Grace, Faith and the Holy Spirit

I continue to wonder at the connection between grace, faith, and the Person and Works of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself commanded His disciples after His resurrection, not to leave Jerusalem but to 'wait for the promise of the Father' (Acts 1:4). Jesus clearly communicated to them, that this 'promise of the Father', was that His disciples would be 'baptized with the Holy Spirit' very soon.

Jesus said that this event would cause them to 'receive power when the Holy Spirit' (Acts 1:8) comes upon them to be His witnesses. So in the early narrative of Acts, Jesus Himself was teaching and bringing to a culmination what He had been teaching his closest disciples - the eleven - in the day preceding His betrayal and arrest. The content of His teaching is recorded in full by the apostle John, in his gospel, chapters 14 to 17.

In these chapters, Jesus takes much time to teach them about the Holy Spirit, the Divine Comforter, another Person of the Godhead, whose sole task would be to reveal Jesus and His will, to the disciples once Jesus is no longer around them in person,

Jesus made it so clear that the Spirit would continuously point to Him, and would reveal to the disciples, the will of the Godhead. The Holy Spirit would remind the disciples of all that Jesus had taught them (John 14:26).

The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, and as Jesus did nothing except that which He saw the Father do, so would the Holy Spirit testify of Jesus to the disciples.

When the Spirit is given on the day of Pentecost, Peter begins to preach. And Peter's preaching, accompanied with the power of the Holy Spirit, accomplishes amazing things. Multitudes are saved, miracles start happening, and angels become a regular feature. Not to mention opposition and persecution.

Peter's preaching is quite straightforward; he preaches that Christ is God's chosen One, the judge of all the earth, and unless the Jews initially, and then the Gentiles as represented by Cornelius and his household, repent, and believe in Jesus Christ, they are under God's judgement, and have no part in His Spirit. Peter's preaching is so unlike today's. Peter preached the full package. He preached Christ Jesus, God's Package of Salvation. And this package included faith, repentance, conversion, and giving of the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit.

In Acts 13, Paul's first sermon at the synagogue of Antioch of Pisidia, departs quite substantially, at least in phraseology, from Peter's. Paul's gospel is focused on Jesus as the forgiver of sins, the fulfillment of Jewish Scriptures, and the Justifier of all who cannot be justified by works of the law.

This message was so powerful that the 'Gentiles begged that these words be spoken to them the next Sabbath'!

Can you imagine such a scene today? That people who hear the gospel of Christ the justifier woudl actually beg that these words of Christ be spoken to them?

How have we missed this central and core element of the gospel today? Christ the Justifier, and the Holy Spirit the promise of the Father? Both crucial elements, often than not missing in the gospel proclamation from many pulpits across the land.

I am convinced that only when we, by His gracious help, come back to these core central message of Christ and His justifying work through the Holy Spirit, will we see what God will do, for the glory of His Son and His Name.