Again Jesus said,
“Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
And with that he breathed on them and said,
“Receive the Holy Spirit.”
(John 20:21-22)
The first words of Jesus after his resurrection was “Receive the Holy Spirit”. When Jesus began his ministry, his ministerial identity was introduced as “he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. “ John 1:33. In John 7:37-38, Jesus said “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” And the apostle John explains its meaning in verse 39. “ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.” When John said Jesus had not yet been glorified, he meant that Jesus had not yet completed His work; dying on the cross and ascending after the resurrection. Basically it is saying that the ultimate goal of the ministry of Jesus was to prepare the straight path for the Holy Spirit to dwell in people’s hearts.
Jesus cleansing us from our sin… it is the only path for the holy God, full of true light, to stay with us who are in the sinful deeds of darkness. In other words, I am saying that to be able to meet God, we need to get our sins forgiven and break free from spiritual confinement. In the Bible, salvation means restoring the loving relationship with God and being with Him.
Jesus’s suffering that we meditated on last week was the ministry of redemption, the sacrifice of atonement that brings us to God by salvation. If you take a long look at the cross and Jesus’ suffering, we will come to know how deep God's love is. Just as God's love is deep, the desire of the Holy Spirit wanting to dwell within us is deep as well.
The Holy Spirit is like a wind, suddenly landing in our hearts from seemingly nowhere. We just need to open up our hearts and ask for forgiveness through the cross, then the Holy Spirit comes upon our hearts and begins to work. Just like the breath of life is breathed into our open mouths, the Holy Spirit comes into our open hearts. Our desire for salvation through crucifixion happens at the same time the Holy Spirit is working within us to dwell into our hearts. The Holy Spirit is involved from the beginning of salvation, and he completes it with his efforts and our open hearts. (1 Corinthians 12:3 “no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit.”) Then the Holy Spirit dwells within the believer’s hearts without knowing. It may look like a simple process, but if we think about the price Jesus paid to make this possible, we will realize that it is a grace that we don’t deserve.
The experiences we go through, where we realize that prayer is spiritual breathing, where our hearts are stirred up when reading the words of God, and where our spirit is renewed, is by itself an amazing grace of God. The mysterious phenomenons, where God's heart is experienced, where spiritual understanding is acquired, where the tear of repentance rolls down our face, where we forgive others and are given spiritual delight and peace, this by itself is also an amazing grace of God. It is because these experiences are the work of the Holy Spirit who stays within us through the work of Jesus.
(To be continued..)
Following the shepherd…
Pastor JiWon Choi.