Quotes about Spirit

For Christians it's always a love game ... that He is love itself ... Indeed, some have suggested that one way of understanding the Spirit is to see the Spirit as the personal love which the Father has for the Son and the Son for the Father.

Redemption is not simply making creation a bit better, as the optimistic evolutionist would try to suggest. Nor is it rescuing spirits and souls from an evil material world, as the Gnostic would want to say. It is the remaking of creation, having dealt with the evil that is defacing and distorting it. And it is accomplished by the same God, now known in Jesus Christ, through whom it was made in the first place.

Because the early Christians believed that resurrection had begun with Jesus and would be completed in the great final resurrection on the last day, they believed that God had called them to work with him, in the power of the Spirit, to implement the achievement of Jesus and thereby to anticipate the final resurrection, in personal and political life, in mission and holiness.

Jesus himself is the new Temple at the heart of the new creation, against that day when the whole earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. And so this Temple, like the wilderness tabernacle, is a temple on the move, as Jesus's people go out, in the energy of the Spirit, to be the dwelling of God in each place, to anticipate that eventual promise by their common and cross-shaped life and work.

Following Christ in the power of the Spirit means bringing to our world the shape of the gospel: forgiveness, the best news that anyone can ever hear, for all who yearn for it, and judgment for all who insist on dehumanizing themselves and others by their continuing pride, injustice, and greed.

Those who belong to Jesus are called, here and now, in the power of the Spirit, to be agents of that putting-to-rights purpose.

Love will always suffer. If the church tries to win victories either all in a rush or by steps taken in some other spirit, it may appear to succeed for a while. Think of the pomp and "glory" of the late medieval church. But the "victory" will be hollow and will leave all kinds of problems in its wake.

There are five language-sets in particular which they employed for this purpose. Briefly, they are as follows: Wisdom, Torah, Spirit, Word and Shekinah

People sometimes speak as if the spirit were given to make us happy and relaxed. Well, that may sometimes happen, but this expectation looks suspiciously like an attempt to get the spirit to endorse [14] our modern western aspirations. In the New Testament, the spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness after his baptism,34 and the spirit drives the church into the places of pain and danger so that new creation may happen right there, where it is most needed.

Exile" wasn't just geographical. It was a state of mind and heart, of politics and practicalities, of spirit and flesh. As long as pagans were ruling over the Jews, they were again in exile.

sovereignty let loose through Jesus and the Spirit and aimed at the healing and renewal of all creation.

And we must not confuse the idea of God speaking, in this or any other way, with the notion of authority. Authority, particularly when we locate it within the notion of God's Kingdom, is much more than that. It is the sovereign rule of God sweeping through creation to judge and to heal. It is the powerful love of God in Jesus Christ, putting sin to death and launching new creation. It is the fresh, bracing and energizing wind of the Spirit.