"The Spirit: He Who Gives Life" 1 Corinthians 2:10-12 Sunday Evening Worship Service

First Corinthians chapter 2, verses 10 through 12.

1 Corinthians 2:10–12

These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

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.

And that right there is the word of God.

And I pray that it would indeed, as Paul himself writes, dwell in you richly.

The Holy Spirit is often described as the forgotten person of the Trinity.

He is often overlooked and seldom taught on, and maybe that is because he is more obscure.

I'm even thinking of the flow of the Nicene Creed.

You saw how there were several, you know, really sentences, several phrases, four at least, about the God the Father, and then you're dealing with what, like 16 or something about God the Son, and then we're back to just a handful of phrases about the Holy Spirit.

I'll put them on the screen for you even.

I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and Son is worshipped and glorified, and who spoke by the prophets.

And we can even wrestle that phrase who spoke by the prophets off and put it under the heading of Scripture, which we'll look at next week.

And so you can see how there's a lot said about the Father, a massive amount said about the Son, and then just a few phrases about the Holy Spirit.

And that's because, in a, I suppose, a very real sense, the Holy Spirit is more obscure.

And if you even think about it in terms of the distinctions between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, you start to see why that is.

The Father, of course, is the source.

He's the speaker.

The Son is the image, he's what you see.

And the Spirit dwells within you.

The Spirit hovers over creation, while the Father is a speaker, and the Son is the Word.

So you can see how there is more obscurity to the Spirit.

And this is, of course, related to who the Spirit is, what he does, and what it means to be the Holy Spirit.

And so we'll look at that tonight.

I want to kind of break down what the Holy Spirit is as a person, what his distinctions are, and what he does in our lives.

And I may just right out the gate say that one of the reasons the Holy Spirit is often forgotten or neglected is because he is more obscure.

But another reason is because of all the abuses of teaching about the Holy Spirit.

I remember coaching a kid who's from a Pentecostal family, and his family had the firm conviction that unless I was baptized with the Spirit, that means I wasn't saved.

And, you know, and I have a phrase for what baptized with the Spirit means, and it's almost synonymous with salvation, but no, not them.

In their mind, the evidence, the only evidence of being baptized with the Spirit was speaking in tongues.

And so they so badly wanted me to speak in tongues so that I could have confidence in my salvation, and also so that they could have confidence in my salvation.

And I've shared the story before a couple years ago, but uh, you know, I had a boss once who was also shared that same conviction, and he tried to teach me how to pray in tongues.

And he sat me down in a chair, and he got down on his knees next to me and put his hands on me and just started saying these phrases over and over again, and he wanted me to say them over and over again and to speak faster and faster.

And that was his way of teaching me to speak in tongues.

So that, remember, he was trying to reverse engineer it.

If the only sign of salvation is baptism with the spirit, and the only incontrivable evidence of baptism with the spirit is speaking in tongues, then if you get somebody to speak in tongues, that means they've been baptized with the spirit, which means they're saved.

So that was how he was trying to reverse engineer this.

I thought the entire experience was somewhat weird and odd.

And I did not leave their spirit filled by his definition of being spirit-filled.

I went with a friend once to one of the more well-known charismatic churches in our country, not some obscure church, but a very, very large, very well-known uh charismatic church, and he and I was preaching up at my friend's church, and so he and I went for the evening service at this charismatic church, and it was, to say the least, a rodeo.

There was a lady with a shofar, and she was putting oil in the shofar, and she was trying to anoint us with oil from the Shafar.

There are people running around and doing holy tickling.

Honestly, holy tickling, where they would chase you around and tickle you.

And that was, you know, your laughing was laughing in the spirit because the spirit laughs.

There were people that were barking like dogs, like barking in the spirit kind of thing.

And and this is not some like random, small, crazy, you know, uh snake venom gargling kind of church in the hills with 12 people at it that are all related.

This is not that kind of church.

This is a church with thousands of people at it.

Like the largest church in that, in that, in that area.

And that's a very typical way that you see the charismatic movement work.

I'm telling you, from our Bible church perspective, that kind of crazy charismatic chaos is the exception, we think.

But if you start to look at the largest churches in major cities around the world, they're not gonna be like Emmanuel Bible Church.

They're not gonna be First Baptist of wherever.

They're gonna be those charismatic churches.

You're just as likely to find somebody wholly tickling and holy barking as you are a sermon from the Word of God.

