Encore Post: “In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” These words are very familiar to us — especially those of us who grew up in a Christian Church. They are ancient, too. Jesus gave them to his apostles just before he ascended into Heaven. (Matthew 28:19) As simple as they are, they contain a riddle — a mystery as theologians call it. The word “name” is singular, but three persons have that name. As we have seen before, this should not surprise us. God is our creator and we are his creatures. Sooner or later, we are not going to understand him. So, Christians have come to the conclusion that we should accept the way God describes himself in the Bible and not try to put it all together when we discover it doesn’t make sense to us.
The first thing we observe is that the Bible is very clear. There is only one God. Here Jews and Muslims agree. But the Scriptures are also clear. At every turn in the New Testament, Jesus is called God and the Holy Spirit is called God. The church from the second century on used the word Trinity to describe it. For Jews and Muslims, this is blasphemy.
So, we believe that God is one, but that three persons are God. With the Bible, reject any view that tries to solve the riddle by saying there are three gods, that one or another are not God or turns god into one being with three states. We are content to marvel at our Creator and love him as he is.
Encore Post: When we hear God’s Word, the Holy Spirit creates faith in our hearts. He also comes to live within us. This faith clings to God’s grace and his promise to save us for the sake of Jesus. In Holy Baptism, he places God’s seal on us. We belong to God as his heirs. The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives is God’s down payment on the resurrection of the dead and eternal life with God in paradise.
What this means is we do not need to worry about whether or not we will go to Heaven when we die. We do not need to worry whether we did enough to earn a second chance from God. We do not need to worry whether God chose to send us to hell before we were born. We do not need to worry whether we were sincere when we accepted Jesus as our savior or if we cannot remember whether we ever made a decision for Jesus at all. God has done everything to save us even before we were born.
God the Father loved us before he made the world. He chose us then to be His children and set things in motion to adopt us as his heirs. He sent God the Son to die for us. God the Son was born of the Virgin Mary, becoming God with us. Jesus lived a perfect life for our sake, obeying God’s Law and fulfilling it. Jesus then went to the cross, bearing our sins and paying the full penalty for our guilt. He suffered, died and rose again so that We might be declared “not guilty,” forgiven of our sins, and rise from the dead on the last day. God the Holy Spirit comes to us through the Gospel, Holy Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Through these Means of Grace, He created faith in our hearts, so that we trust in God’s promises and the sacrifice of Jesus to save us. He seals us with the name of the Holy Trinity and enters our hearts as a down payment on our salvation. So our salvation is guaranteed by God Himself, because everything depends on him.
Encore Post: For most Christians, the first rule for understanding the Bible seems obvious. The Bible is God’s Word. Yet believing that God speaks to us in his own words and is the author of the Bible affects the way we look at the Scriptures, how we approach it, what we expect from it and the assumptions that we make about what it says.
Because the Bible is God’s message to us, we believe that it is not fiction, a myth made up by people to explain the world, or something that it just very well written words to inspire us or make us feel good — like a great movie, a catchy song, or an absorbing novel written by our favorite author. After they make us feel good and escape the world for awhile, nothing changes and life goes on. The Word of God, however, comes with the power of God to change our lives, brought to us by God’s own Holy Spirit. (see Romans 1:16-17, 2 Peter 1:16-21) It creates faith in hearts which do not believe and strengthens faith where it exists.
So, the clear teachings of the Bible are the final authority on everything it speaks about. When it says that all people are evil, not good, at heart, we believe that, even though our mind and culture tells us everyone is basically good. When it tells us God made the world in six days, we believe that, too, even if the world’s myth tells us the universe has always existed and developed over millions of years into what we now see. When the Bible tells us both that God decided to save us before he made the world, but if we reject him, we can loose our faith, we believe that too, even though it doesn’t make sense to us.
So, this rule is that we assume that what the Bible teaches is true and use those things which are perfectly clear in it to understand things that are not so clear.
