Gift and Giver

The Holy Spirit for Today

Keener, Craig S.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781493431410
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

In Gift and Giver, leading New Testament scholar Craig Keener takes a probing look at the various evangelical understandings of the role of the Holy Spirit in the church. He explores topics such as spiritual gifts, the fruit of the Spirit, the Spirit's power for evangelism, and hearing God's voice. His desire is for Christians to "work for consensus, or at least for unity in God's work despite our differences on secondary matters." Employing a helpful narrative approach and an ample number of stories, Keener enters into constructive dialogue with Pentecostals, moderates, and cessationists, all the while attempting to learn from each viewpoint. He seeks to bridge the gap between cessationists and Pentecostals/charismatics by urging all Christians to seek the Holy Spirit's empowerment. His irenic approach to this controversial issue has been endorsed by charismatics and non-charismatics alike. Sure to provoke helpful dialogue on a topic that has caused unfortunate divisions within the church, Gift and Giver will be a valuable addition to college and seminary courses on pneumatology. It will also be helpful to lay readers interested in a balanced discussion of spiritual gifts. This repackaged edition includes an updated preface and a substantive new afterword.

1
Recognizing the Spirit’s Voice

Recently converted in high school, I began sharing Christ with other students on the way home from school. Sometimes I was afraid to witness, but I would feel the Spirit prompting me to talk with the person behind me, or to walk to the next block and find someone there to share Christ with, or to follow up with someone I had led to Christ the preceding week. Often the leading came from the Holy Spirit, but sometimes my feelings were simply the product of indigestion, and I was not very skilled at discerning the difference.

I wanted to know God’s leading better, but to know God’s leading better I had to know something more important than his specific leading: I had to know his heart, what God was like. Too often we hold misconceptions about God’s character. We have our own mental idols and we conceive of God in an image that does not correspond with the true God of the Bible. Paul says that we know in part and prophesy in part (1 Cor. 13:9). We may not always hear God perfectly, either in prayer or in our study of Scripture, but if we know what he is like enough to love him the way he is, he has ways to work out our imperfections in hearing him. When we perceive and reflect his heart, especially the love that nailed Jesus to the cross, we can best say we “know God” (1 John 4:7–12).

This chapter lays the groundwork for knowing and recognizing the Spirit; the next chapter provides further comments on learning to hear the voice of the Spirit. Often we experience God’s leading in evangelism (chapter 3). Chapter 4 also remains central to this issue: The fruit of the Spirit tells us about the Spirit’s character, hence, enabling us to recognize him when he speaks to us.

Why Hear God’s Voice?

In Western Christianity today, people are often far more eager to attend to controversial issues such as Spirit baptism and spiritual gifts than discussions about the Spirit’s character. By these priorities, however, we may miss the most important matter we could learn about the Spirit—learning God’s heart. (Someday, when we know God fully, the gifts will not even be necessary, useful as they may be now [1 Cor. 13:8–12].)

Several years ago, when the pressures of trying to find time for teaching, writing, and speaking were overwhelming me, I walked into a worship service and suddenly felt God’s Spirit prompt me to consider something in my heart. “My son,” I felt him say, “you will not always have this ministry or that ministry. These gifts will pass away when you stand before me. But you will always be my son.” I wept as I felt his comfort (and perhaps a tinge of gentle reproof). I had gotten so wrapped up in all the work I was doing for God—like Martha—that I had forgotten what mattered most: sitting at Jesus’ feet like Mary. God graciously uses us to serve others, but first he graciously saves us from sin, from our selfish rebellion against him and his ways. Anything we do for God is simply the fruit of his new life within us. I felt that God was pleased with my work, but even more than my work he desired my fellowship with him, my continual acknowledgment of him in all my ways. I won’t always be a teacher or a writer, but I will always be his child, and that means more to me than anything else.

The Holy Spirit, like the Father and the Son, is not just a doctrine, an idea, or an experience to be tagged on to the other doctrines and experiences of our Christian life. He is the God who has invaded our lives with his transforming presence.

