The Trinity’s Quiet Member
This is a continuation of the post, Opening the Black Box.
In that post I wrote about how challenging it is to think about God and yet how critical it is to try because, at stake, it turns out, is our own understanding of who we are.
In simplest terms, a reverence for God elevates our view of ourselves and our neighbors (mankind). A disbelief or distain for God opens up the darkest cruelty lodged in each of us.
Proof?
How many God fearing people (those who pray daily, attend church weekly, and talk freely about their personal faith) do you know who have unrestrained appetites for lust and power? We don’t get there following God. Of course there are charlatans who are all about money and power but who try to convince others that they are servants of the Most High. Remember, the opposition is composed of liars.
Last time I spoke about two of the three persons within the Godhead, namely the Father and the Son (Jesus). One’s role is Ruler of all and the other’s is mankind’s Savior. We need both, of course, but it doesn’t stop there (thankfully). My salvation from beginning to end is God’s work.
To show this let’s look at some passages from a letter Paul wrote to a church in the city of Ephesus.
Here first is a description of where we came from.
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Ephesians 2:1-10 (ESV)
Here we learn that God saved us by his grace and in order to enable us to do good works. But the good works we do are because we have been sealed.
In [Jesus Christ] you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation [that Jesus died for your sins], and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
Ephesians 1:13-14 (ESV)
So, God not only saved me, he sealed me with himself in the person of the Holy Spirit. This means God walks beside me and he walks within me.
Of course, this might mean I am nothing at all, that I have no role to play. Not true. Last passage today from Paul’s letter.
The New Life
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.
Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.
Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.
Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
Ephesians 4:17-32 (ESV)
To Conclude
We are told that our lives today and into the future are secure, assuming we are willing to give ourselves to God by believing and trusting (faith) in His finished work on our behalf.
Our path to heaven is a sure thing, and the promise that this will happen as God has said is the fact that we have been given the Holy Spirit.
He lives inside of us as the quiet witness of God. His is that quiet voice that encourages and corrects. In our deepest sorrows he is there with us.
Personally I connect my tears with the work of the Holy Spirit because my default is to not cry. His work in me is to strengthen and soften. Tenderness toward others, again not my default nature, is to me evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work.
Pretty subtle stuff, I know, but also profound because I know where I came from and how I have been changed from the inside-out.
Now, how about you? Are you settled in the idea that as a believer you have the Holy Spirit living within you? I know it’s a controversial idea in many corners of the globe.
