HOLY SPIRIT-INDWELLING
When a person
becomes a Christian and has authentic faith, he has a real mystical union with
Christ, so that Christ really comes to indwell the believer. When we exercise
faith in Jesus Christ, His righteousness is counted towards us and we are
justified. At that same moment, Christ, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, comes to
dwell inside of us.
The Purpose of God, An
Exposition of Ephesians, Christian Focus Publications, 1994, p. 85.
God doesn’t
simply give us His Spirit, He gives the Spirit “into”
us. Not just “to” us, but by an act of what can only be called intimate
impartation His Spirit resides within to encourage, energize, and enable. The
Spirit isn’t just here, He’s inside.
Sam Storms
Copied
from: Pleasures Evermore: The Life-Changing Power of Knowing God by Sam Storms,
© 2000, p. 234. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.org. All rights
reserved.
We are now
the Temple of God! If the inanimate structure of the old covenant trembled and
shook at God’s presence, what is our response, we in whom this same glorious
and holy God now lives? How can there be the slightest indifference or coldness
or routine or mere ritual or mindless habit in our worship when this same God
lives and abides in us?
Sam Storms
Copied
from: Pleasures Evermore: The Life-Changing Power of Knowing God by Sam Storms,
© 2000, p. 140. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.org. All rights
reserved.
It is not
uncommon for Christians to claim that the saints of the Old Testament period
experienced God's Spirit in a fundamentally different manner from that of New
Testament believers or modern Christians. Many have relied on specific idioms
of the Old Testament to argue that the Holy Spirit only came upon people
in the Old Testament but into people in the New Testament. Thus, the
Holy Spirit was only bestowed temporarily, and then externally, to Old
Testament believers as opposed to the permanent indwelling of the early church.
Such preaching and teaching drives a wedge between the Testaments, placing too
much emphasis on disunity rather than on mutual interdependence between the Old
and New. This is an inadequate and incomplete understanding of the role of the
Spirit in the Old Testament. Though the Spirit of God sometimes comes upon
individuals in the Old Testament to empower for specific (and temporary) tasks,
there can be no doubt that His role is also more extensive. He has an
indwelling and transforming presence in the Old Testament believers as well and
is described as the animating feature that effects
spiritual renewal.
Bill Arnold
NIV Application Commentary-1 Samuel, 2003, p.
234-235.