Untitled Sermon
I fully agree with John Mackay, former president of Princeton Theological Seminary, that it is better to err on the side of enthusiasm than of formalism. A cold formalism is an insidious threat to Christian faith because it quenches the Spirit even while it preserves theological propriety. Yet we need to realize that Pentecostalism can become a new formalism, that words of prophecy and speaking in tongues can simply be outward acts that assure us of acceptance by our peers and be completely bereft of the sanctifying presence of the Spirit of God.
This book should be viewed as an effort to build bridges between the various traditions of Christian faith, particularly between Reformed theology and the Pentecostal movement.
I fully agree with John Mackay, former president of Princeton Theological Seminary, that it is better to err on the side of enthusiasm than of formalism. A cold formalism is an insidious threat to Christian faith because it quenches the Spirit even while it preserves theological propriety. Yet we need to realize that Pentecostalism can become a new formalism, that words of prophecy and speaking in tongues can simply be outward acts that assure us of acceptance by our peers and be completely bereft of the sanctifying presence of the Spirit of God.
This book should be viewed as an effort to build bridges between the various traditions of Christian faith, particularly between Reformed theology and the Pentecostal movement.
Faith must not be reduced to experience, but faith will entail experience—not only of God in his awesome holiness but also of God in his inexpressible joy and abounding love.
A theology of Word and Spirit, which I espouse, challenges both rationalist and spiritualist theologies. It seeks for the unity of wisdom and spirit, logos and pneuma.
The person of the Spirit is integrally related to his mission: to seal the fruits of Christ’s atoning death and glorious resurrection in the hearts of all those chosen to believe. The Spirit’s role is not only to enlighten the mind but also to empower the will to live out our faith in daily repentance and obedience
I affirm that prevenient grace is not dependent on human cooperation but instead gives rise to human seeking, a seeking that hopefully will eventuate in saving faith, though not necessarily. The Spirit is not only the source of believing in Christ but also the source of seeking for Christ. In addition he enables us to remain in Christ in the life of costly discipleship.
I cannot emphasize too strongly that in the highest phase of biblical religion the Spirit is free both to impart himself and to withdraw himself. He is not a supernatural fluid that depends on external channels to reach its destination. He descends into external rites and signs by his free decision, and he relates himself to seekers after truth at his discretion. The Spirit in the fuller biblical understanding is neither an impersonal vivifying force (dynamis) that is transmitted by external agency, nor a personlike subject who seeks to gain possession of human agencies in order to demonstrate its power. Charisma cannot be passed on or inherited. It is a gift of the Spirit, who may work through external means but who acts freely though mysteriously in his relationship to humanity. God can withdraw his Spirit from flesh and thereby produce death (Gen 6:3). Or he can bestow his Spirit on flesh in order to produce life, even life eternal (Ezek 37:1–14).
The Spirit of God has various roles, and it is a mistake to magnify one of these over all the others. The Spirit is active in creation, as is also the Word or Logos. He is at work in revelation, opening our eyes to the significance of what God has accomplished for us in Jesus Christ. He is the principal agent in our regeneration by which we are born anew into a life of service and freedom (cf. Ezek 36:25–27; Jn 3:1–15; 2 Cor 3:17). He preserves the people of God and indeed all of humanity from the destroying powers of sin, death and hell. He convicts people of their sins and drives them to Christ for mercy and consolation. He empowers the people of God to bear witness to Christ and triumph over the principalities of the world. Together with the other members of the Trinity the Spirit is responsible for the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. In addition he plays a unique role in the inspiration or supervision of the writing that bears testimony to God’s saving act in Christ, the writing that now forms the canon of Holy Scripture (2 Tim 3:16–17; 2 Pet 1:20–21).
One should bear in mind that the canonical prophets regarded most charismatic or ecstatic prophets with considerable reserve because it seemed that their concern was with extraordinary feats of supernatural power rather than with obedience to the will of God.
The sacrament, or sign, of baptism is quickly over… But the thing it signifies, viz., the spiritual baptism, the drowning of sin, lasts so long as we live, and is completed only in death. Then it is that man is completely sunk in baptism, and that thing comes to pass which baptism signifies. Therefore this life is nothing else than a spiritual baptism which does not cease till death.
