Holy Spirit

“Realize that you are indeed dead unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 6:11).
The Holy Spirit does not exalt Himself. He honors the Father and the Son. Jesus emphasized the importance of the coming of the Holy Spirit in explaining: “Nevertheless I tell you the truth: It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you, but if I depart, I will send Him unto you” (John 16:7). “When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth, for He shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak, and He will show you things to come. He shall glorify Me, for He shall receive of Mine and shall show it unto you” (John 16:13-14).

It is thus not surprising that through the book of Acts, as some of His greatest works are taking place, the special work of the Holy Spirit is assumed, but is not the center of attention. He would come and immerse believers in a special way at Pentecost. Historically it happened. Later references in the epistles explain this special Spirit immersion. What is recorded in Acts 2, however, is not the invisible uniting of believers in the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, but the filling of the Spirit (which was not radically different from His work of filling in the Old Testament) and the resulting clear evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit among believers.
read more

^{Note: This article is reprinted with permission from As I See It, a monthly electronic magazine compiled and edited by Doug Kutilek. AISI is sent free to all who request it by writing to the editor at dkutilek@juno.com.}
That Jesus did perform a multitude of bona fide, undeniable, nature-superceding miracles is the clear and consistent testimony of the New Testament, most commonly noted in the Gospels and Acts. (For a convenient but not quite complete list of Gospel references to Jesus’ miracles, see A. T. Robertson, A Harmony of the Gospels, p. 294.) One question requiring attention is, “How did Jesus perform these miracles? In His own divine power, or by some other means?”

One crucial theological aspect of Christ’s incarnation was His “self-emptying” as described by Paul in Philippians 2:6-7.read more

Pauline Perspectives on the Holy Spirit, the Contemporary Church, and a Postmodern World

“That was then. This is now.”
by Dr. Sam Horn

Read Part 1.

II. Contemporary Perspectives on the Spirit—How It Is Now

A. The Spirit Has Been Depersonalized in Contemporary Theology.

Fee notes that “Paul’s understanding of the Spirit is ultimately a matter of lived-out faith. The experience of the Spirit was how the early believers came to receive the salvation that Christ had brought, and how they came to understand themselves as living at the beginning of the end times. For them, the Spirit was both the evidence that God’s great future for his people had already made its way into the present and the guarantee that God would conclude what he had begun in Christ. Thus the Spirit is the foundational to their entire experience and understanding of their present life in Christ” (The Spirit, the Church, and the People of God, p. 2).

Dispensational concerns aside, what is clear from the above statement is that for Paul, life in the Spirit was the very essence of faith. This was not an academic, theological premise to be articulated in creedal belief—it was a theological truth to be dynamically experienced.

However, in recent centuries, modern believers have managed to keep the central focus and dynamic relationship with Christ theologically intact, but theologically the modern church has been less sure about the Holy Spirit. While believers sing about Him and affirm Him in creeds and doctrinal statements, He has been confined to prepositional theology.