Photo by Michael Metts.

“Who is able – who has either wisdom or strength for so great a work? What zeal, courage, diligence, faithfulness, tenderness, humility and self-denial are necessary to fill up all the various parts of the ministerial character….And yet when I look back upon what I have written, when I think seriously of what I am desirous to undertake, when I look at home upon what I am, and abroad upon what I am about to rush into, what can I return to the Apostle’s question, Who is sufficient? —John Newton

When I was 5 my dad sold his sign business in south Florida and went to Bible college. His first church was a little chapel with about 30 members on the side of Signal Mountain in East Tennessee.

He was working full time as a sign painter, going to school full time, and pastoring this little chapel. The first thing I learned about the ministry was that people served you food you didn’t like and you ate it without complaining.

These were very poor but gracious people who respected a preacher and served the best they had to offer, although I often wasn’t sure what it was. He made sacrifices to serve them. They loved him. And me.

It was a good beginning for his life’s work. I remember riding up the side of the mountain in the trunk of a little Dodge Rambler, sharing the space with a trombone player from the college, picking up folks for church, 21 of them in that little car.

a godly example

From the beginning I learned that ministry was about doing what ever it takes to bring people to Jesus. Dad believed the grace of God could change people. It had changed him as a young man from a broken home, a drifter without purpose and without hope.

By the time I left home myself at 21, Dad had pastored four churches and started three others. He’d started a Christian school and a couple of radio broadcast. He was evangelistic and entrepreneurial. By the time he died he had pastored another church, preached on five continents and written a dozen books. He’d started another school and a radio station. He was a faithful, tireless preacher of the gospel.

But there was more to it than that. It wasn’t about what he did but about who he was. He was a gracious, compassionate man who loved his congregation and his family, exactly the man in private that he was in the pulpit.

As I try to understand what God requires of those who are called to serve him, I am humbled by this example. It may be why I have waited so long. The standard dad set was beyond my ability.

But dad would have said it was beyond his too. This was his favorite verse: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20).” In the King James, of course.

And this, perhaps, is where ministry begins: seeing our gifts, our calling, our opportunity, our success, all as manifestations of the grace of God. It makes sense, doesn’t it? If our salvation is His work, and our sanctification is His work, then our service is His work too. We have this calling in vessels of clay after all (2 Corinthians 4:7).

a biblical responsibility

The work of the ministry is difficult and demanding. The minister himself is as fragile and as fallen as those to whom he ministers. Any pride or power is sheer presumption. Only by approaching the task with this understanding can we begin to do the things we are required to do in a way that brings glory to God.

We are required first to be an example. Paul tells Timothy to “set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity (1 Timothy 4:12).” Peter says the elders are to lead “not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock (1 Peter 5:3).”

This is why, I believe, the qualifications for elders focus so much on issues of character and reputation. Peter goes on to warn them to be humble and watchful. We are not examples of trying harder but of resisting the Holy Spirit less, learning to respond instantly and eagerly to his purpose in our life. I still have a lot to learn.

But only as we learn can we instruct. Or rebuke. This too is required.

The hope of eternal life, Paul tells Titus, is “manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior (Titus 1:3).” And an elder, he says, must live exemplary lives and “hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it (Titus 1:9).”

This word, as does the Spirit of God himself, points to Christ, so that Paul said he was “determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” We refer to someone as a minister of the gospel for this reason. In preaching his own ordination sermon in Boston in 1717, Thomas Foxcroft said, “Whatever subject ministers are upon, it must somehow point to Christ.” As he explains,

All sin must be witnessed against and preached down as opposed to the holy nature, the wise and gracious designs, and the just government of Christ. So all duty must be persuaded to and preached up with due regard unto Christ; to His authority commanding and to His Spirit of grace assisting, as well as to the merit of His blood commending — and this to dash the vain presumption that decoys so many into ruin, who will securely hang the weight of their hopes upon the horns of the altar without paying expected homage to the scepter of Christ….

The love of Christ for us is to be held forth as the great constraining motive to religion, and the life of Christ as the bright, engaging pattern of it. Progress and increase in holiness are to be represented under the notion of abiding in Christ and growing up unto Him who is the Head, even Christ. Perfection in grace is the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, and eternal life is a being forever with the Lord where He is, beholding His glory and dwelling in our Master’s joy.

