In going through the Gospel of John, I emphasized the idea of Salvation as a mission. Jesus set it into motion, we continue it. As He was sent by the Father, so are we sent by Him. To enable us to carry out this mission faithfully (that is: in the same way He did, with the same spirit, the same love, the same understanding), He promised to send us the Holy Spirit.
There is no doubt that it is the Holy Spirit in us that enables us to carry out the mission. But what does that mean? How does the Holy Spirit come to be in us? And what does it look like when the Holy Spirit is in us… How can we tell?
My conclusion is that we know we have received the Holy Spirit
when the plan of Salvation makes sense.
You see, all of us can repent and cry out to the Lord to save us, without any of us having received the Holy Spirit. The reason that is possible is because God has made His Truth unassailable so that every single one of us can perceive it and act upon it. I can think of at least four ways we can know this is true:
- He gave all of us the same kind of spirit that He IS. Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… Therefore, we can recognize Him. (The world sometimes calls this extra “sense” we have, our conscience.)
- Jesus said “My Father works to this day… John 5:17 But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto and I work. Works on what? The Plan of Salvation, which has been declared since Genesis, where He first promised He would send the Messiah: Genesis 3:14-15 And Jehovah Elohim said to the serpent, Because thou hast done this, be thou cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. On thy belly shalt thou go, and eat dust all the days of thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; he shall crush thy head, and thou shalt crush his heel.
- It is not the Father’s will that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9 [The] Lord does not delay his promise, as some account of delay, but is longsuffering towards you, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance…) Therefore, everybody CAN.
- By His mercy, not only has he done the above three, He sometimes intervenes in our lives sovereignly; sometimes directly sometimes indirectly. Think Paul on the way to Damascus… Or think that godly grandmother that never stopped praying for you and even took you to Church when you were little.
A, B, and C
Now imagine we have three people: A, B, and C. I am A. We are all friends, maybe co-workers, or maybe we have known each other since childhood. We are living our lives in this world and getting along OK. Based on what I said above, all three of us CAN respond to the call of the Gospel.
(*) Why do some repent and cry out to God for help and some do not? The answer is: It really is our choice how we respond to God’s mercy. We either choose to take all the noise of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and make it louder than the voice of our conscience, or we don’t. That is it.
As far as we can tell (I say it that way because no one but God can see into anyone else’s heart) everyone has a conscience.
(**) Now, once someone repents, that person has accepted Jesus’ (and John the Baptizer’s) proclamation; Matthew 3:2, Matthew 4:17 Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. And in so doing, we bring that kingdom of God into our lives.
This is why Jesus taught us to pray: Matthew 6:10 let thy kingdom come, let thy will be done as in heaven so upon the earth…
There is something else that happens at that point: The Shepherd declares: this one is mine. As He does in my favorite scene in the book of the prophet Zechariah:
Zechariah 3:1-4 (NASB) Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right to accuse him. And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! Indeed, the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a log snatched from the fire?”
Now Joshua was clothed in filthy garments and was standing before the angel. And He responded and said to those who were standing before him, saying, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” Again He said to him, “See, I have taken your guilt away from you and will clothe you with festive robes.”
And also:
Zechariah 2:8 (NASB) For the Lord of armies says this: “After glory He has sent me against the nations that plunder you, for the one who touches you, touches the apple of His eye.
John 10:14-15, 27-29 I am the good shepherd; and I know those that are mine, and am known of those that are mine, as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep… My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them life eternal; and they shall never perish, and no one shall seize them out of my hand. My Father who has given [them] to me is greater than all, and no one can seize out of the hand of my Father.
And:
Isaiah 43:1 But now thus saith Jehovah, that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed thee, I have called [thee] by thy name; thou art mine.
We are His. We are saved; we are born again.
From that time on, the Shepherd will start opening our ears to hear his voice more clearly. And we will start recognizing that voice and therefore recognizing the presence of the Holy Spirit in this world. Remember, Jesus promised to send the Spirit:
John 16:7-11 But I say the truth to you, It is profitable for you that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you; but if I go I will send him to you. And having come, he will bring demonstration to the world, of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe on me; of righteousness, because I go away to [my] Father, and ye behold me no longer; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
That is the change that starts taking place inside of me: I start hearing the Holy spirit and being convicted, convinced, about what is wrong in my life and what I need to do to be right with God, so that He can use my life for His purpose.
Now stop here and go back to the paragraph I labelled with the single asterisk (*). Think back to that point. At that point I was like the rest of the world, drowning in a sea of noise; making choices based on my own desires and my opinions about what is right or wrong. There really was no difference between me, person A, and my best friend person B. Except that at some point, life got so miserable for me, that I saw that I really could not do anything to fix the problem; that I understood I really needed help from outside, if such help really did exist… and so, I cried out.
And when I cried out I triggered the promise of the prophet Joel:
Joel 2:32 And it shall be that whosoever shall call upon the name of Jehovah shall be saved…
I landed on the paragraph I labelled (**).
