The Better Spirit

Today's Reading

Read Acts 2:1-21. The Holy Spirit is poured out on the gathered disciples in tongues of fire, and Peter explains the event by quoting Joel: In the last days, God declares, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.

Read Romans 8:14-17: "For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, 'Abba! Father!' The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs — heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ..."

Read 1 John 4:1-6: "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God... By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God... Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world."

Read Galatians 5:22-25: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control..."

Finally read John 14:16-18: "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you."

Reflection

We end where the Bible ends: with the gift of the Holy Spirit.

For nine days this plan has worked through what Scripture forbids. Deuteronomy 18 and the list of practices the people of God may not adopt. Acts 19 and the public bonfire of the Ephesian magic books. Calvin on astrology. The slave girl with the python spirit. James on manifestation. Saul and the medium of Endor. Daniel in the astrologers' court. The armor of Ephesians 6.

But a plan that ends only on what is forbidden has not finished its work. Christianity is not, at its core, a religion of negation. It is a religion of gift. The God who tells his people not to consult mediums is the God who gives them, in Christ, the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit himself. The prohibition against the lesser spirits is given by the same Father who is offering the greatest Spirit. To miss this is to miss the entire point.

Acts 2 is the canonical scene that ends every plan like this one.

The disciples are gathered in Jerusalem at Pentecost. The risen Christ has ascended. They are waiting, on his instruction, for what he had promised. Then a sound like a mighty rushing wind. Tongues as of fire resting on each of them. The Spirit poured out — not on a chosen few, not on the prophets and the priests, but on all of them, men and women, young and old. Peter stands and explains the event by quoting Joel: In the last days, God declares, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. The barrier between the laity and the prophets, which had stood for fifteen hundred years, is torn down. All flesh now has the Spirit available to it through faith in Christ.

This is what the gospel offers that nothing else can.

The pagan religions of the ancient world — and the new pagan religions of the modern Western world — offer techniques for accessing spiritual power. The shaman has his rituals. The astrologer has his charts. The medium has her trance. The manifester has her vibrational alignment. In every case, the practitioner is reaching across an immense gap to extract some spiritual content from a distant source.

Christianity says: the gap has been crossed. The Father has come to us. The Son has died and risen. The Spirit has been poured out. The believer does not reach across a chasm; the believer is indwelt. The Spirit of the living God lives in the body of every Christian. You know him, Jesus says in John 14, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

This is the deepest answer to the modern hunger that drives so many people into the occult. The hunger is real — Schaeffer was right that modern people, having lost the Christian God, did not become un-spiritual but more spiritual. The hunger is not the problem. The hunger is one of the deepest signals that human beings are made for God. The problem is the address. The hunger reaches, in the absence of the gospel, for whatever spiritual content is on offer — and the offers, as we have seen all week, are bad. They promise contact with the spiritual but deliver bondage, deception, and slow corruption of the soul.

The gospel does not deny the hunger. The gospel feeds it.

J.I. Packer, who wrote on the Holy Spirit for his entire career, made this his pastoral note in Keep in Step with the Spirit. The Christian's privilege is not the avoidance of the spiritual. It is the indwelling of the Spirit. We are not called away from spiritual experience; we are called to the only Spirit who can be safely and fully experienced. The Spirit of the risen Christ. Given freely. Available to every believer. Not extracted by technique but received by faith.

This is what changes the entire conversation. The modern Christian does not have to live in fear of the occult, because the modern Christian has the Holy Spirit, and he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4). This is the verse John gives the church for moments of spiritual fear. The Spirit who dwells in the believer is greater than every other spirit. The cross has already happened. The empty tomb has already happened. The principalities and powers were already disarmed and put to open shame in Christ's victory (Col. 2:15). The war is not still being fought to determine the outcome. The outcome is determined. The remaining war is mopping up.

This is why the right note for the Christian on this whole subject is not panic. Not anxiety. Not the constant scanning of every coffee shop for demonic influence. The right note is doxology. The right note is the joyful confidence of those who know which Spirit they have received, and who have already tasted what that Spirit gives.

