The Holy Spirit and the Gospel

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

The Spirit of Conviction

This morning we are continuing our series on the Holy Spirit and we want to take a closer look at what God’s Spirit does in the life of the believer. Often, we tend to associate the Holy Spirit’s work with the spectacular and the dramatic so much so that we overlook the importance of the Holy Spirit in our day to day activity. Today, if you are a believer, the Holy Spirit has been given to you and He now dwells within you. Now if you are not a Christian, I realize that all of this sounds kind of crazy. In fact, there are a lot of things about Christianity that seem a bit weird but I want you to suspend your judgment until you have a chance to hear a few messages. The idea of a Spirit living within you probably doesn’t seem that appealing to the modern skeptic but if you are truly looking for answers to your questions about God, your actually looking for an encounter with God’s Spirit in your inner being. Because just as you have a spirit so does God and in order for you to know God intimately, it is vital for your spirit to be connected to His Spirit. Let me try to make this a little less mystical. You can know a great deal of factual knowledge about a person and yet never know that person intimately.

For example, I could tell you almost everything there is to know about my wife: her height, weight, age, social security number, her favorite food but your knowledge of her can’t simply be based on these facts alone because true knowledge of another comes as you spend time in that person’s presence and as you connect at a deeper level. In 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul describes this very same process in terms of our relationship with God.

John 16:8 ESV

And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment:

1 Corinthians 2:11–12 ESV

For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

1 Corinthians 2:11

Any real knowledge of God comes only as we spend time in the Holy Spirit’s presence and far from being something subjective, a true experience of the Holy Spirit can be measured by our conviction of the fundamental truths of the Gospel that we see in this passage. For those of us who have put our faith in Jesus Christ, there are three benefits that this passages highlights.

1. First, you have peace with God.

2. Second, you have access to the grace of God.

3. Third, you are given the hope of the glory of God.

Perhaps, one of the better illustrations that can help us visualize this passage comes from one of the characters out of the movie Forrest Gump by the name of Lieutenant Dan. If you remember his story, he lost his legs in the Vietnam War and instead of leaving him to die from his wounds, Forrest Gump saves his life against his will. From that point on, Lieutenant Dan’s life spirals out of control as he deals with his suffering through drugs, alcohol, and women. Eventually Forrest begins to take him to church. They start a shrimping business that initially fails miserably until a massive storm miraculously destroys all the other boats but theirs. Forrest and Lt. Dan become instant millionaires and they start the Bubba Gump Shrimping Company. One of the enduring scenes from the movie is when Lt. Dan thanks Forrest Gump for saving his life and swims off into the ocean as Tom Hanks narrates, “He never actually said so but I think he made his peace with God.”

The movie is incredibly insightful theologically. In the face of pain, suffering, and adversity, it is nearly impossible to hope in the glory of God, that one day you will walk with Jesus whole and healed. You cannot believe that message until you have made your peace with God and you recognize that you now have access to the unending grace of God because of your faith in the redeeming work of Christ. This sounds so good, in fact it sounds a little too good to believe in, and so many of us don’t believe wholeheartedly. We remain cautious in our relationship with God but this passage gives us the key by which these truths can be fully believed. Wholehearted devotion and trust in the message of the gospel comes as we experience the fullness of God’s love for us.

Love Poured Out

At the core of our relationship with God is an experience of God’s love being poured out into our hearts. We know in theory that God’s love for us is unconditional but this type of love is so foreign, so other worldly, that it needs to be experienced in order to be believed. It has been said that in order to understand a foreign concept, one of the best ways to learn is to look at a known opposite. Well the opposite of unconditional love is conditional love or what I call merit based love. From day one of our lives, we fall into deep patterns of giving and receiving love with conditions. Whether it is the intention of our parents or not, we feel more loved when we do something well. For most of us that was probably our grades, level of obedience, and maybe even our physical appearance.

Now, think about the way you chose your friends in your youth. You probably looked for the popular kids in school, or the ones who made you laugh, or the ones who were nicest to you. You didn’t look for the downtrodden or the oppressed or the ugliest kid on the playground to be your friend. You looked for someone who was worthy of your friendship. As you can probably guess, there is a deep problem with this kind of love. As much as we need it, it has the capacity to do great harm because conditional love ultimately prohibits the exchange of love in our relationships in two ways:

1. If a person doesn’t meet your criteria of who is worthy of your love, you won’t give that person your heart.

2. If you feel that you personally don’t feel meet the criteria of a person who is worthy of love, you’ll stop receiving love even when it is given.

In the end, conditional love creates much of the hurt that we experience from our relationships but God reveals a much deeper love on the cross. Verse 8 summarizes almost perfectly the breadth, width, and depth of Gods love for us.

Romans 5:8 NIV

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Paul presents a very rational and tangible way of measuring love in these verses. Logically, it takes greater love to love someone or something that is completely contrary to your nature and your sense of what is worthy of love. Typically, we may see this person as an enemy. I had a very interesting week on my bike this week. On Tuesday, I was coming home and there is this 3 way stop sign that few bicyclists stop at. Anyways this middle aged, balding, overweight, executive type in a Mercedes Benz rolls up to me and yells, “You need to stop at the f-ing stop sign, you d-head.” I became so incensed that I rode after the Mercedes and yelled back and “What gives you the right to talk to me that way!” If someone were to tell me that I need to love that man, I would have to honestly say, “I will love him when hell freezes over.” That is a measure of love that I do not have. (Anyways, I think that guy put some bad mojo on me because on Thursday, I was riding home again and I got into this crazy bike accident.)

