GOD'S EMPOWERING PRESENCE

Each word of this title expresses one of my urgencies, because 1 became convinced they were Paul's own urgencies, either articulated as such or inherent to his understanding of the gospel. Thus: the Holy Spirit as person, the person of God himself; the Holy Spirit as God's personal presence; and the Holy Spirit as God's empowering presence.

The Holy Spirit as Person.

For most of us our understanding of the Spirit falls considerably short of personhood. We think of the Spirit as wind, fire, water, oil; impersonal images all; and refer to the Spirit as "it." No wonder many regard the Spirit as a gray, oblong blur. It is otherwise with God and His anointed one. Even though we start with the primary biblical understanding of God, that He cannot be imaged by what is created, we nonetheless have had much less difficulty in identifying with God, because in the Old Testament the images and anthropomorphisms at least let us catch a glimpse of true personality. And with the coming of God’s anointed one Jesus, all of that has been given a moment of historical focus. Our understanding of God is forever marked by the fact that He has been "fleshed out" at one point in our human history. Even if God seems distant, transcendent, "from eternity to eternity," we are not in the dark about God and his character. As Paul put it, the glory of God has been imaged for us in the one true human who bears the divine image, Jesus God’s anointed one: and by beholding his "face" we see the glory of the eternal God (2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:4, 6). The burden of this study is that we must recognize the same to be true about the Spirit, not simply theoretically, but really and experientially. The Spirit is not lightly called the Spirit of Jesus God’s anointed one. God’s anointed one Jesus has put a human face on the Spirit as well. If we are truly to understand Paul, and to capture the crucial role of the Spirit in his theology, we must begin with his thoroughly biblical Unitarian presuppositions. Not only has the coming of God’s anointed one changed everything for Paul, so too has the coming of the Spirit. In dealing with the Spirit, we are dealing with none other than the personal presence of God himself.

The Holy Spirit as God's Presence

Absolutely central to Paul's theology of the Spirit is that the Spirit is the fulfillment of the promises found in Jeremiah and Ezekiel: that God himself would breathe on us and we would live; that He would write his law in our hearts; and especially that He would give his Spirit "unto us," so that we are indwelt by Him. What is crucial for Paul is that we are thus indwelt by the eternal God. The gathered called-out Assembly and the individual believer are the new locus of God's own presence with His people; and the Spirit is the way God is now present. One of the key images, therefore, that Paul associates with the indwelling Spirit is that of "temple," part of the significance of which is that it functions for Paul for the corporate, gathered called-out Assembly as well as for the individual believer. With this imagery in particular Paul picks up the Old Testament motif of God's "presence" with the people of God. This theme is one of the keys to the structure of the book of Exodus, where Israel comes to the holy mount, the place of God's "dwelling," the place where they are forbidden to go on the threat of death. Only Moses is allowed into God's presence. But God plans to "move" from the mount and dwell among his people by means of a "tabernacle." So after the giving of the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 20-24), Moses receives the precise instructions for constructing the tabernacle (Exodus 25-31). But this is followed by the debacle in the desert (Exodus 32), followed by God's announcing that "my presence will not go with you"; an angel will go instead (Exodus 33). Moses recognizes the inadequacy of this solution and intercedes: "If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?" (Exodus 15-16 NIV).

God's Presence with Israel is what distinguishes them, not the Law or other "identity markers."

This in turn is followed by the further revelation of God's character (Exodus 34:4-7) and the actual construction of the tabernacle (Exodus 35-39), all of which concludes with the descent of God's glory which "filled the tabernacle" (Exodus 40:35). With that, they journey to the place which "the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name" (Deuteronomy 12:11 and passim). At a later point in time the motif of the divine presence, as outlined here, was actually equated with "the Holy Spirit of the Lord" (Isaiah 63:9-14). In a canonical reading of the Old Testament the Deuteronomy promise is finally fulfilled in the construction of Solomon's temple, where the same glory as in Exodus 40 descended and "filled his temple" (1 Kings 8:11).

Israel's failure caused it to forfeit God's presence. This is the tragedy.

