Spirit of Holiness

Acts 2: 42 - 47

​42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

We are reflecting about Pentecost and we would like to pointing out three important aspect as objectives: The first one, Pentecost represents an important milestone to understand the existence of the Church, secondly, the coming of the Holy Spirit was the accomplishment of the promises given by Jesus as the divine instrument to guide out of the sin and Thirdly, Any revival must be oriented to a holistic and structural experience for the whole of humanity.

The Jews called "Pentecost" (fifty days) the entire festive season of Easter, but especially the solemn conclusion of this time that ended fifty days after it began. The three festivals ordered by the law (Ex 23:16) were the feast of unleavened bread, the festival of the harvest or grain harvest (Lev 23:15-21; Dt 16:9-12), and the Festival of Ingathering. The festival of the harvest or grain harvest (Lev 23:15-21; Dt 16:9-12). Over time, the promulgation of the law on Mount Sinai was also celebrated on that same day. The coming of the Spirit - precisely fifty days after the resurrection of the Lord: the grain of wheat that fell to the ground has borne much fruit - was an event in the history of salvation, which is a history of faith and by faith. The external signs with which this mystery is described show us the irruption of the Spirit in the world of men and presage the expansion of the Gospel to all peoples. When Acts 2 talks about the coming of the Holy Spirit is because the promise Jesus made was being accomplished. Jesus announced the moment in the books of Acts, incorporating the evidence through different signs, in the same way as He did a lot of miracles during His ministry among the people.

The coming of the Spirit of Holiness. One of the hardest things to discern for the human being throughout the history of religion has been how to satisfy the divinity. How to accomplish the demands coming from God? How to understand God's will? Usually, the way to resolve it has been through sacrifices and rituals, looking to offer the reverence and tributes, but what about when what is demanded is the entire life? That was the case of Abraham when was required to him to offer his son Isaac nevertheless at the end of the story a lamb was the substitute but in Abraham's heart was counted his will to offer all the best that he had including his loved son, which is a clear representation of God in his eternal plan to rescue the human being sending his loved Son our Lord Jesus Christ to died for us. During different moments of Judaism and Christianity, movements have been raised to experience a deep seek of God through the separatism of the world. In the Old Testament, the prophets who lived in the desert, the same case was in the New Testament for John the Baptist, and during the obscurantism for the monastic orders during the Middle Ages. The idea is to live in total communion with God through practicing spiritual disciplines and habits used to provoke an integral experience of holiness. Then what does holiness imply? Is it about the separatism of the real world, creating an alternative version of it? What is the most important thing when we consider holiness? Is it about a cultural holiness expressed through dress code and liturgy? What about justice and righteousness in relation to holiness?

John Wesley was in favor of seeking holiness but not escaping reality, but been committed to the personal and social transformation through Holiness of heart and life.

In the book of Acts, we find some key elements of understanding for the holiness of heart and life. The most important is the role of the Holy Spirit. It is impossible to achieve any level of holiness for ourselves without the guidance of the holy Spirit; it is like trying to be saved by ourselves. The only ones capable of convincing us of sin are the Holy Spirit, according to the bible in John 16:8. An early ecclesiastical tradition characterized the writer Luke as "a painter among the evangelists." He got one essential feature right: many statements that other New Testament writers express only formally, in non-intuitive language, are presented by Luke in impressive pictures. The central statement "they were all filled with the Holy Spirit" is not given to us briefly, but rather described with sensible phenomena that accompany the event. A noise, like a strong wind, and tongues of fire serve to present to us, just as the Old Testament does with the burning bush, the pillar of fire, or the storm, the closeness of God. A rabbinic text tells that the voice of God was divided at Sinai into seventy languages so that the law was proclaimed to all peoples in their languages. Luke uses the literary means offered by the cultural environment of his time to expose graphically and intuitively the coming of the Holy Spirit, which is not within the reach of the senses.

