The power of the Holy Spirit in Christian life

Power of the Holy Spirit

Abstract
This paper discusses the power of the Holy Spirit by looking first at the power of God and what it means to have power as God has power. It then looks at the ways in which the Holy Spirit has been manifested through time. Specifically, it discusses the power of the Spirit as seen in external signs, internal signs and in future workings. It looks at the Spirit’s role in creation, resurrection, testimony and grace. It looks at how the Spirit impacts the heart, mind and will. And it looks at the Spirit’s role in ultimately bringing the person to holiness and to God at the general resurrection. The power of the Holy Spirit is shown to be the ultimate force responsible for shaping the Church, for giving the fire of God’s love to those who are open to receiving it, and for transforming the individual to want to follow in Christ’s footsteps to the Cross.

Table of Contents
Abstract 1
Introduction 1
Power is God 1
Outer and Visible Signs 2
Works of Creation 2
Works of Resurrection 2
Testimony 3
Grace 3
Inner, Spiritual Displays 3
Future Action 4
Conclusion 5
References 5

Introduction
St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:5 reminds Christians that the power of the Holy Spirit is beyond the wisdom of men: “My message and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith would not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.” This is an important point to maintain in the Christian life because before the Holy Spirit came down upon the Apostles and confirmed them in the faith, they were still frightened and reluctant. Christ had ascended into Heaven and they were once more alone. They understood what God had told them, but they were not yet animated with the zeal, with the power of the Spirit. When the tongues of fire burned over their heads they were at last filed completely with that power and were able to go and do God’s work, converting the world that the world might finally believe in Him. This paper will discuss the power of the Holy Spirit and what it means for those who come to believe.
Power is God
As Spurgeon (1996) notes, God is power and all power comes from God. This is a critical concept to keep in mind, because it is typically stated that God is love, which is not untrue or misleading as the Gospel of John shows. However, God’s love is powerful, and the Holy Spirit is the expression of that divine love—that power—that individuals need to really be filled with the divine fire that makes one into a true soldier for Christ. Elsewhere Spurgeon (1855) has pointed out that “power is the special and distinctive prerogative of God, and God alone. Power belongs to God. God is God: and power belongs to him.” For Christians who are interested in uniting themselves to God or to working on God’s behalf to bring others to Him, they must work through His power—not their own. That is Paul’s message again and again, whether writing to the Corinthians or to the Romans: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). It is the Holy Spirit that lights the soul on fire and that fills the soul with the fire of God’s love.
But how does the Holy Spirit manifest Itself? It is known in the Bible that the Holy Spirit descended in tongues of fire to the Apostles to fill them with the divine presence after Christ had ascended into Heaven. God would no longer be walking among them—now he would be living and burning within them, animating their every move, filling their every thought, giving life to their every action, and inspiring their words and preaching (Sheen, 2008). For Christians today, however, discerning the Spirit can be somewhat difficult. For that reason, it is helpful to understand the three primary ways in which the power of the Holy Spirit can be manifested: Through outer and visible signs Through inner, spiritual displays Through future action As Spurgeon (1855) shows, these three different illustrations can be helpful in understanding what it means to work with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Outer and Visible Signs
Outer and visible signs of the power of the Holy Spirit have been seen throughout history in four meaningful ways: 1) works of creation, 2) works of resurrection, 3) testimony, and 4) grace. Each of these four outer and visible manifestations is an attestation to the power of the Holy Spirit. Each shows how intricately the Spirit has been involved in the expression of God’s love from the beginning of time.
Works of Creation
First, the Holy Spirit took part in creation: “By his spirit he has adorned the heavens; his hand has pierced the fleeing serpent” (Job 26:13). As Bruce (1948) notes, the serpent described in Job has been thought by some to be a constellation of stars in the sky—a pattern directly set there by the Holy Spirit at the moment of creation. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit continues to take part in creation: if not in the creation of the stars then certainly in the creation of new life on the planet—“Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth” (Psalm 104:30). Every child that is born on earth is given life, soul, will and a place in eternity thanks to the Holy Spirit.
Works of Resurrection
The Holy Spirit was also instrumental in the Resurrection of Christ from the dead, as 1 Peter 3:18 shows: “Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit.”  Likewise, Romans 8:11 states, “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you”—which shows that the resurrection of the dead will be made possible by the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is also the cause of spiritual resurrection—not just bodily resurrection. As is stated in Galatians 5:16, “I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.” The Spirit is what gives new life in the soul. One who was dead spiritually before is made alive once more by the Spirit. The Spirit animates the soul and keeps it from falling into sin.
Testimony
When witness is give to the glory of God, the Holy Spirit is there. This was demonstrated when Christ was baptized: the Holy Ghost descended in the form of a dove, and the voice rang out identifying Christ as the Son of God. It was demonstrated when the Apostles were confirmed in the Spirit, when the tongues of fire danced on their heads. It was demonstrated in their missionary work, as they went forth and preached with zeal whereas before they were like lost lambs, frightened and hiding. The Spirit filled them with a burning desire to preach the Word of God, and it drove them forward to take the message of salvation to new parts of the world.
