And behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you:
but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, unto ye
be endued (ye be clothed with) power from on high.
Luke 24:49
And I will pray the Father, and He shall give
you another Comforter, that He may abide
with you for ever. But the Comforter, which
is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send
in My name, He shall teach you all things,
and bring all things to your remembrance,
whatsoever I have said unto you.
John 14:16, 26
And being assembled together with them,
commanded them that they should not
depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise
of the Father, which saith He,
ye have heard of me.
Acts 1:4
Many Christians have little understanding of the Holy Spirit or how He works in our lives. Many Christians have developed a theology about the Holy Spirit by creating a safe religiosity that they can manage, that is, they can do things as say that it is of the Holy Spirit, a development by means of their own abilities. This is not Authentic Christian Faith! This is not what the Scriptures teach us about the Holy Spirit. How can it be that so many professing Christians have such a small understanding of the Holy Spirit? This can be attributed that cultural Christians are a product of false Biblical truth. It is a product of religiosity, a system created by and for nominal Christians. Jesus gave this as a warning and truth: "Apart from Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). Yes, it is true that we can much apart from Jesus but what we do has little to do with the realites of the kingdom of God.
What does a life of spiritual reality require? The enabling influence of the Holy Spirit. The opening Scriptures give us this fact that by the Holy Spirit we can become enlightened as to our understanding, a purifying of our minds, and work in our lives to aid us to understand our needs. The Holy Spirit brings us to that point whereby we repent and this by our believing for the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to turn to Jesus Christ and repent. The Holy Spirit does not take away our personality, rather the Holy Spirit enters into us with His presence in order that Jesus Christ might dwell in us. All that the Father has decreed is accomplished in you by our experience of what the Son of God accomplished on the cross. It is impossible to have Authentic Christian Faith apart from the operations of the Holy Spirit: "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ" (Romans 8:9).
Scripture is so clear, so plain on these things that it would seem impossible to call oneself a Christian and then deny these truths, to develop a theology on the Holy Spirit apart from those truths. When a theology is built upon a man's theology we can simply see how this has worked out in history and we can plainly see that this is not true spirituality.
The Church in so many cases accepted a faulty thinking about the acceptance with God, about salvation. Many so-called, nominal Christians, cultural Christians have little understanding as to what the Bible teaches about the workings of the Holy Spirit and the wonderful gift that a person receives of what Jesus Christ has done and it this knowledge about Him that is our first hint about us, about our fallen nature, and we are convicted of sin. This is a rare thing as many will never listen to the voice of the calling of the Holy Spirit to repent. Men who will reject Christ, or will associate themselves with a "Christian" Church because it makes them feel good about themselves, or pious are seeking something other than true repentance. Jesus Christ has told us that when the Holy Spirit comes that the Holy Spirit would convict a person of sin and when aroused by the Holy Spirit they are brought to a place where their conscience is roused to the point to accept God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and enters into the presence of God. Man so often will not leave the presence of others for this is a bother to them, to their desires and leads them to not want a relationship with God. This is sin against a Holy God: "O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against thee" (Daniel 9:8). Jesus added these words: "And whoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man,it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come" (Matthew 12:32). A person must come to a conviction of their sin(s), not just caught in sin, but has sinned against a Holy God. Forgiveness and holiness are two sides of the same coin and are seen to be authentic when a person who has been forgiven proves he/she is forgiven by being the opposite to what he was and this by the grace of God.
Cultural Christians have a very superficial and a very dangerous understanding about the Holy Spirit. It is though they are putting the proverbial horse before the cart. A person must repent, must believe and this seems to have taken second place among the cultural Christian, among the Pentecostal Christians, and among the Charismatic Christians as they have placed in importance works rather than repentance. This is true of other Christian Churches. This seems so incomprehensible to consider what Jesus paid on the cross for our sin, that some will think that some general principle of mercy, or that our deeds will outweigh our sins are adequate for a person to stand in a right relationship with God.
The entrance into the kingdom of god is through repentance destroying a person' respectable goodness. Until that is done the Holy Spirit cannot form you into the image of the Son of God. You cannot, nor will not repent by means of yourself: it requires God as it is the gift of God. God hands to you this gift and you must take it, but you did not earn the right to have God extend to you this gift. The love of God, His mercy, His justice, is extended to you, for the world, and to reject this gift is to reject God. It is free! Yes, it is true that to receive this gift, to change your life to be in accordance with God's commands may, or might, bring trials and persecution rejoice you are doing what God desires for you to do and those rejecting you are only rejecting God. God has already placed your name in the Book of Life and eternal life is already yours.
So then, the first step is to repent. Examine yourself and see if you have repented according to that which is acceptable to God. Are you adding something other than what Scriptures informs us? If so, STOP!
For thus saith the high and lofty One
that inhabiteth eternity, whose name
is Holy; I dwell in the high and lofty place,
with him also that is of a contrite and
humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the
humble, and to revive the heart of the
contrite ones.
Isaiah 57:15
Repent: Believe: Add nothing
Richard L. Crumb
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