GOD’S GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
Acts 1:1-14
When Jesus was baptised, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove, alighting on him. Jesus, as the “pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews 12:2) and “the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead” (Colossians 1:18), blazed the trail for us to follow after and thus we too, as his followers, like him receive the Holy Spirit as the gift of God.
What does God’s gift of the Holy Spirit signify? Paul in Ephesians 1:13-14 tells us “When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.” The Holy Spirit is God’s guarantee of our adoption as his children. The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives is an act of God that completes and confirms the whole process of our salvation.
What about the power that Jesus spoke of, that was to come with the Holy Spirit?
There is no doubt that since the Holy Spirit is a member of the Holy Trinity, he brings with him the power of God. But what Luke makes clear right at the beginning of the account is that the Holy Spirit acts on behalf of Jesus. Jesus, in John 16:14-15 says it very clearly, “He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”
While Jesus exercised power to heal and cast out demons when he was on earth, it is his death and resurrection that is to be his calling card. In John 6, the crowd asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do?” And Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
The presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of a follower of Jesus makes all the difference because it signals that a change has happened in us that enables him to enter and make our bodies his temple. That change is the righteousness that we receive because of Jesus’ sacrifice for our sin. The presence of the Holy Spirit then enables us to become a true follower of Jesus. No one is a child of God who does not have the Holy Spirit. And surely no one who has the Holy Spirit will be living a life that is a total contradiction of all that Jesus stands for. He is the Holy Spirit! And so as Paul puts it in Romans 8:11, “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.”
While the apostles exercised the power that undergirds their authority as they go about their mission to establish the church of Jesus Christ, it is the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that changed lives.