HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHURCH!
“A Wesleyan Understanding of the Fullness of the Spirit”
Acts 2:1-41 Luke 11:13: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Introduction
Today is Pentecost Sunday, the day we celebrate the birthday of the Church, the day the church was formed and empowered for its mission.
A year or two ago as we approached this Sunday in the Christian year, I looked for a sermon on Pentecost that I had once written. It was not to be found. But several days ago as I was shredding tax forms and checks from an old file in the garage, there it was in a battered red notebook. Forty six years ago on August 15, 1965, in my home church in Valentine, Nebraska, I preached on “What Happened at Pentecost?” from Acts 2:1-5 and 15:1-9.
The sermon began with a story about two well-known Bible expositors of days gone by. F. B. Meyer was to be the main speaker at a Whitsun (Pentecost) conference in England. He arrived late after the first session had been addressed by a very “profound” Bible teacher, a Dr. Pentecost. The latter had left his audience completely mystified by his address. F. B. Meyer, unaware of all this, began his first message by saying as it was Whitsun he would speak on a matter on the hearts of all present, “What exactly did Pentecost mean?”
My old sermon attempted to answer the question with Peter’s declaration at the Jerusalem council. In reference to the coming of the Spirit upon the household of Cornelius (Acts 10:44), Peter explained that just as at Pentecost “God who knows the heart, bore witness to, giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he also did to us; And he made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:8-9 NASB). We will not repeat that sermon here, but will attempt a broader perspective as we ask, “What exactly did Pentecost mean?”
In our earliest years we were known as The Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene! This title was put in place at the 1907 meeting in Chicago of the Association of Pentecostal Churches in the east and the Church of the Nazarene in the west. This name then became official with the October 13, 1908, union of north and south, thus the date of the founding of our; church as we know it. This name persisted until the General Assembly of 1919 when the church was becoming confused in the public mind with the rapidly growing new movement identified with the gift of “unknown tongues.” So the adjective “Pentecostal” was dropped and we became simply, The Church of the Nazarene.
We begin our attempt to understand the term Pentecost with a look at its biblical background. It occurs only three times in the New Testament where it designates a Jewish religious celebration:
Acts 2:1: “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.”
Acts 20:16: “Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus to avoid spending time in the province of Asia, for he was in a hurry to reach Jerusalem, if possible, by the day of Pentecost.”
1 Corinthians 16:8-9: “But I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me.”
The word Pentecost means “fiftieth” and came to mean the fiftieth day after Passover. The Old Testament designation was the “feast of weeks” (Exod 34:22). It indicated the second of the three national holidays when all males were obligated to appear before the Lord; it took place “fifty” days after the Passover. The Feast of Weeks concluded the interval that began with the presentation of the first harvest sheaves and celebrated with much joy the cessation of hard work. The feast became also an occasion for covenant renewal in Israel: “The LORD our God . . . remembers his covenant forever” (Psalm 105:7-8).
For the Christian Church, Pentecost marks the completion of Christ’s redemptive work. Following his resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven and presented himself as the first fruits of a coming harvest (Heb 9:12). In this sense, Pentecost both consummates Easter and represents its fullness: a watershed in salvation history, the beginning of a new age under a new covenant: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor 11:25).
So to comprehend Acts 2:1 in its relation to the Spirit, we look now at the highlights with a short essay in biblical theology beginning with
“The Spirit of God”
In the opening words of the Genesis creation accounts, “a wind from God swept over the waters” (Gen 1:2; NRSV). “Wind,” the Hebrew ruach, is often translated here by “Spirit” as “the Spirit of God was brooding over the waters” (see John 3:8).
The Old Testament speaks often of the “Spirit of God” at work through his prophets and among his people: “When they arrived at Gibeah, a procession of prophets met him [Saul]; the Spirit of God came upon him in power, and he joined in their prophesying” (1 Sam 10:10). The “Spirit” is also described also as “the Spirit of the LORD” (1 Sam 10:6). The Psalmist prayed, “Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me” (Ps 51:11).
John Wesley (1703-1791), the founder of Methodism and the spiritual mentor of those of us who call ourselves Wesleyans, wrote in 1773 that
The title "holy," applied to the Spirit of God, does not only denote that he is holy in his own nature, but that he makes us so; that he is the great fountain of holiness to his church; the Spirit from whence flows all the grace and virtue, by which the stains of guilt are cleansed, and we are renewed in all holy dispositions, and again bear the image of our Creator.
