The Holy Spirit - Love Personified - The Father’s Love for the Son
How well do you know the Holy Spirit?
We have a lot of stories about Jesus. We often think about the Father as the one looking down guiding everything with a gentle hand, but what about the Holy Spirit? You might not have even realized it, but every time I ask you to take a moment to recognize God’s presence, I am asking you to recognize the Holy Spirit’s presence. The invisible power that is God, roaming, shaping, and empowering things for the glory of God. But other than invisible and powerful, who is the Holy Spirit and how can the Holy Spirit change our lives?
At the Last Supper, Jesus tells his disciples that it is good for us that he is leaving, because if Jesus doesn’t go to His Father, then His Father would not give us the Holy Spirit. It's an intriguing idea. It is better for us to have the Holy Spirit in us than to have Jesus walking beside us. Yet, there is more to this statement. Because what Jesus is saying is that there is something that happens when Jesus is fundamentally reunited with the Father that leads to the outpouring of the Spirit.
We can imagine it, at least somewhat. Here is Jesus who emptied himself to become human, a little baby that grew up slowly, tempted, struggling, mourning, while remaining faithful, but then at about 33 years gave up His own will to the Father, was abandoned, betrayed, reviled, tortured and killed, all to show His love for the Father. Then after 3 days in hell, Jesus rose from the dead and showed a new transformed life to his followers for 40 days before ascending into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father. When someone has done this much to show their love, imagine the homecoming that Jesus would have received. Imagine the thoughts and heart of the Father as they were reunited forever. Even in our human experience, what would this look like? It would look like an overflow of love and there wouldn’t be enough ways to express and show our deepfelt love and thankfulness. The Holy Spirit poured out at Pentecost becomes the overflow of the Father’s love for the Son - like a cup that runneth over from heaven.
Yet, remember that this is God we are talking about. In God when something is realized it becomes something new and amazing. Remember in God the Word has its own identity. God’s wisdom, arm, and name, all have a powerful world change reality to them. But the Father’s love for the Son is so fundamental to who He is and so powerful that it has it’s own personhood, and its own identity. The Love that existed before time is the Holy Spirit. You might remember the moment when Jesus was baptized. The Father sends down the Holy Spirit, as He parts the sky He says, “This is my Son, my Beloved, in whom I am well pleased”. The Holy Spirit becomes the expression of God’s love for his beloved. Another way of looking at it. We can’t speak without breath. Try. So as God spoke at the beginning of creation, it is the breath that carries the Word that brought order and life. God’s love for the Son is so potent and real that it is it’s own personhood in God.
Now, this is important to us, because Jesus has invited us to become His brothers and sisters and so we too can become God’s sons and daughters. God wants to adopt us and so through Jesus, God wants to extend that same powerful love onto us. So how do we become adopted by God? In a worldly sense, what is the difference between your child and your child’s friends? A friend could spend a lot of time at your home, be fed by you, sleep over and on all practical levels look like your child. I think the first fundamental way that we show ourselves to be God’s children, is by belonging to Him, by giving ourselves to him. A child can run away, or disown their parents, even at a young age, but a child can give themselves to their parents. Through this a child becomes more like their parents, especially as this belonging brings with it obedience and a willingness to follow. The child then shows themselves to be your child, because they look like you, not just physically but in life and love. Those are two fundamental ways that we show ourselves to be God’s children - We belong to Him before anything else and we follow Him before anything else. I think we all have a way to grow in becoming children of God.
The benefits to being a child of God are astronomical. We can barely imagine it. We know to some degree what a difference a good parent can make, but only imagine what having God as your parent, who is love, would mean. Well, one of the fundamental gifts is the Holy Spirit. When we are repentant and baptized we die to our old selves. We die to our families, to this world, to what has otherwise defined us and we are reborn as the children of God. We are baptized with Jesus - we die with him and are raised with him - and so we benefit with him and God sends us His Holy Spirit - not because we deserved it like Jesus, but through our faith we followed Jesus to the same end and new beginning.
Baptism is only one of the first steps though. You might not feel like you have the fullness of God dwelling in you. You might not feel His presence, empowering you at every moment. You might not know the wisdom, comfort and guidance that is the Holy Spirit in us, with us and around us. God’s gift of the Holy Spirit is not lacking, instead it is our inability to recognize and make room for His gift of all encompassing, world changing love.