By pointing them to Christ, as a thoughtful teacher and as a godly example, we watch over the flock of God, caring for God’s people and exhorting and encouraging them. And we do these things with tenderness and grace, pointing others past ourselves to the power of the cross.

a pastor’s heart

This tenderness is what is often thought of as a “pastor’s heart.” It mourns with those who mourn and rejoices with those who rejoice.

But it is the tenderness of God reflected in our life. Through Jeremiah, God promises Israel “shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding (Jeremiah 3:15). “

It has always been so, that God brings shepherds to his people who reflect his love for them. That’s because God changes the hearts of those who are serving him in the same way he changes the hearts of those he is saving. Because he who has begun a good work in us will perform it until the end (Philippians 1:6).

The ministry of the gospel requires a great deal from us. Mostly obedience. As God enables us we find both our strength and our rest in him. Whatever good comes from it depends on the grace of God and reflects the glory to God.

Frankly, no flesh will glory in his presence (1 Corinthians 1:29). No preacher either.

As Dad knew, the life we now live we live by the faith of Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.

In the end, “our sufficiency is in Christ (2 Corinthians 3:5).”

That’s my favorite verse, actually.

Dad and I agreed on a lot.

I deeply regret when I see persons so taken up with prophecy that they forget evangelism. Trumpets and vials must not displace the gospel and its invitations. —Charles Spurgeon.

When I was in junior high, I remember coming home to an empty house, not knowing where my parents or sisters were, and wondering if the rapture had occurred and I had been left behind. This was long before the series of novels by the same name.

There was a lot of speculation about the return of Christ, so much so that I’m sure many of the preachers from my past are confused about why we are all still here.

I’ve always thought this obsession with when Christ would return was unwise, since Jesus clearly said we couldn’t know the answer (Matthew 24:36).

That doesn’t mean the question “how does the world end?” isn’t important, or that the Scripture doesn’t give us some insight. I just don’t think it’s as important as we often imagine.

Having said that, I have an opinion. I won’t mind if I’m wrong about the details.

First, and actually very important, I believe Jesus is coming back. He said so. He also said certiain things will happen before he did. And some of these things are happening (Matthew 24).

I also believe He keeps his promises, including those he made to Israel. They have been the special object of His grace, as I have been. They get a restoration beyond any we have yet imagined, one that connects them to their true Messiah. This is rooted in God’s faithfulness, not theirs, just as my security is rooted in His work, not mine.

This makes me premillennial. A real kingdom. A real time. It hasn’t happened yet.

Beyond that I lack much interest or motivation. Technically I believe in a pre-tribulation rapture. Practically I’m not much worked up about it.

I’m confident hard times are coming, and I believe the church will be spared all or most of the worst (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). God spared Lot. He spared Noah. I’m happy to think he will spare me too.

But at different times and for different reasons he didn’t spare the prophets or his own people (Hebrews 11), and I wouldn’t want to put Him in a box of my own making. There are reasonable arguments either way.

Like Jesus said, it’s His call.

In the meantime I won’t worry too much about whether the horses in Revelation are literal or figurative, biological or mechanical.

Jesus gets a white one, I’m sure of that (Revelation 19:11).

It will be real enough.

The ordinary ministry is that which receives all of its direction from the will of God revealed in the Scriptures and from those means which God has appointed in the church for its continual edification. William Ames

When we talk about the church, we are of course talking about it in two ways. There is the universal church, the communion of all believers (Acts 9:31). It transcends denominational and theological lines, without making everyone’s denominational or theological perspectives true.

Some of us are wrong about a few things and some of us are wrong about a lot of things. And there are groups who call themselves Christian who aren’t right about anything at all.

a universal church

But within a wide range of assumptions about what is true and important, it’s great to know that every week millions of believers gather to worship God and contemplate His grace. (Gathering to contemplate our good works doesn’t count.) I can rejoice with them, and pray for them, especially for those who are persecuted for their faith.

