“And…commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” Acts 1:4-5Acts 1:4-5
“And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting…And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.” Acts 2:1-2, 4
Facing the end of His earthly ministry and the transition of that ministry to His own beloved apostles, Jesus spent some of His last hours with them preparing them for the responsibility they would face in His absence. In the record preserved by John, who was present for those final moments, we find two themes especially consuming the Divine heart. One was the unity of the ministry and of believers down through time, demonstrated through their attitude of attentive service one toward another. The other was the infilling of the Holy Ghost.
Well did Christ know the landscape His followers would be required to traverse. Well did He know the obstacles, the pitfalls, the fightings, and the fears. Well did He understand the weight of the ministry of reconciliation, and well did He feel the forces bent on thwarting that work. Only the wisdom of Omniscience could make sense of the unexplainable; only the stamina of Omnipotence could push the work to its appointed end, and only the patience of love purely Divine could bear the injustices of brotherhood.
When Jesus Christ finished His earthly ministry, He promised those who would follow Him that they would not be left alone. They would not need to navigate false teachings alone, and they would not need to survive attacks on their brotherhood alone. They would be given the person of the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost would be a teacher, guiding the soul into not some truth merely, but all truth (John 16:13). In moments of need, He would bring to remembrance the things that would need to be remembered (John 14:26). The Holy Ghost would be a Comforter. Through life's trauma, its sorrows, and its confusion, men would be succoured by the comfort of the Holy Ghost (Acts 9:31). The Holy Ghost would seal believers with His mark of identity and protection (2 Cor. 1:22). And casting out fear, mistrust, and torment (1 John 4:16-18), the Holy Ghost would flow in their hearts as perfected love.
As the days and years passed following Jesus' return into heaven, the apostles found themselves pressed to remind the brethren to be sure of being filled with the Holy Ghost (Acts 19:1-2). Repentance and the resulting work of justification before God were not enough. Peace with God was not enough. There was an access to divine grace (Rom. 5:1-2), an infilling of divine power that alone could equip the soul for successful holy warfare and bring him from the shallows of childhood (1 Cor. 3:1) into the competence and stability of an adult in Christ.
The Holy Ghost does a purifying work in the soul by dealing with carnality–the sinful tendency born into every individual making him by nature a child of wrath (Eph.2:3). He deals with hatred, supremacy, and beastliness, not just in its acted form but at its very fountainhead and source. His divine fire purges out of the heart of man that image of rebellion–self-determination, self-righteousness, self-aggrandizement. Down to the very root of man's problem He cuts with unerring precision, dealing definitively with problems which legislation and rhetoric cannot address.
The Holy Ghost distributes His workings through the members of the body of Christ in various operations and giftings. Great or small, young or old, male or female, each sanctified child of God carries an inward flame of divine life given by the unique dispensation of the Holy Spirit to him for the profit of the body of Christ at large (1 Cor. 12:4-11). It is the effectual working of the Holy Ghost in every member of Christ's body–the simultaneous working of multiple diverse gifts–that perfects the saints and compacts them together as one unified body of believers (Eph. 4:11-12, 16). The Holy Ghost operating through us qualifies us in our gifting. In fact, the first qualification for any calling is neither education nor talent, but the infilling of the Holy Ghost (Acts 6:3).
Where the Holy Ghost is, there is order–not an artificial order imposed upon people at the expense of their soul and their gift, but a divine order springing organically within their soul and manifesting itself through their gift. The church of God is not an organization, but it is an organism. It is a being ordered by divine life, where the Holy Ghost assigns each member the place in the body which He deems fit, and the other members are compelled to recognize and enable what has already been divinely appointed and structured. That same power which spoke the universe to order out of chaos in the beginning of time speaks the church to order today by the voice of His Spirit in our midst.
Where the Holy Ghost is, there is also liberty (2 Cor. 3:17). It is not liberty to follow the desires of the flesh or the whims of the moment, a thing which is not liberating in the long run at all. It is that higher liberty to adventure: liberty from self, liberty from fear, liberty from dead and formal religion. It is liberty to be changed into the perfect image of God and to experience the fullness of joy in His working.
The Holy Ghost is the origin of our Oneness. “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13). It was the infilling of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost which sent the hundred and twenty into the streets of Jerusalem speaking in revolutionary, non-traditionally-Jewish ways with a message that unified the multitude of nations represented in the city. It was the outpouring of the Holy Ghost on Gentile believers which shook the accepted Jewish narrative and opened the hearts of the believers one toward another across a cultural divide that was generationally entrenched. Transcending culture and differences of background, the Holy Ghost identified with every pain and spoke the language of every heart. So still today, all are drawn into one brotherhood who follow the mind of the Spirit.
There is the thought of those who, fearing the unnatural in religion, have avoided the supernatural in religion. Because of people who in the name of spirituality have done unnatural things or held unnatural standards, we have rightfully been disgusted and have run from artificial religious constructs. Yet the Holy Spirit is perfectly natural. Human nature is built to accommodate the Spirit as naturally as a glove is made to fit a hand. It is a comely fit, a fit of goodwill, a fit of health and wholesomeness. A glove, however beautiful–without the hand inside to empower and direct it–is empty and useless except as some kind of decoration. So we are lifeless and without impact unless we are filled with the Holy Ghost. Beauty and decoration and system and structure are of no consequence; it is animation we need. Without that animation, the church becomes a relic, a museum, and a discredit to the calling it claims. As the body without the spirit is lifeless, we are dysfunctional without the life-giving power of the Holy Ghost.
