A Study of the Book of Confessions, Study 8: Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier

Leonard lived what appeared to be a normal life until age fifteen when a rare disease struck him. The symptoms initially looked like a loss of interest in activities but very quickly degenerated into a total inability to physically respond to any stimulation in his environment. He became catatonic.

Leonard was placed in a long-term care facility along with other catatonic patients. For over twenty years, his family and the medical staff had accepted his catatonic condition as incurable and settled for maintenance care. Then one day, Dr. Malcolm Sayer, a shy research physician, arrived as a new staff physician. As he took care of Leonard, his curiosity and compassion drove him to search for a ray of hope for Leonard. And Dr. Sayer found this hope in an experimental drug which “awakened” Leonard, the first patient to receive the controversial treatment. Leonard was then able to walk and talk, laugh and cry, respond and react to stimuli.

The awakening and “rebirth” of Leonard filled Dr. Sayer with awe and enthusiasm. Encouraged by Leonard’s stunning recovery, Dr. Sayer administered the drug to other patients but not all of them responded to the drug.

Dr. Sayer’s story is a striking parallel to the relationship between the Holy Spirit and us humans who are dead in our sin. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Godhead whose job is to “awaken” us to a new life so that our hearts may once again turn to God in love and obedience.

Holy Spirit, the Misunderstood God

In the daily life of the church, the Holy Spirit has been treated like a neglected or misunderstood spouse: neglected because the Spirit has not enjoyed equal attention as the Son, misunderstood because many professing Christians have gross misconceptions of the role of the Spirit. In our time, some of the common misconceptions of the role of the Holy Spirit are:

• The Holy Spirit is the Royal Rubber Stamp that authorizes the church to embrace cultural trends, whether they be pleasing or displeasing to God. After all, the church once reformed is always reforming.
• The Holy Spirit is the Robin Hood who saves us from the unreasonable, unjust, outdated and irrelevant demands of God’s law given in Scripture. With Robin Hood on our side, all humans may enjoy equal rights and equal access to all privileges and resources so that church of Jesus Christ may finally become the ideal “rainbow community” where no one or anyone is excluded.
• The Holy Spirit is the Cosmic Masseur who massages our fears, anxieties and hurts to calm us and make us feel good. After all, the Spirit’s alias is Comforter. This feeds our twentieth-century lust for “feel-good religion” by psychologizing the third person of the Trinity, stripping the Holy Spirit of theological content, and turning the Spirit into our servant.

These misconceptions represent the human tendency to create a god in our own image, to fashion a god according to our own passions and purposes, and to confine God to the imagination of the unregenerate human mind. To have an accurate perception of the Holy Spirit, the people of God must rise above our own fallen human passions, purposes and imagination. The church must once again seek to know the Holy Spirit through God’s Word, his very own self-revelation.

The Holy Spirit and the Confessions

In contrast to the cultural misconceptions which subjugate the Holy Spirit to human sovereignty, the Scriptures and the Confessions teach that the Holy Spirit plays a sovereign role as the Sanctifier:1 the role of a powerful and sovereign Change Agent in the lives of human beings.

• The Holy Spirit is the agent of effectual calling to salvation.2 Indeed “no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3). The Holy Spirit calls us out of the state of sin and death and empowers us to enter the state of grace and salvation.
• The Holy Spirit is the agent of justification.3 The Spirit applies Christ’s benefits to the elect of God.
• The Holy Spirit is the agent of sanctification causing the believers to repent and to grow in obedience to God.4
• The Holy Spirit causes the saints to persevere.5 “This perseverance of the saints depends, not upon their own free-will, but upon … the abiding of the Spirit ….”6

Translated into everyday language, the Holy Spirit, the Divine Change Agent, initiates a change process in the person who is converted to Christ and causes the believer to persevere in the change process to continue toward the right direction and destination.

Holy Spirit, the Divine Change Agent

The Heidelberg Catechism succinctly summarizes this change in its first question:7 Question: What is your only comfort, in life and in death?” Answer: That I belong—body and soul, in life and in death—not to myself but to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ … Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.”

The Heidelberg answer highlights two facts about the Christian life:

• The Christian is under the new ownership of Jesus Christ. The believer who has come to a saving faith in Christ accepts, receives and rests upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life.8 The believer submits and surrenders to the lordship of Jesus Christ.
• The Christian necessarily has a new orientation for living. The believer no longer lives for himself—-his own passions, purposes and imaginations—-but he lives for Christ. “And [Christ] died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Corinthians 5:15).

In the same way that Leonard was “awakened” and became able to respond to his environment, the believer is awakened to the new life in Christ by the Holy Spirit and is enabled to respond in ways pleasing to God. A changed life is the evidence and the fruit of conversion to Christ9 because Jesus said, “By their fruit you shall recognize them ….” (Matthew 7:16).

What Does This New Life Look Like?

The new life in Christ is marked by a number of characteristics which serve as the fingerprints of God or the signatures of the Holy Spirit.

