Did the Holy Spirit Indwell Old Testament Believers?

Dr. David Murray, is the Professor of Old Testament and Practical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. He lives in Grand Rapids with his wife, Shona, and four children.

I found the following articles by Dr. Murray to be very helpful concerning the question “did the Holy Spirit indwell believers in Old Testament times?” He wrote four short articles on this theme and I will put them all together here. That makes this a lengthy post, but I think its best to have all the information in the one place. You can find the original articles at his blog site here.

Did the Holy Spirit indwell OT believers? By David Murray

A huge amount of ink and electrons have been devoted to answering that question. Personally, I can’t understand why this is deemed such a complex issue. It all really depends on our answer to this simple question: Were Old Testament believers believers?

If the Old Testament believers were real believers, the Holy Spirit indwelt them. No one can be born again, believe, or repent without the inward work of the Holy Spirit. And no one can stay a believer for one second without the ongoing internal work of the Holy Spirit – neither in the OT nor the NT. Without the Holy Spirit constantly in and at work in our hearts, we will immediately apostatize.

So, here are the options:

1. Old Testament “believers” were not real believers.

2. Old Testament “believers” believed by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit but kept believing without the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit.

3. Old Testament believers, like New Testament believers, believed and kept on believing as a result of the Holy Spirit’s initial and ongoing indwelling work in their hearts.

If #1 is true, then the Bible is not true (Jn. 8:56; Heb 11).

If #2 is true, then Old Testament believers were not as depraved as we are, as they did not need the ongoing indwelling work of the Holy Spirit. (And in some ways, this debate really is a debate about the nature of human depravity in the Old Testament. Could anything less or other than the indwelling of the Holy Spirit keep a believer believing, repenting, hoping, obeying, etc?)

If #3 is true, then the question that’s left is: “In what ways did the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit differ in the Old Testament compared to the New, especially post-Pentecost?” Everyone accepts there was a difference. But what was it?

That’s a question I’ll return to in coming days (there are some difficult texts to deal with that seem to contradict #3), but in the meantime let the weight, significance, and consequences of the three options clarify our thoughts.

Continue reading

The Holy Spirit’s Ministry

Article by Dr. Sinclair Ferguson (original source here)

The Reformers placed tremendous stress on the gifts of the Spirit to the whole body of Christ. John Calvin himself has rightly been described as “the theologian of the Holy Spirit” (B.B. Warfield). Yet Reformed Christians always have been given a “bad press” for their views on the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Our conviction is that God purposefully gave some gifts (specifically the ability to work miracles, the gift of revelatory prophecy, and speaking in tongues) only for a limited period. We have solid biblical reasons for believing this:

1. A temporary manifestation of these gifts is characteristic of God’s pattern of working. Contrary to popular opinion, such gifts as these were given spasmodically in biblical history. Their occurrence is generally contained within a handful of time periods lasting around a generation each.

2. The function of these gifts, namely to convey and to confirm revelation (now ceased until Christ’s return), is underlined in the New Testament itself (Acts 2:22, 14:3; cf. 2 Cor. 12:12; Heb. 2:3–4).

3. The history of the New Testament suggests that by the close of the apostolic age the role of these gifts was being superseded by the completion of the New Testament. Thus, there is no reference to their presence—or, more significantly, their future regulation—in the Pastoral Letters.

More could be said here in terms of biblical Christology, for the outpouring of the gifts of tongues, prophecy, and miracles at Pentecost was specifically intended to mark the coronation of Christ. It was, therefore, inherently intended to be a non-permanent feature of the life of the church. But in this context, it probably is more important to emphasize another, often-ignored facet of Reformed teaching. It is well-expressed in some words of the great Puritan John Owen:

Although all these gifts and operations ceased in some respect, some of them absolutely, and some of them as to the immediate manner of communication and degree of excellency; yet so far as the edification of the church was concerned in them, something that is analogous unto them was and is continued.

What does this mean? Simply this: It is the same Spirit who gives both temporary and continuing gifts to the church. We should not be surprised, therefore, to discover common threads in both.

Perhaps the most important common thread is the Spirit’s ministry in illumination—He enlightens our minds to enable us to know, see, grasp, and apply the will and purposes of God. There was an immediacy to illumination in the temporary gifts. The Spirit taught the apostles “all things” (John 14:26) and led them into “all truth” (John 16:13). Now, however, He continues this work in us through the Scriptures He enabled the apostles to write for us.

