Transformative Power of the Holy Spirit in Holiness

FERGUSON: When we talk about God, we sometimes think about Him in terms of the names and titles that He's given Himself or that we find in Scripture as given to Him by those who trusted in Him. So, we think about some of the titles that are given to the Father. And, often, in books of theology, you'll find the same thing done with the Lord Jesus. [00:00:08]

We could say he is the creator spirit. And some of the hymns of the Christian church, some of the Latin hymns, express that fact -- veni creator spiritus. Come, Holy Spirit, come. We've also thought about the Holy Spirit as the re-creator, the one who brings order into our disorder, the one who gives fullness where we are empty. [00:01:02]

Therefore, it follows that those who live in communion with him also must be holy. Not only that, but the great ministry of the Holy Spirit, as we've already had hints, is that he takes our disordered lives in our fallenness, in our sinfulness, and he re-creates us so that he is sent by the Lord Jesus into our lives in order to work holiness into our lives. [00:03:48]

Paul expresses something of that conflict when he says, "In myself, I am a wretched man, but thank God, Jesus Christ can deliver me." Then he goes on to explain, in Romans chapter 3, how in the present life, although we are not yet perfect, the Holy Spirit enables us to grow in holiness and, eventually, also in Christ's likeness. [00:05:12]

We are sons of God. We are children of God. If we belong to that family, then it follows, necessarily, that we should live in a manner that's in keeping with that family. When your children are young and they're taking their first steps of independence on their own, perhaps they're going to a friend's house, you quietly take them aside and you say to them, "Now," if they're in my family, "remember you're a Ferguson." [00:07:02]

One of the things that means is that you will constantly be putting to death the things that don't belong to your new family lifestyle. And it's one of the interesting things about this statement. Actually, it's fairly characteristic of the apostle Paul, that he makes these statements, and you want to kind of draw him back and say, "It's all very well for you to make these statements, if by the Spirit you're put to death, the deeds of the body will live, but you don't seem to explain to me how I'm supposed to be able to do this." [00:08:13]

He says, "You've been united to Christ so that you have died to the dominion to sin, and you've been raised into a new kingdom altogether, where grace reigns." And he's saying, now -- I wonder if you ever find this. You often meet Christians who sense that sin is so powerful, "I'll never be able to overcome it." Paul's teaching is this. "Dear friend, if you're a Christian, you've already died to the dominion of sin. [00:11:32]

The point is that the ministry of the Spirit doesn't reduce my responsibility to be obedient to the Lord, but energizes me to fulfill that responsibility. He puts it in other terms in Philippians 2:12-13. He says, "Work out your salvation into the whole of your life and the whole of your fellowship, because God, by the Spirit, is constantly working in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure." [00:12:29]

And he pinpoints this in Romans 8:13, by saying, "If you live according to the flesh, you will die." Very simple principle, isn't it? We reap exactly what we sow. We sow a thought. We reap an action. We sow an action. We reap a character. We sow a character. We reap a life. We sow a life. We reap a destiny. [00:14:05]

Because Paul is teaching us, this is what the Holy Spirit affects in us, actually revolutionizes the way we look at things. I had a colleague who once, beginning of every school year, with an incoming class in seminary, in practical theology, would go into the new room with the new students, eager to learn practical theology, and he would say, "I'm going to give you an exercise before I say anything to you. Take out a clean sheet of paper. I'm going to leave the room. In the next 40 minutes, I want you to write your obituary notice." [00:15:50]

If the Spirit of Christ doesn't dwell in you, then you're not a Christian. But if Christ dwells in you, even, although the body is dead because of the sin, the Spirit is life, because of righteousness. If the Spirit of Him, who raised Jesus from the dead, dwells in you, then that same Spirit will give life to your mortal bodies through the Spirit who dwells in us. [00:19:36]

He was teaching them, right from the beginning, that all practical theology involves looking at the present in the light of your eternal destiny. And that's one of the things that the Spirit affects in us, as a motive, so that we begin to see the visible in the light of the invisible. We begin to see time in the light of eternity. We begin to see all of our actions in the light of the final harvest. [00:16:36]