The Power of the Spirit in Acts 1:8

Question 4134

The power of the Spirit promised in Acts 1:8 is the empowering for witness that the risen Lord pledged to his disciples just before he ascended. He told them, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. The word translated power is the Greek dynamis, from which we get our word dynamic, and it speaks of effective, working strength. Yet the striking thing about this promise is the purpose to which the power is tied. It is not power for its own sake, nor power for display, but power to be witnesses to the Lord Jesus across the whole world.

To understand the power of the Spirit in this verse we have to keep its purpose in view, because much confusion arises when the promise of power is torn away from the mission it was given to serve. The disciples were not to receive a force they could direct as they pleased, but an enabling fitted exactly to the task of bearing witness.

The promise of the power of the Spirit

The setting of the promise is the forty days between the resurrection and the ascension. The disciples, still thinking in national terms, ask whether the Lord will at this time restore the kingdom to Israel. He turns their attention from the timing of the kingdom to the task of the present age. They are not to know the times the Father has fixed, but they are to receive power when the Spirit comes, and they are to be witnesses. The kingdom they long for will come in its appointed day, but first the gospel must go to the ends of the earth, and for that they need the power of the Spirit. The fulfilment came days later at Pentecost, which we describe in our answer on what happened at Pentecost.

The verse also sets out the pattern of the whole book of Acts. The witness begins in Jerusalem, spreads through Judea and Samaria, and moves out to the end of the earth, and Luke traces exactly that expansion chapter by chapter as the Spirit drives the church outward. The power of the Spirit is the engine of the mission, carrying the message from a single upper room in Jerusalem to the heart of the empire at Rome. Without it the disciples would have remained a frightened huddle behind locked doors. With it they became bold witnesses who could not be silenced.

Power given for witness, not for self

The grammar of the promise will not let us separate the power from its purpose. You will receive power, and you will be my witnesses. The one leads straight to the other. This rules out a whole range of ways in which the idea of spiritual power has been misused, where power is sought as an end in itself, a thrill, a status, a means of personal advancement or a tool for impressing others. The power of Acts 1:8 is given to a witness so that he can point away from himself to the Lord Jesus, and the moment it is turned inward to exalt the one who has it, it has been wrenched from its God-given purpose.

It is worth remembering that the Greek word for witness, martys, is the word that gives us martyr, and many of those first witnesses bore their testimony at the cost of their lives. The power they received was not the power to escape suffering but the power to remain faithful through it, the power to keep speaking the truth when speaking it was dangerous. This is a very different kind of power from the one the world prizes, and it runs along the same lines as the empowering that strengthens believers in trial, which we discuss in our answer on not by might nor by power.

How the power of the Spirit works today

The same Spirit who came at Pentecost indwells every believer now, and the same power is available for the same purpose. We should not imagine that the power of Acts 1:8 was a one-off endowment for the apostles alone, for the promise reaches to the end of the earth and therefore to the end of the age, and the church in every generation has needed the Spirit to make its witness effective. A believer may know the gospel thoroughly and still find his witness timid and fruitless in his own strength, and the answer is not better technique but a fresh dependence on the Spirit who gives boldness and makes the word go home to the heart of the hearer.

This empowering is closely bound to the ongoing filling of the Spirit. When the believers in Acts 4 prayed for boldness, they were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness, the same word used at Pentecost. The power for witness is not a static deposit but a living dependence renewed again and again as the need arises. The believer who would witness with power must keep returning to the Lord to be filled, as we set out in our answer on being filled with the Spirit.

Power and weakness together

It is striking that the same Spirit who gives power also keeps the believer in a place of dependence rather than self-sufficiency. Paul, who saw the power of the Spirit at work in his ministry as fully as anyone, was given a thorn in the flesh to keep him from being lifted up, and was told by the Lord, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). The power of the Spirit does not make a man strong in himself, but flows through him most freely when he knows his own weakness and leans hard on God. The proud and self-reliant are the last to know this power, and the humble and dependent the first.

This explains a pattern that often puzzles those who watch the work of God, that he so frequently does his greatest work through people who seem least equipped for it. The power is his, and he is pleased to display it through weak vessels so that the glory is plainly his and not theirs. Paul reminded the Corinthians that not many of them were wise or powerful or of noble birth, but that God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong, so that no human being might boast in his presence. The power of Acts 1:8 has never depended on the natural strength of those who receive it.

Knowing this frees the believer from two opposite errors. It frees him from the despair that says he is too weak to be of any use, since weakness is the very soil in which this power works. And it frees him from the pride that imagines the power is a personal possession to be displayed, since it belongs to the Spirit and not to the one through whom it flows. The witness who walks in the Spirit holds his own weakness and the Spirit power together, content to be weak so that the strength may plainly be from God.

This is why the early believers, having received the Spirit, returned so often to prayer. They did not treat the power as a possession to be assumed, but as a supply to be sought, and they asked again and again for boldness to speak. The power for witness is kept fresh in the same way still, by believers who know their weakness and keep coming to God for the strength to bear their testimony.

So, now what?

If your witness for the Lord Jesus feels weak and fearful, do not conclude that you simply lack the gift and leave the work to others. The power promised in Acts 1:8 is for ordinary believers facing ordinary fear, and it is given to those who depend on the Spirit rather than on themselves. Ask the Lord to fill you afresh and to give you boldness, and then open your mouth, trusting him to supply what you lack in the moment of need.

Keep the purpose of the power clear in your own heart. The Spirit is given to make you a witness to Christ, not to make much of you, and the surest sign that you are walking in his power is that people are pointed past you to the Lord. Guard against every temptation to seek spiritual power for the sake of standing or excitement, and ask instead for the power that makes a faithful witness.

The mission that began in an upper room is not yet finished, and the same Spirit who carried it from Jerusalem to Rome will carry it through you to whatever corner of the earth he has placed you in. Receive the power he gives, and be his witness where you are.

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1:8