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Commission and Pentecost
By daniel | August 15, 2004
Hey fam!
I?m working on a little book about the Spirit and how to live with Him. One section discusses the Spirit as He?s presented in Luke and Acts, and a couple of the essays therein may be useful to our discussions this week. If so, great. Here they are.
The Spirit and Jesus ? the Great Commission
Reading: Luke 24:45-49 and Acts 1:1-8
Luke 24:45-49 and Acts 1:1-8
Jesus? last instructions to His twelve apostles before His ascension ? often referred to as the Great Commission ? should be taken as His recipe for revolution. All three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) contain similar accounts; all three contain ingredients for global restoration. The introduction of truth, the invitation to defect and pledge allegiance to the Triune God, the glad tidings of forgiveness and amnesty in the new kingdom, and (in Matthew) the command to train people to live new lives in open hearted obedience to Jesus. Matthew, Mark and Luke each end their gospels with this earth shaking command. Matthew and Mark both record Jesus commanding the disciples to Go.
Luke doesn?t. In Luke?s accounts Jesus says Wait. And the reason for this peculiar difference defines Luke?s idea of the kingdom, the church and the Christian life. The disciples were told to wait, to stay in the city and do nothing until the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit, be given. They wouldn?t have to wait long, but they would have to wait.
This reference to the Spirit prompts a question from the disciples, “Is this the time when you will restore Israel?s sovereignty and rule the earth from Jerusalem?” Theirs is a question of when the kingdom would come, a question to which Jesus simply replies, “That?s not your business.” Instead, Jesus directs their attention to how the kingdom would come. “You will receive power when the Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
And that?s how it would go down. The coming of the kingdom is a matter of cause and effect. The Spirit, undeniably, is the cause; witness, both verbal and evidentiary, is the effect. And somewhere in between we must find ourselves. The Spirit would be sent, and the world would be filled with the manifestation of Christ, and this would happen as we receive power to participate. I hope we don?t miss that. When you are neither cause nor effect nor mere spectator, you are a participant. The disciples were to wait for the promise of the Father because their role in the kingdom was neither to initiate nor to control. The Spirit would do all of that. Rather, they were told to cooperate with the Spirit, to be the means by which cause became effect.
That?s where we are to live, too. In an era of “Christian” ministry that expends so much energy and resources trying to be the cause or straining to control or at least shape the effect, we must learn the glad simplicity of participation. We need to cultivate an awareness of the Spirit as present cause and power, and we need to cultivate the humility and faith necessary to let go of the effects. We don?t need to wait. The Spirit has been given. But we must be careful to learn our place between cause and effect.
If Christ is to express God in the world ? by the Spirit through the church ? we have got to stop seeing the Spirit as the God-ordained means to our ends and embrace the fact that we are the God-ordained means to His ends.
Luke spends the rest of Acts, I am convinced, developing this point, that the Spirit is both Lord and Source of the church and her mission, and that the saints are called to participation in something we neither initiate nor complete. The book of Acts makes this relationship obvious. I pray my life will as well.
The Spirit and the Church ? the Pentecost outpouring
Reading: Acts 2:1-41 (cf. 8:14-17; 10:1-48)
Acts 2:1-41 (cf. 8:14-17; 10:1-48)
So much has been said, and written, to the events of Pentecost. I hesitate to write anymore, to repeat what has already been said, to labor points that have been major elements of Christian theology for centuries. So, instead, I?d like to draw our attention to a few matters that I believe to be particularly important to our endeavor ? learning practically to live with the Spirit.
First, Luke records the outpouring of the Spirit in such a way as to connect God?s promise of the Old Covenant with His intentions for the New. Pentecost is the fulfillment of Joel?s prophecy ? that God would pour out His Spirit, not just upon a select few leaders, but upon the whole community of faith, and that by this outpouring He would eventually restore the world (Acts 2:16-21; 3:21). This community of faith would speak and live the truth into “every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5-11), progressively bringing representatives from “all the ethnic groups” (Mt.28:18-20) into this life with the Spirit, redeeming the whole of creation by redeeming a people from the whole of humanity. The message of the resurrection of Jesus was given in multiple languages (by men who did not know those languages) ? the heart-languages of those Pentecost pilgrims within earshot that day. Luke?s report of Jews “from every nation under heaven” is obvious hyperbole, and is included to foreshadow the revolution that would eventually restore all things, beginning in Jerusalem, beginning with Pentecost.
Second, Luke tells us that Peter stood up “with the eleven” to speak to the assembled multitude. What is obvious is that Peter spoke. What?s not so obvious is that he acted with the other apostles. This phrase can be translated, “standing up, put forward as the spokesman of the eleven.” We unconsciously assume, I think, that Peter was God?s spokesman on Pentecost. But that assumption is inaccurate. The community, “the eleven,” spoke for Jesus, and together they spoke through Peter?s speech. All of it is a function of the Holy Spirit, an expression of the living Christ in their midst, but what is also significant is the “with.” Peter did not stand up on his own steam, nor did he stand up on his own. He stood up empowered by the Spirit and as one of the eleven, as part of the redeemed community.
The primacy of community will be played out through the rest of Acts. We do well to realize that the redemption and restoration of the world is an “us” thing, only accomplished as we approach our lives and ministries this way.
Finally, Pentecost is a one-time event. Like the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, the imparting of the Spirit to the Church is an accomplished fact. Not to be repeated, not to be asked for again. It is done.
Sometimes questions are asked about the events in Acts 8 and Acts 10, where it appears the Spirit was poured out a second and third time. Unless we take special note of a couple of important facts we are likely to cheat ourselves of the life intended ? and already secured ? for us.
We should understand Acts 8 and Acts 10 to be ripples, aftershocks of the dynamic earthquake at Pentecost. The Lord Jesus gave to Peter the keys to the Kingdom, and Peter uses those keys to open the Kingdom to all kinds of people. As far as the Jews were concerned there were three kinds of people: Jews, Gentiles, and a sort of half-breed found in Samaria. So, we won?t be surprised to find that the Spirit uses Peter to open the Way to all three groups ? the Jews in Acts 2, the Samaritans in Acts 8, and the Gentiles in Acts 10. There is one outpouring applied in time to all people. Jesus understood this when He listed Jerusalem and Judea (Jews), Samaria (Samaritans), and the remotest parts of the earth (Gentiles).
So it?s done. The Spirit has been given, never to be given again. He is ours for the taking, for the breathing and living. I?m alarmed by the lingo so deeply entrenched in Christian thought, encouraging us to beg God to pour out His power on us again, or to rain down from heaven on us. It grates on me to hear people pray for the Lord to anoint us with His Spirit again. Not because I?m a theological stickler, but because if we wait around for something already given, desperately hoping that we might receive what?s already ours, the Lord has no room to move forward. The fullness of the Godhead now dwells bodily in us, and the absolutely limitless power of God rests all over us. We have received power from on high. Let?s get down to the business of living in it. You are supernatural; we are a force to be reckoned with. Let?s just believe that, and then let?s take the world. The remotest parts are not beyond the power with which we are now clothed. I pray they are not beyond our faith.
In the One Spirit,
Virgil
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