Pentecost Sunday – Planter, Pastor, Preacher

In One Spirit

After Jesus ascended to the right hand of God the Father almighty, in place of his physical presence he sent his Spirit, witnessed on the day of Pentecost in tongues of fire upon the apostles.[2] That day was unique in Israel, not because the Holy Spirit was absent from God’s people previously but because the Holy Spirit came in an unprecedented fullness, fulfilling Joels’ prophecy of the Spirit being poured out “on all flesh” (Joel 2:28), not indiscriminately but according to the sovereign grace of God.

Who Are the Children of God?

On this Pentecost Sunday, a day on which we commemorate the coming of the Holy Spirit in fullness upon Christ’s church, I want us to consider within our passage today the indwelling characteristics of the Holy Spirit, and therefore the identifying characteristics, in every believer.

To that end, I want us to think on this simple question: Who are the children of God? Are they the natural descendants of Adam, as the universalists believe? In other words, is every human being a child of God? Or, are they the natural descendants of Abraham, as the Jews of Jesus’ day believed, or as dispensationalists believe today? In other words, is every one of Jewish ethnicity a child of God? Or, how do the writers of the New Testament use the term “child of God,” or do they make a distinction at all?

The Goal of Our Election

In conclusion, let us consider a few ways in which we witness the Holy Spirit’s work in our holiness. First, the Holy Spirit’s work in our holiness is witnessed in delivering us from the “desires of the flesh” (2:16). Since our flesh has been crucified, the Holy Spirit turns our desires from the things of the flesh to the things of the Spirit. This doesn’t mean that the desires of our sinful flesh are eliminated. Surely, the desires of the flesh lurk in the dark recesses of our sinful flesh, but the Spirit leads us away from those dark corners into the light. The Holy Spirit directs us to what we rightly “want to do” (5:17) in Christ. And when we do this we build holy habits, not by self-reliance but Spirit-dependence.