When we talk about the Holy Spirit, and the
work of the Spirit in our lives, we often mention that the Holy Spirit:
unites us
guides us
fellowships with us
guards us
sanctifies us
testifies of Christ through us
proclaims the Gospel through the Church
brings conviction and prompts repentance in
people’s hearts,
and for everything listed here there is
biblical ground.
But today I’m going to emphasize something
else the Spirit of God does. He reveals to us just who we are. The Holy Spirit impresses upon us what our true “self”
is, in the sphere of, and in connection with, the divine Life. God’s Spirit
accords us our genuine spiritual “visage”, personhood, self-concept.
And in a
world like our present, contemporary one, where people desperately scramble
after the coolest “image”, finding out and coming to terms with your authentic
Self in the light of Christ means freedom—it means room, expanse inwardly. It means independence from worldly pressures to please people by fabricating
an external persona that conforms to a fallen world’s ephemeral errors and
delusions.
The
apostle Paul says, “I have been
crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.
So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the
Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20; NET Bible,
here and following)
And he tells the
Colossians: “God wanted to make known to them the glorious riches of this
mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
(1:27)
“Christ in you”—in
this lies our authentic Self, the child of God, because of the abiding Spirit
of God in Whom we have fellowship with the Father and Son.
Paul says the
following as well concerning this Holy Spirit: “For all who are led by the
Spirit of God are the sons of God. For you did not
receive the spirit of slavery leading again to fear, but you received the
Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself bears
witness to our spirit that we are God’s children.” (Romans 8:14-16).
By the inward
witness of the Spirit we realize and affirm who we are—namely, the children of
the living God and Redeemer. And established as such we seek no other “image”
or “profile” in the world’s eyes. On the contrary, our hearts unfailingly
return to the Father in the Spirit, by the grace of the Son, there to exult in
unveiled encounter with the eternal Source of our life.
God’s child, at
the very center of your existence you are not alone; the Spirit of Christ
dwells there and, through you, with your own voice, He cries, “Abba! Father!”
In the world there’s
no shortage of reasons to worry, agonize and fret, no shortage of things that
drown out God’s own call. Not only that, but the very values and influence of
the world constantly work on our minds, and all this, taken together, easily
breeds a false self-concept in us, a counterfeit persona that we lean on like a
crutch in order to cope with the world and all that it expects of us.
But the crutch,
sooner or later, snaps.
The Holy Spirit in
the heart of a believer in Christ, this is He Who delivers us from the
temptation to fabricate a counterfeit Self
out of a misguided attempt to handle life in this world. He accords us the
capacity to find out who we are and what we are appointed to, and why we
even exist at all! And what the real significance
of our existence is right here and now, today, as well as for all eternity. To
the degree we apprehend His gaze upon us, and see ourselves reflected there, to
that degree we know who we are. That
is his gift, because He loves us.
And the more we
find ourselves out in Him, the more
we discard our masks, the outer “gloss” from behind which we used to declare, “This
is me.”
What does this all
convey to us about the Holy Spirit? What does it mean? The apostle Paul writes:
“Now we do speak wisdom among the mature, but not a wisdom of this age or of
the rulers of this age, who are perishing. Instead we speak
the wisdom of God, hidden in a mystery, that God determined before the ages for
our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood it. If they had known it,
they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But just as it is written, ‘Things that no eye has
seen, or ear heard, or mind imagined, are the things God has prepared for those who love him.’ God has revealed these to us by the Spirit. For the Spirit
searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the things of a man except the man’s
spirit within him? So too, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit
of God.” (1 Corinthians 2: 6-11)
To search the deep
things of God, to know “the things of
God,” to receive the revelation of the things God has prepared for those who
love Him, this is all accessible to us,
but only if we are willing to be spiritually naked before God, open,
transparent, with no masks of any kind, and then only may we experience what the
apostle depicts with the following words: “…[W]hen one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the
Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is present, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled faces reflecting the glory of the
Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to
another, which is from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2
Corinthians 3:16-18)
This is what
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ granted to His beloved-in-the-Son nation,
the Church, on that day when “suddenly a sound like a violent wind blowing came
from heaven and filled the entire house” (Acts 2:2) where, with one accord,
they were waiting for the promise of the Father. And they were filled with the
Holy Spirit, thus coming into the rule and sway, the dominion and power of the
Spirit of God, Who is the essential, central, living Principle of our present
redeemed life in Christ.