Once I took that action, the process I laid out through this discussion brought me from that point to this point. (***)
Now compare who we, A and B, were in (*) to what I, A, am now in (***). Do you see an external difference? Nowhere do I claim that I have become holier, that I have seen visions, that I have heard the audible voice of God… much less that I have prayed and miracles have happened… none of that…
To our friend, C, who knew us, A and B, back in (*) we don’t seem much different, except I seem to be making choices based on different “rules” than I did before.
C may even try to figure out why I am doing that; and C and A may come to me and ask what’s going on? And you know what? AND this is the first key thought for today…
If I explain it to them. If I explain what is happening inside me… It will make perfect sense to me but it will not make sense to them at all.
(And if you are thinking, how can you know that? I thought you said no one can see what is in anyone else’s heart? My answer is: You are right. But I remember what I was like back in (*). To me, back then, it would not have made any sense.)
Romans 8:7-9 Because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God; for neither indeed can it be: and they that are in flesh cannot please God. But *ye* are not in flesh but in Spirit, if indeed God`s Spirit dwell in you; but if any one has not [the] Spirit of Christ *he* is not of him…
Something profound has happened almost without me noticing it. I am different. Why? Because as Jesus said I, have been moved from death to life:
John 5:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, that he that hears my word, and believes him that has sent me, has life eternal, and does not come into judgment, but is passed out of death into life.
I have been moved from the kingdom of this world to the kingdom of God, from a life that ends in eternal death to a life that ends in eternal life.
How did this happen? What was the “mechanism?”
Jesus did it all; and He explained it all:
John 14:23 Jesus answered and said to him, If any one love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.
But how did I come to love Him? I thought all I did was cry out for help? I was desperate, hopeless, lost, I just wanted someone to rescue me.
Yes. And He did.
And the moment He did, my conscience, my spirit, recognized the hand that lifted me up out of the quicksand I was in; and then something else stirred inside my spirit, naturally, logically: something called gratitude. And that gratitude, once it recognizes that all that motivated that rescue on God’s part was pure Love (undeserved, unmerited, on my part), eventually, again naturally, becomes love.
And love knows what to do…
We all have known this since childhood: A child that knows the love of their parent, knows to trust that parent, and it is that trust that enables the child to obey.
John 14:21 He that has my commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves me; but he that loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him.
How does this manifestation of John 14:21 take place? How do we experience the Son and the Father abiding with us as it says in John 14:23?
John 14:15-17 If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will beg the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see him nor know him; but ye know him, for he abides with you, and shall be in you.
The Holy Spirit in us, is the “mechanism.” It is Him who leads us from this point on, into all truth:
John 16:12-13 I have yet many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now. But when *he* is come, the Spirit of truth, he shall guide you into all the truth: for he shall not speak from himself; but whatsoever he shall hear he shall speak; and he will announce to you what is coming.
This is where I am now. Once I have accepted Jesus as Lord; once I have entered into this relationship of Love with the God who made the Universe and His Son who gave it all up just so He could save me, He and the Father come abide with me… And that intersection between the eternal Kingdom of God and my mortal life in this fallen world is carried out through the Presence of the Holy Spirit… the Holy Spirit living in me.
This is the only way we can keep living in this world as His children.
While Jesus was physically present with the disciples, He was the Presence that kept them in the Kingdom of God even though they were threatened on every side by the kingdom of this world. Jesus said so in His final prayer to the Father:
John 17:11-16 And I am no longer in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one as we.
When I was with them I kept them in thy name; those thou hast given me I have guarded, and not one of them has perished, but the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled.
And now I come to thee. And these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in them. I have given them thy word, and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, as I am not of the world. I do not demand that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them out of evil.
They are not of the world, as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by the truth: thy word is truth.
There it is! What is it that sanctifies us? What is it that separates us unto God as holy (for that is the meaning of the word sanctify)? What is it that keeps us as holy to Him and thus protected from the evil of this world?
The Truth.
And who reveals to us that Truth?
John 16:12-13 says it: The Spirit of Truth.
It is His Presence that enables us to walk as God’s children. This is why, after Jesus rose from the dead – knowing that His time on this world was over, that soon he would return to the throne room of Heaven – He appeared to the gathered disciples and breathed on them the Holy Spirit.
John 20:21-22 [Jesus] said therefore again to them, Peace [be] to you: as the Father sent me forth, I also send you. And having said this, he breathed into [them], and says to them, Receive [the] Holy Spirit…
And that action was not limited to those physically gathered there because Jesus had already prayed to the Father for us also:
John 17:19-22 and I sanctify myself for them, that they also may be sanctified by truth. And I do not demand for these only, but also for those who believe on me through their word; that they may be all one, as thou, Father, [art] in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou hast given me I have given them, that they may be one, as we are one…
There and then they received the Holy Spirit.
The baton, as it were, has been passed.
It is the same with us.
Do you know this to be true?
If not… and yet you have chosen to call Jesus your Shepherd and Lord, if you love Him and obey Him, then all you have to do is ask the Holy Spirit to reveal this Truth to you.
He will.