The Spirit and the spirits

You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 12:2-3

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.  By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

1 John 4:1-3

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit who delights to exalt Jesus.  His mission in this last age is to bear witness to Christ, to open eyes to the reality of who Jesus was and is - and in this way to bring people to faith and into unity with Christ (and to reveal the reality of sin and judgement in those who will not believe).  Always his focus is Christ Jesus.

Sometimes people ask me 'how do we balance Jesus and the Spirit?' - meaning, how do we take seriously the objective revelation of God in Christ as Scripture bears witness to him, and also take seriously the mysterious subjective revelation of God in the Spirit?  The answer is that we don't.  Taking the Holy Spirit seriously means setting our spiritual eyes, our hearts, our minds on Christ Jesus.  Any spirit which distracts from Jesus, any spirit which does not exalt him, and spirit which does not confess his incarnation - his death, resurrection, and ascension - as the central reality of human history and each individual human life: that is not the Holy Spirit, but is the spirit of antichrist.

This can be subtle.  There is teaching which makes much of Jesus, but not quite enough.  There is teaching which makes Jesus the noblest of human beings (but not God, at least not in the fullest sense) - this is implicit in a lot of liberal teaching (and there is a lot of it masquerading as evangelicalism at the moment, but that's another matter); and there is teaching that makes Jesus divine in some sense (but not a real human being) - although this side of the equation is perhaps less popular in the current cultural moment.

But the Holy Spirit says 'Jesus is Lord' (that is, the LORD), and the Holy Spirit says 'Jesus came in the flesh' (that is, in genuine humanity, in which he suffered, died, and rose).

Test the spirits, and listen to the Spirit.

Being myself

The only problem is, which 'self' should I be?

At the most basic level, all of us come up against the phenomenological self.  That is to say, the person we experience as ourselves.  The bundle of experiences, characteristics, and attributes - physical, mental, and spiritual - which are 'me'.  This is not the same as the person other people encounter; by (provisional, and in need of later tweaking) definition, a 'self' can only be self-experienced.  It is who I am to myself.

But then, I am also aware of another self, the sort of self I want to be, the aspirational self.  Sometimes I am just aware that the self I experience does not match up with well the person I like to think I am.  Sometimes, more painfully, somebody else describes me, and I realise that I am indeed 'like that', even though I feel that is 'not really me' - I am forced to own their description, even as I really want to disown it.  So a gap opens up between 'who I am' and 'who I want to be' - except more often than not, I do not see it that way.  Rather, I see 'who I am' and 'who I really am'.  Perhaps this is a delusion, but it is an important one; I harbour the thought that 'I' am really other than - better than - the self I experience.

The gospel of the world is that I can be, and should be, my aspirational self.  'Sanctification' is about being more myself, more the person I like to think of myself as being.  And when I hit a roadbump - when there is something in my phenomenological self which I don't seem to be able to adjust - I should adjust my aspirational self instead.  The goal is to bring the two together, one way or another.

But then there is what I will call the Christological self.  In Christ, my identity is not about my self-identity.  My true self has already been identified in him.  I don't see it now, because it is hidden.  But that doesn't mean it isn't real.  My self is determined, not by me, but by Jesus Christ, his life, death, and resurrection.  Because here is someone - the only person - who really and truly knows me better than I know myself.  As my creator, he knows the self I was made to be; as my redeemer, he knows the self I have been eternally determined to be.

So the true gospel says: be yourself.  But not the self that is determined by the mere phenomena of your existence, or even by your dreams and aspirations, but by who Jesus has determined you to be.  And these are not the same.  Just because I see something in me doesn't mean it belongs to my truest self.  Just because I dream something doesn't mean it is who I really am.  I am who I am in him, and to be a disciple is to look to him and to walk like him.  And so to be myself.

Future Prospects and Present Purity

I don't know of anywhere in Scripture that expresses the Christian hope more beautifully than 1 John 3:2 - "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is".  This is the Christian's personal eschatology.  A few comments on it...

1.  It is hope, because although it is already ours ("we are God's children now") we do not yet see it ("...has not yet appeared").  We live for the future, because our present status is something that we will only enjoy and experience in the future.

2.  The Christian hope is entirely wrapped up in Christ.  To see Christ is at the heart of it.  That is why "the sky, not the grave, is our goal".

3.  To see Christ truly is a transformative experience.  We see this to some extent in the present life ("we all with unveiled faces...") but ultimately, when we see him - when faith becomes sight - then we will be like him.

It's worth noting the next verse.  "And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure".  If we expect this transformation in the future, if we hope to see him and be like him then, we should seek to be like him now.  To me, this makes good sense.  It is where we are going that decides the direction we strike out in.  If this is where I'm going - toward purity, toward Christ - then it makes sense to make today a step in the right direction.

Who I will be defines who I am, much more than who I was ever could.

Unbelief in Eden

We see two-stage unbelief in Eden.

First, Adam and Eve do not believe that God intends to be good to them, and therefore they suspect that his commands are actually restrictive rather than liberating.  The result of this first stage of unbelief is disobedience, and it is inexcusable.  They should have known from the fact of their creation that God is good, always good.

Second, Adam and Eve do not believe that God will sustain them and all his creation in the face of their sin, and therefore they doubt whether he will show them mercy.  The result of this second stage of unbelief is hiding from God, and this too is inexcusable.  They should have known from the fact of their creation that God is committed to upholding his creatures in the face of the chaos and darkness that threatens them.

I sometimes wonder whether we could truly talk of fallen human beings if there were not this second stage; might they not have been just stumbling human beings, recovered by grace?

Corresponding to this, 1 John 2 counters both stages of unbelief in the Christian:

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

 Believe that God is good and don't sin; if you sin, believe that God is good and don't hide!