The Switch…

To Joy (part 12)

Three things the Holy Spirit does for us: First of all, he helps us understand why we humans have problems; it’s because we don’t look to Jesus to solve them. He then helps us understand how Jesus solves our problems, by filling us with Jesus’ righteousness, his nature, his goodness. And then he helps us understand how Jesus’ nature in us frees from all the rotten, twisted attitudes the evil power controlling this world had us stuck with before.  

And what that does is change our behaviour in such a way it’s noticeable, because that’s God’s strategy for the church having an impact in this world. It’s through the transformed, obviously different lives of Jesus’ disciples, and the joy we are clearly experiencing from being free and whole. 

Because as one writer put it, “There is something beautiful about whole people. They attract us, they capture our attention,” because “despite all the failure and weakness and the stumbling folly of their lives, here are people who like themselves have suffered all the hurt and loneliness of life, but have found the secret of calmness, peace, and forgiveness.”

As the world observes what the Spirit does to Jesus’ disciples, therefore, it’s helping people learn what that secret is, that Jesus is the Lord of life. You can’t play the game of life without acknowledging the One who created human life. Where we jump the rails, then, is ignoring the One in charge of life. We can try all we like to “get ourselves together” and become the whole beings God created us to be, but we are being “made the righteousness of God (the wholeness he has) in Jesus,” 2 Corinthians 5:21. It’s the work of the Spirit that makes us whole, not by anything we come up with. 

Jesus wanted “to say much more” to his disciples on this subject, John 16:12, but they’d be learning all they needed to know from the Holy Spirit later. That’s why he said it was “for your good that I am going away,” verse 7, because the Spirit would come and fill his disciples in such a way their lives would have an impact on people – which is exactly what happened when the Spirit came in the book of Acts. 

The joy for Jesus’ disciples in any age, then, is knowing the Holy Spirit will do the same through us…(continues Monday)