Many of us need guidance to recognize more accurately when and how the Spirit speaks. Some circles in the church tend to exclude the Spirit’s work almost altogether, content to depend on human programs and abilities. As one preacher remarked, “Were the Spirit to be withdrawn suddenly from the earth today, most of the church’s work would continue unabated.” In other circles, nearly everything that happens is attributed to the Holy Spirit, though much of what happens there has nothing to do with him.

In this chapter, therefore, we begin with one of the less controversial but, nevertheless, crucially practical questions: How can we recognize the Spirit? The answer to this question must affect our discussion of the gifts of the Spirit later in the book, our discussion of the Spirit’s leading in evangelism, and why discussions about the meaning of baptism in the Holy Spirit even matter. After briefly commenting on the Spirit and his character as God, we will consider some ways to improve our sensitivity to the Spirit’s voice.

Some Introductory Principles

If we desire to hear God, the best place to start is by asking him to open our ears. God often grants such gifts (compare 1 Cor. 14:13) and encourages us to seek them (1 Cor. 12:31). His voice may come through such means as gentle nudges, calm assurances, specifically Spirit-guided dreams, a powerful urge, clear wisdom, or an unyielding sense of calling or direction.

If we ask to hear, however, we must also be willing to obey what we hear. James invites us to ask for wisdom (James 1:5) but insists that we ask in faith (1:6)—a faith that elsewhere in his letter must be confirmed as genuine by obedience (2:14–26). The more we obey the Spirit’s leading, the more adept we become at hearing it. We must take it seriously and pay attention; God will not continue to give us leadings if we use them merely to gauge our spirituality or keep ourselves emotionally excited (compare John 14:23).1

Yet this raises the question, How do we discern what is God’s leading, apart from trial and error? In situations in which it would do no harm to step out in faith, trial and error may work. In more critical matters, we may need to ask for God’s confirmation or assurance (for example, Judg. 6:36–40; 1 Sam. 14:9–10). But knowing God’s character in Scripture is the most important way to begin recognizing God’s voice. Although our voices change over time, the character of God’s voice has not changed in the past two thousand years.

Who Is the Spirit?

Christians today agree on many details about the Spirit. We recognize that the Spirit is God, just as the Father and the Son are God. Although the Father, Son, and Spirit each focus on some different aspects of our salvation, we can learn about the Spirit’s ways by looking at Jesus the Son, because the Bible reveals God’s character most clearly in Jesus.

Perhaps because their Jewish contemporaries were less inclined to debate the personhood of the Spirit than, say, Christ’s deity, the New Testament writers usually assume, rather than defend, the distinct personhood of the Spirit. Nevertheless, they do teach that the Spirit is personal and divine (Matt. 28:19; John 14:16–17; 16:13–15; Acts 5:3–5; Rom. 8:26–27; 2 Cor. 13:14). But while Jewish people before Jesus did not think of the Spirit as a distinct person, as Jesus’ followers did, they all took for granted that the Spirit was divine, belonging to God’s being (see, for example, Isa. 40:13; 48:16; 63:10–11). That the Spirit was divine was never in question.

I should pause momentarily to explain why I call the Spirit “he” rather than “it.” As early church fathers also recognized, the word for “spirit” is feminine in Hebrew, neuter in Greek, and masculine in Latin. Because the New Testament is written in Greek, it is therefore not surprising that pronouns for the Spirit are normally neuter in the Greek New Testament. (The exceptions are passages in John that refer to the Spirit as the Paraclete, or counselor, a masculine term in Greek.) Because God is Spirit, Christians do not believe that God has biological gender, but neither would we describe him as neuter. I thus use Christian tradition’s masculine pronoun for the Spirit here to remind readers that he is a divine person, an individual, not an impersonal force.

Knowing the Spirit Personally

Greek philosophy might seek to define what God is; the Bible, by contrast, shows God to us in how he related to people throughout history. The Old Testament does not clearly provide the arithmetical components for the Trinity (although it allows for it); God is “one,” but so is a married couple (Gen. 2:24). The Old Testament does, however, reveal God’s character, the same character we meet in the flesh in Jesus in the Gospels. This is also the same divine character we experience in our interactions with God through the Holy Spirit.