Indeed, during the Farewell Discourse (John 14–16), our Lord made it clear to the apostles that this would be one of the central ministries of the Spirit in their lives: He would remind them of what Jesus had said (the gospels), lead them into the truth (the epistles), and show them the things to come (e.g. Revelation).

Why, then, are Christians today—in contrast to their fathers—so thirsty to experience immediate revelation from God, when His desire for us is the ongoing work of the Spirit opening up our understanding through the mediated revelation of the New Testament? There seem to be three reasons:

1. It is more exciting to have direct revelation rather than Bible revelation. It seems more “spiritual,” more “divine.”

2. For many people, it feels much more authoritative to be able to say, “God has revealed this to me” than to say, “The Bible tells me so.”

3. Direct revelation relieves us of the need for painstaking Bible study and careful consideration of Christian doctrine in order to know the will of God. In comparison to immediate revelation, Bible study seems—to be frank—boring.

Lest we be brow-beaten and develop a kind of siege mentality as Reformed Christians, here are some things we should bear in mind about the work of illumination:

1. Jesus experienced it. Yes, our Lord prophesied; yes, He worked miracles. But we would be guilty of Docetism (the view that Jesus’ humanity only seemed to be like ours) and untrue to Scripture if we failed to recognize that Jesus Himself grew in wisdom and favor with God (Luke 2:52) by patiently meditating on the Old Testament Scriptures. (I suspect He probably knew them by heart.) The third Servant Song of Isaiah (Isa. 50:4–11) gives us an extraordinarily moving picture of the Lord Jesus waking up each day, dependent on His Father to illumine His understanding of His Word that He might think, feel, act, and live as the Man full of the Spirit of wisdom and understanding (Isa. 11:2ff).

2. This is the divine method that produces authentic Christian growth, because it involves the renewal (not the abeyance) of the mind (Rom. 12:2) and it is progressive (it takes time and demands the obedience of our wills). Sometimes God does things quickly. But His ordinary way is to work slowly and surely to make us progressively more like our Lord Jesus.

3. The result of the Spirit working with the Word of God to illumine and transform our thinking is the development of a godly instinct that operates in sometimes surprising ways. The revelation of Scripture becomes, in a well-taught, Spirit-illumined believer, so much a part of his or her mindset that the will of God frequently seems to become instinctively and even immediately clear—just as whether a piece of music is well or badly played is immediately obvious to a well-disciplined musician. It is this kind of spiritual exercise that creates discernment (see Heb. 5:11–14).

Well-meaning Christians sometimes mistake the Spirit’s work of illumination for revelation, which, unhappily, can lead to serious theological confusion and potentially unhappy practical consequences. But the doctrine of illumination also helps us explain some of the more mysterious elements in our experience without having to resort to the claim that we have the gift of revelation and prophecy. Here the late John Murray spoke with great wisdom: “As we are the subjects of this illumination and are responsive to it, and as the Holy Spirit is operative in us to the doing of God’s will, we shall have feelings, impressions, convictions, urges, inhibitions, impulses, burdens, resolutions. Illumination and direction by the Spirit through the Word of God will focus themselves in our consciousness in these ways. We are not automata.… We must not think [these things] are … necessarily irrational or fanatically mystical.”

God’s Word, illumined by God’s Spirit, is, as Psalm 119 so magnificently shows, the pathway to spiritual stability and liberty. It leads us unwaveringly to knowing, loving, and doing God’s will on a daily basis. It brings joy through light.

Article: The Best Preacher in the World

by David Murray (original source here)

Every church needs two preachers. We need a human preacher, one who is visible, audible, tangible. But we also need a divine preacher, one that is invisible, inaudible, and intangible. I’m speaking of the Holy Spirit, without whom the work of the human preacher is in vain.

A Personal Preacher
How can I call the Holy Spirit ‘a preacher’? In various places the Holy Spirit is called the parakletos (eg. John 14:16). There isn’t really a comparable English word to translate this, leading to varied inadequate translations such as ‘comforter,’ ‘helper,’ or ‘Advocate.’ The literal translation is something like ‘one who comes alongside to call with words.’ Do you see how I can call the Holy Spirit a preacher? He comes alongside Christians and calls them, or exhorts them, with words.

He is very personal preacher, not only in that he is a person rather than a force or power – a real HE coming to a real you – but also because his pulpit is your own heart. He lives within the Christian and preaches to him with God’s words, preaching so personally and intimately as if he was the only one in his congregation.