(1) New Purpose

The women and men who have come into a new relationship with Christ embrace a new goal, a new journey toward a new destination, and live by a new standard (Colossians 3:9-10). This new purpose is holiness.10 Holiness is separation from sin, without which “no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). The Holy Spirit is the Divine Change Agent who initiates the 180-degree turnaround so the heart of the converted is turned toward holiness instead of sin. The apostle Paul describes the Spirit as the “Spirit of holiness” (Romans 1:4).

(2) New Perspective on Sin

The women and men who are now under the new ownership of Christ also develop a new perspective on sin. What used to be detestable to God but pleasurable to humans now becomes also detestable to the believers. This new perspective on sin, along with changed behavior, is the evidence of true repentance. The Westminster Larger Catechism defines “repentance” this way:

Repentance unto life is a saving grace, wrought in the heart of a sinner by the Spirit and the Word of God, whereby out of the sight and sense, not only of the danger, but also of the filthiness and odiousness of his sins, and upon the apprehension of God’s mercy in Christ to such as are penitent, he so grieves for, and hates his sins, as that he turns from them all to God, purposing and endeavoring constantly to walk with him in all the ways of new obedience.11

(3) New Perspective on Scripture

Coupled with a new perspective on sin, the believer also develops a new perspective on God’s law in Scripture. Unregenerate humans legalistically observe the Torah or recklessly ignore God’s law; but those who are “awakened” and enlivened by the Spirit now “sweetly comply with it: the Spirit of Christ subduing and enabling the will of man to do that freely and cheerfully, which the will of God, revealed in the law, requireth to be done.”12 By means of a saving faith, “a Christian believeth to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word, for the authority of God himself speaking therein … yielding obedience to the commands.”13 The true believer has a new respect for the final authority of Scripture. “For as God alone is a fit witness of himself in his Word, so also the Word will not find acceptance in men’s hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit.”14 This same Spirit testifies to the truth of Scripture and is recognized in his agreement with Scripture. “He is the Author of the Scriptures: he cannot vary and differ from himself.”15

(4) New Process

At conversion, the Holy Spirit initiates a continuous process of conviction to cause the convert to keep moving the same direction toward God. The regenerate person who at one time was a comrade to sin is now in conflict with sin. The control center is shifted from sin to Spirit; sin is no longer the commanding officer. “They who are effectually called and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection by his Word and Spirit dwelling in them; dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified, and they more and more quickened and strengthened, in all saving graces, to the practice of true holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.”16 Throughout this process, the Spirit empowers, influences, and persuades the believer to act in obedience to God’s Word.17

(5) New Person

As the apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” When the Holy Spirit transforms a sinner into a new person, the Spirit nurtures and demonstrates the evidence of this new life in a variety of ways:

• Life simultaneously governed by God’s Word and Spirit because the Spirit who inspired the writing of Scripture does not contradict himself;
• Life demonstrating a pattern of growth in the direction of holiness;
• Character renewed in the image of God, continuously and increasingly demonstrating Christlike character (Colossians 3:9-10; Ephesians 4:22-24).

Conclusion

To rediscover the role of the Holy Spirit as the Sanctifier is to recommit our hearts to the Spirit as the powerful and sovereign God. This calls for our personal surrender to the Holy Spirit, the Divine Change Agent, who intervenes in our lives in accordance with the Scriptures so that we can keep moving toward the goal of holiness.

Gordon Fee sums this up well: “Thus believers live ‘between the times.’ The already crippled flesh will be finally brought to ruin at the coming of Christ. The Spirit already a present possession, will be fully realized at the same coming. To the degree that the old aeon has not yet passed away, we still must learn ‘to walk by the Spirit,’ to behave ‘in keeping with the Spirit,’ and to ‘sow to the Spirit.’ But we do so precisely because the Spirit is sufficient, not because we live simultaneously ‘according to the flesh’ and ‘according to the Spirit.’ In Paul’s view, we live ‘in the flesh,’ meaning in the body and subject to the realities of the present age; but we do not walk ‘according to the flesh.’ Such a way of life belongs to the past, and those who so live ‘shall not inherit the [final, eschatological] kingdom of God’” (Galatians 5:21).18

Questions

1. What are the reasons for the church’s neglect and misunderstanding of the Holy Spirit?
2. Why is it important to have a correct understanding of the Holy Spirit? How can we acquire this correct understanding?
3. Name some ways in which Christians misuse the Holy Spirit.
4. Survey the references in the Endnotes Section. Write a paragraph on the work of the Holy Spirit in each of the following areas: Salvation, Justification, Sanctification, Perseverance.
5. Jesus said, “By their fruit you shall recognize them…” (Matthew 7:16). Why is this significant?
6. If the new purpose is new life in holiness, then this new life must necessarily involve conflict with the culture of the fallen world. What does it mean to live “in the flesh” but not “according to the flesh?” What does it mean “to walk by the Spirit?” How should Christians relate to the culture around us?
7. Why is it not possible for the Spirit to contradict Scripture? How does the authority of Scripture relate to the authority of the Holy Spirit?

This study first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Mar/Apr 1999).