The event, which recently wrapped-up at Asbury University, is called an outbreak by folks in those revivalist circles. “A student praying in the chapel broke out into”, “a prayer meeting the dormitory spilled out onto the streets and became”, or “a student’s testimony broke into a revival lasting [a number of] days.” That’s how the Asbury College website describes their own history of great revivals in 1905, 1908, 1921, 1950, 1958, 1970, and 2023. No mention is made of the lesser revivals that didn’t breakout adequately.
Who are these Asbury University folks?
They identify themselves as a nondenominational Christian college turned university. Nondenominational is a disingenuous category. There’s always a denominational precedent leaving its mark on the organization into the future. Typically that nondenominational root is Baptist. Not so for Asbury, they are product of the Wesleyan-Holiness Movement. The movement comes from a 19th Century mingling of Methodism, Quakerism, Anabaptism, and Restorationism.
The Holiness Churches reject infant baptism, infant faith, and the view that God creates faith in us (monergism). Instead, these churches teach a synergistic view that we generate faith within ourselves as an act of our will. This runs contrary to the clear teaching of Scriptures like “For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing; It is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9) And, “Yet you are he who took me from the womb; You made me trust you at my mother’s breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.” (Psalm 22:9-10)
The Holiness crowd also places a strong emphasis on the “Second Work of Grace.” Namely, after coming to faith, a Christian is completely free from sin’s grip. In the future, Christian perfection is an achievable goal. This goal must be the aim of a Christian, and must be attained. Falling back into sin is a gross error within Holiness communities. When a regenerate Christian “backslides” into sin, they must repent, revive themselves, recommit, and often be rebaptized. This is where the revival aspect took root.
Charles Grandison Finney
Finney’s new measures centered upon revival meetings. His theology rejected the songs and liturgy of the church in favor of new musical styles and a different structure. This structure reversed the direction of corporate worship. Christian worship prior to Finney revolved around God’s gifts for His people and our receiving them.
The revivalist style and its substance revolve entirely upon the emotional excitement of the people gathered. Ramping that into a heightened fury is their evidence of the Holy Spirit at work. Apart from these events, the revivalists find no comfort or certainty in their faith, conversion, working of God in their lives, or even their salvation. The moment and surety of the their salvation, as they understand it, has a date and time concurrent with a revival event experience.
Is that a problem?
Yes, it is. Christianity revolves around a God, who promises Himself to us through means, in which He promised to deliver His gifts. In Baptism, God forgives sins and delivers faith. In the hearing of the Word, we receive faith. In the Lord’s Supper, we receive the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. The absence of our doing in the faith is a feature not a bug. The absence of our emotional proof of God’s work is a feature not a bug.
Revivalism rejects God’s work for us, replacing it with our work. The event earns God’s attention and His favor. The event is all about us and our doing. Our work and our feeling of the event are proof of God. This is the opposite of what the scriptures teach us.
God the Father sent His son Jesus to die for our sin. He delivers this to us extra nos, (outside of our selves). Looking inside, just reveals the sin that remains. Gathering to hear and receive from outside of ourselves in the Lord’s house is His work for us. He’s never been apart from His work for us. He’s always been in exactly the same place for you. There’s certainty here.even
Here is how Martin Luther Describes it:
The third article of the Apostles’ Creed – Sanctification.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian Church, the communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
What does this mean?
I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian Church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers. On the last day He will raise up me and all the dead and will give eternal life to me and to all believers in Christ. This is most certainly true. (Luther’s Small Catechism 2:3, emphasis mine)
The Bottom line
The Holy Spirit isn’t in my emotions, which rise and fall, grow and fade. He is at work in His Word and sacraments. He’s in the same places He promised to be. The Holy Spirit was ceaselessly at work in His church for 1800 years before Finney discovered the “real” way and evidence of the Spirit.
Beware of innovators, God doesn’t change.
