Spirit Works [Easter 6]

LISTEN AND WATCH HERE.


READINGS:

• Numbers 21:4-9
• James 1:22-27
• St. John 16:23-30

Alleluia!  Christ is Risen!

To you all, baptized into the death and resurrection of the true Son of God:  Grace, Mercy, and Peace are yours from God our Father, through our risen LORD and Savior, Jesus the Christ!

Who speaks to you pure doctrine today, in v.27 of the Gospel saying,

“…for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.”

Last week, Jesus introduced the Helper and the Spirit of Truth to us. We Biblically concluded that He was talking about the Holy Spirit and that this Holy Spirit is God having divine names, possessing divine attributes, doing divine works, and receiving divine glory. Jesus also hinted at the works that the Spirit will be doing. That they will be Jesus’ works and Jesus’ words.

Today, we are going to determine just what that work of the Holy Spirit is, for Jesus is talking about prayer today and while there are physical words and body language going on during prayer, most of the action is spiritual. Plus, we have our Lord telling us that it is the Spirit Who translates our prayers for us in Romans 8:26, “…the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”

We call the special work of the Holy Spirit sanctification, as 1 Cor. 6:11 says, “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” We also may refer to this work as conversion. This is an important equivocation because conversion is something that must happen first. An external action. A truth that must be a priori.

A priori is a fancy latin phrase meaning “from what is before”. It is used to refer to knowledge, judgments, and principles which are true without verification or testing. You don’t have to prove blue is a color or that 2 + 2 = 4. It is simply a part of the reality we live in; how the world, how the universe works. Testing, experience, and logical verification are not needed. This knowledge is just known.

One of the biggest arguments against Christianity is that we rely on an unprovable, a priori statement of faith, namely that God exists. The atheists will often argue that so-called "a priori concepts" are little more than baseless assertions — and merely asserting that something exists doesn't mean that it does. Just because we can imagine that God exists, doesn’t make it true. For example, we do imagine plenty of mythical creatures, like dragons, without actually encountering one. Does that mean that dragons must exist simply because we think it? Of course not.

Coming back to our topic, we don’t just dismiss this argument. We can point out that everybody works with a priori statements. The very fact that the atheist can argue and do it rationally, proves that he assumes rational, logic thinking on the part of people and a rational, logical world to operate in. So, a priori statements are not wrong to have, though there are wrong a priori statements.

One of these wrong beliefs is that we need to give permission and allow God be a part of our lives and invite Jesus to be our Lord and Savior. This is not a biblically true statement of faith. We do not first choose God. God first chooses us. When we rob God of this a priori event, we rob ourselves of any semblance of saving faith.

What does Scripture say? Jesus tells us that our sinful minds are hostile towards God (Rom. 8:7). He tells you that you are dead in your sins (Eph. 2:1). You need the Holy Spirit to begin and sustain faith in you because “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14).

So there is a chasm fixed between belief and unbelief, because of sin so that no one may go from unbelief to belief or from belief to unbelief, on his own, as Jesus describes in the rich man and Lazarus. Since this is also the path between life and death, God is able to go from one point to another, not that He believes or doesn’t believe on one side or the other, but that He is able to retrieve you from your unbelief by His Holy Spirit.

Jesus is the God-man that crosses that chasm, bringing life and immortality to light. He descends into the lowest parts of hell, even to before Adam and Eve, to bring them and you out of your sin and death. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He blazed the path and sent His Spirit to give the fruits of His work to all people.

The Holy Spirit does not work through man’s choice, but at the Father and the Son’s choice. He makes the first move and calls you by the Gospel and invites and draws you to partake of the spiritual blessings that are yours in Christ, through faith. It is the Gospel that “is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). This invitation does not invite us to chose, it invites us to believe that we have already been chosen, already been invited, by the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 15:13).

This is because the Gospel has already been accomplished for all people and planned for us before the foundation of the earth (Eph. 1:4). Every single person that has heard it, does hear it, and will hear it, ever, hear and receive a full and complete gift of forgiveness that they may trust, rejoice, and find comfort in.

This is why, when we pray as Jesus tells us today, we pray in Jesus’ Name. All things in heaven and on earth have been given to Jesus. There is nothing that exists that is outside that claim, even saving faith. The Way, the Truth, and the Life are all His. You say “to God be all the glory” and this is how God gets all the glory. You do not have the slightest hand in your conversion from unbelief to belief. If you did, then you would have saved yourself and Christ died for nothing.

The holy, precious, innocent Blood of Jesus was not shed for nothing. It has purchased and won this conversion, this sanctification, this regeneration for you. For, “no one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6), Jesus says and “No one can enter the kingdom of God unless one is born of water and the Spirit” (Jn 3:5). So it is only through the crucifixion of Christ that we receive any means or possibility of salvation.

And it is only the Holy Spirit Who utilizes these means and brings them to you, free of charge. Word and Sacrament are the mode of operation of the Holy spirit. Jesus prays for those who will believe through the Apostles’ preaching of the Gospel (Jn. 17:20) because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ (Rom. 10:17). 

You have been born again through the living and enduring Word (1 Pet 1:23) and you were saved through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5). Word and Sacrament are the physical means that the spiritual Holy Spirit gives to save you. There is no doubt or question what they are doing here, in His Church. 

There is no “did He mean it” or “was I sincere enough” or “is this really for me” stuff. You can wrestle with those question, and you will, but the Word stands firm and by Himself. though you may want to interfere or pay Him back, the Holy Spirit does His work regardless. 

At the Lord’s command, the bronze serpent was set on a pole and when people looked at it, the Holy Spirit healed them as was promised. At the Lord’s command, the Word is preached and there are hearers. And those hearers who look in the mirror and find a sinner saved by grace are moved by the Spirit to be a hearer and a doer of the Word.

At the Lord’s command we pray to the Father, but because the Holy Spirit has first done His work in us, converting us daily from our sin into new life with God. We would never find God. We would never do good works. We would never decide to follow Jesus. What comes first is the Father’s salvation. What comes first is the work of Christ. What comes first is the sanctification and conversion from the Holy Spirit.