The New Testament employs “the Spirit of God” interchangeably with “the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3). The “Holy Spirit” remains God at work, but now the Spirit possesses a new and fuller meaning. . Wesleyan Christians have always been committed to life “in the Spirit” for we believe that “anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him” (Rom 8:9; NRSV). The New Testament uses varied expressions to speak of the Spirit’s presence and work in the hearts and fellowship of God’s people. A favorite with Wesleyans is the fullness of the Spirit: “be filled with the Spirit” (Eph 5:18). We take, however, our terminology of being “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:3) mostly from the book of Acts. So now,
“The Holy Spirit”
The fullness of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts possesses a twofold meaning. First, it characterizes our Church age as the age of the Spirit’s coming into the lives of the people of God in fulfillment of prophetic promise—Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel:
The fortress will be abandoned, the noisy city deserted; citadel and watchtower will become a wasteland forever, the delight of donkeys, a pasture for flocks, til the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the desert becomes a fertile field, and the fertile field seems like a forest (Isa 32:14-15).
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws (Ezek 36:26-27).
And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. Even on your servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days (Joel 2:28-29).
To the prophetic witness we can add the promises of John the Baptist and Jesus:
And this was his [John’s] message: “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (Mark 1:7-8).
On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-5).
This long hoped-for fulfillment of life in the presence and power of the Spirit of God was now at hand. Acts vividly describes the epic moment when the disciples of Jesus became the Church:
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be3TheTheT tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. (2:1-4).
The birth of the Church was now complete. What they are to be is plainly evident—a people “filled with the Holy Spirit,” enabled to witness to the world (1:8; 2:4, 33; 4:8, 31):
We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him (5:32).
When Saul, the early persecutor of the Church and later apostle to the Gentiles, was arrested on the road to Damascus by the risen Lord (9:3-6), the Lord instructed his disciple Ananias in a vision to go see him. As he came to Saul, he laid hands on him and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road . . . has sent me so that you may see again, and be filled with the Holy Spirit” (9:17). Saul, later renamed Paul, with this act was now an authentic and integral part of the Church he had attempted to destroy (8:3; 9:1-2).
The second meaning of the fullness of the Spirit in Acts is that it is to be renewed daily as Spirit-filled disciples face the challenges of the hour. Not long after Pentecost, Peter and John, after healing a crippled man,were put in prison (3:1-10) for “proclaiming . . . in Jesus the resurrection of the dead” (4:1-4) to the people. The next day the Jewish authorities brought the two apostles before them and asked, “By what power or name did you do this?” Acts reports that “Peter, having just been filled with the Holy Spirit” (4:8 NASB margin), boldly answered that they did these things “by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead” (4:10).
As the narrative of the early Church continues, on the release of Peter and John the disciples met to pray, and again “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly” (4:31). To be “full of the Holy Spirit” (7:55; see 6.3, 5; 13:9) was the significant characteristic of those in the service of the early Church. The Holy Spirit empowered their mission as the Church in the world: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses . . . to the ends of the earth” (1:8). The Apostle Paul wrote to the Roman church that his ministry to the Gentiles was conducted “through the power of the Spirit” (Rom 15:19).
In the “spirit” of Pentecost, that first day of a Spirit-filled church, Christians are defined once and for all as those who live and serve in continual renewal of their relation to the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, As our theological mentor expressed it so well,
the life of God in the soul of the believer. . . implies the continual inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit: God’s breathing into the soul, and the soul’s breathing back what it first receives from God; a continual action of God upon the soul, . . . the . . . unceasing presence of God, the loving, pardoning God, manifested to the heart, and perceived by faith; and an unceasing return of love, praise, and prayer, offering up all the thoughts of our hearts, all the words of our tongues, all the works of our hands, all our body, soul, and spirit, to be one holy sacrifice, acceptable unto God in Christ Jesus.
As the church, as the people of God, as the disciples of Jesus, as Christians, our first clue as to who we are and how we are to live—in daily holy obedience to the Holy Spirit--was revealed on the Day of Pentecost and in the first days of the early Church. Such a life, empowered by the gift of the Spirit given first on the Day of Pentecost, is our daily privilege.
As the Church grew and spread the Spirit became known also as
“The Spirit of Jesus” The Christian’s relation to the Holy Spirit is uniquely a relation to Jesus: “the Spirit of Jesus” (Acts 16:7). The Holy Spirit was instrumental in Jesus’ conception and birth (Luke 1:35), the Holy Spirit empowered Jesus at his baptism (Luke 3:22), and Jesus began his ministry full of “the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14; see 4:1). The Gospel of John expresses this truth beautifully on the lips of the Baptist:
“I saw the Spirit come down from heaven like a dove, and remain on him. I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘the man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God” (1:32-34).
