The Gift of the Holy Spirit Today

The final installment from Professor Williams’ book, The Gift of the Holy Spirit Today, about the greatest reality of our time.

The Gift of the Holy Spirit Today: Effects, Part 1 (Chapter 8)

Epilogue & Bibliography

This book has been written with excitement and hope. If it is true that many people today are freshly experiencing the gift of the Holy Spirit, there is much to be excited about. For in this gift there is fullness of God’s presence and power—and entrance into a whole new dimension of praise, witness and action. Also there is much to be hoped for: that people everywhere will become alert to the possibility of this gift, respond to God’s offer of its availability and thereby receive it from the exalted Lord.

Perhaps these pages will have come as a surprise to some readers. For it is a fact that despite the high significance of the gift of the Holy Spirit, many persons have little knowledge or understanding of it. Such a question as Paul’s, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” (Acts 19:2), may seem totally irrelevant and meaningless to many. They may never really have thought about the matter, and perhaps they have not so much as heard about it.

Others in reading may have felt disturbed. First, there may be some who have long thought of the gift of the Holy Spirit in terms of a kind of divine immanence experienced in a mystical moment. With or without the mediation of Jesus Christ it is assumed that the spirit of a person may enter into union with the divine Spirit. Accordingly, there is already a given—hence gift-like—unity of the divine and human spirit which only needs to be realized through meditation and stripping away artificial barriers. Thus to read all this about the work of Jesus Christ in redemption and forgiveness of sins as necessary to the reception of the Spirit may seem strange and unwarranted. Second, there may be other readers who have long viewed this gift as so inseparably attached to the sacramental life of the church that all persons who receive the proper sacramental action (baptism, confirmation) invariably become recipients of this gift. Accordingly, there is no point in getting excited about or looking forward to the gift. For if one has been properly baptized (or confirmed, as the case may be), the gift presumably has been received. Third, there may be still other readers who view the gift of the Holy Spirit as identical with the gift of salvation; thus there is no gift to be considered beyond the new life in Christ. Indeed, some might say, does not the very idea of an additional gift detract from the all-sufficiency of Christ?

Unfortunately, these various views—which may be called, in turn, the mystical, the sacramental, and the evangelical—often stand in the way of a genuine apprehension and reception of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps sufficient answer to the first two views has been given in prior pages, but a word might be added about the last. Christianity, to be sure, is at heart the Good News about salvation—a new life in Christ. This gospel is to be proclaimed to the ends of the earth: that God has graciously gone all the way to bring man back to himself, and through the blood of His Son there is redemption, even the forgiveness of sins. Nothing should ever be said to detract one iota from the wonder of the gospel, for without God’s work in salvation there would be no hope for anyone in all creation. And it comes as a gift—the gift of eternal life (e.g., Rom. 6:23—“the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”). But the all-important point is that the gift of eternal life is not the gift of the Holy Spirit, though the latter presupposes the former and both are mediated through Jesus Christ. Thus Christ continues to be all-sufficient. One never goes past Him: for in Him is every spiritual blessing. The crucial question is: have we caught up with Him? If we have experienced through Him the life-changing wonder of forgiveness of sins and eternal life, have we also received the empowering miracle of the gift of the Holy Spirit?

Perhaps the greatest mistake in this area is to presuppose the gift of the Holy Spirit. The mystic may presuppose the gift of the Spirit in his meditation, the sacramentalist may presuppose the same gift in the occurrence of baptism and/or confirmation, the evangelical may likewise presuppose the gift of the Spirit in the experience of forgiveness and salvation. Each, in different manner, by the very presupposition,¹ bars his own way to the reception of the gift. However, if the presupposition can be removed, there may be a new readiness for and openness to the gift of the Holy Spirit.

In this connection one purpose of the book has been to set forth biblically and theologically the whole area of the gift of the Holy Spirit. By doing this it is hoped that certain commonly held views may have been brought under question and a fresh look taken. By the very description of such matters as the background, dimensions, purpose and effects of the gift it is likewise hoped that many may have been challenged to raise the question: “Have I really—whatever my former attitude and experience—received this gift?”

Earlier it was said that perhaps these pages will have come as a surprise, even a disturbance, to some readers. It is also hoped that for others this book may have come as a source of some pleasure in that the attempt has been made to clarify much about the gift of the Holy Spirit. For it is undoubtedly the case that many persons who are either participants in the contemporary spiritual renewal, or strongly attracted thereto, are looking for a more thorough biblical and theological grounding. If these pages have been helpful in that direction, I am grateful.

It should be added that throughout the writing I have been fully aware of working in a seldom charted theological area. For the church at large has never given adequate consideration to the gift of the Spirit—“baptism in the Spirit,” “the fullness of the Spirit,” and other related matters—accordingly, there has been little from the past to go on.² Hence, though this has been largely a biblical study in the area, I trust that it has helped set the stage for further theological reflection.

Surely what has been dealt with in these pages is no small matter. It is verily, for those who receive forgiveness of sins and become new creatures, the gift of God’s presence and power. Thereby the Spirit of God comes to fill the heights and depths of human existence, bringing forth transcendent expressions of praise, performance of mighty works, and many new aspects of Christian living. It is the outpouring of God’s Spirit upon a redeemed people—a people who having been set right with God now become the arena of His reflected glory.

How much this is to be desired: for the church in our time not only to be “the ark of salvation” but also the tabernacle of the divine fullness! Thus the church may become the earthly counterpart to the praise of God in the heavenly sanctuary, the continuation of her Lord’s ministry in mighty word and deed, and such a moving force against all evil that the citadels of darkness cannot withstand the mighty impact. Indeed, through the Holy Spirit the church may truly become that place of beauty and wonder that presages the final coming of Christ in glory.

And the church described consists of people—people who have become open to the mighty wave of God’s Spirit in our time, and, whatever their frailties and shortcomings, are moving in the power and demonstration of the Holy Spirit. For all such persons, what God is doing is a matter of continuing joy and amazement.

Finally, as we close, it is good to be reminded once more that the gift of the Holy Spirit is a continuing promise. This extraordinary gift from the exalted Lord is not something that belongs to past history. For we have the sure word of Scripture that “the promise is to you and your children and to all that are far off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to him.”

May it be that none of us shall fail to receive what God has so generously promised.

PR

Notes

¹ Karl Barth in his Evangelical Theology: An Introduction (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963): Chapter 5, on “The Spirit,” writes of how “a foolish church presupposes his presence and action in its own existence, in its offices and sacraments, ordinations, consecrations and absolutions . . a presupposed Spirit is certainly not the Holy Spirit” (p. 58). Thereafter Barth adds: “Only where the Spirit is sighed. cried, and prayed for does he become present and newly active.” So it is with the gift of the Holy Spirit.

² Professor Hendrikus Berkhof in his book, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1964) speaks in one place of a work of the Holy Spirit “beyond justification and sanctification,” namely, being “filled with the Holy Spirit,” to which “official theology” has paid little attention (p. 85). He thereupon devotes a few pages (pp. 85-92) to the subject, prefacing his remarks by saying, “I am aware of the fact that I set foot on an unexplored field and that my thoughts here . . . must be considered as preliminary and needing correction by others” (p. 85). This present book, as well as my two earlier ones, The Era of the Spirit and The Pentecostal Reality, are attempts to open up this “unexplored field.”

Bibliography

Books Referred to in This Volume

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The Gift of the Holy Spirit Today by J. Rodman Williams, was published in 1980 by Logos International. Used by permission of the author. Reprinted in Pneuma Review with minor updates from the author.