Transcript
I have talked in these last two lectures of mission as the proclamation of the Kingdom, of the fact that God's rule is the reality with which all men have to deal and which all events and that therefore mission is concerned not with a segment of human affairs but with the whole of God's will for human affairs and secondly I've spoken of mission as the presence of God's kingdom in Jesus Christ supremely in his cross and resurrection
and in the community which bears his name and which is continually renewed in that presence through the word and sacraments of the Now we come to the third of my major headings which is the affirmation that mission is concerned with the prevenience of God's kingdom. Here the point that I want to stress as I've said is that while we may and must speak in a proper sense of the kingdom as present within the church we must
beware of speaking of the kingdom as though it were domesticated within the church or to put it the other way around that while mission does involve the sharing of the life of Christ with men sharing the life of the Son as I've said mission is not simply church extension mission is not simply the church enlarging its boundaries mission is a fresh act of the living God himself God the Holy Spirit which changes the church as well
as changing the world now I will try to to spell that out but just leave it like that for the moment mission is not simply church extension mission is not just extending the boundaries of the church so that more people are included mission is the sovereign action of God the Holy Spirit who goes before the church and changes the church by his action and so I have used the word prevenience proclamation presence prevenience now one could
begin of course by pointing to the role of the spirit in the very initiation of the mission it is by the spirit that Jesus is conceived in the womb of Mary it is by the spirit that Jesus is anointed for his mission at his baptism it is by the spirit that he is driven into the wilderness in order to beat down the powers of Satan and it is by the spirit that he comes back into Galilee
to begin his ministry you remember that there are two great Old Testament passages which are quoted at this decisive point in the beginning of Jesus ministry there is first of all the famous passage of Isaiah 42 behold my servant whom I uphold my chosen in whom my soul delights I have put my spirit upon him he will bring forth justice to the nations and that is the text text which is reflected in the voice heard at
the baptism of Jesus and then the other great text which similarly refers to the prevenience of the spirit Isaiah 61 the spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted to bind up the broken-hearted to proclaim liberty to the captives the opening of the prison to those who are bound to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor that is the text which Jesus reads
in the synagogue at Nazareth so that even in the synoptic gospels already we have the reminder that the initiative is with the spirit there are hints of it also not more than hints but hints for example in text that is repeated in several places mark 13:11 when they bring you to trial and deliver you up do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say but say whatever is given to you in that for it
is not you who speak but the Holy Spirit the spirit himself is the witness it is the spirit who is the active agent in the mission of the church and in St. John's gospel as we shall see later especially from chapter 15 onwards this teaching is brought out very very fully if you look at John 15 verses 18 and following you have the prophecy of the world's hatred the world has rejected Jesus and the world will
reject the disciples but in that context verse 26 when the comes whom I send to you from the father even the spirit of truth who proceeds from the father he will bear witness of me and you also are witnesses in the context of the rejection of the message in precisely in that context the promise is given that there is a witness which cannot be silenced by the world and that is the witness of the spirit and
remember again that the word witness is the translation of the Greek word Maturias the martyr it is precisely in and through and with the rejection that the world makes that that witness which cannot be silenced is given the witness of the spirit but we'll come back to those Johanan passages and and first of all we will look at the supreme development of this theme namely in the Acts that book which could have been called the acts
of the spirit because throughout the narrative of the acts the mission of the church is is being described as the active mission of the spirit I've already referred you to the promise at the beginning acts 1:6 to 8 when the disciples ask about the coming of the kingdom and in reply they are given the promise that the spirit who is the Arabon the foretaste of the kingdom will be given to them and they will be
witnesses they will be witnesses because the spirit is with them it is the spirit who is the primary witness you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you shall be my witnesses you shall be a promise mission is is brought before us here as the promise that the Holy Spirit will be present and will bear his and then we come to chapter 2 the story of Pentecost the fulfillment of that promise the
spirit identified by Peter as the sign that the last days have dawned and Peter rises to answer the what is going on here are these people drunk when he rises to answer that question he begins with the quotation from Joel acts 2:17 in the last days God declares I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh this is the sign that the last days have dawned this the presence of the spirit is already the Arabon