Luke thinks of wonder, not of hearing, but of speaking (v. 4). It does not seem that we are dealing here with the "glossolalia" that is described to us as unintelligible and in need of interpretation. The effect of the wine that makes the drunk act in a way that he normally would not do (it is not he who does it, but the wine inside him) can serve to understand the reality of the Holy Spirit that makes those who possess it act and speak in a way differently (v. 15). Luke maintains in Acts that the mission among non-Jews gradually prevailed in the early community. Previously, he put the outline of all his books in the mouth of the Risen Lord: "You will receive the strength of the Holy Spirit and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1: 8). From which it follows, for the adequate understanding of the Pentecost story, that the Holy Spirit is, yes, the basic principle of the Church and its universal mission, but this universal mission does not begin to be carried out in fact on the same day of Pentecost. Although Luke names groups from all nations, he says they are only Diaspora Jews.

The text does not intend to verify historical details that occurred in a specific place and day before thousands of eyes, but, above all, to make a theological statement about the presence of the Holy Spirit in the community. Peter, who is the only one who speaks, explains that God's plan has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ and the infusion of his Spirit. The success is in the baptism of three thousand Jews (v. 41), which proves that the Church believes inside and out, thanks to the Holy Spirit. To the extent that the Church fulfills its task, it does so by this same Spirit who is the driving force and the force of the New Law of each disciple of Jesus.

The job of the church is not to impact the church, but our job is to impact the world. It's like a huddle in a football game. 70,000 people don't pay $75.00 a ticket to watch the Texans huddle. What if you went to a Texans game and for two and a half hours you watched 11 men stand in a circle and talk? That's not what you paid for or why you're there! 67,000 people pay $50 a ticket to see what difference the huddle makes.

What they want to know is, after having called the play in the huddle, does it work on the field? The challenge for the church is not what we do when we call our play in our Sunday morning huddle, but what we do when we leave our huddle and head to our Mission field.

At Pentecost, the opposite of what is said about Babel happens, where men who tried to climb to heaven ended up not understanding each other. And men can only understand each other when each one opens himself to the surprising grace of God, and not when they fight like titans to rise above the clouds. If humanity was dispersed in Babel, the advent of the Spirit and its reception by men mean the beginning of a new and definitive reunion. Over the conflictive diversity, over the linguistic chaos, the Spirit of God hovers. When we truly receive it, when we all have the same Spirit, we will understand each other even if we speak different languages. And a new creation will emerge. Because the problem lies in the division of spirits, in opposing mentalities, and the clash of interests.

The coming of the Holy Spirit is an event in salvation history; therefore, an event of faith and for faith. What happens mysteriously is announced in external signs: in the impetuous wind that shakes the house and the Rain of fire. Already in the Old Testament, the impetuous wind accompanies and manifests the presence of Yahweh; For example, it is said in 1 Kings 19, 11 that the passage of Yahweh, who wants to reveal himself to Elijah, unleashes a strong hurricane that breaks the mountains and breaks the rocks. The same can be said of fire (remember the burning bush from which Yahweh speaks to Moses). Here, the wind and fire are signs of the strength of God, which is the Spirit; They specifically refer to the freedom and sovereignty of the Spirit who "blows where he wills" and carries the word to the ends of the earth, as well as the gift of tongues and the courage that the Spirit instills in the heralds of the gospel.

The Spirit makes people speak and makes them speak clearly so that everyone can understand. The opposite occurs here than in the confusion of languages at the tower of Babel. It is not exactly a question of already known foreign languages, but of speaking clearly, which is a much stranger way of speaking.

The same Spirit that grants new speech to some grants everyone the ability to listen. Communication is only possible when both have the same Spirit and are free from the spirit of lies that oppose the truth. On that occasion, those who did not want to listen said that the apostles were drunk.

John Wesley considered Methodism to be the revival of the true religion; nowadays, a lot of Christians have an interest in a cultural evangelical revival expressed in liturgy and individual experiences, but the truth is that the world is demanding a structural holiness led by people of God, which means the faith and the holiness must be expressed in justice and righteousness, more than glossolalia, an holiness expressed in empathy and charity more than dress code, which not imply any kind of apology of any immorality but also we must avoid any kind of reductionism consistent in confusing holiness with individual experiences or mere intentions or cultural habits or traditions. The holiness that we need to live is integral to include the community level and aspire to affect all the dimensions of human life, like the economy, even the politic, to express the Kingdom of God not just in the churches but beyond. This is the revival that the world needs now.