And so I feel like that's one of the reasons our world often neglects to study the Holy Spirit.

First of all, he can be more obscure.

But secondly, you look out there and you see the prevalence of just the craziness that goes in that world.

I talked with a pastor down the street at Braddock Road Baptist Church, not their current pastor, but the one before the guy who's there now.

And they have a sign outside of their church that says a spirit-filled Baptist Church.

You've probably seen this, you I'm sure you drive by this all the time.

A spirit-filled Baptist church.

So I asked the pastor about that.

I was like, when you guys say that, do you mean you're like a charismatic Baptist church?

And he's like, No, it's a sign that was up there before I came, but man, do you want to be the pastor that takes a spirit-filled church off of your sign?

So there it remains.

And that's about where our world is with the Holy Spirit.

Um, but this is a great passage tonight, uh, 1 Corinthians 2, 10 through 12, that gives you some robust teaching about the Holy Spirit, and so let's work our way through this passage uh bit by bit.

First of all, the Holy Spirit is described as the giver of life in the Nicene Creed, and what that means, it starts with his procession.

Procession.

If you remember when we talked about what it means that the Son is the only begotten Son of God, that's that's this language of procession.

Procession is a word that we use to describe the way the persons of the Trinity relate to each other in terms of their origin, where they come from, so to speak.

Now, all three persons of the Trinity are eternal.

They don't have a start date.

There was never a time when any of them were not.

They're all eternal.

And so when we say origin, don't think chronologically.

We mean just their personal distinctions.

The father is the father because he's the source of the son.

The son is the son because he's begotten from the father.

Another way of saying that is the father has the element or quality of paternity.

He gives to the son.

He gives life to the son, Jesus says.

As the father has life in himself, so he's given the son to have life in himself.

And we talked a lot about that.

That's what it means that he's the only begotten son of God.

The son has the quality of being a son, of being begotten.

And that's why he's called the Son.

Remember, there are personal distinctions, Father and Son, speak to their origin.

The Spirit, the phrase the Holy Spirit, the word Holy Spirit, that title encapsulates also his origin.

It's not his distinction in terms of the actual word.

The Father is holy, the Son is holy, the Father is Spirit, the Son is Spirit.

We describe the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit, when the scripture does, what that means is really speaking to his relation of origin, where he comes from in a relationship to the Father and the Son.

And so several of you told me this analogy was helpful maybe a month or two ago when I talked about it.

But this idea of the Father having an image of himself.

It's a very common way of describing the begottenness of the Son.

Kind of a review here.

When it comes to the essence of God or the being of God, the being of God is simple, meaning it's not composed of different parts.

There's not different components inside the nature of God or the essence or the being of God, but God is one.

He has one essence, one being.

There is one God, one will, one being that has all the attributes of divinity, one power, one source, one mind, all of that.

There's one God.

But somebody's being or essence only takes on significance when it is a person, when the person has that attribute.

We can use analogies from our own world to talk about this, like there's a dog nature out there, but a dog nature is not going to bite you or bark at you.

It has to be resident in a dog to bite you or bark at you.

And so there can be a, you can imagine a God nature out there, but that nature has to be a person.

And that's the father.

The father is the totality of who God is.

All of the attributes, the essence, the nature, the being of God subsists as the father.

The father has an image of himself.

Do you remember I talked about how you can have an image of yourself, but your image of yourself is not going to be like you really are.

Your image, my image of myself, I'm taller and more handsome and funnier than I suppose I really am in real life.

That's my image of myself.

It deviates from the reality a substantial amount.

Thank you for polite laughing.

The image of myself is way off the reality, I know.

But God's image of himself is identical to himself in every way, including life.

If God has life in and of himself, his image has life in and of himself as well.

The only difference between the Father and the Son is that the Son is the image.

The Father is the source, the Son is the image.

If God has an image of himself, that image is distinct from who he is, but it's also the entirety of who he is.

And I'm re-re-re-covering this ground because this is helpful to understand the nature of the Holy Spirit.

If God has an image of himself and that image is the Son, and the image is the entirety of who God is, but it's also distinct from him, that's two things now.

That's the Father and the Son.

The Son is not the Father, the Father is not the Son, although all that is in the Father is in the Son.

Again, if you were to see the Father and the Son next to each other, there would be no way to distinguish them, unless you had the knowledge that one was the source and the other was the image, but you wouldn't be able to tell.

