Study 62
Keep in Step with the Spirit
Jeremiah prophesied that his people would be expelled from the Promised Land. The one ray of light contrasting with his dismal forebodings was the great promise that in the future God would make a new covenant with his people, do away with external law and relate to them inwardly, ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts’ (Jer. 31:33). Ezekiel proclaimed a similar message, ‘I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees’ (Ezek. 36:26,27).
The law engraved in stone failed to produce holiness in Israel and, after repeated prophetic warnings, the people experienced God’s ultimate judgement – banishment from the land. God, however, didn’t wash his hands of them but forecast a new day and a new covenant. Guilt, failure and death would ultimately be overcome. A valley of dry bones would be transformed into an exceedingly great army, accomplished by a fresh activity of the Spirit (see Ezekiel 37).
A New Covenant
Centuries passed until one memorable night when Jesus gathered his disciples to celebrate the Passover and simply but majestically stated, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood’ (Luke 22:20). His blood would soon be shed to establish God’s new way of relating to his people. Jesus, our Passover, would lay down his life. As John the Baptist had said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God’ (John 1:36) adding, ‘I baptise you with water; but one more powerful than I will come … He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire’ (Luke 3:16).
John the water-baptiser introduced Jesus as the sin-bearing lamb and the baptiser in the Spirit. He effectively said, ‘I plunge you into water, but this one will plunge you into power’. On one of the great feast days Jesus stood and promised that the coming of the Holy Spirit would be like rivers of living water flowing from the innermost being of those who believed in him.
In the upper room Jesus drew his disciples’ attention to this theme more than any other, ‘The Spirit of Truth … is with you and will be in you’ (John 14:17). Jesus would be personally with them, not as an external friend but as one within them as their guide, teacher, motivator, energy-supplier, boldness-imparter and life-transformer. They had to wait in Jerusalem for God’s promise: power from on high (see Luke 24:49). The explosive event took place on the Day of Pentecost. A noise from heaven like a mighty rushing wind filled the house. Fire rested on each of the disciples, they were filled with the Holy Spirit and were transformed.
A New People
Thousands were saved and added to the new community. Generosity between them exceeded anything that the Old Testament law had required. God’s overwhelming, divine, measureless love flooded them to such a degree that they no longer clung to their possessions. There was no more dutiful tithing; they freely shared everything. Their experience of the Spirit revolutionised them from the inside. Others dismissed them as mere drunks, but their inner transformation surpassed the realm of emotion. It touched their pockets! They were genuinely changed people. They’d been plunged into a power that released them from normal attitudes to money and self-interest and made them phenomenally generous and liberated.
Paul knew that the New Covenant was meant to release people to live a new lifestyle altogether. ‘For 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 so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit’ (Rom. 8:3,4 NASB).
To Meditate On
God has given us a totally new life.
‘Go, stand in the temple courts,’ he said, ‘and tell the people the full message of this new life’ (Acts 5:20).
’We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life’ (Rom. 6:4).
‘He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant – not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’ (2 Cor. 3:6).
To Be Inspired
‘Because of the new covenant (the early Christian) men and women were alive as no humans had ever been alive before! They were a new species! They were not of this world. And they knew it ... With their own personal identity and life-course locked in, they saw a world that needed desperately to see Jesus in the flesh – their flesh. And they went out to live.’
David C Needham, Birthright, Multnomah Press, p15. |
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