Bible Study 2023
Ministry of the Holy Spirit
We are looking in Romans 8:5-11 at the life of the believer as impacted by the Holy Spirit. We emphasize Christ and all of His work, His character and His life. And to understand that each member of the Trinity is equally worthy with the other members of the Trinity. Let us worship the triune God in a more full way, to help you understand the true work of the Holy Spirit.
What is the true work of the Holy Spirit? That’s the intention of the word “spirit”; it is motion, it is force. The fundamental meaning is power, energy, force and life. One-third of the times that that word appears in the Old Testament it refers to God, to the Spirit of God. So when you say Yahweh, the Spirit of God, you’re talking about the power of God, the energy of God.
It is the third person of the Trinity that creates the host of heaven in Psalm 33:6, “By the Spirit of God, God creates the host of heaven.” One moment there is nothing, not even a universe, let alone a universe filled with moving bodies in orbit, and in a split second they all exist. The Spirit of Yahweh is the power that takes hold of His prophets, and carries them to different places in Ezekiel 3, Ezekiel 11, and 1 Kings 18.
The Holy Spirit did not limit His power to creation. He does not limit His power to destruction, although there are evidences in Scripture of both. I’m speaking about the power to create, power to render the unique supernatural work of certain men on earth, power to pick up prophets and move them somewhere else. His power is inside of us. It is a power that is invisible.
There is a fullness of the Spirit now on all believers. We all have the responsibility to proclaim the gospel. We are all kings and priests. So the anointing in the fullness of the Spirit comes upon all of us to empower us, as it were, to be those who reign in the kingdom, those who take men before God as priests would do, and those who preach for God to men as prophets did.
So this is the fullness of the ministry of the Holy Spirit now deposited on all believers as we read in 1 Corinthians 12 as He places us into the body of Christ, gifts us with all enabling to do all ministry that He’s committed us to do, and then we all drink of Him, which means He takes up permanent residence inside of us. With those before His coming on Pentecost, He was with them, now He is in us.
It’s a question of fullness, completeness, richness. What is He doing in this ministry? There’s no more creating. The material world is created. His creative work now is spiritual creation. He creates spiritual life, conversion, regeneration. He sanctifies, He equips, He gifts, He calls, He produces fruit, and He provides power. When I talk about power, I’m talking about His violent force.
If you understand your condition before you were saved, you will understand just how violent it was. Dead in trespasses and sin, blind to the truth of God, and we’ll see more about that in Romans 8. Profound corruption to the core. Profoundly dead, the walking dead, that’s the diagnosis of all human beings before they come to Christ. A violent power comes over the dead and gives them life.
A sanctifying power is released to fight against and overthrow corruption. And one day, that same power will re-create a new you fit for eternal life in heaven. This is amazing power. And the Holy Spirit’s power is also behind the writing of Scripture. All Scripture is God-breathed, authored by the Holy Spirit. Peter says that men were moved by the Holy Spirit to write what God told them.
Let me give you an explanation of that. A man sits down to write, he has his own ideas, his own thoughts, his own predispositions, his own presuppositions. He has the things that are interesting and important to him, and he’s going to write, and all of a sudden here comes the Holy Spirit and blasts that man’s mind and literally shatters everything but what the Holy Spirit wants him to put down.
It is a violent force that overrules all man’s thoughts, all man’s expectations and desires, and he’s left with nothing but this overwhelming realization that he must write only one thing and that’s what the Spirit of God wants him to write. Power to overrule their prejudices, their preferences so that what you get in the Bible is the word of the Holy Spirit through writers who banished everything else.
So the same powerful work is done in inspiration that the Spirit of God is effecting in the life of the believer in whom He dwells as this is the word of the Holy Spirit in Scripture. Because it is a perfect expression of His mind, so it is that in the life of the believer, the Spirit of God has a mind and a will in perfect accord with the Father’s, and He works to eliminate everything that stands in the way.
So there is a violence to this, although we don’t experience it. There are times when we know we’re in a battle, and our flesh is fighting against the work of the Holy Spirit as we fight temptation. In the New Testament, the person of the Holy Spirit is more fully revealed. And only to those who know Christ. Why is it that people attribute all of these people falling down to the Holy Spirit?
Because they don’t know Christ. John 16:13 says, “When the Spirit comes, He will guide you into all truth, He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears He will speak, He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me. He will take of mine and will disclose it to you.” If you belong to Christ, the Spirit will be your teacher. You will correctly understand Christ.
God is giving us an amazing and rich revelation of His gracious, violent, explosive power that basically re-creates us and empowers us in righteousness and ultimately empowers us for eternal glory. So where the Holy Spirit’s power is being manifest, it will not produce foolish, mindless flops on the ground, gushing incoherent babble, ecstatic buzz, or hot flashes of emotions.
