A Joyous Pentecost to you, my friends!
What, wait – we mainline Protestant Christians don’t typically
recognize the significance Pentecost…….
But why not?
Pentecost started off as an ancient Israelite festival held
fifty days after Passover, to celebrate the giving of the law on Mount
Sinai. When Jesus rose from the dead
centuries later, He began instituting a new order of things. Forty days after Resurrection Sunday He
ascended to heaven, leaving His disciples with a promise and a command: That
the disciples would receive power from the Holy Spirit and that they were to be
Christ’s witnesses to all the earth (Acts 1:8).
Ten days later was Pentecost, and early that morning as the
disciples were gathered together in prayer, the promised Power arrived in vivid
form. The Holy Spirit enabled the
apostles to fulfill the Great Commission given by Christ. It is interesting to me that the Holy Spirit,
the seal of the new covenant in Christ (Ephesians 1:13-14), came on Pentecost –
a festival which had previously celebrated the giving of the law which was the
foundation of the Mosaic covenant.
The Spirit of God came mightily to seal God’s chosen people in
the new covenant on the same day that the Jews were celebrating the letter of
God’s law—delivered in the Ten Commandments—that had established the old
covenant. God knows what He’s doing,
doesn’t He? :-) The disciples probably started praying for
the promised power soon after Jesus ascended.
They probably didn’t understand what was taking so long as they waited
ten days with no (recorded) apparent progress.
But God’s timing is always perfect – and by waiting, He established an
object lesson of yet another step in the institution of the new covenant:
replacing the Letter of the Law with the Spirit of God.
So…all that was just introduction – and I’m just getting
warmed up! ;-) What I really intended
this post to be about is the Holy Spirit in general, and more specifically looking
at His character as described by one of the names Jesus used for Him. {And it’s important to remember that the Holy
Spirit really is a HIM and not an IT!} This
was the topic of my final research paper for one of my classes last
semester. The paper was 20 pages and
ended up being a rush job…so this is more taking that topic and writing what I
want to write about it, although I’m going off of the background I studied for
my paper. So while I may not cite anything
in particular, my thinking has been influenced on this topic by the sources I used
for that assignment.
In my opinion, the mainstream Church today {“Church” here
referring to the universal body of Christ} – or at least the segment of the Church
with which I grew up being most familiar – tends to downplay the role of living
power from this third member of the Trinity in the day-to-day life of a
Christian. This is partly a reaction to
the experiences of the Pentecostal/Charismatic branch of the Church. Too often we seem to try and put God in
general and the Holy Spirit especially into a box, to nail down what it is that
He can/cannot do in our experiences. And
yes, I am particularly thinking of Cessationism – a viewpoint which I have
grown up hearing and believing. But in
my paper and in this post, I did not and am not going to argue about which
spiritual gifts are or are not valid practices today. I’m not going to use Galatians’ list of the
fruit of the Spirit to demonstrate how He is involved in our lives, or what
particular areas He impacts.
Rather, I am encouraging us to zoom out, to view the Holy
Spirit from a broader perspective than those narrow boxes we so often seek to
fit Him into. We like having things in
understandable, manageable nuggets. But
God doesn’t come like that. He comes as
a holistic being who seeks to invade every part of our lives, conforming our
whole selves to His image. But He does
not typically overrun our free will. He
awaits our invitation.
Regarding the Holy Spirit, I believe there is a term which
ought to frame our conception of Him. As
I mentioned earlier, this is a name that was given to Him by Christ. The setting was the Upper Room Discourse, in
John 13-17 {or as I have also heard it called, the Valedictory Address of our
Lord}. The term is only used five times
in the entire New Testament, four times in the John passage (14:16, 26; 15:26;
16:7) and once in 1 John 2:1 referring to Christ. The Anglicized form of this Greek word is
Paraclete.
So what does Paraclete mean?? Earlier translations use words such as “Comforter”
and “Advocate” for the term, while some later translations simply Anglicize the
word. The latter do so because the
original Greek term encompasses a variety of meanings which are not easily
boiled down into one English word (“Paraclete.” The Anchor Bible Dictionary.)
One possible meaning of the term is “One Called to Stand Alongside.” It is this all-encompassing view of the Holy
Spirit that I think I personally and also the Church in general – from
Cessationists to Charismatics – tends to lose sight of. Instead, scholars seem to spend most of their
time nitpicking over details such as the execution of particular gifts.
The early Church didn’t worry about that. As I researched the writings of early apostolic
fathers, I couldn’t help but notice that they frequently used Paraclete as a
name with which to refer to the Holy Spirit.
As time went on, theologians began to philosophize about the details of
pneumatology {does the Spirit proceed from the Father or the Son or both??? That relatively minor detail caused the first
major schism in the Church} and the use of the name Paraclete seems to have
died out.
In the class I wrote the paper for, we had a dual focus on
orthodoxy and orthopraxy.
The first has to do with what you believe, the second deals with the
practices you engage in. In today’s
world, the emphasis seems to be placed primarily on theological beliefs
(orthodoxy), with the details of practice (orthopraxy) subsequently flowing out
from that. For the early Christians,
however, the opposite was true. They
were taught and experienced certain things (the orthopraxy), and only later
began to build frameworks of understanding (orthodoxy) around what they were
already experiencing.
Now, I do realize that orthodoxy and knowing what I believe
about certain things and why is very important.
Without theological frameworks, how is one to know what is biblical
belief and what is heresy? However, an
increased emphasis on the details of doctrine can and has easily led to
something of a downplaying of experience and living practice.
So what is my point in all of this? Simple: While the study of theology is
clearly important, don’t let that stifle your hunger for and experience of what
God has in store for you. Don’t get so
bogged down in stridently insisting either that the gift of tongues cannot be
given today or that the gift of tongues is a required mark of a believer that
you miss the prompting work of the Paraclete in the simpler moments of your
life.
In past eras, this third member of the Trinity was referred
to as the Holy Ghost. I was thinking
about this recently, and I couldn’t help but be glad that we now typically use
the term Spirit instead. To many modern people,
a ghost raises up the picture of a dead being, come back to haunt the world – a
wraith that is not fully present. This
is not at all an accurate picture of God’s Spirit. As God, the Holy Spirit is fully ALIVE and
active. Though we cannot see Him with
our physical eyes, He is totally present nonetheless.
So friends, I hope you can take a moment today to celebrate
the meaning of that Pentecost 2,000 years ago.
The Paraclete, God the Holy Spirit, dwells within you. He has come to stand alongside you, always providing
an available source of God’s total, living power. He is not limited to a list of His gifts or
fruits. Rather, He is our Paraclete to
meet whatever spiritual needs we have.
No matter what the situation is, He is abundantly adequate.
And for that, we all ought to praise God for His good gift!
