Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4148. The Spirit symbolised by fire is one of the most dramatic and recurring pictures in Scripture, reaching its most famous expression at Pentecost, where “divided tongues as of fire” appeared and rested on each of the believers gathered in the upper room (Acts 2:3). Fire runs through the biblical story as a consistent…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4147. The Spirit symbolised by a dove is one of the most visually arresting pictures in the whole New Testament, appearing at the precise moment of Jesus’ baptism when “the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him” (Matthew 3:16)….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4145. The liberty of the Spirit in 2 Corinthians 3:17 is the freedom Paul says belongs to everyone in whom the Holy Spirit dwells, a freedom from the old covenant’s condemning, veiling, life-denying power, and from the despair of trying to please God through a law that could only ever expose sin without removing…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4144. The ministry of the Spirit in 2 Corinthians 3 is Paul’s description of the new covenant he has been entrusted to preach, a covenant written not on stone tablets but on human hearts by the Spirit of the living God, and one that produces life rather than condemnation. “He has made us ministers…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 4143. The spiritual man and natural man in 1 Corinthians 2 are Paul’s two categories for describing how human beings relate to the things of God, and the difference between them is not intelligence, education or moral effort but whether or not a person has the Holy Spirit. “The natural person does not accept…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4142. The continuous filling of the Spirit is exactly what Paul has in mind when he writes “be filled with the Spirit” in Ephesians 5:18, and the Greek grammar behind that command tells us something the English translation, on its own, can easily miss. The verb Paul uses is a present tense, passive, imperative….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4141. Receiving the Spirit by faith is the very first argument Paul reaches for when he wants to correct the Galatian churches, and he reaches for it because it settles the whole controversy in one stroke. “Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4140. The Spirit of adoption is Paul’s name in Romans 8:15 for the Holy Spirit in His specific work of bringing us, as believers, into the felt reality of being God’s own children rather than His frightened servants. “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4139. The groaning of the Spirit in Romans 8:26 is Paul’s description of the Holy Spirit interceding for us with what he calls “groanings too deep for words”, at exactly the point where our own prayers have run dry. I have stood at enough hospital bedsides and sat with enough grieving families to know…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4150. The Spirit symbolised by oil is one of the oldest pictures in the Bible, and it carries a weight that is easy to miss if we only think of oil as something for cooking or for soothing dry skin. In the ancient world oil was the substance of consecration. When something was set…