Anabaptists are sometimes portrayed as forerunners of the Pentecostal movement of the twentieth century. Yet there are marked differences. For the Anabaptists the baptism of the Spirit is essentially a salvific experience that entails much suffering. For the Pentecostals this baptism is primarily for ministry and involves an effusion of power. It is a joyful experience more than an experience of endurance under trial. As in Pentecostalism the Anabaptists spoke of human preparations for Spirit baptism—seeking, praying, obedience to God, renouncing sin, believing and separation from the world. The Spirit comes not only through hearing the Word (as in Luther) but also through bearing the cross in faith.
On the sign of miracles he argued that “though Christ does not expressly state whether he intends this gift to be temporary, or to remain perpetually in his Church, yet it is more probable that miracles were promised only for a time, in order to give lustre to the gospel, while it was new and in a state of obscurity.”
When we come to the Anabaptists we are in a different spiritual atmosphere. The charismatic gifts, also sometimes called mystical phenomena, were much in evidence in the various Anabaptist sects: miracles, healings, prophecy, tongues, dancing in the Spirit and so on. Yet these gifts were ordinarily not elevated above the demands to live a Christian life. The gifts were intended for the service of ministry and the building up of the body of Christ.
The experience of the Holy Spirit can never remain an individual experience: it leads to community… If we ask God for the gifts of prophecy, healing, and other gifts described in 1 Corinthians 12 and 13, we need to be watchful of wanting to receive honor for having them. We should not ask for these gifts for ourselves, but only on behalf of the whole Body of Christ on earth. For ourselves we ought to ask for pure hearts, wisdom, faith, hope, and love; for more patience and more compassion.
As a Reformed theologian I would argue that the gospel cannot be reduced to either justification or election. The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners by placing them in a right relationship to God through his substitutionary sacrifice on the cross and by engrafting them into the righteousness of Christ by the purifying work of his Spirit. This gospel needs to be received in faith and repentance and demonstrated in a life of lowly service, faith working through love. It also needs to be manifested in the practice of the spiritual gifts, which both build up the church and empower the church to reach the spiritually lost for the gospel. The life of the Christian should be one of unstinting devotion to Jesus Christ in the freedom that comes to us through the outpouring of the Spirit, whose generosity is evidenced in the proliferation of spiritual gifts and an abundance of fruits of love and obedience.
We who appeal to the Bible and celebrate the Reformation affirm not a universal Spiritual Presence that can be tapped into by prescribed repetitions but a personal, living God who remains hidden until he makes himself known in Jesus Christ. We affirm not a God who is waiting to be discovered in the depths of our being but a God who takes the initiative by confronting us as Master and Teacher, Lord and Savior. We affirm a God who does not remain distant from us but who reaches out to us by his Spirit, calling us to mission in the world in the name and for the sake of Jesus.
• SIX •
Charles Spurgeon, who has been aptly described as the heir to the Puritans, was adamant that all saving knowledge of God comes from the Spirit enlightening the mind as it reflects on holy Scripture. He disputed the claims of rationalists that “an honest and willing mind” can “learn all the truth that is in Scripture without the teaching of the Holy Spirit.” Indeed, to the contrary, “the Bible without the Spirit of God is but a lantern without a light.” An avowed opponent of the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, he emphasized the necessity for an experience of personal conversion.
In my opinion the theology of the Reformers presents a more realistic picture of the Christian life in that the emphasis is on daily struggle rather than on final attainment. Calvin here states my own sentiments: “Those who walk after the Spirit are not such as have wholly put off all the emotions of the flesh, so that their whole life is redolent with nothing but celestial perfection; but they are those who sedulously labor to subdue and mortify the flesh, so that the love of true religion seems to reign in them.” At the same time, the note of victory was often eclipsed in the churches of the Reformation, and the confession of free grace sometimes became an excuse for the practice of sin. The Reformation in its dark side occasionally abetted moral defeatism, whereas the Pietists and Holiness proponents held out the possibility of triumph over sin. We are not only sinners saved by grace but also ambassadors and heralds of the advancing kingdom of God. Faith not only justifies, but faith working through love sanctifies. We are not yet in the kingdom of glory, but we are already participants in the kingdom of grace, and we are in debt to the Holiness revival for reminding us of this exhilarating truth.