To know the church in this way, through and beyond time, is to be awed by the immensity of God’s purpose and plan. It is the mystery of the Gospel itself (Ephesians 5:32). Christ has called unto himself a bride from every nation and tribe (Revelation 5:9), and the marriage supper of the lamb is beyond our capacity to comprehend (Revelation 19:9). Here we finally see Him as He is and become like Him in every way ( 1 John 3:2).

But the church is also a local assembly of believers, joined for purposes of encouragement and accountability (Hebrews 10:24-25). And for now, this seems much more practical and important.

This body of believers, to use the biblical metaphor, connects me to its head, Christ himself (Colossians 1:18). As we care for each other, we point each other to Him, telling and retelling the stories of his work in history and in our daily lives.

a local church

I must confess I gave up early on the local church. When I was in high school, my dad, a pastor, was treated unjustly by one of his congregations. He forgave them immediately. It took me years.

But I’ve come to see that despite its many imperfections, the local congregation is how God does his work in the world, as we respond to His grace and seek His glory together. His strength is, after all, made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

The local church is the laboratory for learning to use His gifts and appreciate the gifts of others (Romans 12). This is a place we learn forgiveness and faithfulness, binding our hearts to brothers and sisters in faith as we receive instruction, pool our resources (1 Corinthians 6:1-2), and reach out to others.

We come to understand those frameworks which enable us to make sense of the Scripture. We practice in public what we must master in private—praying, studying and worshiping, reinforcing all this through obedience to Christ’s commands to be baptized and to remember his death, burial and resurrection by coming together at His table.

We are not to forsake this (Hebrews 10:25), for the church is ground and pillar of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15).

I don’t think this is an ecclesiastical function, with distant councils and dignitaries debating theology and denouncing heresy, although I would certainly be willing to listen to what they have to say.

Rather the local congregation reminds us of what is important and calls us to action, as godly men and women seek to know and do the will of God, being led by His Spirit to an understanding of the truth.

This “priesthood of the believers (1 Peter 2:5,9),” as the free churches would have it, is capable of selecting its elders, admonishing its members and disciplining its reprobates. It organizes itself to make disciples, sending its members into the community and into the world, proclaiming the Gospel and glory of God (Ephesians 3:10-11).

Christ died for the church (Acts 20:28).

It’s important.

“Surely that which occupies the total time and energies of heaven must be a fitting pattern for earth.” —Paul E. Billheimer

If salvation and sanctification are both works of grace, all dependent on God’s sovereign purpose, then what’s left for us to do?

I like to joke with my Arminian friends that free will is an illusion, but of course we do choose and act. God’s grace enables us to do so, but we still must choose and act, or trust and obey as the hymn writer puts it.

Obeying Him as we respond to Him in gratefulness and reverence is a lot different than doing it to earn his love, which is presumptuous at best. He loved us when we were unlovable, and called us when we were deaf, and made us alive when we were dead.

There is only one appropriate response, and that is to worship Him.

recognizing His worth

Worship, literally recognizing his “worth-ship,” is not something we do on Sundays. It is what both the Old and New Testament require of us all the time: loving the Lord our God with all our heart and mind and soul (Mark 12;30, Deuteronomy 6:5).

And worship is something we are doing all the time. Something is always more important to us than anything else. Whatever that is, we are worshipping it, regardless of the day or activity.

He wants us to worship Him and His work in saving and sanctifying us makes obeying Him, serving Him and adoring Him seem “reasonable,” as Paul puts it in his letter to the Romans (12:1). But it doesn’t make it easy.

So we develop new habits that point us in the right direction. These habits of the heart start with submission and end with sacrifice. We surrender our will and everything else follows, as we, like Abraham, look forward to a city that has foundations whose builder and maker is God (Hebrews 11:10).

experiencing His presence

Praying. Studying and memorizing Scripture. Fasting. Singing. Giving. Christians are commanded to do many things that keep their hearts and minds focused on the Father, habits that both reinforce and reflect hearts that turn toward Him as the flower turns toward the sun.

These are all means of grace.