As the one upon whom the Spirit “remains” during his ministry, Jesus brought the kingdom of God into the crucible of human affairs: “if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matt 12:28). Jesus thus enables us to pray as he taught us, “your kingdom come” (Matt 6:10). For as “the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit” (John 1:33 NRSV), Jesus, by virtue of his life, death, and resurrection, is the one who sends to us “the Spirit of truth” from the Father fulfilling in our lives the promise of Pentecost (John 15:26; see 14:16-17; 16:7-11).
The beloved disciple, in his Gospel, as he sought to make sense of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, produced “perhaps the supreme theological achievement of the New Testament.” John reports the promise of Jesus as he prepared for his death as “when he, the Spirit of Truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is to come” (John 16:12-13).
The Holy Spirit has not come to tell us more than Jesus, or something beyond Jesus, but to grant a deep understanding of what Jesus means for us in our own time. As life moves unrelentingly on for us, what the crucified and risen Christ wants to be and do in your life and mine, where we find ourselves now, is the present work of the Holy Spirit, ”the Spirit of Truth.” The Spirit helps us find our way through the unexpected, the riddle-penetrated, and the seemingly impossible circumstances of today!
After his resurrection, Jesus said to his fearful disciples, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” With these words, “he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:21-22).
From that epic-moment to this day, the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church and the Christian was and is not only “the Spirit of Jesus” (Phil 1:19) but even more “the Spirit of Christ” (Rom 8:9). Christ is the “anointed” one “who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom 1:4). This is the “Son . . . who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20). Jesus’ humanity, the Incarnation, as well as the Crucifixion and the Resurrection all define who the Holy Spirit is as the Spirit of Pentecost and what it is about now in our day-to-day lives.
“The Spirit of Christ”
William Greathouse (1919-2011) reminds us that what we know as “the Christian experience of the Holy Spirit” comes “to its clearest expression in the Epistles.” So as we listen to the witness of the New Testament Epistles, it is the life of the Son of God, Jesus the crucified and risen Christ, which we are enabled to live out in the world by “the Spirit of Christ.” (Rom 8:9).
The Apostle Paul declares to the Romans that “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death” (8:2; NRSV; see 7:6). To the Corinthians, he sums up this life in words both daring and profound: “we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16). This characterizes the quality of life that the Spirit of Jesus, the exalted Christ, is at work within us to express through our lives. The Spirit filled Christian is thus caught up into the “life-spirit” of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:1—7:28)!
The epistles likewise are concerned about the work of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, as developing the mind of Christ in the fellowship of the Church. Christians cannot “say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3; they are to “live (lit., ‘walk’) by the Spirit” (Gal 5:16; see Rom 8:4-5, 14). For them “the kingdom of God is . . . joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17)—all this because God has given them his Spirit in their hearts “as a first installment” or “guarantee” (2 Cor 1:22; 5:5; NRSV) of their hope for “a house, . . . eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor 5:1; NRSV; see Rom 5:5; 8:11).
Since “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5:10), as Christians “we make it our goal” in life to please the Lord (2 Cor 5:9). As people of “a new covenant” our help is in “the Spirit [who] gives life” (2 Cor 3:6). Paul was certainly Spirit-inspired to write,
the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:17-19).
Conclusion
Amazingly, this same Holy Spirit, the “Spirit of Christ” had been long at work in relation to the people of God; this Spirit was within the prophets when they predicted “the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow” (1 Pet 1:11). The Spirit is linked to Jesus both before and after the Incarnation; the Spirit brings to us the culmination of the speaking of God in the Old as well as the New Testament.
It follows then that Jesus could say to his generation, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13).
And no wonder the Apostle was inspired to pray for the Ephesians “that you might have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:18-19; see Col 1:19; John 16:13-15).
And the final invitation of the last biblical prophet to us today remains thrillingly “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, Come.’ And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life freely” (Rev 22:17; NRSV).
“Jesus, I Come”!
The old hymn from my Methodist boyhood rings again in my ears:
Out of my shameful failure and loss, Jesus, I come; Jesus I come. Into the glorious gain of Thy cross, Jesus, I come to Thee.
Out of earth’s sorrows into Thy balm, Out of life’s storms and into Thy calm, Out of distress to jubilant psalm, Jesus, I come to Thee.