Gordon Fee shared in the Preface to his book, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God, comments that drove the writing of his book. I am sharing several of them that should give contemporary Christians reason to be more effective in their witness to the Holy Spirit.
“The bottom line is . . . the generally ineffective witness and perceived irrelevancy of the church in Western culture. Here, it seems to me, is where the real difference between Paul and us emerges, where in a culture similar to ours the early believers seem to have been more effective than we are. I am convinced this is due in large part to their experience of the reality of the Spirit’s presence. . . . Crucial to this experience was the early church’s understanding of the Spirit as the fulfillment of Jewish hopes of the return of the divine presence . . . . What this meant for early Christians was that the Spirit was not only the personal presence of God in and among them (both individually and corporately) but that their understanding of God had to be broadened so as to become trinitarian. . . . Equally crucial to the experience of the Spirit was the early church’s self-understanding as “thoroughly eschatological,” in the “already/not yet” sense [which I have discussed in my books]. The first believers really believed that the future had begun, being attested by the gift of the outpoured Spirit, who also served as the guarantee of the future consummation. . . . This personal, powerful, experience of the eschatological Spirit not only transformed them individually but made them effective in their being the people of the good news in pagan Grego-Roman culture. And this is why I think they had the better of it, and why we would do well to recapture something of that reality.”
Already but not yet
The theological concept of “already but not yet” holds that believers are actively taking part in the kingdom of God, although the kingdom will not reach its full expression until sometime in the future. We are “already” in the kingdom, but we do “not yet” see it in its glory. The “already but not yet” theology is related to kingdom theology or inaugurated eschatology.
Gordon Fee expressed a concern when Jesus Christ is the sole focus in the church, although He is rightly to be taught. He pointed out that “. . . we are less sure about the Holy Spirit. Despite the affirmations in our creeds and hymns and the lip service paid to the Spirit in our occasional conversations, the Spirit has been largely marginalized both in the halls of learning and in the life of the church as a community of faith.
“. . . too often missing . . . are two further matters that, for Paul, lie at the very heart of faith. First, the Spirit as person, the promised return of God’s own personal presence with his people; second, the Spirit as eschatological fulfillment, who both reconstitutes God’s people anew and empowers us to live the life of the future in our between-the-times existence - between the time of Christ’s first and second coming.
“If the church is going to be effective in our postmodern world, we need to stop paying mere lip service to the Spirit and to recapture Paul’s perspective: the Spirit as the experienced, empowering return of God’s own personal presence in and among us, who enables us to live as a radically eschatological people in the present world while we await the consummation.”
And through my studies I have shared the process by which, at least in part, the Holy Spirit interacts with us in repentance in our time. It is a dualist interaction created by God so that He can have a personal communion with His people.
Renewed presence of God
The outpouring of the Spirit meant for Paul that God had fulfilled his promise to dwell once again in and among his people.
This statement was posted at the beginning of Fee’s second chapter. He went on to say, “God has made us this way, in his own image, because he himself is a personal, relational being. The great problem with the fall is that we lost not only our vision of God (that is, his true character has been distorted) but also our relationship with God, and thus no longer knew his abiding presence. For Paul the coming of Christ and the Spirit changed all of this forever.”
Indwelling of the Holy Spirit
Citing Fee, “Here, then, is one of the more significant areas where the Spirit represents both continuity and discontinuity between the old and new covenants. The continuity is to be found in the promised renewal of God’s presence with his people; the discontinuity lies in the radically new way God has revisited them - indwelling them individually as well as corporately by his Spirit.”
Purchased for God's glory
In his letter to the Corinthians Gordon Fee points out that the Apostle Paul appealed “to the presence of the Spirit in their lives in the context of the saving work of Christ. In ‘purchasing’ them for God’s glory, Christ also purchased their bodies, as evidenced by the Holy Spirit, whose temple they are because God now dwells not in temples made by human hands, but in temples constructed by his own hands. Thus they are not their own, to do with their bodies as they please. They belong to the God who purchased them through Christ’s [redeeming, sin] sacrifice and now indwells them by his Spirit.”
Gospel is about salvation
Gordon Fee shares that “at the heart of Paul’s theology is his gospel, and his gospel is essentially about salvation - God’s saving a people for his name through the redeeming work of Christ and the applying work of the Spirit.”
God's love is the foundation of salvation
Fee expressed “that the love of God is the foundation of Paul’s view of salvation . . . . The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is what gave concrete expression to that love; through Christ’s suffering and death on behalf of his loved ones, God accomplished salvation for them at one moment in human history. The participation in the Holy Spirit continually makes that love and grace real in the life of the believer and the believing community. The koinonia (‘fellowship/participation’) of the Holy Spirit . . . is how the living God not only brings people into an intimate and abiding relationship with himself, as the God of all grace, but also causes them to participate in all the benefits of that grace and salvation - that is, by indwelling them in the present with his own presence and guaranteeing their final eschatological glory.”