I like that term. It is so unBaptist. It makes me feel like a Lutheran or something. And while I don’t believe the bread and wine of Communion become the actual body and blood or our Lord, I do believe any spiritual discipline thoughtfully engaged enables me to remember, realize, revisit or reenact the work of God and experience His presence. And to worship Him.

Sometimes, however, I get confused and think these things are what God wants when what He really wants is my heart. I love what C.S. Lewis said about prayer, that it doesn’t change God, but that it changes us.

This change is not simply an emotional response to the goodness of God, although that becomes part of it. It is rather a conscious, intentional choosing of that which honors Him, regardless of what I feel or want.

I’ve come to understand that God’s purpose in my life is not to make me happy but to make me holy. Given all the rough edges He has to work with, this is sometimes an uncomfortable process.

How can I have joy when life is filled with temptation and trial (James 1:2-6)? Because God is at work, causing me to depend more on Him and become more like Him.

This brings Him glory and gives me yet another reason to worship Him.

“…justification is an act of God as a gracious judge, sanctification is a work of God as a merciful physician.” —Robert Traill

Growing up Baptist, I was often told I was one of those people who believe in “once saved, always saved.” And while that’s true, it’s a huge oversimplification.

It doesn’t mean, for example, that I think you are saved just because you think you are saved. Walking an aisle, filling out a card, praying a prayer: none of these things can save you. And many people who have done these things were never saved at all.

They will be among those who may have called him Lord but about whom Jesus himself will say, “Depart from me, I never knew you (Matthew 7:23).”

Knowing Him is the thing, and this requires a rebirth, a new creation. If we don’t experience this, we’re just kidding ourselves and should be terrified. No amount of helping the poor or casting out demons or doing good works will save us.

So what I really believe is once saved, continuing to be saved, as a sovereign God begins to make us like His own Son through the efforts of His own Spirit. If we didn’t want this, we didn’t want Him at all.

And if we do want Him, we want to be like him. This is the essence of holiness, ”without which no one will see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:14).”

The process that gets us there requires daily, deliberate choices to be more like Jesus (Philippians 2:5-8) as the Holy Spirit brings our mind into submission to His (I Corinthians 2), until we come finally “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:15).”

In this way we are sanctified, or set apart. This is what we are but it is also what we are becoming. We are set apart by the sacrifice of Christ (Hebrews 10:10) and sealed by the Spirit of God (Ephesians 1:13).

We are also being set apart. Our condition is, as Luther observed, “at once righteous and a sinner.” In a fallen world, everything around us continues to call us to put ourselves first, but by the grace of God we progress from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 2:18) as we learn to worship Him.

This process is sometimes painful. We may be persecuted or disciplined by a loving Father. But it is certainly progressive, as we learn to delight in His law, loving his commands (Psalm 119), finding peace with Him (Romans 5:1), offering a sacrifice of praise (Hebrews 13:15).

We are no longer dead to the purpose and plan of God as we once were (Ephesians 2:11-3).

Some dying may be involved, however. We are told to die to sin, to put to death the desires and the deeds of the flesh (Romans 6:11). The Puritans had a wonderful word for this: mortification, a constant looking to Christ and the cross, praying in such a way that we are increasingly alert to sinful desires and seeking God’s help in refusing them.

All this requires new habits which cultivate new desires. Through both private and corporate disciplines we seek God first and come to love our neighbors as ourselves. (Matthew 22:37-39).

We fail often. But we continue to repent. We continue to seek grace. We continue to believe the promises of God.

To do so is not natural. It is supernatural. Fortunately God saves us and sets us apart. “He that has begun a work in us will perform it unto the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:6).” This work fills our heart and extends into our lives. It is, as Thomas Boston observed, a “constellation of graces.”

Again, like salvation, it is not based on our merit. We respond to His Spirit, growing in our understanding of Him, becoming more like Him, dying to ourselves as we are made alive to righteousness.

We are becoming grateful, obedient children, the object of our Father’s affection and grace. We have peace and rest. Assurance and joy. He strengthens our character, preserves our integrity, undergirds our service and prepares us for heaven.

This work of God is what comes next, if we are saved.

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” —1 Corinthians 1:18

Trust in the Lord. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 16:31). These are biblical answers to the question how can we be saved.

