“…and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.  Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common” (NRSV, Acts 4:31,32)

Although we mention the Holy Spirit every time we say the Creed or the Glory be or the Grace, yet in our thinking about him we are conscious of a vagueness and elusiveness, with the result that, apart from Confirmation or Pentecost, he may seem to play only a small part in our personal relationship with God.

With Our Lord we find it different.  We have the record of his earthly life set out before us in the Gospels; and from all that he said and did we can form a clear idea of what kind of a Person he was and is.  His character is not only definite but understandable because it is presented to us in human terms and human qualities.

So also, though to a lesser degree, with God the Father.  By using the word Father, Our Lord depicted God for us in familiar human terminology that conveys to us the love and care of our Maker.  We can think of the attitude of a good earthly father towards his own small child and can picture God’s own relationship with us in the same way.

But more than that, as Holy Scripture tells us, Our Lord as God’s Son reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature (Hebrews 1:3).  In Our Lord’s own words, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (NRSV, John 14:9).  And so we actually see the character of our Heavenly Father revealed in his Son.

But when we turn to the Holy Spirit there seem to be no human terms and no human terminology in which his nature and character can be expressed and understood.  The symbolism in Holy Scripture does not take us very far – the dove of peace and gentleness, the tongues of fire, the sound like the rush of a mighty wind; and the still small voice.

But in point of fact in the New Testament we have something much more intelligible than those symbols.  We have the actual effects of the Holy Spirit on real people living a real life in a real world.

Both the Acts of the Apostles – which is a contemporary history of the first 30 years of the Church – and also the Letters in the New Testament, they are all crowded with references to the Holy Spirit; and the reason is that the ordinary Christian people who lived at that time were so undeniably aware of the activity of the Holy Spirit in their midst and within themselves; and that awareness was irresistibly corroborated by the practical evidence of the transformation which the Holy Spirit had effected in their lives and characters.

And that transformation was nothing less than the creation and the growth of the character of Christ himself within them.  And that was no accident.  Jesus himself throughout his earthly life was filled with the Holy Spirit.

At the Annunciation the Angel Gabriel told Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God” (NRSV, Luke 1:35).  And at his Baptism in the River Jordan the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus like a dove and formally anointed him for the work of his ministry and, as St Luke tells us, “…Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee…” (NRSV, Luke 4:14).

So later St Peter described Our Lord’s ministry itself by saying, “…God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power;…he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (NRSV, Acts 10:38).

But that was only the beginning of all that Jesus did and taught, for before his Ascension he told his Apostles that they themselves would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them and they would be his witnesses, not merely in Palestine, but to the end of the earth.

So, on the Day of Pentecost according to Our Lord’s most true promise, the Holy Spirit who had been with the Apostles, now came and dwelt within them. And Our Lord also kept the rest of that promise, namely that he himself would come to them and in that day they would indeed know that he was in the Father, and they in him and he in them; and that both he and his Father had made their home in them (John 14:15-23).

So although the Holy Spirit was plainly distinct from Jesus, nevertheless he was so closely and actively associated with him that the early Christians, as we can see from the New Testament, could speak literally in the same breath of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus; of the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ; of Christ being in them and of the Spirit of God dwelling in them also (Acts 16:6-7; Romans 8:9-11).

And that is why the fruit of the Spirit in the soul of the Christian is nothing other than the character of Christ.  Or, to put it from another point of view: as the Manhood of Jesus throughout his earthly life was filled with the Holy Spirit, so his Body was the Temple of the Spirit and through the indwelling Spirit, God raised him up from the dead by supernaturalising his Body.  And ever since the Day of Pentecost the Spirit fills his mystical Body the Church, making it, as St Paul says, into a holy Temple in the Lord and a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:21,22).

Principal among the practical qualities which manifested themselves among the Christians in those days, and which ideally should be evident among members of the Church today, were love and boldness.

One of the most characteristic features of the early Church was its corporate compassion and care for needy people, and the motive behind was that charity or Christian love which St Paul extols in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians.  In this “famous hymn of love we get a picture of the human character of Jesus.  In other words, in this display of fellowship the Church was reproducing in every field of its life the characteristic attitude of Jesus Himself.  It was demonstrating in the most direct way the truth that it was really filled with His Spirit”. (1)

Secondly, the Church in Jerusalem in those early days was characterised by boldness, “a glad fearlessness, such as comes when men feel that they are at one with themselves, their fellows, and with God”. (2)

As St Luke describes it for us in the Acts of the Apostles, “…they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness” and ”With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus…” (NRSV, Acts 4:31,33).

We may ask why the activity of the Spirit was so potent in those members of the early Church.  The reason is plain; and its lesson for us is equally plain – they were blessed with that singleness of mind, clarity of conscience and openness of heart which allowed the Spirit to act freely and without restriction in them and their lives.

References

1. Bicknell, E.J. (1928) ‘The Acts of the Apostles’, in Gore, C., Goudge, H.L. and Guillaume, A. (editors) A new commentary on Holy Scripture.  Part II The New Testament, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

2. Bicknell, E.J. (1928) ‘The Acts of the Apostles’, in Gore, C., Goudge, H.L. and Guillaume, A. (editors) A new commentary on Holy Scripture.  Part II The New Testament, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.