Rev. Jason M. Kaspar Sole Pastor Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool La Grange, TX and Mission planting pastoral team Epiphany Lutheran Church Bastrop, TX
Encore Post: When the Holy Spirit uses his gifts to create faith in our heart, he does more than just change our minds. He creates a whole new person within us. (2 Corinthians 4:6, 5:17) Our new self, our new Adam or Eve, loves God, is thankful for the salvation he won for us when Jesus died on the cross and desires to do good works, serving God and our neighbors. Our new person produces truly good works, deeds done because we love God. The Holy Spirit makes us more and more holy through these things we do for him and produces his fruits: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)
Yet, in this life, even though our old self, sometimes called by St. Paul the flesh, is drowned in the waters of Holy Baptism (Romans 6:3-4), it is not quite dead yet. Our old self seeks to serve ourselves and looks out for our own interests, to satisfy our bodily hungers and appetites rather than channel them to serve the way God made them. It seeks praise from the world and fills our hearts and minds with evil thoughts and desires. Every day in this life is a battle between our Old Adam and our New Adam, our Old Eve and our New Eve.
The Holy Spirit does not abandon us to fight this battle alone. He uses God’s law to remind us of our sin, the Gospel to forgive that sin, reminds us of our baptism and its power, feeds us with Christ’s Body and Blood in the Lord’s Supper and uses the ears and the voice of the pastors he calls to care for us to hear our confessions of sin and forgive them with the sure promise of our Lord Jesus.
We are never alone, then. Our Counselor stays by our side, prays for us and calls to our mind and heart all that Jesus promised us. With him, we will grow holier until the day death finally kills the Old Person in us and we go with him to be with Jesus until the day the resurrection of all flesh.
Encore Post: God the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, hovered over the dark chaos before the world began. (Genesis 1:2) When God the Father spoke and God the Son acted, He joined in the work of laying the foundation of the Creation. With the Father and the Son, he deliberated the creation of man and woman. (Genesis 1:26-27) Sent by the Father and the Son, he inspired the prophets to speak and to write the Holy Scriptures and spoke through them.
When the time was right, (Galatians 4:4-5) the Holy Spirit came to the Virgin Mary and conceived in her womb the Son of God Made flesh. (Luke 1:35) With the Father, he witnessed the baptism of the beloved Son — the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. (Matthew 3:13-17, John 1:29 ) It was the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised to send to us. He saves us through the hearing of the Gospel and the waters of baptism. He is our companion and counselor. He leads us to know the truth (John 16:13). He lives inside of everyone who trusts in Christ. (Romans 8:9-11, 1 Corinthians 3:16, 2 Timothy 1:13-14) More than that, when we pray, he prays with us. When we cannot pray, he intercedes for us.
Encore Post: We use his name several times each time we worship. He is responsible for the faith in our hearts and the good works we do. Yet most Christians know very little about him. The Holy Spirit has been called the quiet member of the Trinity, God’s secret agent or thought of as shadowy as his name. The words Spirit, wind, and breath are all good translations of the Hebrew word רוּחַ (Ruach) and the Greek word πνεῦμα (Pneuma). In fact, beginning in the Earliest days of the Church, non-Christian movements have declared that the Holy Spirit is not a person at all, but a force or power.
The reason why the Holy Spirit gets so little attention is that he wants it that way. The Holy Spirit’s role in our lives is to create faith in Jesus and point us to the Son of God. (John 16:13-15) The Holy Spirit knows everything, even the mind of God. (1 Corinthians 2:10-11) He teaches God’s people. (John 14:26) He gets angry when his people betray him. (Isaiah 63:8-10, Hebrews 10:29) The Holy Spirit prays for us (Romans 8:26) and spoke to his people. (Acts 8:29, Acts 10:19-20) So, the Scripture does speak about the Holy Spirit in such a way that it is clear he is not only a person, but also God. (Acts 5:3)
If you have been reading this blog awhile, you may remember my comments on the structure of the Church Year in liturgical churches, especially the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod. Our long Pentecost season allows continuous reading of books of the Bible — in some cases whole books. In the three year lectionary, we will be doing this with the book of Ephesians beginning this Sunday.
As it turns out, I did a running commentary of Ephesians 1 & 2 at the beginning of this year. If you want to read this series of posts, start with “So, Does God Hate Me?”. At the bottom of each post, select the link for the next “Material Principle” post. If you find your curiousity peaked, drop Pastor Hercamp and I a comment on the blog itself. We would be happy to write a post to answer a question or explore a topic.
