Contemporary Western Christianity has a tendency to overlook the work of the Holy Spirit (granted, some sects within Protestant Christianity aren’t as negligent as others). First, I want to answer the question why? After that I want to freshen our perspective on the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church and in believers.
First, why do we tend to neglect the Holy Spirit? There is more than one answer. The primary answer, however, I think is that as Protestant Christians, we’ve inherited a theology, by way of history, that focuses on Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross. In other words, Christ died for me so that when I die I can go to heaven. Our point of reference for thinking about salvation is deliverance from sin-guilt. In the Scriptures, we look for the answer to the question, “How do I escape God’s eternal judgment and damnation?” The problem with this question is that the work of the Holy Spirit plays no role in answering it. We look to the substitutionary death of Christ alone to answer that question.
Certainly, deliverance from eternal damnation is a part of salvation according to the Scriptures, but it is hardly central. The center of the salvation message in the Scriptures is Christ Reigns! Properly oriented to that point of reference, the cross and Christ’s substitutionary death become the means through which God’s world redeeming plan comes into the world.
So, what is the work of the Holy Spirit in the collective church as well as in individual believers? The answers are many, so I want to focus on just one for now, and I believe it is the one that the apostle Paul has in mind when he writes about the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. One of the central functions of the Holy Spirit as the second person of the Holy Trinity is to convict the world of sin. Essentially, the Holy Spirit takes the job of the Torah in the Old Testament for the New Testament church. But how does this work?
The Law was the means through which God orients people to what is good and what is bad. YES, humanity is so perverse that we have difficulty knowing what is good and what is evil. We need help.
I have a 8 month old at home, and that sweet little crawler wants to eat EVERYTHING. She can’t tell the difference between what’s proper food and what’s a beetle. Stacey and I have to constantly watch over her to be sure that she’s not stuffing harmful things in her mouth. She just doesn’t know any better.
In much the same way, as humans, we have this tendency to do things that we think are good for us, but in fact, they are harmful. We desperately need help knowing what’s good and what’s bad. This was the role the Law played in the Old Testament.
Why do you think people need told not to steal, murder, cheat, commit adultery, etc.? If it was evident, we would hardly need told. The Torah, then, instructs.
The Holy Spirit does much the same thing, however, there is a big difference. The Torah is external (the Bible talks about it being “written on tablets of stone”), yet the Holy Spirit is able to write the will of God on the tablet of our hearts. Because of the Holy Spirit, we can not only gain a cognitive knowledge of what’s good and what’s evil, but we can have a heart knowledge. This means that the will of God becomes natural to believers because of the work of the Holy Spirit.
In other words, the Holy Spirit ILLUMINATES the mind of the believer.