[This is the first in a series of six posts on the importance of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit. Here is the Introduction to the series.]
What does the Holy Spirit do? He makes the church.
Let’s start corporate. Just before the Ascension, Jesus instructs his disciples to stay in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes upon them, at which point they will receive power and will, therefore, be his witnesses in, to, and for the world (Acts 1:4-11). Next thing you know, Jesus goes up, the Spirit comes down, and ‘Voila!’, Peter’s proclaiming the good news of Jesus to a group of devout Jews and the church is coming into being (2:37-47).
Now, the irruption of the freshly baptized church (“three thousand souls (!)”; 2:41) in response to Peter’s preaching is stunning, but we should resist the temptation to make it the ‘model’ church. A beautiful picture of early Christian community, to be sure, but not the fullness of what God intended. It is, after all, a monolithic group. These are “devout Jews” from the diaspora, now followers of Jesus, who are getting on so well together—a miracle in its own right, but hardly Jesus’ “ends of the earth” vision of Acts 1:8. The net must be cast wider.
And so, with a bit of gentle nudging from God himself (10:9-33), the story of Acts moves forward: Peter proclaims the good news of Jesus to the Gentiles, and Pentecost happens all over again: “While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word” (10:44). This is a bit of a shock for the Jews (“the Holy Spirit [is] poured out even on the Gentiles”; v. 45), but it’s merely further corroboration of what Peter had already learned: “Truly … God shows no partiality” (10:34). That pristine vision of the early Jewish/Christian community (2:42-47) now has a pebble in the sandal: what to do with all these Gentiles?
And here we’re beginning to zero in on perhaps the central work of the Holy Spirit, and therefore of Pentecost. The radically new thing that results from the finished work of Christ is that two people—Jew and Gentile—formerly separated, are now one new person—the people of God, the church (Ephesians 2:13-18). As Peter recognizes in Acts 10, if the Holy Spirit has fallen indiscriminately on the Gentiles, we can hardly withhold baptism (and therefore, inclusion in God’s people) from them.
What Peter recognizes, Paul proclaims: “We [Jew and Gentile] both have access in one Spirit to the Father” (v. 18). Even better, we don’t just share access to the Father; together, we’re the new temple of the Father: “[Jew and Gentile] are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (v. 22). As Ephesians echoes back over the rest of Scripture, the Spirit’s work becomes clear: in the church, He is reconciling Cain and Abel, and giving birth to a New Adam. The same Spirit who hovered over the waters of that creation then now also hovers over the baptismal waters of this new creation now: the church.
To make all of this explicit: the sign that both Jew and Gentile are now included in the people of God—the constitutive marker of the church—is the presence of the Holy Spirit. Why does Pentecost matter? Because there would be no church without it. Without the Spirit, we’re a random collection of individuals. We cannot make ourselves, and we cannot make Christ’s church. In obedience to Jesus, we must wait for power from on high. We must wait to be his witnesses. But as of Pentecost Sunday, we need not wait any longer, for the Holy Spirit has come, and has made his church.