WHAT IS THE MINISTRY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT?

There is a tendency for different churches to emphasize one person of the Holy Trinity to the neglect of the others, e.g. some churches tend to emphasize God as Father, some churches tend to emphasize God as the Son, and some churches tend to emphasize God as the Holy Spirit. Your church background influences you on how you see the work of God in your life. An 80 year old member of my congregation confided that, though he had been an active member of his Baptist church in Atlanta all his life he had not learned about the Holy Spirit until he came to my church.

The work of the Holy Spirit has become more popular due to the growth of the charismatic and Pentecostal churches throughout the world and their prevalence on television and online. Enthusiastic contemporary informal worship music and preaching has attracted young people and led to the growth of megachurches and healing ministries. These nondenominational churches are growing whereas denominational churches are declining (with the exception of the Assemblies of God). Is it because they are not open to the ministry of the Holy Spirit?

Jesus began his ministry by quoting Isaiah 61:1f. “The Spirit of the Lord is on me….” (Luke 4:18) The work of the Holy Spirit is to universalize and to internalize the presence of Jesus. The bodily presence of Jesus was succeeded by the Holy Spirit being always with us, wherever we may be, and entering into our personalities to change us into his image from within. The Holy Spirit is the ‘executive’ of the Godhead, meaning that what the Father and the Son desire to do in the world today, they execute through the Holy Spirit.

SEVEN AREAS OF THE SPIRIT’S MINISTRY:

1. Christian conversion. He begins by convicting or convincing the world of sin, righteousness and judgment (John 16:8-10). “Every stab of conscience and pang of guilt, every sense of alienation and longing for reconciliation, and every anxious fear of coming judgment are prompted by him. Next, he opens our eyes to see the truth, glory and saving power of Jesus… The Holy Spirit moves us to repent and believe, and so to experience the new birth. For to be born again is to be ‘born of the Spirit John 3:6-8).” The Nicene Creed rightly calls him ‘the Lord, the Giver of life.’
2. Christian assurance. The Holy Spirit is God’s ‘seal’ to indicate that we are now his own (2 Corinthians 1:22; Ephesians 1:13; 4:30). The indwelling Spirit actively assures us of God’s love and fatherhood (Romans 5:5; 8:16). He is the guarantee or down-payment of our future inheritance. “He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” (2 Cor.1:22; Eph.1:14). We are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor.6:19).
3. Christian holiness. “His ministry is not only to show Christ to us, but to form Christ in us. And he does it by penetrating deeply into the hidden recesses of our personality. We are to live by the Spirit, be led by the Spirit, and keep in step with the Spirit, surrendering daily to his mastery and following his promptings, producing the fruit of the Spirit (Gal.5:16,18,22,23,25).”
4. Christian understanding. He is the Spirit of truth (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13). He believes, loves, defends and teaches the truth. He is the primary author of Scripture and its primary interpreter. He spoke through the prophets in the Old Testament and the apostles in the New Testament. “He will teach you all things….he will guide you into all the truth” (John 15:26; 16:13). We need his illumination to understand and to apply the Word of God in the Scriptures to our lives.
5. Christian fellowship. What happened at Pentecost was that the remnant of God’s people became the Spirit-filled body of Christ. The church is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. “There is one body and one Spirit” (Eph.4:4). We are united by the Spirit.
6. Christian service. 1 Cor.12:7ff.The Spirit gives both supernatural and natural abilities to members of the church. The gifts of the Spirit are for service to be used for the common good, so that the church is built up and grows into maturity. We should emphasize the teaching gifts, since nothing nurtures the church like the truth. The love of Christ is the supreme gift.
7. Christian mission. It is the Spirit who empowers us to witness to Christ. There is perhaps no greater need in the contemporary church than that we should be filled with the Holy Spirit (Eph.5:18). “We need him not only to bring us to conversion and assurance, nor only to sanctify, enlighten, unite and equip us, but also to reach out through us in blessing to an alienated world, like rivers of living water which irrigate the desert (John 7:38,39).”

The fullness of the Holy Spirit, is a continuous blessing, to be continuously and increasingly appropriated. If this is so, why is it that many Christians live on a level lower than their Spirit-baptism makes possible? It is because they do not remain filled with the Holy Spirit. “They need to recover the fullness of the Spirit which they have lost through sin, thus becoming what the Corinthian Christians were, namely ‘unspiritual’ or ‘carnal’ (1 Corinthians 3:1ff.). The result of the baptism of the Spirit is that ‘they were all filled with the Holy Spirit’ (Acts 2:4). The fullness of the Spirit was the consequence of the baptism of the Spirit. This fullness was intended to be the continuing, the permanent result, the norm. As an initiatory event, the baptism was not repeatable, and could not be lost, but the filling can be repeated, and needed to be maintained. If it is not maintained, it is lost. If it is lost, it can be recovered. The Holy Spirit is ‘grieved’ by sin (Eph.4:30) and ceases to fill the sinner. Repentance is then the only road to recovery. Even in cases where there is no suggestion that the fullness has been forfeited through sin, we still read of people being filled again, as a fresh crisis or challenge demands a fresh empowering by the Spirit (Acts 4:8,31; 9:17; 13:9). Ephesians 5:18 contains the well-known command to all Christian people to be filled, that is, to go on being filled with the Spirit.”

(Condensed from chapter 3 of Ted Schroder, John Stott: A Summary of his teaching)