What does the Spirit give?

Galatians 5:22-25 lists the fruit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. This is what a life in the Spirit produces. Not occult power. Not predictive ability. Not the manipulation of outcomes. The fruit of the Spirit is character — the slow remaking of the soul into the image of Christ, evidenced in how the believer loves, how the believer waits, how the believer suffers, how the believer rejoices, how the believer walks through the world.

Romans 8:14-17 names the deepest gift. You have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" This is the privilege the entire Old Testament longed for. The God of Sinai is, in Christ, the Father of his people. The Spirit's first and deepest work is to make the believer's heart cry Abba — the intimate Aramaic word a child uses for his father. Packer in Knowing God called this the deepest gift of the gospel: not just forgiveness, not just righteousness, but adoption. We are not God's hired servants. We are his children. The Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit that this is true.

This is the answer to every counterfeit intimacy the world offers. The astrologer offers a "personalized" reading; the Father knows your name. The manifester offers a "personalized" universe; the Father is your Father, and his providence is the most personal love any human has ever experienced. The medium offers a voice; the Father, in his Word, has already spoken, and continues to speak by his Spirit. The whole architecture of pagan spirituality is the search for personal connection in an impersonal cosmos. The gospel says: the cosmos is not impersonal. There is a Father. He has named you. He has adopted you in Christ. He has given you his Spirit.

This is the charge that ends the plan.

You have spent ten days walking through forbidden territory. You have seen, perhaps for the first time, how saturated your own life and the lives of those you love have become with practices the Bible names as abominations. The temptation now is to walk away from this plan more anxious than when you began — more aware of the danger, more vigilant, but also more burdened.

That is not the right ending. The right ending is the joy of the better Spirit.

Take the inventory you made on Day 1. Take the renunciations you saw in Acts 19. Take the courage you found in Daniel and the patience you learned in 1 Samuel 28 and the discernment you practiced on Day 6. And take, alongside all of it, the deepest assurance: the Spirit who lives in you is greater than every other spirit. The God who has named you Father has not given you a spirit of fear (2 Tim. 1:7). The Christ who is on the throne disarmed the principalities and powers at the cross. There is nothing in the spiritual world to fear if you are in him.

This does not mean the war is over for any individual Christian. It does mean the outcome is settled. The Christian fights not for victory but from victory. The Spirit who is in him is the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead, and that Spirit is now his birthright, his comfort, his teacher, his guide.

So the answer to the spiritual hunger of the age is not less spirituality. It is the right Spirit.

The world is full of offers. The astrology app on the dating profile. The tarot reading at the bachelorette party. The manifestation journal in the Christian women's bookstore. The deliverance influencer who has the answer. The yoga studio that calls itself spiritual. None of these can give what the soul actually wants, because none of them is the Father, and none of them gives the Father's Spirit.

But you have him. If you are in Christ, you have the Holy Spirit himself. You can pray to your Father any time and know you are heard. You can read the Scripture and know it is the very breath of God speaking to you. You can come to the table on the Lord's Day and receive Christ in the bread and the cup. You can walk in the company of the saints and know that the Spirit who indwells you indwells them, and that together you are the temple of the living God on earth.

This is what we have been offered. This is what those who are sliding into the occult are missing. This is what the church is for.

Walk on, then, in the joyful confidence of those who have the better Spirit. Refuse the lesser ones. Pray for the friends who have not yet found him. Live, in front of them, the kind of life the Spirit produces — full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Let the fruit of the Spirit be the most attractive argument the church offers against the occult next door.

The Spirit who is in you is greater than every other.

He has already won.

Going Deeper

Pray a long prayer of thanksgiving today. Not asking for anything; not bringing any petition. Just thank the Father for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Thank him for adoption. Thank him for the Word. Thank him for the church. Thank him that the cross has happened and the tomb is empty and the war is decided. Then re-read Romans 8 in full, all thirty-nine verses. End the plan with verses 38-39: neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. The "rulers" and "powers" Paul names include the spiritual powers. None of them can separate you from him. None of them can win.