All those behaviors have nothing to do with the Holy Spirit. They are a mockery of His true work. When the Holy Spirit is moving, people will be saved, sanctified, united, enabled, gifted, empowered for worship and service and obedience to Holy Scripture. They will be coherent, rational, thinking, orderly, and be faithful to the Word of God because that’s His work.
1 John 2:20 says the Holy Spirit is the anointing that teaches you all things, so you don’t need any men to teach you because He is your teacher. He overcomes your ignorance and all your prejudices. He overcomes your dispositions. In the New Testament everything becomes clear, that salvation is something the Father initiated, the Son validated, and the Holy Spirit activated.
Now, as we come to Romans 8:1, “So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.” That is the summation of the Good News. Verse 34, “Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.” Nothing can separate us; we are in an everlasting, no-condemnation status.
We know God planned it. We know Christ executed it on the cross, but how does it get applied to us? Answer: The Holy Spirit. Now we get into the work of the Holy Spirit in putting us into this saved condition, this no-condemnation status. The first thing that we looked at, is in verses 2 - 3. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
You must be born of the Spirit, Jesus said in John 3 to Nicodemus. And what makes it possible is verse 3, that Christ Jesus, the Son of God, gave Himself as an offering for sin. He took our place. He paid the penalty in full and thus condemned sin. The law can condemn the sinner, but the law can’t condemn sin, only Christ in His death condemned sin in His own human flesh as an incarnate man.
But it’s not automatic and it’s not based on human will; it’s based on the work of the Holy Spirit who gives us life from the dead. Secondly, because of this life, He enables us to fulfill God’s law. This is the heart of what Paul is going to say here. Verse 4, “He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit.”
What will happen when you are regenerate is you will for the first time in your life fulfill the requirements of the law of God, not perfectly, but to some degree. Why is this so? Why will I now obey the law of God in attitude and action? Because verse 4 says, “We do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” That is a fact, people. That is what it means to be a Christian.
Your daily conduct is consistent with the Spirit who is the power, the violent force in you. The Holy Spirit, literally came into your condition of spiritual death with a blast and brought life. And now that same power, that same controlling, dominating power of the Holy Spirit drives you in the direction of obedience to the law of God. Your nature is changed. This is a total transformation.
Verse 5-8, “Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. 6 So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. 7 For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will.”
“8 That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God.” The ability to fulfill God’s law comes from the regenerating power and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. All of a sudden you have a love for the Scripture, you have an interest in the Scripture, and you have a hunger for the Scripture. You want to love God more, and you want to obey His Word.
What is the flesh? It’s not just that which you can touch and see. It is the invisible thought patterns in your mind that inform the behaviors of the body. And you can’t fix it by education. The New Testament talks a lot about the flesh, talks about the deeds of the flesh, the desires of the flesh. It talks about the corruption of the flesh. It simply means your fallen condition without God.
Does this mean we’re perfect? No. We still struggle with the flesh because it’s still there. We don’t live according to the flesh, but the flesh is after us and it’s hanging on. But its power has been severely reduced by the Holy Spirit. Our minds now are such that we are no longer hostile to God. We are subject to the law of God, we are able by the power of the Spirit even please God.
Verses 9 – 11, “But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. (And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all.) 10 And Christ lives within you, so even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God.”
11 The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.” You’re not in the flesh. This signifies the state of grace, the state of salvation. But you’re in the Spirit, you walk in the Spirit, you mind the things of the Spirit, you have life and peace.
The Holy Spirit sustains the same relationship to the second person that He does to the first person and each to each other. This is the mark of a true believer. And because you have the Holy Spirit dwelling in you, it changes how you think, it changes how you act, it changes what you love, it changes what you do, and it changes how you talk because of His power overwhelming your fallenness.
Finally He raises us to immortality, to glorification. That is what verses 10 – 11 say, “Christ lives within you even though your body will die because of sin, and the Spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God. 11 The Holy Spirit, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ from the dead, He will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living in you.”
Look, we’re all going to die. But the truth of the matter is, the day of our death is better than the day of our birth because the first time, we were just born into sin, and the next time we die, we’re going to be reborn into holy perfection. When you die, your spirit goes to heaven, to be present with the Lord. You’re not going to purgatory. Immediately, you’re going to see the Lord.
But you’re going to be a spirit without a body until the final resurrection. And in the final resurrection, the Lord Jesus will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory. He’s going to give us a body like His resurrection body, like His body that ascended into heaven, like His body that walked through walls. By the Holy Spirit power that He has demonstrated.
He also has a perfect understanding to make the perfect you, which will bear some distant relationship to what you are here. He will re-create you and everyone who believes. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. This is the work for which He is to be exalted, freeing us from sin and death, enabling us to fulfill the law, transforming our nature, and giving us a glorified body that will dwell forever in heaven. Let us pray.