Every time we breathe, it is an opportunity for us to know and experience God’s life giving breath as it fills us, energizes us and pushes us forward. This is only a lived out and practical analogy, because the Holy Spirit is so much bigger than our breath. Everytime we hear something we can listen for the Holy Spirit carrying those words in the air. Everytime we stop we can take a moment to experience the Holy Spirit that surrounds us and fills our hearts, minds and more.
Breathing Exercise! - recognizing the Holy Spirit in our breath
We did this on Wednesday. One of the first things Richard said was that this brought him comfort. Which is really fitting, because the Holy Spirit is called the great comforter. God wants to comfort us, but where do we turn to for comfort. There is a lot of things that might numb us or make us forget, but there is only one person who can truly comfort us, because there is only one person who can give us hope in all situations. That is Jesus and his confirmation of that hope is the Holy Spirit. As we experience this from the Holy Spirit, the comfort and hope live in us in a new way and so we are given something even more. We are given a peace that passes understanding, a peace that the world does not know and cannot give. We all want this peace and it starts with the simple and repetative act of turning to God for comfort and trusting in his hope.
Breathe can give us clarity. The Holy Spirit is often called the Spirit of wisdom, of truth of guidance. Again, I think we all want these things in our lives, but how do we get in touch with the Spirit’s all encompassing wisdom. It’s simple. We start listening to it and following it. God has already given us a great amount of wisdom and guidance through Jesus and Scripture. If we aren’t willing to trust and follow what God has already said why would we think that we will suddenly be able to hear and understand a voice and hand that we can’t see. It doesn’t mean that we have to understand everything, but acting doesn’t require understand - though God will give that too, because as we hear, when we are obedient and listen to Jesus then He loves us, the Father loves us and so we are given the Holy Spirit, which is the fullness of understanding and truth.
Breathe also gives us strength and energy. The Holy Spirit is also called the Spirit of power. This power, this strength and energy comes to nothing unless we step out and use it. We need to have courage to be God’s powerful love. This ultimately comes through obedience again, if we trust and have learned that following Jesus leads to wisdom, truth, goodness and even peace, then we can find courage in ever situation and can grow in that courage as we step out and follow. The power of the Holy Spirit moving in us can often be in simple ways - we’ve talked about a few like wisdom, peace, courage, but it can be grander than all of that too.
One of the unifying factors when we see God’s miraculous work is that there is a godly purpose behind it. It isn’t just humans working because they want to, it is that God is using that miraculous work to become so much more than the simple act itself. God has bigger plans in miracles - it is not just healing or speaking in tongues, or a bit of knowledge or even a resurrection, it is about directing the world to Him and His Kingdom.
A profound unity is one of these purposes. We see that in our passage from Acts. It starts out with the disciples in one place and all of a sudden the Holy Spirit sent them out with tongues so that everyone could hear and understand them. From that understanding, those with open hearts heard the word, repented, turning to Jesus and we baptised. The power of languages had the purpose of unitying everyone under the love of Christ, by giving love for Jesus. The unity we crave ultimately, must be founded in a love for Jesus. Our gospel reminds us that this is the only way God’s love lives in us and that is the only way we will be united in a love that is greater than our difference and greater than our love - a love that is the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the amazing personification of the Father’s love for His Son Jesus. We too have been invited into that love to experience it and have it live in us. The fullness of God wants to live in us and show his love in us and through us. We now need to learn what it means to be adopted by God and what it looks like to be his children. We need to be practical and purposeful about belonging to him, following him and taking time for him. There is such a richness to knowing God as our Father and we are invited as coheirs to experience it all. It doesn’t happen all at once though - God’s peace comes from turning to him for comfort and hope. God’s wisdom comes from faithfully following and obeying him. God’s power comes from a couragious trust in following our godly purpose. God’s unity comes from a wanting to be united to Him in love. Let us all faithfully seek and live in the Holy Spirit, which is God’s love.
Peace comes from comfort and hope
Wisdom comes from following and obedience
As a byproduct of faithful and trusting following Courage comes from moving out
Power comes from an indwelling and Godly purpose - Which is tied to obedience
Unity comes from the Holy Spirit - first and primarily a love for the son