And they are answers consistent throughout the Scripture. Abraham, we are told, believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6, Romans 4:3).

We are saved by faith alone, as Ephesians clearly indicates: For by grace are you saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves it is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8).

It really is that simple. And that hard.

The hard part is, we don’t want to be saved by faith alone. We want to do something. We want salvation to reflect on how good we are, or how hard we tried, or how perceptive we were. We want it to depend on us, at least a little.

It doesn’t.

God’s work

If nothing we do is wholly good, and God is Holy and good, salvation is his own gracious act, from beginning to end. The faith is a gift. Even the will to believe is a gift (Philippians 2:13). We get none of the glory. He gets it all.

The heart resists this until the heart is changed. And the Holy Spirit has to do the changing because “the man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14).”

Yes, whosoever will may come. But Jesus said “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him (John 6:44).”

This is the Spirit’s work— to draw us and to convict us and to point us to Christ. Any other spiritual experience is counterfeit. In this way the Spirit makes us alive. We are literally, not metaphorically, dead to God until we are made alive (John 6:63).

This is what Jesus called the new birth. “Except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of God (John 3:3).”

Newborns don’t decide to be born. They don’t decide to try real hard to be born. They can’t be good enough to be born. They are born of water, just as those who are saved are born of the Spirit (John 3:5-6).

When this happens we are new creatures, with a new nature (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Our response

Can you be born again? Maybe. Is the Spirit drawing you, convicting you of sin. Then repent and believe, as Jesus commanded (Mark 1:5).

But if we have to repent, isn’t that something we do? We are incapable of it, really. Our heart must be changed, but for a changed heart in the presence of God repentance is as natural as breathing.

This is real repentance- not just a turning from sin, as some suggest. But a brokenness, a grief over the gulf that separates us from God and a hunger for fellowship with him (2 Corinthians 7:10, Psalm 51).

Do you not feel it? Then beg for it. Those that come to him must believe that he is and that he rewards those who diligently seek him (Hebrews 11:6). Cry out to God and wait on him until his Spirit settles upon you and makes you alive (Galatians 5:5).

When he comes, the Spirit will show you the cross (John 16:7-14). For this is the gospel, “how that Christ died for our sins and was buried and rose again on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:2-4).”

Nothing you might try to do to be saved can add to what Jesus did to save you. He took up our infirmities and was pierced for our transgression (Isaiah 53:4-5).

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53: 6).

But there is more to it, much more: “It was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer (Isaiah 53:10).”

God’s love is our favorite of all His attributes, but the cross is not about that, even though God loved us and sent his only Son so we can have eternal life (John 3:16).

The cross is about judgment. The Father’s just wrath was poured out on our sin in the person of the Son, and he became our substitute (1 Thessalonians 5:9, Romans 5:10-12). This was not about nails and thorns. It was not that the Father and the Son were separated or that the Son was obedient to the Father. These are parts of the story. But they are not the point of the story.

The point is that our sin was judged there, and at a great and terrible cost.

This is what we must believe.

How arrogant of us to bring our pitiful pile of good works to the Father and hope to appease him. How dangerous to ignore this sacrifice and offer our self-righteousnes (Hebrews 10:26-31).

Christ alone is sufficient and necessary.

To believe otherwise is to be damned.

We believe that man was created in holiness, under the law of his Maker; but by voluntary transgression fell from that holy and happy state; in consequence of which all mankind are now sinners, not by constraint, but choice; being by nature utterly void of that holiness required by the law of God, positively inclined to evil; and therefore under just condemnation to eternal ruin, without defense or excuse.
—New Hampshire Baptist Confession, 1833

When I was in junior high, I got an A on a paper about total depravity based on our reading of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

There was some sense in which my engagement with this project was based on my Baptist upbringing. But I also recognized myself, and my own ability to wish the worst on my classmates, who teased me about my bookishness.

We have all wished the worst on some one at some time, even though we have different conceptions of what the worst may be. At the heart of this desire is a selfishness we can not escape, and which only hints at the darkness of our heart.

This is not to say we are incapable of doing good, given the restraining influence of God’s common grace reflected in government and family and other institutions of his design. No, the problem is not that we are wholly evil, but that we are never wholly good.