That's the distinction between the Father and the Son, and everything that is in God is in the Son.

And if the Son is alive, which he is, and the Father is alive, which he is, are the two aware of each other?

Well, of course.

And do they have a response to one another?

And response is kind of a chronological word, but work with me here.

Do they have a response one to the other?

Do they have a recognition of the other?

Or any kind of thought or affection or attitude or disposition, anything at all towards the other person?

And the answer has to be yes.

And if that answer is yes, that response, attitude, disposition, thought, whatever word you want to use, is a third thing.

It's not the father and it's not the son, it's a third thing.

What thing is that?

Well, that is what we refer to as the Holy Spirit, who's not a thing at all, but a person.

Because, again, work with the analogy, the father has an image of himself that is the entirety of his being, and the son sees the father, or has any response to the father, it's going to be a positive response, right?

It's going to be a response of love, of joy, of delight.

And it's going to be a response that is the entirety of divinity.

The son doesn't respond or think of or love only part of the father, or only a sliver of the father, or half of the father, or some attributes of the father, but not all.

No, the son's response to the father is the totality of deity.

Everything about God exudes then from the Son.

And not only from the Son, the Father has an image of himself, the Son, and the Father sees that image and delights in that image because it's himself.

That delight is also the third thing.

And it's all of God.

The Father sees the Son and delights in every part of the Son.

And so this is why the Father and the Son together communicate or spirate, is the word people use, the Holy Spirit.

It's the response one to another.

Now I know response is a chronological word, and you know it sounds, it makes it sound like first the Father and then the Son and then the Holy Spirit in chronology, but that's not true.

And remember the analogy from the Sun.

There's the rock, then the light and the heat, and there's a logical sequence, but not a chronological sequence.

There's never a time where the rock is illuminating, where there's not light and there's not heat.

No, they're all co-eternal.

So it is with God.

The Father and Son and the Spirit are all co-eternal.

One doesn't start and then the other.

But there is a logical sequence between paternity and sonship, and between paternity, sonship, inspiration, the spirit.

And this is why the spirit is also the entirety of deity.

He possesses all the attributes of God.

The Father is life in himself.

He grants the Son to have life in himself.

Now the Father and Son both have life in and of themselves, they see each other and respond with love and joy, and that response is life in and of itself.

And that's true with every attribute of God.

God's holiness is seen in its entirety in the Father, Son, and the Spirit.

His love, his life, his joy.

And notice how once you start thinking and describing it from the perspective of the Spirit, you're going to use a lot of spiritual language, aren't you?

Just by nature of what he means to be the Spirit.

You're going to start describing the Spirit as having love and joy and delight and life in himself, which are all very spiritual words.

And do you remember when we talked about the Son, you started to, you understood the Son was the image, and you start describing the Son as the radiance or the image or the exact representation or the Father is the speaker, the Son's the Word.

We start using all these descriptions that are fitting for sonship.

And that's not intentional.

That's just as you're thinking through the concept of source and image, father, son, you start describing that relationship with all the words that are appropriate to sonship.

Did you notice the same thing is true with the Spirit?

When you understand the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as the mutual love, joy, and affection of each other, you can't help but describe that except with words that are spiritual.

That's the beauty and the mystery of the way God made the world.

We can't explain it.

That's just the Trinitarian fabric of our world.

The Father, Son, and Spirit are identical.

And yet when you start to describe the Father, you use all these kind of words that are fatherly.

And you start to describe the Son and you use all these words that are sonly.

And you start to describe the Spirit and you use all these words that are spiritual.

And that wasn't deliberate.

That's just when you think about the way they relate to each other, that's the kind of vocabulary that comes out naturally.

That's what the scripture means in describing the third person of the Trinity as the Holy Spirit.

He proceeds from both the Father and the Son.

That's his eternal procession.

I'm sure you've heard that in the Eastern Church there's some church fathers that believe the Spirit only comes from the Father and not the Son.

The Father begets the Son and the Father spirates the Spirit.

That they both come from the Father, and the Spirit does not come from the Son, and that's bad.

I know sometimes people will try to explain, like, oh, that's just the way the Eastern mind thinks, blah, blah, blah.

No, that's bad.

The Holy Spirit has his identity as a relationship between the Father and the Son, a relation of origin between the two of them.

That's why he's described in spiritual terms.

Again, the Father and the Son relate eternally to each other.