The love of God
I am sharing wonderful comments from Gordon Fee about how the Apostle Paul considered the love of God:
“For Paul the ‘love of God’ was no mere abstraction. God’s [boundless, my addition] love, the most essential reality about his character and the absolute predicate of our existence, has been demonstrated historically in its most lavish and expansive expression through Christ’s death for his enemies. . . . But such love is not merely an objective historical event. By the presence of the Spirit, God’s love, played out to the full in Christ, is an experienced reality in the heart of the believer. This is what the Spirit has so richly ‘shed abroad in our hearts.’ If we are not thus overtaken by God himself at this crucial point, then all else is lost. . . . What rectifies all of this for us is not simply the fact of God’s love - although in some ways that would surely be enough - but that God’s love has been effectively realized in the experience of the believer. God’s love for us has been ‘poured out’ as a prodigal, experienced reality by the presence of the Holy Spirit, whom God has also lavishly poured out into our hearts.”
The Spirit's presence of the future
I cite Gordon Fee in the following statements: “For Paul, . . . salvation in Christ is a fundamentally eschatological reality, meaning, first of all, that God’s final salvation of his people has already been accomplished by Christ. . . . This essential framework likewise causes Paul to see the church as an end-time community, whose members live in the present as those stamped with eternity. We live as strangers on earth; our true citizenship is in heaven (Phil 3:20). . . . Believers have tasted of the life to come; and the full and final realization of the future is so certain that God’s new people become heavenly radicals as they live in the ‘already’ but ‘not yet’ of the present age.”
The seal, metaphor for the Spirit
Fee writes, “In Paul, as Ephesians 1:13 and 4:30 make certain, the seal is a metaphor for the Spirit, by whom God has marked believers and claimed them as his own.”
Spirit gives us life
Fee shares that “Paul’s point is simply that we can be certain that our bodies, though destined for death, will be given life, precisely because of the Spirit who indwells us. . . . the Spirit guarantees our future, including our bodily resurrection. . . . the future body is supernaturally fitted for the final life of the Spirit, totally unhindered by any of its present weaknesses.”
To be saved by the Spirit
Fee summarizes what it means to be “saved” by the Holy Spirit:
“In sum: ‘to be saved’ in the Pauline view means to become part of the people of God, who by the Spirit are born into God’s family and therefore joined to one another as one body, whose gatherings in the Spirit form them into God’s temple. God is not simply saving diverse individuals and preparing them for heaven; rather he is creating a people for his name, among whom God can dwell and who in the life together will reproduce God’s life and character in all its unity and diversity.”
Life in the Spirit
Fee continues: “In saving us through Christ and the Spirit, God has created an eschatological people, who live the life of the future in the present, a life reflecting the character of the God who became present first in Christ and then by his Spirit. As the renewed [indwelling] presence of God, the Spirit, having given life to his people, now leads them in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” [the process of dualist interaction addressed in my books and blogs]
Active life in the Spirit
Gordon Fee discusses life in the Spirit, that it “is not passive; nor is obedience automatic. We continue to live in the real world; we are, after all, both already and not yet. Therefore, the imperative for the already is walk in/by the Spirit. That assumes that we live in a world very much controlled by the flesh; but it also assumes that we now live in that world as different people, led by the Spirit and empowered by the Spirit to produce the fruit of righteousness, rather than to continue in the works of the flesh.
Empowered by the Holy Spirit
I conclude my posting of excerpts from Gordon Fee’s book, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God, with this one from Chapter 15:
“The Spirit’s major role in Paul’s view lies with his being the essential element of the whole of Christian life, from beginning to end. The Spirit thus empowers ethical life in all its dimensions - individually, within the community, and to the world. Believers in Christ, who are Spirit people first and foremost, are variously described as living by the Spirit, walking in the Spirit, being led by the Spirit, bearing the fruit of the Spirit, and sowing to the Spirit. Ethics for Paul is likewise founded in the Trinity: the Spirit of God conforms the believer into the likeness of Christ to the glory of God. The Spirit is thus the empowering presence of God for living the life of God in the present. There is therefore no Christian life that is not at the same time a holy life, made so by the Holy Spirit whom God gives to his people (1 Thess 4:8). At the same time, life in the Spirit also includes every other imaginable dimension of the believer’s present end-time existence, including being empowered by the Spirit to abound in hope, to live in joy, to pray without ceasing, to exercise self-control, to experience a robust conscience, to have insight into God’s will and purposes, and to endure in every kind of present hardship and suffering. To be a believer means nothing less than being filled with and thus to live in and by the Spirit.”
I pray that the excerpts I have posted from the books by Ryrie and Fee are seen to be in concordance with what I have described as dualist interaction in my books and blogs. The Holy Spirit indwells believers who are in repentance and accept the truth of the Gospel in our time. This indwelling of the Holy Spirit by the grace and boundless love of God through his living, glorified Son, Jesus Christ, did not cease with the closure of the Canon, as believed by some. No, it is a reality now in our end-times existence as we await the final promised consummation upon the return of Jesus Christ.
Galatians, Luther's Book
I am sharing several Scriptures from the Book of Galatians, referred to as “Luther’s Book.” The basic message of the book brought about the Protestant Reformation, and it is also referred to as the “Magna Carta of Christian liberty.” These Scriptures attest to the indwelling of repentant believers by the Holy Spirit with whom our personal communion has been restored by the grace of God through the sin sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ.
“But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts [souls], the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.” (Gal 4:4-7)
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” (Gal 5:22-25)
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.” (Gal 6:18) [I include this benediction at the end of the book since it identifies the human spirit [s in lower case] which is indwelled by the Holy Spirit [S in upper case], by whose Counsel our souls [minds, wills and emotions] strive to live.