4. CHURCH - ordinary people with supernatural clothing
CHURCH, the ESSENTIALS (4 of 7)
“I am going to send you what my Father promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” Luke 24:49
My first years of influence as a new follower of Jesus were exclusively conservative evangelical. They gave me a strong and lasting love for the Scriptures, even if it did err on the side of legalism. We were warned about liberalism and pentecostalism. As such the diet was Romans more than the Gospels and the Word to the exclusion of the Spirit. It was all about Passover at the expense of Pentecost. The vibrant personal experience of God’s presence was unwittingly replaced by listed statements of right doctrine. When I was filled with the Spirit in 1971, the Scriptures opened up to me again as if I was reading a brand-new book.
Among the things that stood out was the way John the Baptist pointed to Jesus. More correctly, what he pointed to about Jesus.
‘And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” ‘ (Mark 1:7,8)
As a ‘by the book’ evangelical I would have preferred John to say, “Jesus will die on the cross for our sins.” Surely the cross is the not-to-be-missed front and centre item on the gospel agenda? But it is the most quoted item of John’s ministry. It is referred to by all four gospel writers (Matt. 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33). It is quoted by Jesus during his post-resurrection teaching sessions (Acts 1:5). It is quoted again by Peter when he was defending his visit to Cornelius’ house and saw the Holy Spirit fall upon every Gentile in the room (11:16).
In addition to John the Baptist, we have Jesus telling the disciples repeatedly not to do anything until they are filled with the Spirit (Luke 24:49; John 7:37-39; 15:5; Acts 1:4,5,8). On top of that we have apostolic testimony and the importance they placed on Holy Spirit fulness and presence (Acts 2:38; 7:51; 8:14-16; 10:44-46; 19:1-7). The last reference, where Paul is speaking with the small group of disciples in Ephesus is one of the sharpest testimonies to the fact that we can be genuinely born again, but not empowered by the Spirit.
I have my doubts that a person could lose their salvation in a day, but it is possible, and perhaps common for us to shift from the Spirit to the flesh in a matter of seconds. It is a constant battle going on inside of us. The flesh and the Spirit are at war with each other (Galatians 5:16,17). It is not only an individual war but also a corporate war. The church is meant to be supernatural (Spirit-filled, led, guided, empowered) community. The same enemy will war against that calling and we have all too often ceded victory to such a subtle enemy presence. It challenges our independence, self-centredness, our pride, and our insecurity. It challenges our desire for predictability and control.
We are given a very clear picture of the difference between flesh-driven and Spirit-led as the narratives of the Gospels and Acts provide candid accounts of attitudes, motives, and behaviour of Jesus’ disciples, especially the twelve and especially Peter. They are convinced Jesus is the Messiah, but they don’t want any thought of suffering or dying (Matthew 16). They are amazed at the relentless ardour of Jesus’ love for crowd after crowd of strangers who show up in the most remote places but would rather send them away than feed them (Mark 6). When Jesus is asleep during a storm at sea, they presume that he doesn’t care if they hall get drowned (Mark 4). They’d rather build a monument than listen to the message of the transfiguration (Luke 9). None of them have the faith to cast out a demon, but they still want to argue about who is the greatest (Luke 9). When they were told to do nothing until the Holy Spirit came upon them, they felt the need to appoint a replacement apostle (Acts 1).
By contrast, after Pentecost (Acts 2) the stories become Holy Spirit stories. Here is a selected summary: Their response to the visitation of the Spirit starts in the upper room but ends up out on the street with thousands of bewildered residents and visitors (Acts 2). When Peter preaches, three thousand people become followers of Jesus and form a radically different community (Acts 2). When Peter and John go to the temple, they offer healing to a lame man and preach the gospel to another crowd of temple visitors (Acts 3). When they are arrested and told not to proclaim the gospel any more then gather to pray and experience a further impartation of boldness to continue regardless of the threats (Acts 4). When Ananias and Sapphire deceive the community, they the church witnesses the outcome, divine protection is removed, and they are killed (Acts 5). When seven Greek speaking leaders are chosen to resolve friction between groups in the church, they only choose people who evidence Spirit filled discipleship. When they lay hands on them, the new leaders experience greater power and authority, and their ministry capacity increases (Acts 7,8). Saul goes to Damascus to persecute followers of Jesus and meets Jesus on the road and is baptised and filled with the Spirit through Ananias, a disciple in Damascus (Acts 9). Peter has a vision, goes to the home of a Roman centurion in Caesarea and witnesses them being filled with the Spirit (Acts 10). The church in Antioch becomes the first Jew/Gentile church because of visiting preachers (Acts 11).
And so, it goes on. It’s not a perfect record, but it is a record of the Acts of the Holy Spirit through the first churches in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and around the Mediterranean world. They are stories that start because of human faith and obedience to the commands of Jesus and end up being experiences of Holy Spirit power and presence. The events tell how the Spirit of God worked through ordinary fallible but committed followers of Jesus to make the presence of God manifest in every kind of circumstance possible: it might have been a synagogue, but it could also be a jail (Acts 16). It might have been a case of getting it right the first time (Acts 10) or of getting it right after multiple attempts (Acts 16:1-10), but all these stories have one thing in common. The result ended up being a combination of human faith and faithfulness and the attendance of God’s power.
The question we need to keep on asking is: What does God want to do in these circumstances through the promised presence and power of the Spirit? Afterwards, we need to ask ourselves whether the testimony is to what the Holy Spirit did or is it just a matter of our human skills and abilities. And we must know the difference. The Holy Spirit is another person, not an extension of our person. The Holy Spirit is a person who represents Jesus’ presence in us, not someone we can domesticate to our preferences. Like Moses said to God in Exodus 32, “If your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here…… What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” (vs. 15,16). Our only distinctive must be our only clothing - “clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49) We must refuse to be enticed by what is familiar, what is humanly contrived and executed and what is copied from our secular culture. People need to see things that “glorify my Father who is in heaven.” (Matt. 5:16)
NEXT: The last thing Jesus said to his followers took the form of a commission. It was a simple job description. It was at least the sixth time he had spoken to them about it. That task is to proclaim the gospel to every person. Currently that number is a little over 8 billion. It is the only task and the one by which every expression of church must be ultimately measured.