They're identical in every way except in their relation of origin.

And the Spirit is from both the Father and the Son.

That's procession.

Second.

Oh, and by the way, before we get to second, let's look at the verse and see how the verse describes it.

The middle of verse 10.

The Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

So you understand when Paul's describing the Holy Spirit here, he's saying the Spirit knows everything there is to know about God.

So take you, for example.

Earlier I used the example, you have an image of yourself, and the image is not like you in all the ways we covered earlier.

What about your thoughts?

Who knows what you're thinking, like right now?

Who knows your secret thoughts late at night?

When you're daydreaming in class or at school or at work, when you're imagining things?

Like, who knows your secret thoughts?

You would never say aloud, like, who knows your thoughts?

Only you.

Does your image know your thoughts?

No.

In your case, your image does not know your thoughts.

Because you sanctify your thoughts before they get to your image.

But with God, the totality of who he is is in his image, and the totality of who he is is known by the Spirit.

Nobody knows your thoughts except you.

That's the idea.

Only you know your thoughts.

The same is true with God.

Nobody knows the mind of God except the Spirit of God.

Now, of course, the totality of the mind of the Father is resident in the Son, and the totality of the mind of the Father and the Son is in the Spirit.

All three persons know each other perfectly.

And yet there's a third.

Theologians call the third thing.

I don't like calling the Holy Spirit a thing, but that's what theologians always refer to that as the third thing.

They don't mean that the Son is not a person, they just mean that you're dealing with the Father's sorts, the Son is second, the image, the Spirit is a third thing now, a third person of the Trinity.

The love and joy in response.

Somebody asked me last time I taught this, why can't there be a fourth thing?

Why can't it be a quadrinity?

If that's the word.

Like, why can't the spirit then have an image of himself and that be a fourth thing in God?

And the answer is because a spirit doesn't beget.

A spirit doesn't give life.

Only the Father does.

So the Father alone has an image.

The Father and the Son have a spiritual response.

What does it say the Spirit?

You can use the same logic I used earlier.

The Spirit sees the Father and the Son.

And does the Spirit have a response to seeing the Father and the Son?

Yes, that's the other person.

As the Spirit delights in the Father, that's reflected in the Son.

As the Spirit delights in the Son, that's reflected in the Father.

So the three make a perfect cohesion of eternal love, joy, and fellowship.

I could say much more about that, but that's the kind of thing that me talking more about it won't help you understand it more.

But you thinking about it and meditating on it on your own without me talking up here will probably help you with that.

So anyway, that's the procession.

And recovered with the Son, that the Son uh has his procession, namely that he's begotten.

That's seen in the world.

When the Father sends the Son in the world, that's what's seen.

And then we're going to see the same thing here as well.

Procession gives way to mission.

Procession gives way to mission.

Mission is the word that is often used to describe how the persons of God come to act in the world.

They come to act in the world.

And they act in the world in keeping with their personal distinctions.

The Father acts in the world as a father, the Son acts in the world as a son, the Spirit acts in the world as the Spirit.

Of course they do.

They can't act any other way.

And yet recall that everything that God does, He operates together.

The Son is not doing something independently of the Father and the Spirit.

The three persons of God share the same will, the same attributes, the same mind, the same energy, if you want to use that, the same life, whatever language you want to use.

They all share it.

And so the son doesn't do anything that the father is not also doing.

Now, with the father and the son, I feel like we get that.

We lose that so fast when it comes to the Holy Spirit.

And that's why there's so much bad theology about the Holy Spirit, because people lose that doctrine of inseparable operations.

The concept that whatever a person of God does, all three persons of God are doing.

They're doing it as Trinity, but the Father, you know, the Father sends, the Son goes, and the Spirit applies.

That's the language.

That's missions.

And missions here are not like Michael Connor style, go to India missions, missions of the triune God coming to earth.

How God works in the world.

And he always works as Trinity, and He always works in order, Father, Son, Spirit.

All of their works are inseparable.

Everything God does, all three persons of God does, got God do, however that language works.

And we've seen this all over the Bible.

You think of it in creation, for example.

Remember, the Father speaks, the Son is the Word.

This is the very beginning of the Bible.

The Father speaks, the Son is the Word.

And Genesis 1, verse 2, the Spirit hovers.

Genesis 1:2

You're seeing 1, 2, 3.

Father speaks, Son is the Word, Spirit hovers.

