The Gift of the Holy Spirit

Easter season is a time of celebration, but also a time of preparation. The gospel readings for the next three Sundays come from John 14-17, in which Jesus is preparing his disciples for his departure. In deeply tender language, Jesus assures his disciples, whom he now calls friends (John 15:15), that they will not be left alone, that they will not be as orphans. Instead, Jesus tells them, another One like Him, another “paraclete,” to use the Greek word, will come to them. We know this paraclete as the Holy Spirit, who comes as our advocate, our counselor, and our comforter—all possible translations of “paraclete” into English.

In the progression of Easter season, we begin to turn our gaze from the empty tomb and prepare for Jesus’ ascension, which we celebrate 40 days after Easter (May 10 this year), and, then, for Pentecost Sunday, when we experience again the gift of the Holy Spirit, who, in the words of New Testament scholar Gordon Fee in his book Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God, is the “personal presence of God” (p. 25). Throughout John 14-17 we find some of the richest New Testament language regarding the fellowship the believer has with God—with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

It is through the presence of the Spirit that, today, we are not only assured of God’s love for us now, but also assured that our present experience of the Spirit is simply a foretaste of the day in which that petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” is finally fully realized. Fee writes that, for the early Christians, “the Spirit was both the evidence that God’s great future for his people had already made its way into the present and the guarantee that God would conclude what he had begun in Christ” (p. 2).

So, as we continue to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, let us also prepare our hearts for a fresh experience of God through the Spirit. Jesus didn’t leave us as orphans. He left us, who are Jesus’ friends, the Spirit, through whom he continues to make all things new (cf. Revelation 21:5)—our broken hearts and our broken world.

Peace,

Chris