Worship Old and New Part 6: Charismatic Gifts in the Bible and Today

Bible readings  [] =omitted from verbal presentation

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ybRpjiH2YH8&si=jaHRNh1QP-sECZM4

Luke 3:15-22 Acts 2:29-33 1 Cor 12:1-11

Introduction

In the process of coming to Christ [from an unchurched background][1], two life changing books came into my possession. The first was a New Testament that turned up on our kitchen table [amidst a pile of novels from neighbours], the second was a copy of The Cross and The Switchblade, by Pentecostal author David Wilkerson. [Founder of the drug rehab, Teen Challenge. This was loaned to me by a fellow student.] This combination was used by the Spirit to first lead me to a tortuous conversion to Christ, and then to seek out a Charismatic[2] congregation which would have the sort of phenomena I had just read about in Acts and 1 Corinthians. I was helpfully directed by some believers at the university to a local Pentecostal congregation, where I was routinely exposed to the classic second-experience teaching of the work of the Spirit in the Christian life[3]*, naturally I began to seek an experience like the one they taught and testified to. One Sunday night after Church I came home and said to the Lord that I was going to kneel by my bed and seek the outpouring of his Holy Spirit and wasn’t going to get up until the Spirt came in power. Then it happened, the Spirit was outpoured (cf. Tit 3:5-6) and I was so flooded with “joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Pet 1:8)that I began to weep and weep and to praise the Lord and to speak in tongues (Acts 10:46). About 1 a.m. I reminded myself that I needed to go to uni in a few hours and so went to bed. In the years since then I have never doubted the reality of that encounter with God, but I have often been led to reinterpret it. Which is the content of tonight’s message.

Reinterpreting the Reality of the Spirit

John 7:37-39 records, “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”.

Most English translations read for verse 39, “the Spirit had not yet been given”[4] but “given” is not in the Greek. One literal translation reading, “the Spirit for not yet was the Holy Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified”, which indicates that the recognisable identity of the Spirit depends on the glorification of Jesus. In John’s writings, Christ’s glorification comes by way of death, resurrection and return to the Father (John 12:27-33;13:31-35; 17:1-5). Until Jesus went back to the eternal glory of his Father, he could not share as a human being in the divine ability to give God the Spirit[5]*. Recognising this, Peter preached to the crowds on the Day of Pentecost, “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. 33 Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.” (Acts 2:32-33) In this significant but widely neglected text, indicates that the first person to receive the fulness of the Spirit was Jesus, [not primarily at his baptism (Luke 3:22), nor even in his resurrection (Rom 1:4; 2 Cor 13:4; 1 Tim 3:16), but] as a coronation gift [for the Church] when he sat down at the right hand of the power of God in heaven (Dan 7:13; Mark 14:62). To explore the implications of this perspective on the gift of the Spirit, first to Jesus then to us, let me shift from Acts to 1 Corinthians.

The most strategically important verse in 1 Cor 12-14 is 12:3, “no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit”. This scripture indicates that charismatic gifts are means by which the Spirit “manifests/shows” (1 Cor 12:7) boasts /glories in the finished work of God in Christ[6]. All charismatic gifts are a revelation of Jesus Christ[7]. [Given that “the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy” (Rev 19:10),]; the desire of the Spirit is to bring the witness of Christ through the gracious gifts he gives to the Church [into “all things”, ] into all the spaces of life and culture (business, education, arts, politics, medicine, law, science and technology etc.).

[If the Spirit is Jesus’ “alternative personality”,[8]  then] the identity the Spirit is discerned, and his ministry best understood, through his revealing who Jesus now is as a glorified human being[9]. I now understand my initial “Pentecostal” experience [not as a hyper-spiritual disembodied encounter, but] as the Spirit, who presently fills the Lord’s glorious ascended humanity, sharing with me the Son’s heavenly love, joy, peace, wisdom, knowledge, power etc. in the presence of God the Father. [This is why it launched me into an ongoing series of ecstatic experiences.] The most disordered movements in Church history are those who detached the Spirit from Jesus.[10]

Grounding  

Revival movements go astray for the same reason the Church in Corinth was led astray. Disconnected from the one foundation of Christ (1 Cor 3:11), they seek spiritual wisdom, power and glory (Rev 4:11; 5:12) in something other than Christ crucified (1 Cor 1:17). As I explained two weeks ago, the Corinthian Church was a place of supernatural healing and divine killing, for intoxicated with their spiritual giftedness (1 Cor 1:7) they were blinded from seeing spiritual truths and exposed themselves to the holy judgements of God (1 Cor 11:27-32). In ongoing Church disasters, like the recent Hillsong fiasco, this is still happening in our day. Only when the cross [and its fellowship of suffering (Phil 3:10)] is seen as “[not the cost of glory but] the means of glory” (Bingham), can the Church of Christ perpetually[11] live true to the difficult truth that “The way to Pentecost is Calvary; the Spirit comes from the cross.”[12] (x2)

[With the help of the Spirit the people of God can see themselves as a sort of extension of the Incarnation in the world[13].] The divine fulness which dwelt bodily in Jesus is no longer limited in space and time to one place but is presently by God’s power and through his gifts making disciples of all nations through the Church as the Body of Christ (Matt 28:18-20). This panorama is outlined for us in Acts.

