[This is the fourth in a series of six posts on the importance of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit. To catch up, here is the Introduction, Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3.]
What does the Holy Spirit do? He convicts us of sin and enables our obedience.
If the Spirit ushers us into the Divine Life, this welcome inclusion back into the life of God will be accompanied by two very specific works of the Holy Spirit: convicting us of sin and enabling us for good work(s).
That these are at the forefront of the Spirit’s work is evident from Jesus himself, who tells his disciples, “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper [i.e. the Spirit] will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (Jn 16:7-8).
When Jesus uses the language of sin, and righteousness, and judgment, he’s speaking the language of holiness—of a life turned outward in love of God and neighbor.[1] The Spirit, in other words, is sent to call the world back to the life for which it was made. It’s not, as we have seen, a life that comes naturally; to be drawn up into this life is an act of new creation—a new birth. New birth is, of course, followed by new life—the putting to death of the ‘old self’ and the bringing to life of the ‘new self’ (cf. Colossians 3:5-17).
And now we’re circling in, again, on the glorious work of the Holy Spirit. To be drawn up into the life of God (new birth!) means the purging of that in us which is Godless and the putting on of that which is Godly (new life!). And this is exactly what the Holy Spirit does in us.
First, in so far as our life is ‘of the world’, the Spirit will convict us concerning it. If we are to enjoy the presence of the One “in whom is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5b), whatever is dark in us must be put to death. The penetrating light of the Spirit exposes the cobwebs in the attics of our lives, and the Spirit (mercifully!) pulls them down—one strand at a time. “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth” (1:6). The Spirit names the darkness and calls out our lies. To go back to Luther’s image, the Spirit—having turned us right side out—doesn’t let us spin back in on ourselves.
Which brings us to the second work of the Spirit: to enable us to do good work(s), and to cause us to “practice the truth.” The same Spirit who exposes our sin also enables our obedience by cultivating in us the character of Christ. The fruit of the Spirit is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). Let us not fall so in love with the fruit that we forget the root. This is the virtuous life that the Holy Spirit grows in us.[2] This is astounding, for even our growth in Christ (our holiness) is not fundamentally our work. At every step of our salvation, God’s gracious initiative is primary. Past, present, and future, he saves us—in Christ, and by the Spirit.
Let me make something explicit that has been implicit all along. The Spirit’s work—to convict us of sin and enable our obedience—is not arbitrary. It is the necessary (and obvious) work that follows on from his primary work—to draw us into the life of God. Welcomed back into the divine relationship for which we were made, the Spirit now ‘fits’ us for this life, creating the conditions in us whereby we might actually enjoy the presence of God again.
We cannot rid ourselves of sin, and left to ourselves, we cannot live rightly. And then Pentecost happened. Slowly, in fits and starts, creaking all along the way, the Spirit bends us back outwards, causes us to be the people we were created to be, puts us back to the good work of tending God’s good creation, and makes us fit for God’s perfect future. How marvelous is the Spirit—that we might once again live the life for which we were made?
[1] When we speak of ‘holiness’ in our present context, we immediately encounter two problems. First, the church has (largely) dropped the language of holiness (and ‘antiquated’ words like ‘sanctification’) from its vocabulary. Is it any wonder we look around the church today and see a bunch of baby Christians running around—what one author has called “the junenilization of American Christianity” (Thomas Bergler)? Without a robust theology of growing up in Christ, we’re bound to remain infants (and infantile). Second, with respect to God, holiness has come to be seen as an ugly term, as if somehow God’s holiness was something that tempered his love. But the holiness of God is good news. God is righteous and merciful and pure and just and good; we are not. For God to be ‘set apart’ (i.e. holy) from us in these ways is the best news possible. Who wants a God like us: all cold and clammy and lifeless? (See the book by Michael Reeves [Delighting in the Trinity, 114-20] for more on this.)
[2] So, if you wonder about the presence of the Spirit in your life, or in our church, these are the things we should be looking for. Are you/we growing in love, joy, peace, etc.? These are the markers of Christ’s presence among us, and the Spirit’s dwelling within us.