The Holy Spirit
in Action Today
In the 1970s, there was some dispute
about how the Holy Spirit can be said to act in our time. Essentially, this
resulted in two different views. These can be summarized as:
1.
The “Traditional”
view was that the gift of the Holy Spirit consisted of divine supernatural help,
which was given to the first century Ecclesia to assist the early brethren in
the work of establishing the Truth in the earth. The Holy Spirit was withdrawn
when this was accomplished and the Ecclesia established. Such gifts are not received
by any today. As far as we today are concerned, we have available in the word
of God the result of the Holy Spirit acting upon apostles, prophets and other inspired
writers. If, of our own free will, we allow this word to influence our minds
there is created in us a new mind, or spirit, which is referred to as “the
Spirit of Christ” or “Spirit of God” which is recognized by works of
righteousness, otherwise known as the fruits of the Spirit.
2.
An alternative,
somewhat modified view of the Holy Spirit today is that the gift of the Holy
Spirit is not to be identified with the miraculous powers, but is an inner
power of righteousness received by all believers at baptism. It is not sufficient
simply to assimilate in the mind the Word of God, and allow the Word to do its
work in our lives, which alone produces righteousness by obedience to its
commands. Rather, in addition to the Word, God sends His Holy Spirit into the
life of the believer to strengthen him against temptation and help him to
overcome his sin. This Holy Spirit or Comforter, which gives strength and
courage cannot be explained, but its working can be felt within as it works the
transformation of the mind. The receiving of this Holy Spirit is thus part of
the process of salvation; in fact without it, salvation would appear to be impossible.
It must be said that the second view
is not widely held. Rather the current mainstream view is as follows:
1.
The Bible was
wholly given by inspiration of God.
2.
The only true God
is everywhere present by His Spirit.
3.
The Spirit is a
unity with His person in heaen.
4.
Creation was
effected out of God’s own underived energy.
5.
The Son of God
was begotten of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, and afterwards anointed with
the same Spirit without measure at his baptism.
6.
Being so begotten
of God, and inhabited and used by God through the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit, Jesus was Emmanuel, God with us, manifested in the flesh.
7.
The only way
in which God makes known His saving revelation is in His Word, and by this
alone we come to knowledge of the truth.
8.
It is this Word, mixed
with faith in our hearts, which produces the growth of the mind of the Spirit
within us.
9.
Chrs0tlike
behavior is formed in us, as Pal expressed it, by the influence and effect of
the Word of God at work in the believer’s life, through his understanding and conviction.
10. Those who by believing and obeying the words
of “the Lord the Spirit” thus enter into the fellowship of the Lord Jesus
Christ are “in the Spirit” and share in the “fellowship of the Spirit”.
11. The gifts and signs of the Spirit were evidences
of the truth of the Gospel at the outset of its first declaration in the name
of Jesus Christ.
12. Comfort is to be obtained from the continuing
work of the angels as “ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them who
shall be heirs of salvation”.
13. In line with the beliefs of our earlier
brethren, we affirm our belief in the continuing care of God and of our Lord
Jesus, without seeking to limit or even define all the ways in which the Father
fulfils His promise to be ever with His people and to be their helper:
God also by the same Spirit sustains in the spiritual life those whom He has
begotten unto a lively hope. We can call this by the non-scriptural phrase of “providence”
if we like, and the phrase is a useful distinction between the work of the
visible hand of God, capable of objective assessment, and those experiences and
events which we feel, usually with hindsight, that God has overruled. But we
must then ask, “Who provides? Who is at work?” and “By what means?” The answer
must still be “My God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in
glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19) (Alfred Nichols, The Spirit of God
(CMPA: Birmingham). (Peter Hemingray and Peter Bilello, Doctrines to Be
Rejected: A Study in the Second Section of the Birmingham Amended Statement of
Faith [Simi Valley, Calif.: The Christadelphian Tidings Publishing Co.,
2023], 83-86)
The Holy Spirit
in our community
None in the Christadelphian community would
claim to have the specific gifts of the Holy Spirit. None would claim that the Holy
Spirit speaks to the heart and mind of the believer today, giving a genuine revelation
of the will and purpose of God. And some in our community disbelieve not only
all claims to possess the Spirit’s gifts, but also to be subject to the Spirit’s
guidance or help. In fact, some have concluded that the only safe course is to
claim the sole sufficiency of the Bible, without acknowledging any power from
above which could, as they would put it, come between the believer and his unrestricted
reliance on the written Word of God. These would then claim that the Holy
Spirit simply does not now operate otherwise than through his Word. The
believer has his Bible, and needs nothing else to enable him to secure the
blessing at his Lord’s return.
