REFLECTIONS

Written by Stephen Shead

When we think about holiness, our brains often jump to the “doing” part – what kind of people we should be and how we should live. Those things are crucial, and we’ll get to them. But it’s more important to slow down and give God our full attention. Because the real transforming power comes not from struggling with sin, but from gazing on God.

So let’s delve deeper into the giver of holiness. Yesterday we saw that the way to become holy is by grace, that is, as a gift. But who exactly is the giver of that gift? Well, God, of course. But in Jesus, God’s gives us a much fuller, deeper picture of who he is and how we are sanctified.

Through Jesus, we discover that the one true God is an eternal relationship of three “Persons” or “someones”: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And through the New Testament, a pattern emerges in the life of God and in his work in the world. This isn’t the time for a full-blown doctrine of the Trinity, but the pattern looks something like this:

• The origin of basis of everything God does is the Father’s purpose and election.

• The Son is the mediator, the content of God’s work and the agent who carries it out.

• The Spirit is the one who completes or “perfects” God’s purpose and connects his power to our lives.

That’s why the Bible tends to focus on the Father in God’s work of creation, on the Son in redemption, and on the Spirit in our experience of God’s work in our lives. It’s not that the other two Persons are less involved at any point. All three are fully and equally involved in everything God does. It’s just that the spotlight shifts.

So, when it comes to God’s work of making us holy: The Father elects, the Son redeems and reconciles, and the Spirit completes.

We saw that from Ephesians chapter 1 (you can read it again if you like):

• God the Father chose us before the creation of the world to be holy. He predestined us to belong to him as his sons (v4-5).

• Jesus the Son redeemed us from sin and reconciled us to God by his blood shed on the cross – in him we have redemption and forgiveness (v7).

• The Spirit completes God’s electing and redeeming work by bringing us to faith in Jesus. It’s through the Spirit that we experience Christ’s redeeming work and are born again. Or in Paul’s words, when we believed the gospel, we were sealed with the Holy Spirit (v13).

It can feel special when someone makes a big fuss over you or goes to a lot of work for you. But when it’s not just one person – when everyone goes to huge trouble for you – it can be very humbling, even embarrassing. So, what an awesomely humbling thrill it is to know that all three Persons of the eternal Godhead were fully involved, from before the world was created until the moment you said “yes” to Jesus, in making you holy.

God the Father chose to devote you to himself, even before he said, “Let there be light.”

God the Son was thinking of you when he laid down his life and allowed the soldiers to hammer the nails into his Word-become-flesh wrists.

God the Spirit came to you personally, opened your eyes to see the light of Christ, and marked you out as a child of God himself. He made Christ’s work real to you, and gave you the experience of being washed clean and becoming wholly devoted to God.

That last point is why it’s appropriate that the spotlight tends to fall more on the Holy Spirit when we think about the experience of salvation and coming to new birth through faith in Jesus. The Spirit is the one who completes God’s redeeming and reconciling work. That is, the way we actually become holy is through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

But the Spirit doesn’t do that in a way that means the Father and Son fade into the background. He does it by turning the spotlight at full brightness back on the Father and the Son. That’s why, when the Spirit has sanctified you through faith in Jesus, your mind is filled with God the Father and his love and glory and goodness in Christ. It’s the Spirit’s work that makes you long for nothing more than to run to the Father and call him ”Abba”, “dad”.

Finish today by meditating on Paul’s words in Galatians 4:

3 So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. 4But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. 6 Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba , Father.” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir. (Galatians 4:3-7)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen is our senior minister.