The temple in Jerusalem, the place where God has chosen to dwell, is finally destroyed; and the people are not only carried away captive, but the captives and those who remained were no longer a people distinguished by the presence of the living God in their midst-although it is promised again in Ezekiel's grand vision (Ezekiel 40-48). The second temple itself evinces mixed feelings among the people. In light of Solomon's temple and the promised future temple of Ezekiel, Haggai complains, "Who of you is left who. saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing?" (Haggai 2:3). It is this complex of ideas and images that Paul picks up in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 and 6:19. His introductory, "do you not know that ... " followed by "you are the temple of God [in Corinth]," strongly suggests that this is the rich history that Paul here has in mind.

The called-out Assmebly corporately and individually, is the place of God's own personal presence, by the Spirit. This is what marks God's new people off from "all the other people on the face of the earth."

Therefore Paul's consternation with the Corinthians behavior; which had the effect of banishing the Spirit; the living presence of God that makes them his temple. This is the context of continuity in which we should read scores of Spirit texts in the apostle. This is how we know God's love for us in His anointed one (Romans 5:5); this is what makes us certain that we are God's very children (Galatians 4:6; Romans 8:15-16); this is why holiness is not optional (1 Thessalonians 4:7-8), why we must not grieve the Holy Spirit of God (Ephesians 4:30), why Timothy must not flag in the context of external pressures (2 Timothy 1:6-7)~because we are in indwelt by God Himself. The Spirit is the fulfillment of God's promise to dwell in and among his people; the Spirit is God present among us.

The Holy Spirit is God's Empowering Presence

In keeping wi.th Paul's Old Testament roots, the presence of God by His Spirit also meant for Paul the powerful and empowering presence of God. We are not left on our own as far as our relationship with God is concerned; neither are we left on our own to "slug it out in the trenches," as it were, with regard to the Christian life. Life in the present is empowered by the God who dwells among us and in us. As the personal presence of God, the Spirit is not merely some "force" or "influence." The living God is a God of power; and by the Spirit the power of the living God is present with and for us and in us. But in Paul power is not to be thought of merely in terms of the miraculous, the extraordinary. Rather, because of his basic eschatological framework (see Romans chapter 12) Paul understood the Spirit's power in the broadest possible way. On the one hand, the future had broken in so powerfully that signs and wonders and miracles are simply matter-of-fact (1 Corinthians 12:8-11; Galatians 3:5); on the other hand, the Spirit also empowers for endurance in the midst of adversity (Colossians 1:11; 2 Corinthians 12:9-1O); and for everything else as we endure, awaiting the final glory, of which the Spirit is the guarantee.

Person, Presence, power: these three realities are what the Holy Spirit meant for the apostle Paul. Because this was so, he "theologizes" about Christian life in a way that makes him neither a triumphalist, nor defeatist, but realist. To recapture the Pauline experience and understanding is the key to our finding our way into the "radical middle," where we expect neither too much nor too little. Here we will know life and vitality, attractive life and vitality, in our personal lives and in the community of faith. Here we will constantly have the veil removed so that we might behold God's own glory in the face of His anointed one Jesus, so that we are constantly being renewed into his likeness. Here we will regularly expect, and see, both the working of miracles and the fellowship of his sufferings, without sensing frustration in either direction. If we do not have the Spirit, Paul says, we do not belong to God or His anointed one at all.

An Additional Note:

The giving of the Spirit within John’s gospel is hinted at in John 19:30 and 34, but is explicitly recounted in John 20:22: on the evening of resurrection Sunday Jesus ‘breathed’ on the disciples and said to them “received the Holy Spirit”.

The key feature here is surely the use of the verb ‘breathed’ (enephysesen). For that verb is used twice to denote the divine creative breath in the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible.

First in Genesis 2:7 – God ‘breathed into the nostrils of Adam the breath of life; and man became a living being’.

Second in Ezekiel 37:9 in Ezekiel’s great vision of an exiled Israel as a valley of dry bones, where Ezekiel is instructed to prophecy: Come you four winds, O breath (or wind or Spirit) and breathe on those slain, that they may live. It could hardly be clearer that what is in view in these usages of the verb ‘breathed’ is the breath of the breath/Spirit of life.

In depicting the scene in John 20:19-23 in just these terms, then, there can be little doubt that John intended his readers to understand this event as the new creation – Jesus the beginning of God’s new creation giving the spirit of new creation life to his disciples as God had given old creation life to Adam in the beginning. So who are in God's anointed one Jesus are new creations having the indwelling of his spirit in us to enable us to walk according to the words His Father gave to him to give to us to obey. If we walk in faith obedience to the words that Jesus has given to us we will be in the coming new age as co-rulers with him and co-inheritors!!!