Holy Spirit - Part 3: In the Life of the Believer
THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT:
HELPER:
The Holy Spirit is a helper who comes alongside us to help lead us in our Christian walk.
John 14:16
“And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever;”
TEACHER:
The Holy Spirit is our teacher from the moment of indwelling conversion onward.
John 14:26
“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you”.
1 John 2:27
“... the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as He hath taught you, ye shall abide in him”.
1 Cor 2:13-14
“Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned”.
When we are born again we enter the dimension of the Spirit. In this dimension, we can be taught by Him to understand the things of God that are beyond the reach of our experience or intellect. 2 Cor 4:18 “... the things which are not seen are eternal”.
The Holy Spirit brings the scriptures that we have read or heard to our remembrance for teaching us more and more about the things of God.
GUIDE:
The Holy Spirit will guide us in all truth.
He will give us the discernment to judge between true and false teachings. If we open our hearts and read the Bible with the Spirit as our guide, we will not stray from the truth and we will have all we need to guide us through the Christian life.
John 16:13
“Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth...”.
2 Peter 1:3
“... his divine power hath given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness...”.
PROPHECY:
The Holy Spirit will show us things to come. The Spirit will help us understand the prophecies in the books of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation which we need so much as we live in these final days of the age. We are guided into this truth so that we as believers stand fast in understanding and
“... That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men... “. (Eph 4:14)
THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT:
THE PROMISE:
Acts 1:4-5
“And being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me.
For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence”.
Here is the promise by the Father through the Son to give the gift of the Holy Spirit to those who are chosen and believe.
This promise did not begin with the New Testament nor with the book of Acts. It was given in prophecy by the Lord's prophet, Joel, hundreds of years before.
Joel 2:28
“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy...”.
THE POWER:
We are clearly taught that the Holy Spirit gives us the power to live the Christian life as a witness for God.
Acts 1:8
“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth”.
We ourselves live in the uttermost parts. We have been given the same power to witness and are called and commanded to do so.
It is impossible to live the Christian life without the power of the Spirit within us.
Gal 5:17-18
“For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh... For if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law”.
Matt 26:41
“Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation, the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak”.
Jesus himself is the best example of the witness that we should be.
In John 14:8-9 Jesus teaches Phillip that if you have seen Him, you have seen the Father. This is the life we should exemplify for the world. When the world sees us, they should see the Father in us.
The word “power” in the Greek is “dunamis” from which we derive the word dynamic. When we become a true witness, we are at the same time a dynamic witness for all to see.
Before Peter received the power of the Holy Spirit he was afraid to be identified with Jesus. Mark 14 reveals to us the familiar story of Peter promising to remain with the Lord, and then fear overcoming him, even bringing his denial three times. After he received the Spirit, Peter witnessed boldly to these same people who had tried Jesus in the mock trial, as we see in Acts 4, even telling them that there was no salvation apart from Christ.
Then when Peter went back to the Christians, they prayed for even great boldness.
We must allow the Holy Spirit to change us within, rather than trying to change from the outside ourselves and then to hope we will change within.
Romans 8:2
“For the law of the Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death”.
As we yield each area of our lives to the Spirit, He then progressively conforms us to the image of Christ.
THE CONFORMING WORK:
THE STANDARD OF RIGHTEOUSNESS:
In Matthew 5:20 Jesus told the disciples that they had to be more righteous than the scribes and the Pharisees, who rigidly follow the law, if they wanted to enter the kingdom of heaven. We must take this command very seriously even today, for there are still Pharisees among us.
In Matthew 5:21-47 Jesus gave illustrations as to how the law is to be considered. The Pharisees practiced an outward righteousness, but Jesus said the commands He taught required inward purity as well. We should constantly recall that He said that it was not what goes into a man that defiles him, but rather what comes out of a man from within.
He also taught that on the outside the Pharisees appeared as clean as whited tombs but inwardly they were filled with dead men's bones.
In the last verse of Matthew 5 Jesus concludes this teaching by teaching those who seek to follow Him to be perfect (meaning complete). This was the standard he brought in the newness of His own righteousness granted by grace to each who believe.
SALVATION THROUGH JESUS CHRIST:
Since we cannot hope to achieve the level of righteousness necessary to stand before holy God on our own efforts, He has given us another way to come to Him. In John 6:28-29 when the people asked Jesus what they should do in order to do the works of God, He told them “... to believe on Him whom He hath sent”.
When we come to believe upon Jesus as our savior, we are only able to do so when the Father draws us (John 6:44). At this moment of conversion the mystery of the Holy Spirit is revealed to us as it enters into our being, never to leave, and from that moment onward, the Spirit works within us to make us more like Christ, the process called sanctification.
2 Cor 5:17
“Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new”.
Jesus is the example of what God intended man to be when He created man as explained in Genesis 1:26, “... in our image, in our likeness...”. In John 8:29 Jesus said He did that which pleased the Father, and we know that in Matthew 3:17, God spoke from heaven, telling the world He was indeed pleased.
Therefore, if we wish to please the Lord, it is necessary for each of us to become more and more like Jesus as we live for Him, through the Spirit given to us by Him.
How does that happen?
THE SPIRIT CONFORMS US:
God's predestined purpose for us was to conform us to the image of His Son.
Romans 8:29
“For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son...”.
The means provided by the Lord to accomplish this holy change is the Holy Spirit working in us to change us into the likeness of Christ.
Eph 4:13
“Till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God...”.
When we come to see that this divine ideal is in the person of Jesus Christ through the teaching and guidance of the Holy Spirit changes us from glory to glory into that same image. Through that work of conformance by the Spirit we come to see Christ with an open or “unveiled” face that is not any more blinded to the truth.
2 Cor 3:18
“But we all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord”.
We now can only see Christ within His holy Word (scripture) and we must have the Spirit to make the Word alive within our hearts.
2 Peter 1:4
“Whereby are given to us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature...”.
BECOMING SONS OF GOD THROUGH CHRIST:
Through this process of sanctification provided by the guidance and teaching of the Holy Spirit we are considered sons of God, not through any righteousness of our own but through His righteousness only (John 1:12 & Romans 8:16-17).
As we become more like Christ, our problems arise from living as redeemed spirits in unredeemed bodies. We desire to be delivered from these bodies of flesh so that we may enjoy the full, rich, and overflowing joy of life in the Spirit completely
(1 John 3:2 & 2 Cor 5:4 & Romans 8:22-23).
As the Holy Spirit continues to work in us, we find that our joy is growing continually as we become more conformed to the image of Christ.
Psalm 17:15
“I shall be satisfied when I awake, with Thy likeness...”.
The Spirit descends through the prayer of the Son into human time thereby showing His eternal relation with the Son. He brings the love of the Father and we are accepted into that divine love through our acceptance of the conviction brought by the Spirit. All who are His (the whosoever of John 3:16) become beloved of God, forever (eternally) joined with Christ in His Holy Spirit. From the salvation moment onward each dwells in love and is indwelt by love, known both now and in eternity as SONS OF GOD.