Welcome
back to my blog. Thank you for visiting today. We are exploring relevant
research findings from Teleios! A list of our compelling findings is on our
website (www.teleiosresearch.com).
Teleios
recently examined the important role of the Holy Spirit in Christians’ lives in
visitors to the Instagram account, InstaPray. We had 475 participants, 68% were
adolescents (<18) as well as millennials (18-34), 78% evangelicals and 71%
female. Wow, we received some amazing answers!
The Holy
Spirit is a very important yet controversial and often emotional topic. Opinions
vary widely about the role of the Spirit, from traditional orthodox to
charismatic beliefs. However, in all groups there is often a general lack of
knowledge of what scripture teaches. Let's cover some pertinent topics over the
Spirit examining what scripture says and perhaps we can all better shape our own
thinking based on the truth of God.
I
generally breakdown scriptures handling of the Spirit for the New Testament
Church into three basic realms:
· The Spirit’s work in salvation
· The Spirit's role in
our Christian walk
· The Christian’s duties
to the Spirit
Let's
examine what our participants said regarding the Spirit and salvation (please
see table).
What
the Bible says:
Indeed, the Spirit in salvation in scripture is key. He performs the following
vital functions.
· Convicts the world of
sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8) - This role is vital because left
to our own resources, as fallen man both physically and mentally, we would not
come to faith and salvation by our own reckoning (Romans 3:10-12). Therefore,
the Spirit is central to help unbelievers recognize their faults, coming
judgment and God’s demand for righteousness.
· Baptizes (Romans 6:2-3,9;
Ephesians 2:4-7; Colossians 2:12-13) - In the epistles the word ‘baptism’
signifies spiritual baptism which occurs at our salvation by the Spirit. The
actual meaning of the word baptism (βαπτιζω, baptizoo) is ‘to
identify with’. Therefore, the Spirit baptizes us by identifying us with
Christ’s death and resurrection.
The Spirit accomplishes this by putting to death
our old person and resurrecting us to a new living person. ‘Regeneration’ and ‘born
again’ are other concepts in Scripture signifying this important event (Titus3:5; John 3:3). These wonderful verses demonstrate to us the profound
importance of the resurrection because there is no eternal life without the resurrection
and regeneration (1 Corinthians 15:13-19).
The incredible fact of spiritual baptism (which
water baptism may symbolize) gives us surety for our great salvation as a new
creature that cannot be slain and re-created our old dead self.
· Seals to Redemption (2 Corinthians 1:20;
2 Corinthians 5:5; Ephesians 1:13-14) - This great promise indicates that each
of us has the Holy Spirit from our time of belief in salvation until the day we
die and go to be with God. Indeed, one of the definitions of a Christian is
that we have the Holy Spirit for we if do not have it we are not yet a believer
(Romans 8:9).
· Places us into the
church (1Corinthians 12:13) - The spirit graciously has placed us at salvation into the
universal church of Christ for which he is the head.
As you
can see, the Spirit is integral in bringing us to Salvation, completing salvation
and bringing us to our eternal life. What a fantastic blessing that we have
such a gift from God as the Holy Spirit.
Please
join us next week as we continue the scriptural discussion of what the Spirit
does for us. Thank you for reading my blog. I hope it is an assistance to you.
WC
Stewart
Response policy - The purpose of the comment section is to promote discussion that
is encouraging, propels the further search of Scripture and raises interesting
and thought provoking Biblically related questions. You may feel free to
disagree with me in a constructive manner using appropriate language. I reserve
the right to remove your comments if they are profane, pornographic, libelous
or I do not consider them constructive or consistent with the policy
stated above. By posting you no longer own your comments and you are granting
me an unrestricted worldwide license to use your comments.
Copyright © 2016 Teleios, Inc. All rights
reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment