N.T. Wright on the Holy Spirit

What an awesome day yesterday at Woodward Park! A full house, an offering of over $80,000, two more baptisms (that makes four in the last seven days!) and a new member transfer.

And that doesn't include last night's Christmas dinner, a truly enjoyable time of joy. The WWPP (Woodward Park Paparazzi, aka Suzi Planas) captured this shot of the girls with the little deer that is adorning the decor on the speakers platform.

I am so proud of what our college students are up to right now. The baptisms this week of Tinh, Annalise and Thari are a testimony to God's faithfulness and your consistent witness. The new member transfer in Jason, a student at Fresno State, shows you are making a place in receiving and welcoming newcomers.

To God be the Glory, Great Things He is Doing!

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Jessieville, Arkansas is a blip on the map northwest of Hot Springs. Yet that small town and its high school football team will take center stage this week as the Jessieville Lions play on Friday for the AA State Championship in War Memorial Stadium.

Jessieville knocked off Bearden, favored by Hootens and the AP, but not by me!, 28-12 last Friday night to claim their first-ever spot in the state championship game. The #2 ranked Lions will face #1 ranked Junction City (another blip on the map, located on the border of Louisiana and Arkansas, south of El Dorado), a team that knocked Jessieville out of the playoffs in 2005 by a score of 33-21.

I'm so proud of Don Phillips and Jamie Saveall, two high-character guys who deserve the opportunity to coach in their first state championship games. I'm proud of Lonell and Justin and Ruey and Matt, kids who were in the youth group at the Village Church of Christ, who've played critical roles in leading their time to a 14-0 record.

I'll have my pick on Friday.

In the meantime, anyone got a frequent flier ticket from Fresno to Little Rock that you'd like to donate? I know someone who will take it!!

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N.T. Wright on the Holy Spirit and the implications of the "inheritance" in Ephesians 1.14:

"St. Paul, our earliest Christian writer, speaks of the Spirit as the guarantee or down-payment of what is to come. The Greek word he uses is arrabon, which in modern Greek means an engagement ring, a sign in the present of what is to come in the future.

Paul speaks of the Spirit as the guarantee of our inheritance. He isn't simply using an image taken from the ordinary human transaction whereby, when a person dies, someone else inherits his or her wealth -- an 'inheritance' from which one might perhaps receive something in advance, an early first installment. Nor is he simply speaking, as many Christians have supposed, of our 'going to heaven,' as though celestial bliss were the full 'inheritance' God had in mind for us. No, he is drawing on a major biblical theme and taking it in a striking new direction. To grasp this is to see why the Spirit is given in the first place, and indeed who the Spirit actually is.

The theme upon which Paul is drawing when he speaks of the 'inheritance' to come, of which the Spirit is given as a down-payment, is our old friend the exodus story, in which Israel escapes from Egypt and goes off to the Promised Land. Canaan, the land we now call the Holy Land, was their promised 'inheritance,' the place where they would live as God's people. It was where -- provided they maintained their side of the covenantal agreement -- God would live with them and they with God. As both the foretaste of that promise, and the means by which they were led to inherit it, God went with them on the way, a strange holy Presence guiding and directing their wanderings and grieving over their rebellions.

So when Paul speaks of the Spirit as the 'guarantee of our inheritance,' he is evoking, as Jesus himself had done this whole exodus tradition, the story which began with Passover and ended with the Promised Land. He is saying, in effect, you are now the people of the true exodus. You are now on your way to your inheritance" (Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, San Francisco: Harper, 2006, p. 125).

The Purpose of the Indwelling Spirit, Part Two

So I hear the onset of Tule fog is generally after the first significant autumn rain. That rain came on Monday evening, so is the fog this morning a harbinger of things to come?

It's funny how no one mentioned the fog when Mandy and I were here back in June to visit. Then we relocate here and autumn has rarely seen an assembly at church when someone didn't warn me of the impending doom of the fog.

Frankly, the fog comes with such acclaim -- from the repeated warnings of friends to the handy "Fog Delay" information from Trae's school -- that I am anxious to see what all the fuss is about.

Check back in a couple of months to see if that still holds true!

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How do you like the face lift for the blog? Thanks to some significant upgrading at blogger, I decided to change the layout and color scheme. Also, post labeling and site feed have been added to make access to specific topics more handy.

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"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me" (John 17.20-23a).

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2.20).

"To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1.27).

The first time he said it, I did a double-take. It was a fresh perspective. A new insight.

The wisdom came from my dear friend and mentor, Dale Mannon, was now preaches for the Greenlawn Church of Christ in Lubbock, Texas. We were visiting together about the work of the Spirit and Dale told me, "I believe the Holy Spirit works in addition to, but never in contradiction to, the written Word."

I asked Dale to repeat that (I think I wrote it down) and from that day on, I've never forgotten it. My formative Bible teaching at church had taught me that the Spirit had served his purpose once the written Word was complete and canonized.

Little wonder, then, that many of my peers grew up equating the Holy Spirit to our postal carrier -- the Holy Spirit delivers God's mail and then disappears, resulting in a mysterious cloud around the third person of the Trinity.

My quest to get a better handle on the Spirit led me on a fascinating search of Scripture where illusions to the Spirit's purpose caused me to see that my formative Bible teaching left me with a spiritual limp. Spiritual life was often couched in intellectual terms (a factor of the influence of the Enlightenment on our interpretation of Scripture) leaving little room for the spiritual. If we couldn't understand the operation of something, we were taught, we didn't believe it. Or worse, we developed a theology that we could handle that neutered God of the power to be God.

As I searched Scripture, I continually came to the idea expressed by both Jesus and Paul that the essence of spiritual life is the formation of Christ within the believer. How does that happen? Through the Word...and the Spirit! The Spirit indwells the believer for the purpose of recreating the character of Jesus within the heart and mind of the believer.

When Paul says "I no longer live but Christ lives in me" and the essence of the mystery is "Christ in you, the hope of glory," he is not just speaking pithy, religious jargon. He is speaking to the purpose of the Spirit within the believer.

For example, Paul says in Galatians 5.22 that one aspect of the Spirit's fruit in our lives is peace. And in Philippians 4.7, Paul says, "and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Peace is a product of the Spirit's work within our hearts. Peace in the face of death is available to the believer. Peace in the face of an uncertain future is available to the believer. And Paul adds this caveat: this peace transcends all understanding.

We can't explain it -- it is a mystery. But we can acknowledge the source of the mystery, the Holy Spirit of God working within to produce in our lives Christ likeness.

I hope you will give these thoughts consideration as you teach and interact with others. Could it be some of our evangelistic efforts have been so anemic because we neglected to teach new Christians the reality of the indwelling Spirit? Could it be so many hearts have become infertile soil so quickly because we neglected to share with those converted to Jesus the reality that not only are they in Christ, but Christ is in them through the indwelling Spirit. Could it be that we are, in fact, "a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God" (1 Corinthians 6.19)?

The Purpose of the Indwelling Spirit

Its T-minus 33 hours until Rick and Gail are supposed to roll into Fresno, although I hear they are coming to Fresno by way of Malibu. Something tells me once they get to Malibu, we might be lucky if they make it here by Bible class tomorrow night!

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In Acts 2.38, Peter tells those who cut to the heart on the day of Pentecost that in order to be saved of their sins, they must repent and baptized. Obedience to those two commands, according to Peter, yields two promises: forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

In Churches of Christ, we've got a good handle on the first three of the four. We know what repentance is and we teach it; we know what baptism is and we practice it; we know the joy of forgiveness of we claim it. But what about the Holy Spirit?

For some reason, the Holy Spirit has always been tough for us. Perhaps this is due, in part, to the translation of the King James Version that renders "Holy Spirit" as "Holy Ghost." There's something about the term "ghost" that is mystical and spooky. Perhaps it is also due, in part, to abuses we've seen under the banner of the influence of the "Holy Ghost."

But my fear is that many swung the pendulum to another extreme. Whereas charismatic churches had the Holy Spirit doing everything, some in our heritage went to another extreme limiting the Holy Spirit of the ability to do anything.

Some claim that the Holy Spirit is the Word -- the divine mail carrier for God. With the compliation of the Word, the Holy Spirit's work ceased, some claim.

I cannot buy that line of thinking, in light of the words of Jesus and the illusions to the work of the Holy Spirit throughout Paul's writings.

For example, I asked you yesterday to spend some time reflecting on the words of Paul in Colossians 1.15-19, 2.9 and Ephesians 3.14-19 because those verses seem to nail down God's purpose in sending the Holy Spirit to indwell believers.

In Colossians 1.19, Paul says that the "fullness" of God was revealed in Jesus Christ. In Colossians 2.9, he again reiterates that all the "fullness" of deity dwelt in Jesus in bodily form. When those two verses are coupled together with Paul's powerful prayer for the Ephesians in 3.14-19, we find him asking God to empower the Ephesian Christians through the Holy Spirit with all the "fullness" of God.

What does that mean? Simply this: when you were immersed in baptism, not only did you receive the gift of forgiven sins, you also received the gift of the Holy Spirit. God placed within you a part of himself to live inside you, not to empower you charismatically but to recreate your character.

Living like Jesus is not first and foremost a willpower issue; it is a Spirit-empowered issue. Through the indwelling Spirit, we are empowered in character to become more like Christ as a witness to his transforming power in our lives. Through the Spirit, our lives become not only a reflection of Christ but an essence of the second incarnation in our world.

More to come tomorrow...