Role of The Spirit

[newnature]

Jesus having been crucified and then raised from the dead, Jesus ascended, he has gone up to be in the heaven with God. Heaven is God’s dimension of our present reality, but then Jesus has come down with the gift of the Spirit, making Jesus’ presence a reality to all his followers everywhere. The way Luke describes the arrival of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, the tabernacling presence of God. The early Christian movement becomes as it were, a kind of portable temple, the Spirit goes with them. The point seems to be that the community of Jesus’ followers is a kind of a moveable temple movement with God’s Spirit going with them, leading them, active in their midst and through their witness wherever the go.

The Spirit makes Jesus present and real to individuals and communities. The Spirit remakes broken and sinful human beings into genuine image bearers, reflecting God into there world. The Spirit give Jesus’ followers new direction and new energy for God’s mission in the world and for the many different personal vocations which contribute to that. The legal advocate, the one who comes and puts his arm around your shoulder or the counselor, the one who gives you the wise advice, this will be the way in which Jesus himself comes to make himself at home with them and where Jesus comes, the Father comes too. Jesus speaks astonishingly about himself and the Father coming through the work of the Spirit to dwell with them, anticipating the dwelling of God is with humans.

This is Jesus’ promise for those who love him and follow him, he and the Father together will love them and come and make their home with them in and through the work of the Spirit. The Spirit will remind them of what Jesus has told them and will lead them further and further into the mysterious depths of truth, truth about God and his purposes. The works of the flesh, all the various ways in which human beings mess up their own lives and the lives of other people, Paul contrasts those works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit. The Spirit dwells in the community of Jesus’ followers, turning them into a living temple and making the church and each member of it, a small working model of New Creation.

Being a renewed human being is that Jesus’ followers are to take responsibility for their own spiritual growth and development, they have to think through as much as they are able, what it’s going to mean, they have to translate that into moral decision and action. At the very heart of Christian spirituality, that the Spirit who is as close to us as breath itself, the Spirit is active in our thinking and feeling, gently, sometimes not so gently, putting ideas into our minds, warning us against inappropriate actions or thoughts, leading us into unexpected places and possibilities, all of which contribute to our being able to be living witnesses to God’s inaugurated New Creation.

The Spirit gives Jesus’ followers new direction and new energy for the tasks of mission and for the many personal vocations which go to make that up. Jesus promises directly that if we, sinful though we are, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will God, the heavenly Father, give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? We simply have to ask, though we mustn’t make the mistake of imagining that the Spirit simply enters a person as a one off event with no further development required. We should expect the Spirit to be constantly at work, continually challenging believers to new tasks, to fresh holiness, to deeper and more searching prayer, to a boldness of witness and a patient resolve in building up Christian community. With every such new step, there may come a deeper awareness of the presence of Jesus, but there may come a time of apparent absence, which then constitutes a further call to trust God in the darkness. The Spirit who dwells within us, is the one through whose work we will finally be raised from the dead, everything the Spirit does in our lives in the present, is an anticipation of that final gift.

 

[XtraPercept]

I admit I have not read many of your posts, but this one in particular resonates deeply with me. I am quick to hope I have found a brother, and impetuous in my application of the term at times, but it is for fervor of the God with Whom I hope to commune among with understanding.

We are each a temple of the Spirit if He truly dwells within. We become His body, operating as conduits of His blessing in the pleasure of expressing His glory for the primary purpose thereof. Because of the heart from which the obedient serve, God blesses all of their efforts that their light may be shining with His for the magnification of His Name.

Some think because I teach one God, I demote Christ, but they can't see that Christ was the unblemished flesh donned by God to demonstrate to perfection how we might serve Him in truth and sincerity for the experience of the truth of His promises. So yes, Christ is God and lives today, but He is distinguishable from and outranked by His Father. The holy Spirit is the primary metaphor for the work of God within and among us, not a separate person.

The holy Spirit only arrived after pentecost because of the restorative power of the sinless Death and Resurrection, as before that the work of God was external to the heart of man. Upon Pentecost, the work of God moved within. This is why the holy Spirit is not attributed with direct quotation in Scripture.

It is the Spirit which has quickened my flesh, revived me from sheol, and brought me into the New Jerusalem wherein I may fall upon my face whenever the angels announce to me the presence of The LORD enthroned in Zion as He rightly should be.

I am raised from the dead, I walk the heavens with The LORD presently. I write true words to any who can receive them, but to do so does require a lot of reading, so I bid any who engage the pursuit fare well and may God bless your efforts to reach Him as He has my own.