Church

The foundational Spirit outpourings [initiatory events][14] recorded in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to “the ends of the earth”[15], as Jesus prophesied (Ps 2; Acts 1:8; 2; 8; 10; 19), where in each case prayer, praise and proclamation spontaneously broke out, are signs that the Spirit was indelibly stamping the Church with the presence and identity of Jesus. This is what we should expect given that Jesus is the “baptiser in the Spirit” (Matt 3:11; Luke 24:49; John 7:39; 20:22; Acts 2:33; 8:16-17). How then is it possible today that so many congregations, whatever their theology or alleged spirituality, are so disordered that they fail to look like Christ? There is no need to be speculative or analytical about such things. Since, as Jesus explained “out of the overflow of the heart his mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45)[16] you can infallibly discern what’s going on inside of someone by what they say. I was listening to someone speak recently about “mission”, and all the key words were spoken regularly “Bible”, “gospel”, “God”, but the name …“Jesus” was not uttered once. [I am not suggesting that “Jesus” is some sort of charm, but as the beloved name of the Person who overwhelms us with his love (2 Cor 5:14-15).] One of the most dreadful of my experiences I ever had in in “worship” occurred at a city wide gathering to hear David Wilkerson, after about 20 minutes I became aware that the well known song leader had not mentioned “Father”, “Son” or “Spirit” once[17], the spirit of antichrist was running that service. How are such things possible??

Through prayer, I sense that the present polarisation between Spirt-identified [Pentecostal/Charismatic] groups and Bible-identified churches [Conservative, Evangelical, Reformed] is grounded in ungodly fear. 1 John 4:15-19 testifies to a fear of “punishment/day of judgement” that is not “perfected in love” because we fail to understand we are like Jesus “in this world”. Our failure to actively love each other across the Body of Christ points to a failure of receiving God’s holy love perfected in the sacrifice of Jesus (John 19:30; 1 John 4:10). [Hard as it may be to live fully out, “Any friend of Jesus is a friend of mine.”] What happened to me so long ago at my bedside is best encapsulated by these words of Paul, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Rom 5:5). (Pause and prayer here in service.)

We need to go deeper into the accounts of Christ’s death to understand such profound realities.

In John, the plan of God for the restoration of the universe is “finished”/completion” (John 19:30) by his death. In this Gospel, the first visible sign[18] of the perfection of Christ ministry comes when John interprets the dying Jesus handing over his spirit to the Father (John 19:30b; Luke23:46)  as a fruit of the shedding of his blood. “one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.” (John 19:34)[19] In John, “water” is a sign of the gift of the Spirit (John 4:14[20]; 7:37-39). A little later, in the same Gospel, the risen Jesus “breathed on the disciples and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.””  (John 20:22-23).

What is happening here? As fully forgiven people free from the fear of judgment the apostles receive complete authority to declare sin forgiven. Then on the Day of Pentecost the glorified man Christ Jesus (cf.  1 Tim 2:5) with divine authority pours out the Spirit as his Spirit for the Holy Spirit “has become ‘the Spirit of the man’ (i.e., the man Jesus, the man now exalted and glorified).” (G.C. Bingham). All subsequent references to the Spirit in the New Testament and across Christian history must be understood as “the Spirit of (the Lord[21]) Jesus” (Acts 16:7; Phil 1:19). In glory Jesus is completely penetrated in his humanity by the Holy Spirit.  Anything less than this diminishes the glory of God in Christ[22]. Following John in the book of Revelation, “He (Jesus) is now in possession of the seven Spirits (that is, the Spirit in His fullness), even as he is in possession of the seven stars/churches” [23]

 

In God’s marvellous plan his once unfaceable power has been redefined by the Spirit’s relation to Jesus. The intimate connection between Jesus and the Spirit is established in Hebrews 9:14; “how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve/worship the living God.” (Heb 9:14). In his sacrificial offering for us the Spirit came to interpenetrate and perfect every aspect of Christ’s humanity, including his conscience. When Jesus promised, “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; 12 or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 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!”” (Luke 11:11-13).  We are to think of the Father giving the Spirit to us as he gave him to Jesus in raising him from the dead and lifting him up to heaven!

In a way previously impossible, the Spirit now has the “personality” of a human, that of Jesus. The implications of all this are deep and profound, any religious experience not in character and effect an experience of Jesus is not a manifestation of the Spirit of God (2 Cor 13:5; Gal 2:20; Col 1:27; Eph 3:16f.). It is not accidental that Paul slips so unconsciously in Romans 8 between “the Spirit of God” “the Spirit of Christ” “the Spirit of him who raised Christ from the dead” (vv.9-11) as indwelling us. [The apostle is immersed in the perichoretic relation/inter-containment of the second and third Persons of the trinity.]

