Easter 22 The Great Promise Part 2

[HKHaugan]

“A promise is a promise” is what we usually say to someone when we want to make sure they will do what they promise because of the importance of the outcome. Hopefully you'll get a response like, “You've got my word on it.” That is precisely what Jesus did. He made promises and He fulfilled them based on His Word. Like the Great Promise coming out of His Resurrection, Him living in us, and then the second part of that promise, to send the Holy Spirit who will enable Jesus to live in us. This two-fold promise is our internal guidance system for everyday living on into eternity.

The question for us is are we taking Jesus at His Word and receiving what He promised? Now this is what that looks like: believing His Word with our mind, trusting His presence in our heart and exercising faith as the Holy Spirit energizes our spirit for action. This involves the whole person, the image of God, in us. Instead of 'taking our best shot,' 'using our common sense,' 'trying to be a survivor,' 'just be a good person,' (none of which ultimately work because they are self-centered) we give it all over to the Lord who directs our inner traffic with the Holy Spirit.

The Great Promise Part 1 is Jesus living in us through faith. To make that possible comes The Great Promise Part 2. Jesus sends each of us the promised Holy Spirit. “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you (Jn.14:26).”

The mission of the Holy Spirit is to make Jesus central in us so that our humanity begins to look and act like His.

There are three solid reasons for His gift.

First, it's about being a person, an image of God (Gen.1:26). God really cares about who we are, what we do with the gift of life, how we live with one another. He really does love us and wants us to know it personally. After all, He did create us to be images of Him, to be like Him and to experience Him. It's a person to person exchange.

Second, it's about balance, something we don't have without Him (Rom.8:5-8). No two people are alike. Each is unique. Therefore, because of sin our minds, hearts and spirits are out of balance. Some are more about the mind and developing intellect. Others about the heart and delving into emotionality, pursuing relational fulfillment. Yet others are more about the spirit, fascinated by the unseen forces moving about us. Sin throws us into the fear of not being in control of how we operate. All of this in turn throws us out of relational balance. We need someone who can bring us out of sin and into the personal and relational balance for which we were intended in the first place. Jesus, being without sin, is that perfect balance and the fact that He lives in us let's us know the Holy Spirit is working to bring His balance and shape us to be like Him. His promise is real.

Third, it's about the Word, Holy Scripture. This is not a book in the cultural 'Dead Letter Office.' It is our spiritual balance beam. It's got all the principles necessary to bring about that balance within and without.. The Holy Spirit shows us, reveals to us, gives us its insights and makes it a living truth (Jn.17:17). It comes alive when we trust its principles to be real people in a world running away from being real. It's had that kind of an inspiration since the Holy Spirit first framed its words to be penned. It spans every generation since Adam and Eve and will continue to do so until the Lord Jesus returns.

No human being is left out of Scripture's diagnosis nor its prognosis (Ps.14:3). The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God who activates the Scripture. This is why we want to be absolutely clear here. There is no escaping, denying, avoiding or thinking we can be an exception to God's personal assessment of each of us as sinners nor His unrelenting plan to restore us to Himself through His Son Jesus by grace and love. Restoration from the effects of sin is the work of the Spirit.

Sin makes it a battle of wills, mine against God's. What the Spirit does is to expose the battle. It's right there in our heart. He identifies whose will desires what. God wants to bring us together in Him for eternity. The devil, His adversary and author of sin, wants to separate and keep us alone and afraid eternally. Guess who wins? Jesus made that an open and shut case on the Cross and died to prove that His Father's grace and love result in eternal life through faith. The Holy Spirit raised Him from the dead. The Resurrection proves all of His promises from Genesis right through Revelation are real, true and working as we speak.

So how does the Holy Spirit work in us? There are three basic ways.

First, there's our self-assessment, the internal part. He gets our attention, He gets us to make a choice, my will or God's will, and He gets us to put the choice in action.

Second, the external part begins when we make the process a relational project. He makes us aware that we are dealing with other images of God. He gives us a sensitivity to the particulars taking place at any given moment.

Then third, He gets us to make a decision to respond and that response is always a calling to do what would give Jesus the glory. Of course we will make mistakes in the process. We're sinners, but, sinners on the mend. Paul reminds us of his struggle when he said that the good he wanted he couldn't and the evil he didn't want to do, he did. Apparently it was life long battle for him since it was so vividly recorded in his final letter (Rom.7:21-25). But He found that when he placed every moment in Jesus' hands there was no condemnation, only freedom from sin's power (Rom.8).

Further, whatever moral law required he couldn't do. It was the Holy Spirit empowering His faith to respond like Jesus that drove him when the chips were down (Rom.8:9-17). To always try to be good is to be bound up in a never ending self fulfillment project, a subtle slavery to self. But to live by the Spirit is to be free from self, free to love and serve God and free to love and serve others.

Next, we want to look at the work of the Holy Spirit more specifically.