ever say, “You’re stupid.”?

There are other examples, issues of the day, that revolve around the question of God’s ongoing revelation – and I’m talking big issues like gay marriage, abortion, the uniqueness of Jesus Christ even; these all center on how you say God speaks through the Holy Spirit. I say there is no contradiction between the past revelation of God found in the Bible and the ongoing revelation given through the Holy Spirit to the Church. Does the Church have the discernment to listen to the Spirit, and does the Church have the courage to speak wisdom to a culture that may not recognize the authority of the Speaker?

The Holy Spirit is most clearly heard and vitally experienced in the context of spiritual community. Many people will say they know God is real and even speaks when they look at a sunset or see salvation in some kind of life-changing event or crisis, like 9-11. But it’s amazing how infrequently we look to nature for inspiration, though according to Romans chapter one, God clearly speaks there. And it’s a blessing that disasters don’t strike more often than they do. We ignore God’s most consistent and reliable voice when we don’t listen to our brothers and sisters in the community of faith called the church.

When the guy sits down with Jesus in the restaurant and Jesus reveals his true identity, part of the guys disbelief and surprise rests on Jesus appearance – not a long-haired, bearded, flowing robe type, but rather a thirtyish businessman in suit and tie. He doesn’t believe God would look this average. And neither do we. We miss out because God speaks to us through the average people and the average events of our daily lives. Becoming a spiritual person is simply learning how to listen to the voice of God in our daily routine and conversation. This most readily happens when we are in regular contact with other believers who share our desire to hear God.

“Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.” Paul is talking about the church here. In the church, the Holy Spirit gives gifts so that lives will be transformed, so that people will be healed of sins destruction, so that real community will be born. Paul makes it clear that the Holy Spirit doesn’t only speak through the preacher or the Apostle, but through the teacher, the administrator, the helper, and the one who needs healing.

“The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts. . .they form one body. So it is with Christ. . .and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”

We cannot become all that God desires us to be without the church. We cannot hear God’s voice speaking without the church. We cannot experience the Spirit’s power without the church. We cannot fulfill God’s purposes in our generation without the Church.

What are you doing to listen to the Spirit’s voice in your life? How are you seeking community in the body of Christ? What is God saying to you in your life right now?