When Paul writes that God demonstrated his life while we were still sinners, he is telling us that God chose to love us knowing that we are contrary to his very nature, contrary to everything that He holds to be true, beautiful, and just. And when two things are so diametrically opposed, the proper reaction is to judge and destroy what threatens you but instead God chose to love. Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, used his prodigious knowledge of math to justify God’s wrath. In our day and age, it seems so archaic to talk about the wrath of God towards sinners and we assume that people in the past were simply less educated so they chose to believe in this monstrous idea of God. But Pascal showed that the fundamental laws of math prove that whatever is finite will be swallowed and destroyed, made nothing by that which is infinite. Our goodness is finite, bound on every side by our sin and when this limited goodness is placed over the infinite and limitless goodness of God, it becomes null and void. God’s goodness and our goodness is not simply different by degrees, it is something that is qualitatively different. This is the distance between God and man and its into this chasm that God poured out his love.

This is the full measure of love that exists in this universe and it isn’t a love that is merely sentiment or feelings or words, it is a love that is concrete and real. The proof and the measure of love is what you are willing to sacrifice for the ones you love. As a parent, you demonstrate your love for your children by sacrificing your time, your energy, often your own well being. This is what it means to love. So if we hold to the truth that God’s love for us has no limits then the ultimate demonstration of that love is to sacrifice the life of his only begotten, eternally perfect Son. A limitless sacrifice that perfectly represents his limitless love. God’s desire is to share with us this same love that He has shared with His Son from everlasting to everlasting. It is this unfathomable love that the Holy Spirit desires to pour into our hearts. Many men and women have written about their experience of this love and they are all strikingly similar.

Blaise Pascal -

FIRE! GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob not of the philosophers and of the learned. Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace. GOD of Jesus Christ. My God and your God. Your GOD will be my God. Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD. He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob not of the philosophers and of the learned. Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace. GOD of Jesus Christ. My God and your God. Your GOD will be my God. Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD. He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.

D.L Moody -

One day, in the city of New York—oh, what a day!—I cannot describe it, I seldom refer to it; it is almost too sacred an experience to name.... I can only say that God revealed himself to me, and I had such an experience of his love that I had to ask him to stay his hand... I would not now be placed back where I was before that blessed experience if you should give me all the world—it would be small dust in the balance.

After reading through the accounts of many of these types of experiences, you’ll begin to see this common thread where God becomes the center of their very existence and the world and everything in it begins to fade away. This is consistent with what love does to the human heart. When you find yourself loved and in love, your world begins to revolve around that person or object. It may be your family, your significant other, your friends, your career. What you love dictates your priorities, your commitments, your behavior, and ultimately it begins to shape your heart. What you love even dictates the things you hate. (If you love the Giants then by the natural order of things, you have to hate the Dodgers!)

And the resulting relationship with God that is born out of that love was meant to touch every corner of our lives.

It is one thing to have cognitive knowledge about God’s love but it is another thing all together to experience that love deep within your own heart. And the resulting relationship with God that is born out of that love has the power to touch every corner of our lives starting with the inner life. Everyone of us is being shaped by hundreds and thousands of external messages that impact and change the way we think, the way we feel, the way we behave. And we can either let the world

Everyone of us is being shaped by hundreds and thousands of external messages that impact and change the way we think, the way we feel, the way we look at life.

Spiritual Formation

Everyone of us is being shaped by hundreds if not thousands thousands of external messages that impact and change the way we think, the way we feel, the way we look at life. Dallas Willard writes that “The human spirit is an inescapable, fundamental aspect of every human being; and it takes on whichever character it has from the experiences and choices that we have lived through or made in our past.”

How can we make sure that the things that we go through in life shape our character for the better and not for the worse? Central to our spiritual formation is how we deal with the inevitable suffering and adversities of life. Not everyone who suffers and goes through difficult times comes out for the better. There are plenty of people who are mean, spiteful, angry, and critical specifically because of what they have suffered. The cascade of inner events that are recorded in verses 3-4 are not guaranteed for everyone. In fact, it is guarantee only for those who have been touched by the power of God’s love.

Romans 5:3–4 ESV

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,

Romans 3

Central to our spiritual formation is how we deal with the inevitable suffering and adversities of life.

God loves teaches us how rejoice in our suffering, that produces endurance, endurance then produces godly character, and from this character comes hope in the glory of God. And what is this glory?

The Epistle to the Romans 1. From Justification to Salvation (5:1–11)

“the glory of God” is that state of “God-like-ness” which has been lost because of sin, and which will be restored in the last day to every Christian (cf. 8:17, 18, 21, 30). A joyful confidence in this prospect, overcoming our (proper) frustration at our present failure to be all that God would want us to be, should be the mark of every believer.

The change that all of us are looking for is the transformation that starts within the heart and renews our dying spirit. When confronted with the greatest sin and moral failure of his life, King David made this plea to the Lord:

Psalm 51:10–11 ESV

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

Psalm

If you have even an ounce of self-awareness, we would all agree that the human heart needs changing, that your heart needs to be changed, we are just not agreed on how that change can happen. Most people read self-help books and try to change their habits. I’ll take my chances that David must have known something when he connected the change of his heart and the renewing of his spirit with the presence of the Holy Spirit. There in the presence of God, we encounter a love that heals, makes whole, and shapes us into the likeness of the glory of God.

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