In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost?
[Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from Bullinger’s Decades and have been lightly adapted.]
Let us therefore pray and plead with God the Father, that by his son Jesus Christ he would deign to enlighten our dark and misty minds by sending his holy Spirit into our hearts and directing us in the sincere way of truth according to the holy scriptures.
Older forms of evangelism that emphasised ‘inviting Jesus into your heart’ may have been sentimental and misguided. Yet ‘God in our hearts’ is a clearly scriptural idea. It’s explicit in 2 Corinthians 1.22, and it’s implicit elsewhere. So maybe those of us Reformed types who like to use bad evangelistic strategies as a punching bag can chill out and…just maybe…go evangelize a bit ourselves. Okay. Soapbox removed.
One of the key things I noticed in this sermon was what was absent. There was virtually no discussion on the charismatic gifts, miracles in general, the ‘enthusiasts’ or the Zwickau prophets, ecstatic experience, or the Anabaptists. These would all have been in the water for Bullinger, and they were issues that would have created significant pastoral headaches throughout the Reformation. Yet Bullinger gives an almost entirely straightforward and positive treatment on the doctrine and work of the Holy Spirit.
As an aside, when I was in theological training, while doing my first baptism, I baptized the individual ‘in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’ As I was bringing this individual up out of the water (for those of you Presbyterians who are confused as to why there was ‘much water’ involved, ask someone who’s Eastern Orthodox…or Philip’s Ethiopian friend) I remember thinking, ‘Ghost? Why on earth did I say Holy Ghost?’ We weren’t an KJV church, yet somehow that’s what came out during my first baptism. Odd.
Back to business. I’m getting very easily distracted today.
What are some lessons we can draw from Bullinger’s sermon on the Holy Spirit?
1. We need doctrine. The Name into which we are baptized matters.
The fact that we baptize into the Triune Name points to the importance of all three persons of the Godhead. Their names signify their personhood, their existence. So, it’s essential that we understand Who our God is, all three persons. Our doctrine of the Spirit matters, not just for our knowledge, but also for our practice. Who, then, is the Spirit?
The Holy Spirit is the third person in Trinity to be worshipped, very God, proceeding from the Father and the Son, who enlightens, regenerates, sanctifies, and fulfils the faithful with all good graces…. As well, that he is very God, of the same power, glory, majesty, and being with the Father and the Son, that is particularly proven because he is the third person of the holy Trinity. Neither must we think that he is lesser than they because he is reckoned in the third place. For though we remember the blessed Trinity in a specific order, yet there is still no degree, no time, no place, no number within the blessed Trinity. For as Athanasius has confessed…
2. We need sanctification. That’s what the Holy Spirit does.
He is called the Holy Spirit of God because all creatures that are sanctified are sanctified by him. The heavenly Father sanctifies by his grace but through the blood of his Son, and sanctification is brought to us and sealed in us by the Spirit. Therefore the holy Trinity, being one God, sanctifies us…. Moreover, he is called holy, to differentiate between the Holy Spirit and other spirits. For we read in the scriptures that there was and is a spirit in the world, a spirit of confusion, a spirit of immorality and uncleanness, a spirit of pride. From all these the Holy Spirit is separated, who inspires to us the scriptures and confirms us in truth, who purifies our hearts and makes our minds chaste, and so preserves them, and finally, who makes us lowly and gentle, and drives away from us all maliciousness.
Bullinger’s contrast between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of uncleanness present in our world should be convicting. Which spirit fills us? Which spirit are we more like? Which spirit is more evident in our lives? Actions? Streaming habits? Secret thoughts? Browser histories? Yet how often do we make excuses for our sin and sit content, if not actually happy, to remain exactly how we are today for as long as absolutely possible? If by nature I’m a child of wrath, and if God has given me life and renewed my nature through his Spirit (by his plan and the power of his Son), why on earth would I be happy to be what I naturally am? I should yearn to be who God wants me to be! Not my normal self.
Yet how few of us love sanctification the way the Spirit does. He must love it, because that’s his particular purpose and work in the plan of redemption. He sanctifies, hence – as Bullinger notes – he’s called Holy. Look, it’s easy to talk about becoming godly. It’s easy to chat about growth. All too often our labour at sanctification is vague and ephemeral, and frankly, rather less than laborious. We race toward our sins and slouch toward our Bibles. We consume digital media and tune out sermons. We rage against others’ flaws and ignore our own.
Yet God has given us his Spirit – in our hearts – to change us. To grow us.
Read the Puritans on sanctification. Owen. Watson. Goodwin. They’re all fantastic on the work of the Spirit in the believer’s life. Read J C Ryle’s Holiness. Even Kevin DeYoung’s Hole in our Holiness. But pursue holiness from the heart and with an eye to practical change, not just from a pursuit of knowledge.
Incidentally, this is why faculty psychology is so helpful, because it explains for us what the scriptures mean when they say the Spirit is poured into our hearts, what in us exactly it is that the Spirit regenerates, and how sanctification takes place in us and changes our natures. Unfortunately, I don’t know what book to point you to on that, and the Puritan teaching on this isn’t exactly user-friendly. But it’s still true…and vitally important.
3. We need the body. Why else would scripture emphasise the diversity of gifts that flow from the Spirit?
Bullinger points his listeners to 1 Corinthians 12 and the variety of Spirit-empowered gifts there are within the church. Which means…are you with me still…that we need those gifts in our own lives. And we don’t possess them all ourselves. Ergo (that’s Latin darling), we need the body. Christian, we need the body. Church members, we need the body. Disgruntled Christians, we need the body. Pastors, we need the body. All of us in whom the Spirit and his work have been poured need the body. Because we need the whole complement of giftings that the Spirit provides. Not a one of us is whole without the body.
4. Church history is really helpful.
I’ll simply point out how many long block quotations he uses in this chapter from Augustine, Cyril, Tertullian, Didymus, Novatian, Theodoret…just to name some of the authors he uses. Clearly he thinks they’re worth knowing and bolster his theology of God. How many of us are familiar with even this short list?
Then Bullinger finishes his sermon.
Thus far, not without trembling, have we explored the most holy mystery of the reverend Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which we have learned out of the scriptures. And here now we will stay, humbly worshipping this Unity in trinity and Trinity in unity.
Not without trembling…is that how I approach the doctrine of the true and living God? Content with what scripture reveals and seeking no happier state, knowing to know no more than what God has written? Humbly worshipping him simply for Who he is?
And when sins are said to be forgiven in the Holy Spirit, we believe that this benefit and all other benefits of our blessedness are unseparably given and bestowed on us from one, only, true, living, and everlasting God, who is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. To whom be praise and thanksgiving for ever and ever.
Amen.
Next, on good and evil spirits and what they do
