I thought I would put this quote up from John Calvin and see what everyone thinks about it...try to stir up some conversation amongst us.
"The work of the Spirit, then, is joined to the word of God. But a distinction is made, that we may know that the external word is of no avail by itself. unless animated by the power of the Spirit ...All power of action, then, resides in the Spirit himself." - John Calvin
"The work of the Spirit, then, is joined to the word of God. But a distinction is made, that we may know that the external word is of no avail by itself. unless animated by the power of the Spirit ...All power of action, then, resides in the Spirit himself." - John Calvin
4 comments:
SOOOOO good. That whole part of book 1 in the Institutes helped me understand 1 John 5 so much more! It's all about revelation. I remember before i was a Christian the bible was the most boring thing to read, but now that the Spirit has illumined me to see some of the truths of scripture God's Word is an amazing gift! It is not that the Spirit and the Word work completely independently of one another, but the Holy Spirit reveals to us the scripture. He does not add anything to God's Word, but He makes it come alive to us. We cannot understand the testimony of God by reading the scriptures without the aid of the Spirit, but only by His power. He gives us ears to hear and eyes to see, where we were once blind and deaf. Wow, thanks Jeremy. Hopefully some more people will comment on this one and we can get a bit of a discussion. I did the same kind of thing on my blog and got a storm of comments. Peace bro, and i'll be praying for the baby!
Yeah, I can't agree more with you. I think of the passage in 1 Corinthians:
"The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned."
1 CORINTHIANS 2:14
I think that the Holy Spirit is something that we tend to not talk about as much in the Christian world. I feel that people would much rather focus on the person of Jesus or other more tangible facets of God than spend the time to dive into what scripture teaches us about the Spirit. Just something that has been on my mind lately.
Good thought. I think you are right about losing a bit of a focus on the person of the Holy Spirit. I think there is a disease among different churches that causes them to not have a healthy view of the trinity and the work of the three persons in it. I mean, we tend to place an unhealthy emphasis on one of the persons of the Godhead, which gets us into trouble. I'm thinking of churches that focus on Law and tradition, or super charismatic churches. Sadly, i'm afraid some of us more fundamentalist Christians have come to have just as much of a problem with this issue as anyone else. It's too bad, because nobody talked more about the Holy Spirit than Calvin and the Puritans that we look up to and admire. We should try to reclaim some of the focus they had on the Holy Spirit; i think it would do a lot of good.
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