Some people suppose that learning theology means learning about God only in an abstract, rational sense, and feel this has little influence on their personal relationship with him. But when the Bible talks about knowing God, it speaks of a relationship characterized by intimacy and obedience, not by merely intellectual knowledge. Knowledge about God is clearly essential for knowing him, because a relationship with someone demands that we get to know about that person and the people and things important to that person. But knowledge about God is inadequate unless we apply it in practical ways to our relationship with him. In fact, merely knowing about him without applying that knowledge leads to more severe judgment than if we did not know about him (Luke 12:47–48; Rom. 2:12–16; James 3:1).

One of the first steps we should take in knowing God’s voice is knowing God’s heart. If we know the God of the Bible—the God of the cross—we will recognize the true Spirit of God when he speaks to us. Of course, God sometimes reveals himself to us by his Spirit within us first before we understand Scripture fully. But the heart of God we come to know through prayer is the same heart of God we find in Scripture when we search it with hearts humbled before him.

Knowing someone’s background and significant relationships and what matters to that person are important if we want to really know and care for someone. Each day as we study the Bible and watch God in his relationships with others throughout history—confronting the arrogant, comforting the broken, calling and using the humble—we should hear God speaking to us. We learn God’s character and get to know him in Scripture and must recognize the same God in our experience. As Dallas Willard points out, we need to see the people in the Bible as being just as human as we are. We can believe the Bible and enter into its experience only if we study it “on the assumption that the experiences recorded there were basically of the same type as ours would be if we were there.”2

Knowing God through the Spirit

Although we will look at many passages in the Bible, we will return often to the Gospel of John in this chapter and the next. John especially emphasizes the theme of knowing God personally through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit undoubtedly led John to emphasize this theme because it was so important to his readers, mainly Jewish Christians, in their difficult situation. Leaders of some synagogues had expelled them from the synagogues and in some cases may have handed them over to hostile Roman authorities because of their faith in Christ. These local Jewish leaders appealed to their superior knowledge of religious traditions to justify their actions, but John encouraged the Christians to appeal to a more essential kind of knowledge: We know God himself, because the Spirit of his Son lives in us (compare 1 John 4:13).

As I will mention several times in this book, many Jewish people felt that the Spirit of prophecy had departed from Israel. From the time of Malachi on, prophecies were rare, and most people believed that Israel lacked prophets in the authoritative, Old Testament sense. But Jewish people recognized that someday God would pour out his Spirit on his people in a fuller way, as the biblical prophets had promised (Joel 2:28–29). By appealing to their continual experience with the Spirit, the Christians not only appealed to a supernatural empowerment their opponents did not even claim. They also declared that the time of promise had arrived in Jesus of Nazareth! The presence and manifestation of the Spirit constituted the clearest proof that Jesus was the promised deliverer.

John encourages his readers by telling them that their experience marks them as God’s true servants, but he also calls them to a deeper relationship with God by presenting the ideal meaning of that relationship. By listening to John’s words of encouragement to his first readers, we can deepen our own sensitivity to the Spirit.

Jesus’ Sheep Know His Voice

How do we recognize the Spirit when he speaks to us? Paul tells us plainly that we do not yet know as we are known (1 Cor. 13:12); yet if we are to grow in our relationship with God, we need to begin somewhere. John’s Gospel teaches that all who are born again have a relationship with Jesus. We have already begun to know God; we simply need to develop the relationship that God has already established with-us.

The Bible describes many people who were intimate with God, while at the same time imperfect just as we are. God became so intimate with his friend Abraham that he asked, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” (Gen. 18:17 NIV), and Elisha seemed disturbed to discover that God had not revealed something to him (2 Kings 4:27). Yet this same Abraham acted in unbelief in having relations with Hagar (Gen. 16:1–3, reported immediately after God’s confirmations of Genesis 15). Noah and Enoch walked with God (Gen. 5:22, 24; 6:9), but this same Noah got drunk (9:21). Likewise, Jesus came in the flesh to imperfect disciples (who could sleep through a prayer meeting or even deny him) and made them examples of the transformation he can bring about in us through intimacy with him.