This is described in Scripture in Acts 1:8: “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and all of Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” The Holy Spirit was what allowed the Church to grow: just as it filled the Apostles with the fire of God’s love, it animated those who received the Word from the Apostles and made the Church a reality on earth. Without the power of the Spirit it could not have been possible. The Church therefore owes its very existence to the Holy Spirit. The Church, which stands to this day as a testimony and witness to the Christ, was founded by the Holy Spirit.
Grace
Acts 8:1-25 shows how the Holy Spirit is manifested through the working of grace on the soul: “Remember the city where there lived a sorcerer named Simon who boasted of divine power and that he was someone great. Philip then enters that city and preaches the Word of God, and right away Simon loses all of his power and seeks that the power of the Holy Spirit be given to him” (Spurgeon, 1855). It is the Holy Spirit that provides true power—the power that the Apostles of God had. It was not of their own working but rather of the Spirit of God. It is the Holy Spirit that fills the hearts of men with grace that they need to proclaim Christ as their savior. Just as the Holy Spirit was there to testify at Christ’s baptism, the Spirit is there in every heart that opens itself to God’s love—to grace—to the transformative power of the Spirit.
Inner, Spiritual Displays
The heart, the mind and the will are all affected by the power of the Spirit when one makes an act of faith. The heart is where the feeling is: this is where love is rooted; it is where the desire to be one with God, to do God’s will, to follow after Christ in His footsteps towards the Cross occurs. The mind is where the conviction starts: it is in the mind that the individual uses reason and logic to arrive at a sense of the Holy Spirit. The mind is the rational part of man; the heart is the passionate part of man. The will is the acting part of man. The mind may understand, but it must also consent. The will then must act on what the mind knows. Both heart and mind must be in alignment for the will to act.
Yet, the heart and the mind can never be wholly committed, for there is always a battle being wage in both—a battle between God and the devil—in the heart and mind of every human being. That is why the Spirit is necessary. In order for a human being to come to God, the power of the Holy Spirit must be present in the heart, the mind and the will—that is the only way the battle of all three can be won for Christ, as Spurgeon (1855) points out.
But it is Paul who explains what the Spirit looks like best in these internal instances. The Spirit fills the heart, the mind and the will with love, so that the individual can be loving towards others, towards God and even towards the self, keeping the self out of presumption, out of despair, and out of self-worship: “Love suffers long, and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own; is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8). It is this love that makes man one with God and allows man to truly follow in God’s footsteps, suffering just like Christ did all the way to the Cross out of love for God and for His children; offering up sacrifices for them that their hearts and minds and wills may be made open to the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Future Action
It is the work of the Holy Spirit to perfect every man, woman and child in holiness (Spurgeon, 1855). The completeness of Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary was accomplished in the moment: however, for His Church, the work was just getting started, and the hiding disciples is the case in point. They had believed while Christ lived—but once Christ was arrested, they fled—and only John was there with Him at the Cross. Thus, there was much ground to be covered in terms of perfecting the disciples in holiness.
Therefore, the power of the Holy Spirit is responsible for perfecting everyone in holiness—then as now. Today, every person who seeks union with God must have his or her soul perfected in Holiness by the Holy Spirit. It is not something that one can accomplish on one’s own—though one must have the right disposition to receive the Spirit and capitalize on Its gifts and graces.
It is the Holy Spirit that brings one to God. It is not one’s own will all by itself, or one’s own heart or mind but rather the Third Person of the Holy Trinity that comes to one and carries one to union with God at the end of time. It is the general resurrection that the power of the Holy Spirit will conduct.
It is the Holy Spirit that must come to man to bring him the kind of light and life and love that must be demonstrated in order for that man to be part of the general resurrection that goes to Heaven. It is the inner man that the Spirit comes to make appealing to Christ—for Christ must recognize Himself in the soul, the heart, the mind and the will of His children—otherwise they will not be re-united at the end of time. The future work of the resurrection depends upon the present-day work of the Spirit in renovating the house of every person’s soul so that Christ can live there, rule, and act as the head of the soul. As Ephesians 3:16-19 states: “… to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” This is the essence of the meaning of the future work of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit must come to abide in every person in order for every person to have the fullness of God and be recognized as one of God’s own at the end of time.
Conclusion
The power of the Holy Spirit was there at the beginning—i.e., during creation; it was there at the most important moment in the act of Redemption—i.e., at the Incarnation when the Holy Spirit conceived in the womb of the Virgin the life of the Christ; and it was there at the start of the Church when the Apostles were visited by the Spirit and filled with the fire of God’s love. The power of the Holy Spirit is there when every person is made perfect in holiness—and no one can be made perfect in holiness without the Spirit. And the Spirit will be there at the end, when those who were faithful to God are given passage to be with Him in Heaven, thanks to the Holy Spirit, Who will come to re-animate the dead at the general resurrection. Thus, the power of the Holy Spirit is essential to the life of all men seeking to be with God.
References
Bruce, F. F. (1948). The Crooked Serpent. Evangelical Quarterly, 20, 283-88.
Sheen, F. (2008). Life of Christ. NY: Image Books.
Spurgeon, C. H. (1996). Holy Spirit Power. Whitaker House.
Spurgeon, C. H. (1855). The Power of the Holy Spirit. Zondervan. Retrieved from http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/0030.htm