Lesson #13 on Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God
From book of same title by Gorden Fee
I. The Spirit in Pauline Theology
A. Intro
The general ineffective witness and perceived irrelevancy of the church in Western culture stands in stark contrast to the early believers who seem to have been more effective than we are. This is due in large part to their experience of the reality of the Spirit's presence.
The sometimes either/or approach to the Spirit (between 'gifts' and 'fruit') or even the Spirit and
the Word should make us uncomfortable. The Spirit was an empowering presence for the early
church, and the power had to do with fruit, witness and gifts.
The early church believed that the gift of the Holy Spirit was the fulfillment of the Jewish hopes
of the return of the divine presence (from temple times). They believed that the future had began, being attested by the gift of the outpoured Spirit, who also served as the guarantee of future consummation. The goal was not simply to fit individuals for heaven but to create a people who by the power of the Spirit lived out the life of the future in the present age.
One reads Paul poorly who does not recognize that for him the presence of the Spirit, as an
experienced and living reality, was the crucial matter for the Christian life, from beginning to end. For Paul life in the Spirit meant embracing both fruit and gifts simultaneously and vigorously. The Spirit covered the whole waterfront: Power for life, growth, fruit, gifts, prayer, witness, and everything else.
B. The theology of the Spirit
Our theology and experience of the Spirit must be more interwoven if our experienced life of the
Spirit is to be more effective.
The traditional view, fostered by the Reformers and perpetuated by generations of Protestants, is that "justification by faith" is the key to Paul's theology. It is fair to say that Paul's entire theology
would crumble into ruins without the supporting pillar of the Spirit.
The outpouring of the Spirit meant for Paul that God had fulfilled his promise to dwell once again in and among His people. Whatever else, the people of Israel understood themselves to be the people of the presence, the people among whom the eternal God had chosen to dwell on earth. The most prominent way God's presence is experienced in the Old Testament is? - in the tabernacle and the temple.
This is what makes the fall of Jerusalem and the exile so horrible for them. The captives and
those who remained were no longer a people distinguished by the presence of the living God in
their midst. Central to the prophetic hope was the promised return of God's presence.
For Paul, the Spirit is how God presently dwells in his holy temple. It is especially with temple
imagery that Paul designates the Spirit as the renewed presence of God among his people.
The church as God's Temple. How the living God is now present with his people is most clearly
expressed in Ephesians 2:22, the church is being raised up to become a holy temple in the Lord,
built up together as a dwelling for God by his Spirit.
In I Cor. 3:16, Paul uses the same type of imagery with the Corinthians. As a gathered
community, they formed the one temple of the living God, God's alternative to Corinth's
countless pagan temples; and what made them has alternative was the presence of the Spirit in
their midst.
For Paul, the Spirit is not merely an impersonal force or influence or power. The spirit is none
other than the fulfillment of the promise that God himself would once again be present with his
people.
II. The Spirit and the People of God
A. A people for his name.
Based on the work of Christ, The Spirit calls forth a newly constituted people and makes them
"a people for his name".
One of the sure members of the modern world's "trinity" along side of relativism & secularism
is individualism. Recapturing the biblical sense of the significance of the individual, but revising
it to fit a nonbiblical, naturalistic worldview, the Enlightenment led the modern Western world
into a totally individualistic understanding of life, which has never been more prevalent than it is
today. The individual is the be-all and end-all of everything. The individual is 'god', with self-
interest and self-centeredness being the chief end of life.
But Paul can hardly help himself. His focus and concern are always on the people as a whole.
Though entered individually, salvation is seldom of ever thought of simply as a one-on-one
relationship with God. While such a relationship is included, to be sure, "to be saved" means
especially to be joined to the people of God. In this sense, the third-century church father
Cyprian had it right: there is no salvation outside of the church, because God is saving a people
for his name, not a miscellaneous, unconnected set of individuals.
God chose, and made a covenant with, not individual Israelites but a people who would bear
God's name and be for God's purposes. This concern for God's saving a people for his glory is
further demonstrated by the frequency of one of the most common words in Paul's exhortations:
"one another". Everything is done "one another". They are members of one another, who are
to build up one another, who are to care for one another, and love one another, and bear with
one another, etc.
God is not just saving individuals and preparing them for heaven; rather he is creating a people
among whom he can live and who in their life together will reproduce God's life and
character. Created and formed by the Spirit, the early communities thus became a fellowship of
the Spirit. The community of God's people owe their life together as a body to their common,
lavish experience of the Spirit.
B. Paul's images for the community of the Spirit
1. God's family
2. God's temple
3. Christ's body
C. Misc. Thoughts
Homogenous churches lie totally outside Paul's frame of reference. Unity in the body means
that believers "walk by the Spirit" so as not to "eat and devour one another" (Gal. 3:15-16).
It also requires heterogeneous people to submit their diversity to the unifying work of the Spirit.
The Spirit is also responsible for maintaining a necessary and healthy diversity in the church.
The early believers did not have buildings called "churches"; they did not "go to church". They
were the church, and at appointed times and places they assembled as the church.
In sum: "to be saved" in the Pauline view means to become part of the people of God, who by
the Spirit are born into God's family and therefore joined to one another as one body, whose
gatherings in the Spirit form them into God's temple.
No comments:
Post a Comment