So far, posters have in my view made at least 6 basic errors in their posting about the Holy Spirit and what it means to enjoy a personal relationship with Christ:
(1) a failure to recognize the significance of texts like Rom 8:9 in the biased selection of salvation prooftexts:
8:9 teaches that if you lack the Spirit, you are not a child of God. This means that no matter how many belief-based biblical texts you claim as grounds for salvation, you are deluded about your salvation, if you lack the Spirit. Faith is not enough "Even the devils believe and tremble (James 2:19)."
Romans 8:1-11
1Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
3For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,
4so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
5For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.
6For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace,
7because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so,
8and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.
10If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.
11But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
Romans 8 commands us to set our minds on the spiritual, the moral life required by the Law, but not empowered by it, now enabled by the Holy Spirit. Seems like it is an intellectual, informed decision. Romans 8:9 rceognises the readers as those who have chosen moral living, IF the teachings of Christ is present in them.
(2) a failure to recognize the Spirit's sovereignty in the believer's experience of Him:
Reception of the Holy Spirit is not automatic upon profession of faith and cannot be divorced from our experience. Jesus compares the impartation of the Spirit to our experience of the wind: the coming and going of the wind is unpredictable, but its arrival is experiential, not just a belief, because we feel its force and hear its sound (John 3:8). The Spirit can be "grieved (Eph. 4:30) " and "extinguished (1 Thess. 5:19)," so that it is no longer present. The Holy Spirit does not jump just because we crack our whip. I shudder to contemplate how many people falsely infer from mere belief that they are true Christians.
Actually reception of the Holy Spirit is conditional on prayer:
Acts 19:5,6
5When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
6And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they beganspeaking with tongues and prophesying.
Luke 11:3
Give us each day our daily bread.
Well since the Holy Spirit is another advocate, like Christ, feeling force and hearing sound would be the same too, but John is talking about the characteristic of the BELIEVER!
John 3:8
8“The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
As for grieving and extinguishing, disobedience can lead to the teaching of God being no longer intelligible. Faith is loyalty, not belief, although the wrong translation has been perpetuated because Christianity is not relevant to the life we lead everyday.
(3) a failure to grasp the meaning of biblical metaphors that imply the need for experiential or sensory confirmation of the Spirit's presence:
Jesus promise to "dine" with believers who invite Him in is obviously a metaphor for an experience of intimate nurturing fellowship with Christ's Spirit (Rev. 3:20; 1 Peter 2:3). Jesus' sensory metaphor of drinking in the Spirit also presumes sensory experience and not merely a doctrine. (See my elaboration of this point in (4) below.)
Rev 3:20-Context, context, context! Jesus is not talking to individuals here. He is speaking to the Church.
1 Peter 2:3- Actually, doctrine is in view here. See
Hebrews 6:4,5 and other parallels. And drinking from the Rock is learning from God.
(4) a failure to distinguish larger context from the more relevant immediate context:
One poster dismisses my allusion to drinking in the Spirit in 1 Cor 12:13 on the grounds that the larger context deals with spiritual gifts. His objection can be refuted on 2 grounds:
(a) What is relevant is the immediate context, not the larger context, and the immediate context deals with spiritual baptism into the Body of Christ, an act that makes us a Christian. So its metaphor of drinking in the Spirit is dealing with the Spirit's role in our salvation, not His role in inspiring spiritual gifts.
All of which are preaching gifts, everything to be done for edification.
(b) More importantly, the poster ignores my supportive text (John 7:37-39, which has nothing to do with spiritual gifts. Here Jesus' drinking metaphor implies an experience of the Spirit in 2 ways: (a) the believers' spiritual thirst is quenched by the Spirit's arrival. (b) The Spirit's presence is confirmed by an inner upwelling of living water, a beautiful metaphor that implies a refreshing experience of the Spirit's flow.
The believer is enlightened. He then enlightens others, becoming a blessing to the world, so that what was promised to Abraham, to be blessings. would be fulfilled through the giving of the Spirit.
(5) a failure to grasp the significance of holy emotions--love, joy, peace-- that are fruit of the Spirit, not the result of human striving:
Paul repeatedly makes it clear that these emotions are richer than their equivalent ordinary emotions (1 Peter 1:7; Phil. 4:7). It may take a long time to grow enough to experience these emotions. But the point is that one's claim to have the Holy Spirit is seriously called into question if these holy emotions, fruit of the Spirit, are not experienced.
The fruits are received through enlightenment. The test is if we are living moral lives, if Jesusś words have remained in us:
2 Corinthians 13:1-9
1This is the third time I am coming to you. EVERY FACT IS TO BE CONFIRMED BY THE TESTIMONY OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES.
2I have previously said when present the second time, and though now absent I say in advance to those who have sinned in the past and to all the rest as well, that if I come again I will not spare anyone,
3since you are seeking for proof of the Christ who speaks in me, and who is not weak toward you, but mighty in you.
4For indeed He was crucified because of weakness, yet He lives because of the power of God. For we also are weak in Him, yet we will live with Him because of the power of God directed toward you.
5Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?
6But I trust that you will realize that we ourselves do not fail the test.
7Now we pray to God that you do no wrong; not that we ourselves may appear approved, but that you may do what is right, even though we may appear unapproved.
8For we can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth.
9For we rejoice when we ourselves are weak but you are strong; this we also pray for, that you be made complete.
10For this reason I am writing these things while absent, so that when present I need not use severity, in accordance with the authority which the Lord gave me for building up and not for tearing down.
To have sin is to fail the test.
(6) a failure to grasp the significance of the questions Paul poses to congregations about the Spirit:
"Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers (Acts 19:2)?" What posters have overlooked is that Paul has not founded the church at Ephesus and does not know these people. So he is on a fact-finding mission. His question addresses the initial work of the Spirit, not a 2nd work after they have received the Spirit at their conversion. So Paul is asking whether the Ephesians have experienced the initial redemptive work of the Spirit, not whether they have spoken in tongues or prophesied.
In their focus on what I say about Acts 19:2, posters have ducked my reference to Paul's question to Corinthian believers in 2 Corinthians 13:5: "Test yourselves. Do you not recognize that Jesus Christ is in you?--unless, indeed, you fail to meet the test!" Paul uses the "Spirit of Christ" interchangeably with "the Holy Spirit." So he is asking them to introspect to determine whether they experience Christ's living Spirit within.
The Good News is that what has been promised to Abraham, to be blessings to the world, can now be fulfilled through the giving of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit enligtens, enabling us to be founts of living water.
(5) a failure to consider Paul's teaching about the inner witness of the Spirit (Rom 8:16;
When we get saved, we experience the Spirit in many ways, including in an inner witness that reassures and provides conviction: e. g.
"...It is that very Spirit that bears witness with our Spirit that we are God's children (Romans 8:16)."
"God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying "Abba! Father! (Gal. 4;6)!"
"Our message of the Gospel came to you not simply in words, but...in the Holy Spirit with full conviction (1 Thess. 1:5)."
The Spirit bears witness because we are no longer children of the devil, but of God: a moral change.
A true Christian develops a personal relationship with Christ and this relationship takes the form of experiencing Christ's Holy Spirit in the various ways I have discussed and will continue to discuss on this thread. Stay tuned for the best evidence of all for my case that possession of the Holy Spirit involves experience and not just doctrine accepted by faith.
The experience being enlightenment of how the requirements of the Law, whcih could not be met because of the weakness of the flessh, is now met through living according to the Spirit.
We are going to have a very interesting time going into Romans, as the Spirit enlightens us how we become blessings to the world.[/QUOTE]