How to know if you have the Spirit

After a discussion of the Spirit as the sine qua non of being a Christian, a Pentecostal student once asked, "And how do you know that you have the Spirit." I knew where this was headed. The student believed that a person could know they had the Spirit if they spoke in tongues. Of course the consequence of this belief is that, unless you see Pentecost as a second blessing, a person cannot even be a Christian if they do not speak in tongues.

The book of Acts plays fairly easily into this idea, because of the six times Acts says someone was filled with the Spirit in Acts, three of them also mention tongues. Further, if you take 1 Corinthians 14:18 to mean that Paul spoke in ecstatic tongues as well, then a person might suggest that even though Acts 9 doesn't mention it, he probably spoke in tongues when he was filled with the Holy Spirit as well.

However, the fact that Paul only mentions tongues in relation to a problem in the Corinthian church leads us to suspect that they did not likely play such a significant role in his theology as the very evidence of the Holy Spirit.

So what is the evidence of the Holy Spirit in the individual, and how does this relate to the church?

In Romans 8:16, Paul says, "The Spirit itself witnesses together with our spirit that we are children of God." What does this look like?

It is not the purpose of this study to explore the individual evidence of the Holy Spirit in an individual believer. I will just mention three in passing.

The first is the assurance of sonship, which is surely related to the fact that the justified "have peace with God" (Rom. 5:1). We do not receive a Spirit that allows for the continuance of the fear of coming wrath (8:15). God has poured out His love in our hearts through the Holy Spirit (5:5). What is this love a metonymy for, assuming that Paul is thinking of us feeling God's love? In the light of what follows, surely this includes the atonement provided by Christ's death (5:9). Surely it includes an avoidance of God's wrath (5:9).

Might it also include the fact that the Holy Spirit is an earnest of our inheritance? In other words, we should not think of receiving the Holy Spirit as some legal enactment. There is a real heavenly "infusion" involved here. The mind can certainly play tricks on us, but if there is no change, no recognition of any difference eventually, then something is awry.

Part of this infusion should be a power over sin. If a person does not find it much more possible to overcome temptation and live "righteously," we must again question whether the person has really received the Holy Spirit.

Finally, along with this empowerment over sin should be the visible presence of the fruit of the Spirit in a person's life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

But for this study, the question is how the church might relate to these dynamics of the individual and the Spirit. Let me suggest three:

1. The church's authority to exclude from the body of Christ implies some authority in relation to the witness of the Spirit.

Paul says in 1 Cor. 5:4-5, "In the name of the Lord Jesus, when you are gathered together and my spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus, deliver such a person to the Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit might be saved on the Day of the Lord."

Notice the ecclesial dimension to this explusion. It is not an activity of Paul alone but Paul with the church in Spirit. This action is the removal of this person from the visible, corporate "midst" of the church at Corinth (5:2). The putting of this person out of the physical gathering of this individual is his delivery over to the realm of Satan, which is outside of their physical gathering.

The importance of contiguity should not be overlooked. An unbelieving spouse, as well as the children, are sanctified by a believing parent (1 Cor. 7:14). Notice here that it is in connection with the believing one that the unbelieving spouse is sanctified.

2. Related to the power that the community has to expel sinners of a certain degree from its midst is the authority through the Spirit to retain or forgive sins.

In John 20:22-23, Jesus says, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of certain ones, they are forgiven. If you hold on to the sins of certain ones, they have been retained."

Certainly the disciples/apostles were a special group of believers, but the Gospel of John was not written for the apostles any more than Matthew 18:17-20 was:

"If he does not listen to them, speak to the assembly [church]. If he does not listen even to the assembly, let him be as a Gentile and tax collector to you.

"Truly I say to you: whatever you bind on earth will [already] have been bound in heaven. And whatever you loose on earth will [already] have been loosed in heaven. Again I say to you: if two of you concur on earth concerning any matter whatever he ask, it will happen to them from my Father in the heavens, for where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst."

These passages were written first, I would argue, with the local church rather than the universal church in mind. John in particular seems closely connected to a specific community in Ephesus. Matthew has a fairly clear Palestinian Jewish provenance. I do not believe they were written just for these communities, but the sense of the assembly is local assembly and not the metaphorical assembly of all the firstborn.

These words were written to apply to the local churches of all the ages and not just for the apostles or the localities of these communities.

If the Spirit gives the individual power over sin, there is a sense in which the community of saints empowers even further over sin. How can this not be the case when the realm outside the community is the realm of Satan? It is the realm of the Spirit that is the place of power over sin.

But we also see the role of intercession in overcoming sin. 1 John 5:16-17 tell of how the prayer of a fellow believer on behalf of a brother sinning a sin not to death can effect that brother's forgiveness.

3. We see from Acts and John that it is in fact the Spirit that empowers all the functioning of the church. It is the Spirit that gives the early church boldness to proclaim and suffer. It is the Spirit that brings unity of spirit and mind. It is the Spirit that directs, that leads into truth, that convicts of sin, righteousness, and judgment. This is the subject of my last post before I crank out a paper version of these ideas.