A Pure Preacher
Every preacher has his flaws, and eventually the congregation will see them. That’s why visiting preachers often seem much better than our own pastor. It’s because we don’t know them and their flaws in the same way as we know our own pastor. But the Holy Spirit is different, primarily because he is the HOLY Spirit. As such, he is flawless and faultless.

He’s also pure in the sense of having the purest of motives. The entertainer is after your applause, the politician is after your vote, the attorney is after your verdict, the financier is after your money, the advertiser is after your eyeballs, but the Holy Spirit is after the good of your soul. He is pure in his effect as well, the result of his work in the Christian being a holier spirit. Continue reading

The Letter Kills But The Spirit Gives Life

Charles Hodge on 2 Corinthians 3:6:

An Exposition of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, n.d., 56-58 (Language modernized by Nate Milne where necessary).

For the letter (i.e., the law) kills, but the spirit (i.e., the gospel) gives life. This is the reason why God has made Paul the minister of the Spirit. “God had made us able minsters not of the law but of the gospel, for the law kills, but the gospel gives life.” This passage and the following context present two important questions. First, “In what sense does the law kill?” And second, “How is it that the apostle attributes to the Mosaic system this purely legal character, when he elsewhere so plainly teaches that the gospel was witnessed or taught both in the law and the prophets?”

As to the former of these questions, the answer furnished by the Scriptures is plain. The law demands perfect obedience. It says, “Do this and live” (Rom. 10:5; Gal. 3:12), and “Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things written in the book of the law to do them” (Gal. 3:10). As no man renders this perfect obedience, the law condemns him. It pronounces on him the sentence of death. This is one way in which it kills.

In the second place, it produces the knowledge or consciousness of sin, and of course of guilt, that is, of just exposure to the wrath of God. Thus again it slays. And thirdly, by presenting the perfect standard of duty, which cannot be seen without awakening the sense of obligation to be conformed to it, while it imparts no disposition or power to obey, it exasperates the soul and thus again it brings forth fruit unto death. All these effects of the law are systematically presented by the apostle in Romans 6 & 7, and Galatians 3.

The second question is more difficult. Every reader of the New Testament must be struck with the fact that the apostle often speaks of the Mosaic law as he does of the moral law considered as a covenant of works; this is, presenting the promise of life on the condition of perfect obedience. He represents it saying, “Do this and live;” as requiring works, and not faith, as the condition of acceptance (Rom. 10:5-10; Gal. 3:10-12). He calls it a ministration of death and condemnation. He denies that it can give life (Gal. 3:21). He tells those who are of the law (that is, Judaizers) that they had fallen from grace; that is, had renounced the gratuitous method of salvation, and that Christ should profit them nothing (Gal. 5:2, 4).

In short, when he uses the word law, and says that by the law is the knowledge of sin, that it can only condemn, that by its works no flesh can be justified, he includes the Mosaic law; and in the epistle to the Galatians all these things are said with special reference to the law of Moses.

On the other hand, however, he teaches that the plan of salvation has been the same from the beginning; that Christ was the propitiation for the sins committed under the old covenant; that men were saved then as now by faith in Christ; that this mode of salvation was revealed to Abraham and understood by him, and taught by Moses and the prophets. This view is presented repeatedly in Paul’s epistles, and is argued out in due form in Rom. 3:21-31; Rom. 4; & Gal. 3.

To reconcile these apparently conflicting representations it must be remembered that the Mosaic economy was designed to accomplish different objects, and is therefore presented in Scripture under different aspects. What, therefore, is true of it under one aspect, is not true under another.

1. The law of Moses was, in the first place, a re-enactment of the covenant of works. A covenant is simply a promise suspended upon a condition. The covenant of works, therefore, is nothing more than the promise of life suspended on the condition of perfect obedience. The phrase is used as a concise and convenient expression of the eternal principles of justice on which God deals with rational creatures, and which underlie all dispensations, the Adamic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Christian. Our Lord said to the lawyer who asked what he should do to inherit eternal life, “‘What is written in the law? What do you read?’ And he, answering, said, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.’ And he said unto him, ‘You have answered rightly, do this and you shall live’” (Luke 10:26-28). This is the covenant of works. It is an immutable principle that where there is no sin there is no condemnation, and where there is sin there is death. This is all that those who reject the gospel have to fall back upon. It is this principle which is rendered so prominent in the Mosaic economy as to give it is character of law. Viewed under this aspect is is the ministration of condemnation and death.