That doesn't mean the Spirit is hovering apart from the Father or the Son, or the Son is the Word apart from being spoken, or the Father speaks without something happening in the world.

No, all three are operating together.

People call this a doctrine of appropriation.

Like we appropriate things that God does to one of the three people, Father, Son, and Spirit.

Because remember, God only acts through the persons of God.

We appropriate the actions, but they're always in order to them.

The Father speaks, the Son is the Word, the Spirit hovers.

You see the same thing in salvation, which look at a second.

The Father elects, the Son redeems, the Spirit applies, it regenerates.

You see it in Scripture.

The Father is the source of the Word, the Son is the Word, the Spirit inspires the Word.

And notice with all of those things, are you starting to see the same concept?

That the Father's always using source language, the Son's always using image language, and the Spirit's always using spirit language.

I mean, think about hovering.

Hovering is a very spiritual kind of brooding is a better word.

It's a very, very spiritual kind of thing.

It's an affectionate, tenderly thing.

The son being the word.

That's very son-like, isn't it?

He's the image, he's what's spoken.

With salvation, the spirit's the one who regenerates, works in your heart.

And of course, the Father and Son are all saving you, but the Spirit regenerates.

So none of this is exclusionary.

When we say this, when we say the Holy Spirit causes you to be born again, that doesn't mean the Father doesn't cause you to be born again or the Son doesn't cause you to be born again.

No, all three are at work in everything God does.

They all do all things.

And yet you can say the Spirit is the one who's at work in your spirit.

And that's the way the Bible generally maps these things on to it.

That's always one, two, three, Father, Son, Spirit.

And if you think about that for another few seconds, which I know you will because you're here, there's a bit of a boomerang effect.

As Deidre and I have been talking about this, I don't know if she coined the phrase boomerang effect, or if I did, or we got it in a book somewhere.

I don't know, but I'll give her credit for it right now.

The boomerang effect, meaning that all things come from the Father through the Son, and you experience them by the Spirit, but you experience a sense of immediacy with the Holy Spirit.

He's the first one you encounter in that sense.

The Father is a source, but you encounter the Spirit first.

And you work your way back up to the Father in opposite structure.

From the Father through the Son by the Spirit, and then you encounter the Spirit who gives you life.

And now you're working backwards from the Spirit.

You pray in the Spirit.

The Spirit intercedes for you and translates your prayers to the Son, who's your intercessor, your advocate before the Father.

Before the Father, who's receiving your prayers.

So your prayers are to all three persons of the Trinity, because of all three persons of the Trinity.

Of course they are.

And yet you encounter them almost in opposite order: Spirit, Son, Father.

That's the mission of God.

And let's break down some of the mission of God.

First, salvation.

This is the most immediate one.

I mean, none of the rest of this makes sense until you have salvation.

The Spirit saves you.

The Spirit saves you by making you a new creation.

That's Paul's language in 2 Corinthians 5.

Behold, anyone who is in Christ is a new creation.

The old has passed away, behold, the new has come.

It's very interesting that God is recreating the world in a new creation in the same triune way that he made the first creation.

Remember, we said in Genesis, the Father speaks, the Son's the Word, the Spirit hovers.

Now the boomerang effects, the new creation comes into being in that same order.

The Spirit regenerates you by means of your faith in the Son who gives you access to the Father.

That's the new heavens and the new earth.

You see this in the book of Revelation.

That when all things are all in all, and all things are submitted back to the Father, it's because the Spirit binds us together and draws us together as we worship the Lamb who was slain and resurrected, and he submits all things back to the Father.

It's the boomerang effect.

The Father speaks, the Son's the Word, the Spirit hovers.

Your new birth comes the same way.

Salvation comes to you the same way.

By the Spirit, with faith in the Son, back towards the Father.

And salvation, you can even break salvation down a little bit more, which I will.

First is regeneration.

You encounter salvation by regeneration.

The Holy Spirit causes you to be born again.

The Holy Spirit causes you to be born again.

Scripture refers to this, Titus, Paul writing to Titus refers to this as regeneration.

The washing of the water of the Word.

The Word of God washes over your heart and purifies you.

That happens when the Holy Spirit sanctifies your heart by letting the Word of God implant in your heart and causing it to come alive.

The Word of God bounces off everybody's heart when they hear it initially.

The Word of God just bounces off of you like toy arrows.

But then the Holy Spirit comes in and softens your heart, implants the word in your heart, brings you conviction of sin.

The Spirit waters your heart with the word, and suddenly there's spiritual life.

It produces faith towards God.

That's salvation.

You go from darkness to light, blindness to sight, death to life.

That's regeneration.

You were dead, and the Holy Spirit caused you to come alive through the Word of God.

That's regeneration.

All three persons of God regenerate you.

And yet, when the scripture speaks of it, it often attributes it to the Holy Spirit.

Jesus says, the Spirit blows where he wants to.

You can't summon the Spirit, you can't direct whom God saves.

The Spirit goes and saves whomever the Spirit wants to go and save.

Now we recognize big picture.

Who does the Spirit want to save?

Those whom the Father chose and the Son redeemed.

There's a Trinitarian partnership.

The Spirit regenerates those the Father chose and the Son saves.

Of course.

And yet it's the Spirit who is attributed the work of regeneration.

Election guarantees your salvation, normally attributed to the Father.

Redemption purchases your salvation, normally attributed to the Son.

And the Holy Spirit applies it by regenerating your life.

That's the language of the effectual call.

Romans 8 28.

That's the language of the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit comes.

Those whom he foreknew, he predestined.

Those whom he predestined, he calls.

And he calls you by giving you spiritual life.

There's the external call of the gospel.

Billy Graham preaches to a stadium of 60,000 people.

And they plug their ears and close their hearts, but they all hear the external call.

The external call saves exactly zero people.

Nobody is saved from the external call of the gospel.

Nobody's saved without it, but nobody's saved because of it.

Only those who are saved have the internal call.

The Holy Spirit opens their heart to hear and believe the external call.

The word is planted in the heart and they come to faith.

The internal call is what saves.

That is often called regeneration.

It's not only described in John 3, of course.

It's described all over the Bible.

Ephesians 1 describes you as being sealed with the Spirit.

Ephesians 1 is where you get the Father predestined, the Son redeems.

He's the agent of salvation.

He goes and purchases your life with his own blood.

And then the Spirit applies that by sealing your heart, and that guarantees redemption.

But notice that even that can't be disentangled from the work of the Son.

The Father elects you by writing your name in the Lamb's book of life about the Son.

The Spirit then saves those who are written in the Lamb's book of life because of their faith in the Son.

This is a very Trinitarian concept.

Father, Son, and Spirit together.

Well, first, regeneration.

The Spirit gives you life.

Regeneration leads to union.

That you then have union with Christ.

Through your faith in your new spiritual life, you're united with Christ.

You're called, justified, and saved because of your belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That Jesus lived a perfect life in your place.

You put your faith in that, and you receive the rewards for his life.

The obedience of Christ is imputed to you and credited to you, so you now stand not guilty before God because of your faith in the work of Christ.

So you would think that union with Christ would be a very son kind of language, wouldn't you?

Because you're united to the Son.

And yet, when you think more carefully about it, how are you united to the Son?

With the Spirit who dwells in you.

Remember, Jesus said, I have to go away so the helper can come, and it will be better for you if I go away, because the Spirit unites you to the Son.

This is why the New Testament, this is surprising.

For most people, when they start to think about it, they're surprised by the fact the New Testament attributes union to the Spirit.

1 Corinthians 12, verse 12, just as the body has one and many members, so it is with Christ, because we are all baptized in one spirit.

1 Corinthians 12:12

Jews are Greeks, slaves are free.

We are all made to drink of one spirit.

And so here you have water baptism and spirit baptism together.

Everybody who's a member of the church has been baptized into the church, publicly demonstrated to by water.

That's one of the requirements for membership.

You're baptized by water to demonstrate your union with Christ.

It's a demonstration on the outside.

Then Paul says that demonstration on the outside works because of the union you have with Christ on the inside.

You've been made to drink of one spirit.

So Paul says the Spirit is the one that gives you union with Christ.

Galatians 2.20.

I've been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who lives, but Christ in me.

Pause.

Wait a minute.

Christ lives in you?

Where did that come from?

How does Christ live in you?

Well, first of all, your faith is in his finished work on the cross and his perfect life of obedience, which is credited to you.

So there's a conceptual way that Christ is in you because his life is credited to you.

But he means more than that.

He says, in you.

It's the Holy Spirit who dwells in you by appropriation, remember?

All three persons of God dwell in you, but it's the Spirit who dwells in you personally.

And so it can be said that Christ dwells in you through the agency of his Holy Spirit.

Notice the language of union.

Christ is in you.

You're united to Christ because of the Holy Spirit.

This is the covenant of redemption that before time the Father, Son, and Spirit planned salvation.

And the Father sends the Son.

The Son goes to accomplish his salvation.

The Spirit, who participates in the covenant of redemption is a witness, then enacts it by actually saving you.

In election, you are guaranteed salvation.

It's purchased by the Son, applied, and united to you by the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 3.16 makes the same point.

It's Paul's prayer that Christ would dwell in you in your heart through faith.

You place your faith in Christ and he dwells in your heart.

That's union.

That Christ lives in you through your faith.

Secondly, adoption.

Since you have union with Christ, there's an adoption that happens.

And remember, this is not like the eternity, this is not a chronological distinction here.

But it's a logical distinction.

You're regenerated and you have union and adoption.

That's all happens simultaneously.

But there's a logical order.

Once you're united to Christ, you're adopted into faith in Christ.

You're adopted into the family of God.

Where the Holy Spirit reckons you as one of God's own sons.

Christ becomes your brother at salvation.

And he's not ashamed of you because you're part of his family.

That gives us assurance and perseverance.

Think of things in life where you might help a teammate out with something.

You know, you see a teammate of yours in soccer or whatever, and you see him, like even at the mall or at the store, and he needs something, you would help him.

You have some kind of a union with that person.

It's an artificial union, but you have a union with that person, so you would help him.

You understand?

That's the concept of adoption to Christ.

Like you are united with Christ, and so he sees you, and he doesn't see you just as a stranger.

He sees you as his own brother.

And he'll help you in any way you need.

That adoption, again, you would think adoption would be something from the Father who adopts you in the family.

But when the New Testament speaks of it, it speaks of it as a work of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 8, verse 14, I'll put on the screen for you so you see it.

Romans 8:14

All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

That's adoption language.

You didn't receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father, and the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we're children of God.

And if we're children, then we're heirs.

And if we're heirs with God, we're fellow heirs with Christ.

So see how adoption and union are joined there?

That if your faith is in God, you have a union with Christ, and you are adopted into his family by the work of the Spirit.

So much so that Paul says you have the spirit of adoption.

The Holy Spirit confirms your identity as God's children.

He enables your intimacy with the Father through your prayers, and he guarantees your inheritance with Christ, whom you are united to.

That's why the Spirit is called the Spirit of Adoption.

Paul says Galatians is like the reader's digest version of Romans here at this point.

Galatians 2, verse 4.

Galatians 2:4

When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son to redeem those who are under the law.

So see the Trinitarian action.

The Father sends the Son, the Son redeems, so that you will receive adoption as sons.

Because you're sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts.

Crying, Abba Father.

It is the Holy Spirit who executes and enables your adoption into God's family.

When you cry out Abba Father, you're speaking of the work of the Spirit in your heart who enables you to see Christ as your brother and God as your father.

You know, so with all this on the screen, oh back because I've got one more point here, too, or one or two more points.

But I just wanted to pause here a second and look at these.

Do you see how distinct this is from what is often considered the work of the Holy Spirit in the church or a spirit-filled church?

People are normally talking about things that focus on spiritual gifts or speaking in tongues or miracles or healing or what it means to be spirit-filled, the kind of songs that you sing, like that kind of stuff.

When people talk about being spirit-filled, that's generally what they mean.

And I just want you to marvel for a second about how far away that is from what the Bible means about being spirit-filled.

It has nothing to do with what kind of songs your church sings.

My goodness.

It has nothing to do so far, even with your spiritual gifting.

We'll get to that next.

It's not about a language that you speak or about a miracle or a power you have.

It's about this structure in the mind of God that gives way to an actual personal union with Christ, resulting in you being adopted into God's own family.

This leads to edification.

Or you could call it spiritual gifts, but I was going with the I-O-N, the motif here.

Edification, spiritual gifts.

Edification just means building the body.

The body of Christ on earth is the church, and the Holy Spirit is the one who builds the church.

And you can understand this in the chronology of the Bible.

The Old Testament, God's word is out there in the world in the form of the law, but not close to you.

In the New Testament, the word of God comes among you.

You can touch it in the person of Jesus Christ.

And then that's in the Gospels.

And in the epistles, the church is built by the Spirit.

Old Testament, the work of the Father, the Gospels, the presence of the Son.

The New Testament, the work and the building of the Spirit, who's making the church.

And he does so by giving people spiritual gifts.

The Holy Spirit builds his church by gifting us to do the work.

The Holy Spirit appoints pastors, teachers, evangelists to do the work of the ministry, to build up the body of Christ, to equip the saints to do the work, so the body of Christ is built.

That's the gifts of the Spirit.

They're called spiritual gifts, not because they give a warm, fuzzy feeling or some kind of energy to you.

They're called spiritual gifts because the church is being built by the Spirit.

So anything you do to build the church is a spiritual gift.

Spiritual gifts are used in the context of the church because that's the body of Christ that the Spirit is building.

He's not building the world.

Spiritual gifts are not seen outside of the church, so to speak.

Outside of the church building, yes, but not outside of the union of God's people one to another.

Spiritual gifts are for the building of the church.

1 Corinthians 12, verse 4.

1 Corinthians 12:4

There's a variety of gifts, but the same spirit, all kinds of different ways God does this.

This is even prophesied by Jesus in Luke 13, where he says, you know, somebody who loves their kids are going to give them gifts.

How much more will your heavenly father give you good gifts by giving you the Holy Spirit if you ask for him?

That's Luke 13.

And that's what you see in the church.

Hebrews 2, verse 4.

Hebrews 2:4

God bore witness by signs and wonders and very various miracles by the gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

The Holy Spirit's will, God's will, same will in Hebrews 2, verse 4.

Hebrews 2:4

The Father, Son, and Spirit all doing the same thing, and they're giving gifts to the church.

By getting the weeds of spiritual gifts, we'll never get out, but know that there's lots of different spiritual gifts.

Anything you do to build the church is your spiritual gift, even if it defies categories.

You know, serving coffee is not on the list of spiritual gifts, but it definitely helps the building of the church.

Amen.

I mean, do you do you understand that anything you do for the building of the church is your gift?

I took some spiritual gift tests before, and they're kind of frustrating to me until I eventually realized the spiritual gift tests are just asking you, what do you like to do at church?

It's like, do you like driving?

Yes.

Do you like to go to church early?

Yes.

At the end, it's like you have the spiritual gift of shuttle driver.

Like, okay.

Like you could have just asked, what do you like doing?

And then do that to help the church.

That's spiritual gifts.

The Lord is using you to build a church.

I read one book a couple years ago that argued that anything you're good at before you came to faith in Christ can't be a spiritual gift because then it's not the Spirit who gives it to you.

No, before your faith in Christ, you're not using it to build the church.

But if you're good at something and then you use what you're good at to help build the church, that makes it a spiritual gift because you're building the church.

The church is the body of Christ.

So build it.

And of course, we're not talking about the building, we're talking about the way you encourage each other in the Lord.

And this leads finally to glorification.

The Holy Spirit will take you all the way home.

He guarantees you.

He guarantees your deliverance, and he'll take you all the way home.

He's going to raise the dead in Christ and glorify them forever and ever and ever.

Ezekiel is asked by God, Ezekiel, can these dry bones live?

And God's, and Ezekiel says, You know, Lord, I don't.

And God raises the dead bones to life to prefigure what he'll do to Israel, he'll raise them to life, to prefigure what he'll do to all of us.

He saves us, he puts his spirit in us, and he will resurrect us and bring us all the way to glory.

Back to the verse here.

No one comprehends the thoughts of God at the end of verse 11, except the Spirit of God.

We have received, verse 12 says, not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so we can understand the things freely given us by God.

That's that boomerang effect again.

You receive the Spirit, through the Spirit, you understand the things of the Father and the Son.

They're freely given by God.

Probably the most immediate way He gives you a realization of the work of His Spirit is through the Word of God.

That's the doctrine of inspiration.

And that is the one we will look at next week.

Lord, we're grateful for your spirit who dwells in us and fills our minds with your word.

Your spirit convicts us of sin.

Your spirit strives against sin in our life, Moses says.

Your spirit wrestles with us.

Your spirit compels us, it convicts us, it energizes us.

Your spirit does all of those things to enable us to serve you.

We're grateful for the work of the Spirit.

He draws us to Christ, gives us a love for Christ, a delight in Christ.

He energizes our own obedience.

We're so thankful for him.

Thankful that he draws us to your son, and it's in his name we pray.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBC.church.

If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to tms.edu.

Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.