The self creeps in, so that our desires and decisions reveal how we constantly place ourselves on the throne of our own heart. This is idolatry. We believe things are the way we see them, and we see them the way we want them to be. In this way, we remake God in our image (Romans 1:23-25), choosing from his laws those that serve our own interests and from his attributes those that make us the most comfortable.

That’s why I’ve argued we are required to worship him but are incapable of doing so. If we acknowledge his holiness, however, we immediately become aware of our innumerable transgressions (Isaiah 6:1-6).

Sin, in this biblical sense, is a matter of both our nature and our choices. We are sons of Adam (Romans 5:12), conceived in sin (Psalm 51:4). But we are also people who choose to sin every day (James 1:15).

And sin is not our desire or decision to do bad things to other people. It is our desire to put ourselves first, usurping the power and privilege of God himself. Who can honestly say they have kept God’s law, which Jesus defined as loving God with all our heart and loving our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:38-40)?

The Bible does not mince words about this. It says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). It says even our most righteous deeds and aspirations are but filthy rags before the holiness of God (Isaiah 64:6).

This uncomfortable truth is even more uncomfortable when we consider the penalty, not just death (Romans 6:23), but alienation from God himself. In fact, we don’t even have to wait until we die to experience it.

We are dead now, even as we live (Colossians 2:13).

There is no spark of divinity in dead people. There is no will to do good, or ability to do so. If we are dead in our trespasses and sin (Ephesians 2:1-3) we have no faith and no future. We cannot even desire God or his righteousness unless we are made alive in Christ Jesus. We are slaves to sin (Romans 6:17).

And we will stay dead, were it not for the grace of God. Justice is what we deserve, and its demands are severe. Hell is reserved for those who disobey God’s law and reject his sovereignty (Luke 12:5, Psalm 9:17).

That’s all of us. We live in rebellion against the throne of a holy God, even though our wretchedness should make fall in terror before him.

Our refusal to do so proves the point.

A sinner can no more repent and believe without the Holy Spirit’s aid than he can create a world. —Charles Spurgeon

I grew up as a very conservative Baptist, and was taught early to sit on my hands when the music started. Not a lot of clapping and shouting and dancing in the aisles where I came from.

No speaking in tongues, either. Ever.

It would be a mistake, however, to think this meant we didn’t understand or experience the work of the Holy Spirit. I’ve seen individuals and entire congregations moved by a sense of their sin, on their knees in tears, crying out to God for mercy. I’ve been there myself.

And I’ve been, and seen others, comforted in great grief, finding solace through the work of the Holy Spirit by which our very groanings are brought to the attention of God (Romans 8:26). Convicting and comforting are part of the Spirit’s work, and I was taught to respect it. And to desire it.

But our fear of Pentecostal excesses probably did prevent us from spending much time focused on the third person of the Trinity, an error that comes at some cost to the vitality of the church. In a way, this is how it should be, since the New Testament tells us the Holy Spirit’s work is to point us to Jesus. “He will testify of me,” Jesus said (John 15:26). And I’ve always known the Holy Spirit to do exactly that. We can focus so much on the Holy Spirit that we desire experience with him over obedience to him.

But the real danger in failing to understand the Holy Sprit is that we might blaspheme him, a sin Jesus says will “never be forgiven (Matthew 12:31).” We should tremble at this, all of us.

the person of the Spirit

Another danger is that we think of him as some sort of benevolent influence when he is not that at all. He is a person, as much as the Father or the Son, and as a person, he speaks and acts. An attribute never does that. “Separate me Paul and Barnabas for the work,” he tells the elders in Acts. He tells Paul to “Go to the centurion and what I have cleansed do not call unclean.”

He also has personal qualities of understanding and will, since no one knows the things of God but the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:11) and he divides gifts among us as he wills (I Corinthians 12:11). He can be lied to and grieved (Ephesians 4:30). And he appears at times, as a physical presence- a dove descending from heaven, or a tongue of fire on the heads of the apostles.

the work of the Spirit

Like the other members of the Godhead he was present at creation, brooding over the face of the earth. And He has his own work, directing the writing of Scripture (2 Peter 1:21), convicting unbelievers, sealing believers (Ephesians 4:30) and assuring them of God’s work in their lives, “the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God (Romans 8:16).”

