[?] our adoption gives us the key to understanding the ministry of the Holy Ghost.
Today’s Christians face many pitfalls and perplexities with regard to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The problem is not to find the right title, but to know the experience corresponding to God’s work with regard to the title. Therefore, we know from the scriptures that the Spirit teaches what happens in God’s thought and glorifies the Son of God; that he is the agent of the new birth, giving us the understanding to know God and also the new heart to obey Him; we also know that he dwells in Christians, sanctifies them, and strengthens them for their daily pilgrimage, security, joy, peace, and power are your special gifts. However, many complain, confused, that these claims are simple formulas for them, which correspond to nothing they recognize in their lives.
- Of course.
- These Christians feel that they lack something vital and anxiously wonder how they can fill the gap between the New Testament image of life in the Spirit and their feeling of dryness in the daily experience.
- Then.
- Perhaps in despair.
- They decide to undertake the search for a transformative psychic event for themselves.
- Through which they can feel that barrier of lack of spirituality: the cane broke forever.
- The event can be called “Keswick Experience” 1.
- “total abandonment”.
- “baptism of the Holy Spirit”.
- “total sanctification” 2.
- “sealing with the Spirit”.
- Gift of languages.
- “second conversion”.
- Guided by a Catholic star instead of a Protestant) or in silent prayer or together.
However, if something happens and they feel able to identify it with what they were looking for, they soon discover that the barrier of lack of spirituality has not been broken at all, so they expect something new. today they are caught up in this mess. We ask: what help can be offered to these people?The light that comes with the truth of adoption about the ministry of the Spirit provides the answer.
The cause of problems like the ones described is a kind of false and magical supernaturalism that makes people yearn for a transformative touch, like an impersonal electrical force, that will completely free them from all the burdens and chains of living with themselves and with themselves. . other. . They believe that this is the essence of true spiritual experience. They believe that the Spirit’s work is to give them experiences like LSD trips (what harm do evangelists do when they promise this and drug addicts equate their fantasies with religious experiences! Will we never learn to distinguish between different things?). The point, however, is that this search for an inner explosion rather than an intimate communion shows the profound misunderstanding of the ministry of the Spirit. The fundamental truth to be learned is that the Spirit has been given to Christians as “the adopting Spirit,” and therefore acts throughout their ministry. His task and purpose, therefore, is to make Christians think more and more clearly about the meaning of their filial relationship with God in Christ and respond more and more deeply to God. Paul highlights this truth when he writes 😕 [Have you received] the Spirit who adopted you as sons, for whom we cry? (Rom. 8:15); “God sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father? (Galatians 4: 6).
Just as adoption itself is the key thought to unravel the idea of Christian life in the New Testament and the central point for unifying it, the recognition that the Spirit comes to us as the adopting Spirit is the key idea for unraveling everything the New Testament says. us about his ministry to Christians.
Based on this central idea, we see that his work has three aspects: first, does it make us aware?Sometimes more clearly, but always, one way or another, conscious, even when the perverse part in us leads us. deny such a conscience? that we are children of God by spontaneous grace, by Jesus Christ. Your task is to give faith, security and joy.
Second, it leads us to look at God as Father, showing him respectful audacity and boundless trust, as is natural in some children of fatherly love. Is it your job to make us cry? Abba, Father? The attitude described is that expressed by the cry.
Third, he urges us to act in accordance with our position as real children showing a familiar resemblance (i. e. , conforming to Christ), promoting the well-being of the family (i. e. loving brethren) and maintaining his honor (seeking the glory of God). ) It is his work of sanctification. By this gradual increase in consciousness and filial character, in an effort to seek what God loves, avoiding what He hates, we transform ourselves into his own image with increasing splendor, and it is the work of the Lord, who is the Spirit. ? (2C 3:18; CPH).
Therefore, it is not when we seek sensations and experiences of all kinds, but when we seek God, looking at Him as our Father, courage in his friendship and discovering in us the growing concern to know and please him. of the ministry of the Spirit becomes visible in our lives. It is the necessary truth that can take us out of the swamp of non-spiritual assumptions about the Spirit, in which so many people fight today.
1 Designation of the English movement (since 1875) that offered four- or five-day lectures on spiritual renewal. These conferences were designed to present to people the evil of sin, teach them to live victoriously and challenge their total commitment to God and His 2 Theological Expression used in circles of holiness to designate: The divine act, after conversion, by which believers are freed from original sin or depravity, and their carnal nature is eradicated and brought to the state of complete devotion to God , and to the holy obedience of love, perfect?(http://www. freewebs. com/ihcircuitriders/ entiresanctification. htm).