This latter view (we might call [it] “the
spirit word view”) does not seem to fully correspond to many passages in the
New Testament, nor the teaching of the pioneers. In the 1970s’, there as much
dispute between this view and those who held a slightly more nuanced view: this
was really initiated by AD Norris, in his “The Holy Spirit and the believer today.”
To quote:
[There would be those who, while recognizing
that the Bible is the only court of appear at which doctrine, instruction, and
moral precepts are to be established, hold that the Bible itself promises help
from God’s Holy Spirit to the believer in living his life, meeting his
temptations, and working out his salvation. These would regard the evidently miraculous
gifts as past, at least for the time being, and would add that they are in any
case irrelevant to salvation. But they would say that to deny God’s power and
will to work in the life of every believer in every age by His Spirit could lead
to the assertion that man can save himself if only e knows enough. It would lie
within the believer’s power, having understood what God has revealed, to live
his life in the light of that knowledge alone, and bring it to a successful issue.
Such a view, they would claim, is entirely out of accord with the Bible’s won
revelation o the mediation of the risen Christ and the facts of Christian worship.
On the other hand, the pamphlet, “The Spirit”
by Aleck Crawford goes into great detail to defend the view that:
God’s power, however, is still active
in the ministering Spirits who are sent forth to minster to those who shall be
heirs of salvation. In addition, to this we, of course, have the complete revelation
of God revealed by His Spirit. This is the only source of revelation today. If
we read and obey this, then it will produce understanding, repentance, faith
and the hope of salvation.
This dispute was strongest in
Australia, and in 2003 the Association of Christadelphian Ecclesias there
developed motion regarding the operation of the Holy Spirit. It said in part:
Almighty God is powerful and His
Spirit or power sustains creation (Acts 17:28). We may be confident that God exercise
His power in answering our prayers, or in influencing our lives, the affairs of
nations or natural phenomena, but often He does so in ways that are beyond our ability
to understand fully (Isa 55:8-11). We have some guidance in the Bible, but must
avoid prescribing limits or defining ways in relation to the activities of God
when there is no Scriptural warrant for so doing. Our limitations also mean
that we cannot claim with certainty whether God has intervened miraculously in
any specific event in the lives of individuals, the affairs of nations or
natural phenomena, other than when Scripture explicitly says that this is so
(e.g. the parting of the Red Sea; the return of the Jews to Israel).
The motion was carried overwhelmingly.
To say one “has the Spirit of God”
with absolute conviction is to assert a claim beyond the bounds of information given
to us. To deny its possibility also seems similarly impossible to assert. So,
we must conclude with a quote from Len Richardson:
It is a strange anomaly to me that we
have such argumentation going on in our community about it. There are brethren who
believe that the Spirit of God is given to those who believe, and others who
stoutly deny it and say that it ceased at the end of the first century. But one
is able to observe very little difference, if any at all, between the one and
the other in the lives they live and the kind of people they are. They do the
same kind of things, they have the same love of the Scriptures, and the same
desire to interpret the mind of Christ into their lives. I do not see
outstanding differences between this man, on the one hand, who says he has got
the spirit, and this man on the other hand, who says he has not. (See The
Tidings, November 2017, p. 527) (Ibid., 213-15)
Further Reading:
