To
experience peace is everybody’s desire. We all need to have peace with God
before we can experience the peace of God. Being reconciled to God we will have
peace with God. But it is our daily drawing near to Him in prayer and fellowship
that will enable us to experience the peace of God. It will help us to stay afloat
in a hostile and restless world. This was what Christ promised to the disciples
in that Upper Room that evening on that Sunday evening of His resurrection. Immediately
after He promised them the peace, He also told them to receive the Holy Spirit.
Many wonder about
what happened here. The question is this: If the Holy Spirit had been given
here then how to account for what they experienced forty days later on the day
of Pentecost? Why did Jesus tell them to wait in Jerusalem until they have received
the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit? Let us look at it this way. Man only have life
because God breathed into him the breath of life. The same is true for spiritual
life. One cannot have spiritual life until he has the Holy Spirit indwell in
him. Spiritual life begins when we receive the Holy Spirit into our life. He
will give us the power to live the new life in Christ. That’s why Jesus told His
disciples to receive the Holy Spirit. Here He breathed upon them to impart to
them the gift of the Person of the Spirit. Up till that point, the life of the
disciples was kept by the power of Jesus’ physical presence, but after Christ’s
return to the Father, they would need the power of the Holy Spirit to reside in
them to sustain them in their spiritual journey. Like the disciples, our spiritual
journey begin with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. He will also come within
us to enable us to live that life.
The experience
on the day of Pentecost is a separate experience known as the infilling or
baptism of the Holy Spirit. Here a believer will be filled with the Spirit to a
fuller measure to enable him or her to minister the life of Christ. So we see
two experiences: one at our spiritual birth, where the Holy Spirit is received
and He comes and indwells us to give us power to live the life. The other is coming
to Christ to be filled by the Holy Spirit to a fuller measure so that we are
enabled to minister the new life. In reality what we are talking about is becoming
more aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our life. The book of Acts shows
us that signs, such as speaking in tongues, would accompany the experience of
the infilling of the Holy Spirit.
When we are
guided and led by the Spirit to live the life, we find progression in personal
sanctification. Like His commission to the apostles, here Christ also expects
us to minister the life. Here Christ is not saying that we have the authority to
forgive sin but that we have the power to declare the forgiveness of Jesus when
people believe in Him. When a person recognizes his or her sin, confesses it
and acknowledges a need for Jesus, we have the right to tell that person that
his or her sins are forgiven in Him. We can also tell a stubborn person who
refuses to acknowledge his sinful resistance to Christ’s forgiveness, that he
or she would remain unforgiven.
Here’s the
point: when we came to Christ, we received the Holy Spirit in the born again
experience. This experience gave us the power to live the Christian life. But we
also need to have the filling of the Holy Spirit to empower us to effectively
minister the life of Christ. That’s why Paul said in Ephesians 5:18 that we
should be filled with the Holy Spirit. The force of two words “be filled” is to
be seen as “be being filled.” God’s intention is for us to be constantly filled
with His presence so that we can be effective in declaring His love and forgiveness.
We must keep on declaring the forgiveness of sin that can only be experienced in
a personal relationship with Christ. What a wonderful declaration: there is
therefore no condemnation for a believer in Christ!
No comments:
Post a Comment