The Bible says that Jesus’ sheep know him and know his voice (John 10:4–5, 14). They recognize him when he speaks because they are already acquainted with his character. The Gospel of John, which includes this saying of Jesus, illustrates this point with various examples. Nathanael, undoubtedly a student of Scripture (1:45–46), recognized the Lord he already served when the Lord confronted him (1:49). Similarly, Mary did not recognize the risen Jesus by his physical appearance (20:14–15), but when he called her by name—as the Good Shepherd promised to do with his sheep (10:3)—she immediately knew who he was (20:16). In the context of Jesus’ promise that his sheep would know his voice, a broken man whose need Jesus touched embraced him readily, whereas the arrogant who rejected Jesus showed that they were not his sheep (9:35–10:10).

God’s Nature

Because the Father, Son, and Spirit are one in nature (though distinct in person and role), what we learn about the character of one member of the Trinity applies to all three. Just as we cannot have a relationship with the Father except through the Son (1 John 2:23), we cannot have a relationship with the Son except through the Spirit (John 16:14; Rom. 8:9), or vice versa (John 14:17). Thus, whatever we learn about our relationship with the Father or the Son also applies to our relationship with the Spirit, through whom we experience the presence of the Son and the Father.

How, then, can we learn about God’s character so that we can recognize his voice? Countless Bible passages teach us about him—about a God so merciful and patient that human analogies portray him as almost foolishly indulgent (Matt. 18:24–27; Mark 12:6; Luke 15:12). At the same time, Scripture reveals that God’s patience does have its limits with those who continue to take his mercy for granted (Exod. 4:24–26; 32:35; Ps. 78:17–31; Hosea 2:8–10; 11:1–7; Rom. 2:4–5; 9:22).

God disciplined his people for their continual disobedience to him, but when they repented, Judges tells us that God “could endure their pain no longer” (Judg. 10:16), so he raised up a deliverer for them. In Jeremiah he weeps that his people have forsaken him, the true source of water, in exchange for broken containers (Jer. 2:13); in Hosea he laments that they oppose him, their help (Hosea 13:9).

God often chose to illustrate his character by comparing his relationship with his people to human relationships. Thus, through Hosea we learn of God’s wounded heart, broken by the betrayal of his unfaithful people. Just as we are ready to condemn Hosea’s unfaithful wife, Gomer, Hosea reminds us that Gomer did nothing to him that all of us have not done to the God who loves us (Hosea 1:2–2:23). Hosea speaks further of how God redeemed Israel from slavery, then adopted the people as his own children. God says he taught Israel how to walk, carried them in his arms, bent down and fed them like a loving father (Hosea 11:1–4). But they rejected his message, so he warned in grieving anger that he would send them back to captivity (11:5–7)!

In the midst of pronouncing judgment in this passage, however, God’s voice breaks. “How can I punish you like this, my people?” he cries out. “How can I treat you like Admah and Zeboiim?” (11:8), referring to two cities God overturned and burned when he overthrew Sodom (Deut. 29:23). Rather, he says, “My own heart is overturned within me, and all my compassion burns” (Hosea 11:8). God is saying, “My people, if I could bear the judgment in your place, I would.” And then he forgave his people (11:9–11). This is the God of the cross.

God’s Supreme Revelation of Himself

Some issues are more central in the Bible than others (e.g., Matt. 23:23–24, where the Pharisees neglected the “weightier matters” of Scripture). The same principle is true in how God reveals his character; all of his revelation is important, but some of his revelation is clearer to us than other parts.

John teaches us about God’s character in a special way: He tells us to look at Jesus. When one of Jesus’ disciples fails to recognize that Jesus perfectly reveals the Father’s character, Jesus responds, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9 NIV). Indeed, even John’s prologue introduces this point: Jesus is God’s “Word” made flesh.

All that God revealed of himself ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Recognizing the Spirit’s Voice
• 2. Learning to Hear God’s Heart by the Spirit
• 3. The Spirit Empowers Us for Evangelism
• 4. The Spirit and How We Live
• 5. Are Spiritual Gifts for Today?
• 6. A Closer Look at Some Spiritual Gifts
• 7. The Spirit and Salvation
• 8. When Are We Baptized in the Spirit?
• 9. Tongues and the Spirit
• 10. Why Discern the Spirit?
• Conclusion
• Afterword: Looking Back on Twenty Years
• Appendix: What Can Bible Stories Teach Us?
• Notes
• Back Cover