In understanding the climax of the history of the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost in terms of the climax of the history of the Son passing out of this world into heaven (1 Tim 3:16) we give due glory to God the Father in his great plan for the redemption of the universe[24].

Unlimited Intimacy

If no Christian would conceive describing Jesus as “it”, the same is surely true of the Holy Spirit of God[25]. His Personhood is one with that of our Holy Father and our beloved Lord Jesus. [To remind us of such great truths is a function of the ancient creeds.] Whilst we would all affirm this, if the goal of the gifts of the Spirit is to bring praise to Jesus to the glory of God as Father, the lack of such gifts across the Body must indicate we are grieving and quenching the Spirit of the Lord (Isa 63:10; Eph 4:30; 1 Thess 5:19) [in ways few are registering.] When such things become manifest, then the hard and impenitent hearts of God’s people (Rom 2:5; Heb 3:15; 4:7), will surely cry out, “Forgive us O Lord!” Such sin is a fearful thing to be ignorant of. All this is so counterintuitive I need to approach it from another angle. Through one of my “favourite” subjects, suffering.

 

Suffering and the Charismata

The seemingly inappropriate question, “Who’s afraid of the Holy Spirit?” is one with the inquiry “Who is afraid of Jesus?”  and “Who fears the heavenly Father?”[26] Despite all protests to the contrary, by both non-Charismatics and Charismatics, the answer must be, “Just about all contemporary Western Christians.” Whilst Paul speaks, “of suffering for the gospel by the power of God” (2Tim 1:8), the primary evidence for our unhealthy fear that diminishes obedience in discipleship (Matt 28:18-20) is that so few show evidence of the high-risk Spirit-led lives characteristic of the book of Acts. The boldness to witness[27] that came on the Church from Pentecost on led to beatings (5:40; 1:22) stonings (7:58; 14:51) and imprisonments (5:18; 8:3; 12:4; 16:23; 23:18; 24:27), all are sure signs of what it means to be baptised in the Spirit[28].

Charismatic theology has always been impoverished by its failure to understand the ongoing necessity of suffering in the call of God, and today’s Conservative-Evangelical theology in practice is little better. The spiritual status of a Church without martyrs, the Church in the West, is questionable[29].

The theological and practical separation of the blood of the cross from [its outpoured water] the gift of the Spirit has cut off his giving life to the Body of Christ and has been disastrous for Church unity and growth. These divisions were  grievously imaged at the recent international high profile World Prayer Assembly when a Pentecostal speaker made the claim that speaking in tongues, rather than a life of empowered sacrificial service of God (cf. Rom 12:1-2), is the evidence of the baptism of the Spirit. [This sends a message to many Evangelicals that they are people without spiritual power and unworthy of genuine gospel partnership for fulfilling the Great Commission. On the other side, if you see Pentecostal-Charismatic folk as deficient in the Word of life (Phil 2:6; 1 John 1:1) then there is no deep foundation of unity in the Spirit (Eph 4:6) for fellowship in the gospel[30]].

 

Conclusion

The New Testament confidently affirms the participation of all believers in the fullness of Christ, “[For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross…. ] For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form and you have been brought to fullness in him… ” (Col 1:19-20; 2:9-10). This profound acclamation of Christ’s all-inclusive work needs to be applied to the present cleavage between the poles of the Bible-believing Church. The Spirit’s Word to the Church in Perth (Rev 2:7 etc.) involves a call to united prayer and praise that honours equally[31] Father, Son and Holy Spirit in a manner which alone can catalyse and sustain missional obedience. It is time to recognise the fullness of the dimensions of the impact of the Incarnation, the Word becoming flesh, on the whole Godhead. As the cross meant the dehumanisation of the Son of God [in flesh by his taking into himself the sin of the world (Mark 15:34; John 1:29; Rom 8:3; 2 Cor 5:21; 2 Pet 2:24),] the resurrection, exaltation and glorification of Jesus means the humanisation [hominization] of the Holy Spirit. From Pentecost on, the Spirit comes to us [to whoever would earnestly seek him,] cloaked with the character of Jesus. The humiliation and exaltation of Jesus has brought about a major shift in the life history of the Spirit of God to the glory of the heavenly Father. This is what makes Father, Son and Spirit worthy of all praise, now and forever.

Paul’s exhortation, “earnestly/zealously desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.” (1 Cor 14:1 cf. 12:31) is a call to share in Jesus’ desire to express the fullest possible revelation of his Father through his Spirit (1 Cor 12:3). Jesus’ love in the Spirit (Rom 15:30) led him through death into resurrection glory so at the pinnacle of his power in heaven he poured out the all-loving Spirit on the whole Body of Christ (Acts 2:33; Rom 5:5). [The disciples recorded of their Lord, “zeal for your house has consumed me” (John 2:1 cf. Ps 69:9).] This depth of Spirit filled desire (cf. Rom 12:8) is the spiritual passion we must seek today (Rom 12:11; 1 Cor 14:12).