He draws us to the heart of the Father and points us to the work of the Son by convicting us of sin and guiding us into truth. In fact, we can safely assume that someone who does not experience the work of the Holy Spirit is neither saved nor sealed.

Even in the Old Testament he was active, long before Christ sent him to comfort his church. We are told he “came upon” Baalam, Joshua, Samson, David and others. But he doesn’t “come upon” believers today. He dwells in them, so that our body becomes his temple (1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19). This is the promise of the new covenant, that he would dwell in us and write his law on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33).

Jesus said

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. (John 14:16-17).”

This is comforting.

But he goes on to say the Spirit will

“convict the world of sin and of righteousness and judgment (John 16: 8).“

This is not as comforting.

But just as necessary.

In the same way we know God as father and creator, we get some sense of who Jesus is through familiar metaphors. We know him as prophet, priest, and king.

Prophet (Acts 3:19-26) is the easy one. Every one believes Jesus was a prophet, although not everyone gets the image of an Old Testament prophet, the kind that might overthrow the tables of the money changers and pronounce woes on the Pharisees. Generally we like our prophets a little tamer than that, speaking clever platitudes and reminding us of our moral duty as opposed to the work of Biblical prophets who called down the judgment of God.

Priest (Hebrews 3:1) is a little harder to swallow. Priests do things for us that we can’t do for ourselves, and that’s a little humbling. But being a priest in Jesus day had nothing to do with hearing confession. It was a bloody business that involved slaughtering animals all day. No room for PETA in that calling. Thinking about sin and its consequences is hard work, and our understanding of priest is extremely shallow compared to what Christ did as our high priest.

And the king thing? We have no idea at all, even though Christ as sovereign Lord is where an understanding of who Jesus is must lead us in the end. This isn’t about Queen Elizabeth and Prince Henry, bound by Parliament and centuries of human reason and regulation. We’re talking Darius, with power of life and death, as less than a choir boy. Ultimately Jesus is the King (Revelation 17:14, 19:16) before whom the heavens and the earth will melt.

No, we don’t really get that. Not unless we understand that Jesus is God. Once we get that settled, the rest falls into place.

the deity of Christ

He is also man, wholly man. But it’s the deity thing we struggle with, even though he asserted it often and the early church affirmed it emphatically.

In John 8:23-24 he tells the Pharisees: “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.”

He forgives sins (Mark 2:5), says his words have the authority of Scripture (Matt. 5:21-22, 27-28), claims the angels and the kingdom of God as his own (Matthew 118:41), and informs the religious leaders that he existed before Abraham (John 8:58).

He also says to see him is to see the Father (John 10:30) and to know him is to know the Father (John 14:7-9). At his trial he is charged with claiming to be the Son of God (not a son of God) and has plenty of opportunity to clear up the confusion if it were not true. (In both John 5 and 10 we see that the Jews understood he was claiming to be God and tired to stone him.)

In other places he claims power over life, that God has given him all judgment, and that his work and the Father’s work are inseparable. If he wasn’t God he was mad.

No wonder then that John tells us the Word was God and came to dwell among us (John 1). According to the writer of Hebrews “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word (Hebrews 1:3).”

In Colossians 1:15 Paul says,

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”

The church fathers also affirm his deity, so that by 325 A.D. the Nicene creed summarizes it in this way:

“We believe in God the Father All-sovereign, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all the ages, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not created, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things came into being.”

the humanity of Christ

But what about the man thing? That also matters. He is the Son of Man, and of Mary. He walked, he talked, he got hungry and tired. He wept and had compassion. He was tempted and nailed to a cross, where he died.

Not an ordinary man, of course. But completely man. Yet

“being in the form of God, [he] did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:5-8).”

That’s why it matters. He becomes our mediator. Growing up in a village, working in a carpenter’s shop, hanging out in the marketplace, he was not a “high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15).”

And he becomes our Savior. We’ll get to that.

And King too.

Don’t forget that part.