The workings of the Holy Spirit
Geoff Thomas
We often fail to make a distinction in the operations of the Holy
Spirit both individually and congregationally.
1. A distinction in spiritual maturity
Each Christian begins as a novice. That is how the Bible describes a
beginner believer, as a recent convert (I Timothy 3:6). He is not
instantly mature. His understanding of everything is inadequate; his
understanding of himself is immature. God veils from him the full power
of remaining sin or he would be crushed. I heard a preacher recently
speak of his nine year-old son who earnestly witnesses in his South
Wales school about Jesus Christ. He has been tormented by a few children
for this so that he came home recently to his mother quite
disconsolately. She got her Bible and read to him verses from John 15
where the Lord tells his disciples about the fact that as he had been
persecuted so they are going to be persecuted - as this little boy had
experienced in this relatively mild way. Gareth listened and then said
to his mother, ‘You mean it is always going to be like this?’ Yes.
That is one of the early lessons a recent convert learns; always needing
courage to go on taking your stand for Christ, always doing battle with
remaining sin; always growing in knowledge of the Scriptures; always
growing in evangelistic earnestness and so on. Everyone starts as a
novice. It is not that everyone starts without the Holy Spirit. We
progress spiritually as we do physically by inches. We become men of God
through the means of grace in a growing communion with God.
2. A distinction in spiritual gifts
There is the great picture of the church as a body in 1 Corinthians.
There are different kinds of gifts . . . service . . . working (12:4-6)
from the same Lord. God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of
them, just as he wanted them to be (12:18). Some seem weaker, and others
are unpresentable, while others are less honourable, but all are
designed and given by God. Are all teachers? No. Do all speak in
tongues? No (12:29-30). It is simply that in the congregation there is
planned diversity. The gifts of the Spirit make us different from one
another so that we can minister to one another and receive ministry from
one another. The fruit of the Spirit makes us like one another, and the
chief of the fruit is love. So Paul never took one of the gifts of the
Spirit and made the possession of that gift definitive for the presence
of the Spirit. A New Testament congregation where every single person
spoke in tongues would have been like one enormous nose rather than a
body of various complementary organs. So too extraordinary preaching is
not the infallible mark that a man is full of the Spirit and an heir of
heaven.
3. A distinction in talents
Some Christians are 'strong' while others are 'weak brethren'. In the
parable of the Lord the master goes on a long journey and he gives to
one servant five talents and tells him to be occupied in using these
talents until his return. Another is given three and another one. They
did not choose the number. That choice and bestowal was divine, but all
three men had to put them to use. They would be judged if they hid them
away and did nothing with them. Some Christians have been called to be
preachers and pastors. That is their distinctive gift of the Holy
Spirit, but there are five-talent gifts of preaching, and three-talent
gifts, and one-talent gifts. In other words, Martin Luther had a great
gift of teaching, and so did John Bunyan, and so did Cornelius Van Til:
five-talent people. The grandeur of those men was that they were on full
stretch in their use of those talents throughout their lives. There was
no let-up.
In that way they are our examples and we should seek to copy them,
but we should not fret that we will never accomplish what they achieved.
Most of us preachers are one-talent men and it will be enough for us to
answer to God in the great day how we employed that one. Were we
steadfast and immovable and always abounding in the work of the Lord
with the talent God gave us? No special empowering of the Spirit will
change one talent into five talents. A baptism of the Spirit will not
turn a John Bunyan into a John Owen. We need John Bunyan and we need
John Owen just as they are. We ourselves will never do a metamorphosis
into a Jonathan Edwards, but we need the Holy Spirit to enable us to
work with our one talent just as he helped the five-talent William
Tyndale to labour. When I get to heaven the Lord will not ask me, ‘Geoff,
why weren't you Tyndale?’ But he will ask me, ‘Geoff, why weren't
you the Geoff I gifted and blessed?’ The pulpits all over the world
are filled with humble men of one or two talents who by the ministry of
the Spirit have given their gifts to the Lord and have been greatly used
by him. If there is one evident pattern for 21st century church life it
is that. There are no hyper-preachers in our day but thousands of
faithful servants working by the Spirit's enabling to advance God's
kingdom. However, let no Christian feebly excuse his own laziness
and cowardice and prayerlessness with the words, ‘But my name is not
George Whitefield.’ That is true, but you can go to the same God as
Whitefield and ask for the same strengthening of your heart and soul in
the Lord's service. Let us dedicate the talent we have to God and seek
the strength of the Spirit to employ it until the Saviour comes. Robert
Murray M'Cheyne used to write 'Master, help!' on his sermon manuscripts.
Whatever our talents we need Holy Spirit aid for them to be used as they
should be.