2. The Mosaic economy was also a national covenant; that is, it presented national promises on the condition of national obedience. Under this aspect also it was purely legal.

3. But, as the gospel contains a renewed revelation of the law, so the law of Moses contained a revelation of the gospel. It presented in its priesthood and sacrifices, as types of the office and work of Christ, the gratuitous method of salvation through a Redeemer. This necessarily supposes that faith and not works was the condition of salvation. It was those who trusted, not those free from sin, who were saved. Thus Moses wrote of Christ (John 5:46); and thus the law and the prophets witnessed of a righteousness of faith (Rom. 3:21). When therefore the apostle spoke of the old covenant under its legal aspect, and especially when speaking to those who rejected the gospel and clung to the law of Moses as law, then he says, it kills, or is the ministration of condemnation. But when viewing it, and especially when speaking of those who viewed it as setting forth the great doctrine of redemption through the blood of Christ, the represented it as teaching his own doctrine.

The law, in every form, moral or Mosaic, natural or revealed, kills. In demanding works as the condition of salvation, it must condemn all sinners. But the gospel, whether as revealed in the promise to Adam after his fall, or in the promise to Abraham, or in the writings of Moses, or in its full clearness in the New Testament, gives life. As the old covenant revealed both the law and the gospel, it either killed or gave life, according to the light in which it was viewed. And therefore Paul sometimes says it does the one, and sometimes the other.

But the spirit gives life. The spirit, or the gospel, gives life in a sense correlating to that in which the letter (i.e., the law) kills.

1. By revealing a righteousness adequate to our justification, and thus delivering us from the sentence of death.

2. By producing the assurance of God’s love and the hope of his glory in the place of a dread of his wrath.

3. By becoming, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, an inward principle or power transforming us into the image of God; instead of a mere outward command.

The Lord Told Me??

Article: Please Stop Saying — “God Told Me” by Josh Buice (original source here)

It happened again recently. I was listening to a sermon online and the preacher said, “God told me.” Apparently everyone in the congregation enjoyed it from the response I heard, but I immediately turned it off. This type of communication is becoming more prevalent in Christian circles. It’s showing up in conversations because people are hearing it from the pulpit and reading it in books they purchased from the local Christian bookstore. Perhaps it sounds spiritual or is emotionally stirring to the congregation.

Although the “God told me” method of communicating makes for interesting, suspenseful, and entertaining stories, what people need most is to hear from God. I would like to make a simple request. Please stop saying “God told me” unless the phrase is immediately followed up with a text of Scripture. Have you considered the connection between the “God told me” language and the sufficiency of Scripture? What connection does the “God told me” phrase have with the third of the Ten Commandments?

The “God Told Me” Language Violates the Sufficiency of Scripture
If God spoke to Moses from a burning bush (Ex. 3:4-6), to Samuel in the dark of night (1 Sam. 3:1-9), to Elijah in a cave (1 Kings 19:9), to John the Baptist and others at Jesus’ baptism (Mark 1:9-11), and to Saul (subsequently Paul) and his traveling companions on the road leading to Damascus (Acts 9:4-7)—why would God not speak to us today? That’s a fair question, but it might surprise you to know that God does still speak to us today. He does so through His sufficient and authoritative Word.

In chapter 1 and paragraph 6 of the 2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), we find these words:

The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down or necessarily contained in the Holy Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelation of the Spirit, or traditions of men.

During the days of the Old Testament, God was communicating to prophets in order to write Holy Scripture and to prepare the way for Jesus’ birth. All of the audible communication of God has direct connection to the redemptive plan of God to save sinners. God’s direct communication with His people was not centered on what to eat for breakfast, the need to give money to a random person at a bus stop, or to go join a group of college students at a morning workout.

During the days of the New Testament, and the early church period, God’s audible voice, although rare, was connected to the redemptive plan of God in Jesus Christ. Once the Bible was completed, there was no longer any need for God to speak to people audibly or to provide direct (divine) communication. God has communicated everything necessary for faith and life, worship and service, in His sufficient Word. To use the “God told me” language violates the sufficiency of Scripture. Simply put, it needs to stop.
It’s strange that many churches that once stood courageously for the inerrancy of Scripture in the past frequently employ the “God told me” language in their pulpit today. We don’t allow Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses to play the “God told me” divine revelation card, and we shouldn’t allow Baptists or Presbyterians or Methodists or mainstream evangelicals to have a free pass on this crucial issue. Continue reading