 

[newnature]

I admit I have not read many of your posts, but this one in particular resonates deeply with me. I am quick to hope I have found a brother, and impetuous in my application of the term at times, but it is for fervor of the God with Whom I hope to commune among with understanding.

We are each a temple of the Spirit if He truly dwells within. We become His body, operating as conduits of His blessing in the pleasure of expressing His glory for the primary purpose thereof. Because of the heart from which the obedient serve, God blesses all of their efforts that their light may be shining with His for the magnification of His Name.

Some think because I teach one God, I demote Christ, but they can't see that Christ was the unblemished flesh donned by God to demonstrate to perfection how we might serve Him in truth and sincerity for the experience of the truth of His promises. So yes, Christ is God and lives today, but He is distinguishable from and outranked by His Father. The holy Spirit is the primary metaphor for the work of God within and among us, not a separate person.

The holy Spirit only arrived after pentecost because of the restorative power of the sinless Death and Resurrection, as before that the work of God was external to the heart of man. Upon Pentecost, the work of God moved within. This is why the holy Spirit is not attributed with direct quotation in Scripture.

It is the Spirit which has quickened my flesh, revived me from sheol, and brought me into the New Jerusalem wherein I may fall upon my face whenever the angels announce to me the presence of The LORD enthroned in Zion as He rightly should be.

I am raised from the dead, I walk the heavens with The LORD presently. I write true words to any who can receive them, but to do so does require a lot of reading, so I bid any who engage the pursuit fare well and may God bless your efforts to reach Him as He has my own.

The project happened through Jesus’ Kingdom work, which reached its climax on the cross and because the power of death was defeated on the cross, that opened the way for creation to be set free from its slavery to decay, from its corruption and death, starting with Jesus’ own physical body resurrection is the beginning, that’s why the bodily resurrection of Jesus matters so much. If God is the good creator and if at the last he will put everything right, resurrection is going to be the result. This is the launching of the New Creation, in which the divine intention for the whole creation from the beginning is at last fulfilled. Jesus is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead Paul says, so that in everything he might be preeminent, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, in him and through him and for him all things were created.

 

[XtraPercept]

The project happened through Jesus’ Kingdom work, which reached its climax on the cross and because the power of death was defeated on the cross, that opened the way for creation to be set free from its slavery to decay, from its corruption and death, starting with Jesus’ own physical body resurrection is the beginning, that’s why the bodily resurrection of Jesus matters so much. If God is the good creator and if at the last he will put everything right, resurrection is going to be the result. This is the launching of the New Creation, in which the divine intention for the whole creation from the beginning is at last fulfilled. Jesus is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead Paul says, so that in everything he might be preeminent, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, in him and through him and for him all things were created.

Project? Climax?

You lose me with these words I haven't seen in Scripture. Not in this application anyway.

Not saying they aren't there, I'm just not familiar.

Enlighten me? Or link to your definitions?

 

[newnature]

Project? Climax?

You lose me with these words I haven't seen in Scripture. Not in this application anyway.

Not saying they aren't there, I'm just not familiar.

Enlighten me? Or link to your definitions?

Unless we see the gospel as a great narrative which finds its way through the dark night of the long years of Israel’s desolation and then bursts out with new life with Jesus’ resurrection. If having been launched, the New Creation is then put to work in the world, that is the primary task of the Holy Spirit in the great commission, there’s new life and if the Holy Spirit is given new life so that we can not only have life ourselves, but be life bringers into the world. Creation and justice, a good world spoiled by hostile and destructive forces, but now to be remade, a world to be brought through death and out the other side into a new kind of life, which death can no longer touch and though the Holy Spirit can and does work in a thousand different ways of which we only hear the rustle of the passing wind, one of the primary ways the Spirit works is of course through the humble, prayerful servants of Jesus, whose hearts have been renewed, whose minds have been enlightened by the powerful gospel, so that they not only believe in Jesus’ resurrection and hence in his victory over the dark powers on the cross, but that they become resurrection people, both signs and agents of the new life which will one day flood the whole creation and the key areas for their work will be creation and justice, beauty and justice imitating and drawing from God, the lavish Creator, anticipating God’s final putting right of all things.

 

[XtraPercept]

At present, you lose meaning to lack of formatting which is exacerbated by admixture of foreign language with Biblical concepts.

I encourage you to seek a vernacular more exclusively constructed of Scriptural terminology.