Can you trust the Holy Spirit?

One of our elders recently told me that the main reason why he was baptized before 20 years is because he wanted to receive the power of the Holy Spirit so that he could overcome all his sins. His intentions were good, but his understanding was somewhat flawed (of course, no one has perfect understanding, we are saved by God's grace, despite our misunderstandings).

The Holy Spirit is not something that we can simply “turn on” to achieve our “overcomer goals”, like a kind of supercharger for our willpower. The Holy Spirit is God, he is with us and in us, he gives us the love, certainty and close fellowship that the Father makes possible for us in Christ. Through Christ the Father made us his own children and the Holy Spirit gives us the spiritual sense to know this (Romans 8,16). The Holy Spirit gives us close fellowship with God through Christ, but does not negate our ability to sin. We will still have wrong desires, wrong motives, wrong thoughts, wrong words and deeds. 

Even when we try to give up a particular habit, we find that we are still unable to do so. We know that it is God's will for us to be delivered from this problem, but for some reason we still seem powerless to shake off its hold over us.

Can we believe that the Holy Spirit is really at work in our lives - especially when it seems like nothing is actually happening because we are not very "good" Christians? If we keep struggling with sin when it seems like we're not changing much at all, do we conclude that we're so broken that even God can't fix the problem?

Babies and Adolescents

When we come to Christ by faith, we are born anew, created anew through Christ. We are new creatures, new people, babies in Christ. Babies have no strength, they have no skills, they don't clean themselves.

As they grow up, they acquire some skills and also begin to realize that there is a lot that they cannot do that sometimes leads to frustration. They fiddle with the crayons and scissors and worry that they can't do it as well as an adult. But the bouts of frustration won't help - only time and practice will keep it going.

This also applies to our spiritual life. Sometimes young Christians receive dramatic power to break with drug addiction or a hot temper. Sometimes young Christians are an instant "treasure" for the church. After much more often, it seems, Christians struggle with the same sins as before, they have the same personalities, the same fears and frustrations. They are not spiritual giants.

Jesus overcame sin, we are told, but it seems quite as if sin still has us in its power. The sin nature within us has been defeated, but it still treats us as if we were his captives. Oh what wretched people we are! Who will save us from sin and death? Jesus of course (Romans 7,24-25). He's already won - and he made that win our win too.

But we don't see complete victory yet. We do not yet see His power over death, nor do we see the complete end of sin in our lives. Like Hebrews 2,8 says we don't see all things done under our feet yet. What we do - we trust Jesus. We trust his word that he has achieved victory, and we trust his word that we are victorious in him too.

Even knowing that we are clean and pure in Christ, we would like to see progress in overcoming our personal sins. This process may seem terribly slow at times, but we can trust God that He will do what He has promised - in us as well as in others. After all, it is his, not our work. It's his agenda, not ours. If we submit to God, we must be willing to wait for him. We must be willing to trust him to do his work within us in the way and at the speed that he sees fit.
Adolescents often think they know more than their father does. They claim that they know what life is about and that they can do everything quite well on their own (of course, not all adolescents are like that, but the stereotype is based on some evidence).

We Christians can sometimes think in a way that resembles growing up. We may begin to think that spiritual "growing up" is based on right behavior, leading us to think that our standing before God depends on how well we behave. When we're well behaved, we can show a tendency to look down on other people who aren't as happy as we are. If we don't behave so well, we can fall into despair and depression, believing that God has abandoned us.

But God does not ask us to make ourselves righteous before him; he asks us to trust him, the One who justifies the wicked (Romans 4,5) who loves us and saves us for Christ's sake.
As we mature in Christ, we rest more firmly in God's love, which is revealed to us in the supreme way in Christ (1. John 4,9). As we rest in him, we look forward to the day revealed in Revelation 21,4 It is described: “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will there be more mourning, nor outcry, nor pain; for the first is past.”

Perfection!

When that day comes, Paul said, we will be changed in an instant. We will be made immortal, immortal, incorruptible (1. Cor. 15,52-53). God redeems the inner man, not just the outer one. He changes our innermost being, from weakness and impermanence to glory and, most importantly, sinlessness. At the sound of the last trumpet, we will be transformed in an instant. Our bodies are redeemed (Romans 8,23), but more than that, we will eventually see ourselves as God made us in Christ (1. John 3,2). We will then see in all clarity the still invisible reality that God made reality in Christ.

Through Christ our old sin nature was conquered and destroyed. Indeed, she is dead. “For you died,” says Paul, “and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3,3). The sin that "ensnares us so easily" and that we "try to cast off" (Hebrews 1 Cor2,1) is not part of the new man we are in Christ according to God's will. In Christ we have new life. At the coming of Christ, we will eventually see ourselves as the Father made us in Christ. We will see ourselves as we really are, as perfect in Christ who is our real life (Colossians 3,3-4). For this reason, since we have already died and have risen with Christ, we "kill" (verse 5) what is earthly in us.

We overcome Satan and sin and death in only one way - through the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 1 Cor2,11). It is through the victory of Jesus Christ won on the cross that we have victory over sin and death, not through our struggles against sin. Our struggles against sin are an expression of the fact that we are in Christ, that we are no longer enemies of God but his friends, through the Holy Spirit in communion with him, who works in us both to will and to do for God's good pleasure (Philippians 2,13).

Our fight against sin is not the reason for our righteousness in Christ. He does not produce holiness. God's own love and goodness towards us in Christ is the reason, the only reason, for our righteousness. We are justified, redeemed by God through Christ from all sin and ungodliness because God is full of love and grace - and for no other reason. Our struggle against sin is the product of the new and righteous selves given to us through Christ, not the cause of it. Christ died for us when we were still sinners (Romans 5,8).

We hate sin, we fight against sin, we want to avoid the pain and suffering that sin causes for ourselves and for others because God made us alive in Christ and the Holy Spirit works in us. Because we are in Christ, we fight against the sin that "so easily ensnares us" (Heb. 12,1). But we do not achieve victory through our own efforts, not even through our own Holy Spirit-enabled efforts. We gain victory through the blood of Christ, through his death and resurrection as the incarnate Son of God, God in the flesh for our sake.

God in Christ has already done everything that is necessary for our salvation and he has already given us everything we need for life and piety, simply by calling us to know him in Christ. He just did this because he's so amazingly good (2. Peter 1: 2-3).

The book of Revelation tells us that there will come a time when there will be no more crying and tears, suffering and pain - and that is, there will be no more sin, for it is sin that is suffering caused. Suddenly, in a brief moment, the darkness will end and sin will no longer be able to lead us into thinking that we are still His captives. Our true freedom, our new life in Christ, will forever shine with him in all his glory. In the meantime, we trust the word of His promise - and that is something really worth thinking about.

by Joseph Tkach