Tag Archives: J.I. Packer

How Does the Holy Spirit Work?

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“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. 
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives…” (Luke 4:18)

I head off to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) this weekend to speak on behalf of an overture that was written by our session and approved by our Presbytery.  I have to admit, I am reluctant to go.  This year the GA will be dealing with the same issues that have been before the church since before I was born.  Every year it seems the church is asked to change its long-held standards for ordination, and this year is no different.   

What seems most puzzling to me is how every side of every debate claims the endorsement of God through the work of the Holy Spirit.  When the GA passes a monumental bill, its supporters will be quick to declare, “the Holy Spirit has spoken to the church.”  Months later, when the Presbyteries have met and debated and prayed and eventually overturn the work of the GA, they too claim the Holy Spirit has spoken through the voice of the Presbytery. 

You may not really care about any of this.  But I would venture to guess that you have, at one point or another, wondered how the Holy Spirit was leading you.  Should you go to this school or the other, should you spend your money on this or save it for later?  How does the Holy Spirit guide and influence us?

Unfortunately, most of us have a wrong understanding of the Holy Spirit.  We treat the Spirit of God as a medium, a fortune teller, or a Magic 8 Ball, shake Him up and He’ll tell you where to go.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say, “I just had a ‘gut feeling’ that this is what the Spirit was leading me to do.”  To borrow from Dickens, maybe it wasn’t the Spirit, but just a bad case of indigestion.

The real purpose of the revealing power and presence of the Holy Spirit is to lead us into a deeper knowledge and understanding of the grace of God in our savior Jesus Christ.  God has clearly and authoritatively revealed himself through His word by the power of His Spirit, and the Holy Spirit continues to reveal God’s will through God’s word to us today.  God cannot lie, so neither will God’s Spirit reveal to us anything that is contradictory to God’s word, nor lead us to decide anything that is contrary to His word.  Rather, when the Spirit works, the gospel will be boldly proclaimed and God’s kingdom will advance.

J.I. Packer, in his book, 18 Words, writes the following about revelation:

Do you want to know God?  Then… stop, look, and listen.

Stop trying to discover God by pursuing thoughts, fancies and feelings of your own, in disregard of God’s revelation.  Our knowledge of Him and His revelation to us are correlative realities, you do not have the first without the second.

Look at what God has revealed.  The Bible is the window through which you may look to see it, and there are many Christians and guide books that can help you to see what you are looking at and pick out what is important.  As London is the centre of England, put first in their itinerary by tourists from overseas, wherever else they plan to go, so Jesus Christ the Lord, who died and is alive for evermore, is the centre of Scripture.  Whatever else in the Bible catches your eye, do not let is distract you from Him.

Listen to what the Bible tells you about Him, and about our need of Him (which means your need of Him).  The Bible in which you see him is itself God’s communication with you about Him.  Learn from God about the Son of God; respond to all that you are shown.  Do that, and one day you will be saying with Paul and many millions more, ‘God… has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ’ (2 Cor. 4:6).  You will be saying with the once-blind man of Jerusalem, ‘One thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see’ (John 9:25).  You will know revelation in the only way that finally counts – namely, from the inside; and in so knowing it you will know God.

Be praying for the church as our General Assembly meets, be praying that we might learn to listen to the Holy Spirit and discern God’s will for His church, and may the gospel be boldly proclaimed and God’s kingdom advanced.

SDG

Gripped by the Cross

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“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
(1 John 4:10 ESV)

How would you define love?  Is it an emotion or feeling that you get when you are around someone you adore, someone who makes you feel good just being in their presence?  Is love an act of the will, a conscious decision to show someone kindness, compassion, mercy, and tenderness?  When we say “I love you” do we really mean “I love me, and I want you”? 

The Apostle John defines love for us saying, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”  God defined what love means by demonstrating his love for us in Jesus Christ.  When we were lost in our sins, unloving and unlovable, God loved us still, and sent his son to die for us (John 3:16, Romans 5:8).  Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13), then proceeded to demonstrated that love by going to the cross.  During that same conversation in John’s gospel, Jesus also told his followers, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35).

Dr. Joel Beeke writes in his Epistles of John that “the great motivation for practical, Christlike living is the doctrine of the cross; hence, every failure to love can be traced back to a failure to understand the cross.  When the cross of Christ grips us, everything in our world changes.”

If love has been defined in the cross of Christ, then our failure to love in the church, in our homes, in our community with a Christlike love is simply because either we don’t understand what the cross really means or we forget to that the cross should affect every relationship and every decision.  Either way, our failure to love belies our failure to really understand the cross.

When we have been gripped by the Cross of Christ, when the beauty, tragedy, and grace of the cross really shakes us, our lives will never be the same.  J.I. Packer writes “Christ as crucified is the great object of our live, or should be… in the death of Christ do his love, his grace, his condescension, most gloriously shine forth.  Sin nowhere appears so hateful as at Calvary, and lust shrivels up in the Christian’s heart while he keeps Calvary in view.”  If we keep the cross before us, we will learn to live like he lives and love like he loves.  If we really want to be a more loving church, a more loving people, let us keep the cross of Jesus before us. 

SDG