The Spirit Gives Christ

Today's Reading

Read John 14:16-17 and John 14:25-26: "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth... the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you."

Read John 15:26-27: "But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me."

Read John 16:13-15: "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak... He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you."

Read Romans 8:9-17: "You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you... For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God... The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God."

And read 1 John 4:1 one final time: "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world."

Reflection

We come to the last day, and we come back to where the plan began. John 4:1. Test the spirits. After nine days of frameworks — Edwards's marks, the fruit, Corinthian order, prophetic testing, cessationist sobriety, charismatic expectation — there is one test underneath them all that finally settles every other test, and it comes from Jesus's own mouth.

In the upper room, on the night of his betrayal, Jesus has only hours left with his disciples and a great deal to tell them. He devotes much of that final discourse to explaining who the Spirit will be and what the Spirit will do. Read those chapters back-to-back and a single, decisive theme dominates them. The Spirit will teach what Jesus has said. The Spirit will bring to remembrance what Jesus said. The Spirit will bear witness about Jesus. The Spirit will glorify Jesus, taking what is his and declaring it to the disciples. The Spirit will not even speak on his own authority. He is, in Jesus's own teaching, the great revealer of the Son.

This is the deep structure underneath every test we have run. It is what John meant in 1 John 4 by every spirit that confesses Jesus. It is what Paul meant in 1 Corinthians 12:3 by no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except in the Holy Spirit. It is what Edwards meant by his first positive mark — raised esteem for that Jesus who was born of the Virgin and crucified without the gates of Jerusalem. It is what Packer meant by the Spirit's floodlight ministry. It is what Calvin meant by the Spirit's inseparability from the Word — because the Word's content, finally, is Jesus. He will glorify me. That is the Spirit's job description, in his Lord's own words.

Take this seriously and the diagnostic question becomes simple, even when our spiritual experiences are confusing. Did this experience deepen your attachment to Jesus? Not your attachment to a feeling. Not your attachment to a leader. Not your attachment to a movement, a tradition, or your own spiritual progress. Your attachment to him. To the Christ of the Gospels. To the actual Lord whose hands still bear the marks of nails and whose throne is the right hand of the Father.

If yes — if you walked away loving him more, trusting him more, eager to obey him more, comforted by him more — then whatever else happened, the Spirit was there. The experience may have been quiet. The experience may have been dramatic. The setting may have been a Pentecostal worship night or a confessional Reformed sermon or a sacrament you have received a thousand times. The vehicle is not the test; the destination is.

If no — if the experience left you more attached to a feeling, a leader, an ideology, a tribe, a sense of your own significance, a hunger for the next intensity, but not more attached to the Lord Jesus himself — then however dramatic it felt, the Spirit's signature was not on it. He may have been mercifully present anyway, working through what was confused; he often is. But the experience does not vindicate itself. The Spirit was sent for one chief purpose, and that purpose is the Son.

This cuts in two directions, and both matter as you finish this plan.

It cuts against any suspicion of the dramatic that has hardened into a refusal to receive the Spirit's actual gifts. There are quiet Christians who have, decade after decade, deepened in love for Christ through Word and sacrament and prayer. The Spirit was at work in every page of every Bible reading and every Lord's Supper and every ordinary Sunday they showed up. They are right that they did not need fireworks. They may also have refused some of his offers along the way — a moment of bold prayer, a sense of leading they explained away, a charismatic friend whose gifts they could not honor because of their suspicion. The Spirit who deepened their love for Christ through the ordinary means would have happily deepened it further through the means they would not name.

And it cuts against any pursuit of the dramatic that has lost track of the Son. There are Christians who have spent years on conferences, anointings, prophetic words, healing services, and waves of revival. Some of that has been the Spirit's real work. Some of it has not. The test is not in the moment; it is in the trajectory. After all that pursuit, do you love Jesus more — the actual Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — or do you love spiritual experiences more, with Jesus as their occasioning excuse? If the former, the Spirit was at work; if the latter, you are exactly where Edwards warned the converts of his own awakening they could end up.

Romans 8 brings the same point home with shattering tenderness. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. The Spirit's chief inward work in the believer is not to produce ecstasies; it is to produce assurance — the steady conviction, in seasons of fire and seasons of dryness, that the Father's love rests on you in his Son. Abba. The Aramaic word Jesus prayed in Gethsemane is now the word the Spirit gives the believer to pray. That is what the Spirit is doing, all the time, in every Christian he indwells. He is binding you to the Son and through the Son to the Father. Anything else he does — the gifts, the leadings, the consolations, the convictions of sin, the slow growth of fruit — is in service of that.

So here is where the plan ends. Be a Christian who expects the Holy Spirit. Do not quench him. Do not despise prophecies. Do not write off the dramatic by reflex. Do not dismiss your charismatic brothers and sisters because some of their churches have been embarrassing. Pray for healing. Ask the Spirit, by name, to act. Read the Bible expecting him to illumine it. Receive the sacrament expecting him to feed you through it.

And test every claimed work of his against the criteria he himself has given. Christological — does it land you on the actual Jesus? Doctrinal — does it agree with the Scriptures he breathed out? Ethical — does it bear the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? Communal — does it build up the body in love and order? Eschatological — does it produce, over years, a person more conformed to the image of Christ? Where the answer is yes, give thanks; the Spirit is at work. Where it is no, hold the experience loosely; whatever it was, his signature is not on it. Where you are uncertain, wait. Fruit takes seasons.

This is what John commanded. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. It was an apostolic command, in the first century, in a church besieged by competing spiritual claims. It is also a command for our century, in our churches, besieged by our own. The same Spirit who gave the command will help you keep it. He has been the third party at every page of this plan, and he is the third party in your reading of it now. Ask him plainly — for discernment, for love of Jesus, for the fruit only he produces — and then live as if you trust him to answer.

He will. He glorifies the Son. That is what he does.

Going Deeper

Pick one experience, claim, or movement in your life — your own past, your church, a leader you follow, a viral testimony you have been chewing on — and run it through the tests one final time. The Christological test. The fruit test. Edwards's positive marks. The order-and-love test. The "did this deepen my love for Jesus?" test. Write down what you see. Then pray, in the same words John gave you: Lord, by your Spirit, lead me to confess Jesus Christ has come in the flesh — and to recognize you wherever that confession is being deepened. That is the prayer the Spirit was sent to answer. He will.