of the kingdom the foretaste of the kingdom this is how Peter interprets it and therefore also it is the reversal of Babel as we remember as we as we saw when in the last week when we went through Genesis 9 10 11 we saw the story of Babel this the scattering of mankind which is the result of man's efforts to create his own unity and here we have the curse of Babel reversed and the gathering of
all the nations begins here is the Arabon the foretaste the first sign of the reversal of Babel and men of all different races and languages are able to testify we hear in our own tongues the mighty works of God there is a foretaste of the fulfillment of the mission of the church through which all nations will hear in their own language the mighty works of God according to Orthodox the Eastern Orthodox theology Pentecost is the baptism
of the languages the baptism of the tongues this is why in Orthodox Missiology in contrast to Roman Catholic Missiology the Orthodox have always insisted that the first action in mission is the translation of the scriptures and the liturgy into the native tongue and that is why of course so many of the Slavic languages especially Russian owe their existence to the work of missionaries and because this this point that Orthodox theology makes so much so much of
that Pentecost is the baptism of the languages and this is another way of expressing the fact that the coming of the Spirit is the Arabon of the new world the foretaste of the day when all the nations will hear the mighty works of God the work of redemption through Jesus Christ in their own well then when the disciples are questioned they repeatedly affirm the fact that this new age has dawned that the Spirit promised by the
prophets has now been given and when they are pressed in in Acts 5:32 they say of these things where are we Acts 5:32 we are witnesses to these things and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him the primary witness is the of the Spirit and then as we go on with the story we see that at each decisive point in the forward movement of the mission it is the Holy
Spirit who takes the initiative chapter 8 verse 26 an angel of the Lord tells Philip to go down the southern road from Jerusalem to Gaza and there he meets the Ethiopian finance minister and then it is the Spirit who says to Peter go and join this chariot the Spirit brings about the meeting of Philip and the eunuch and one could quote many similar stories I could quote from my own experience as a missionary of meetings that
have been brought about in that kind of way without and so that the sense that the initiative is not ours becomes very clear then in chapter 9 it is the Spirit who prepares Ananias to go and receive Saul by baptism into the fellowship of the church in chapter 9 and then in chapter 10 we have perhaps the supreme example of what I want to bring out in this lecture and that is the story of the meeting
of Peter and Cornelius you remember how the Spirit prepares Peter for this meeting Peter has this dream and in the way that the dream is told you have a vivid picture of Peter's own personality and the way he understands what it is to be a member of the Israel of God the voice says rise Peter kill and eat Peter says no Lord I have never eaten anything common or unclean Peter's firm affirmation of his identity as
a faithful obedient child of Israel who lives by the Torah and is not going to be deflected even by a vision from obedience to the Torah and then while Peter is pondering the Spirit said to him behold three men are looking for you rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation and so the Spirit instructs Peter to go with these pagan emissaries from a pagan military officer to his house and then when Peter goes into
the house while he is still speaking verse 44 the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word the Spirit takes the initiative and so to say breaks down the preconceptions of the Jewish believers the believers from among the circumcised who came with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles and then Peter declared can anyone water for these for baptizing these people who have received the
Holy Spirit just as we have and he commanded them to be baptized this is always spoken of as the conversion of Cornelius but one could also describe it as the conversion of Peter because Peters whole understanding of what it means to be part of the Israel of God is radically changed by this experience that Peter who had said no Lord I have never touched anything unclean is now accepting that the is taken to task for this
by the church when Peter went up to Jerusalem the circumcision party criticized him why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them and then from verse four onwards Peter began and explained to them in order what happened he tells the story of what has taken place then he concludes verse 17 if then God gave the same spirit the same gift well let's take the verse 16 at 15 as I began to speak the Holy
Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning and I remembered the word of the Lord how he said John baptized with water but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit if then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ who was I that I could withstand God and when they heard this they were silenced and they glorified God saying then to
the Gentiles also God has unto life a radical conversion of the church the church being compelled to revise its most fundamental ideas rooted right in the very heart of the scriptural revelation the church is compelled to a radical change by the action of the Holy Spirit which they cannot deny so that this is not just the conversion of Cornelius it is in a very real sense the conversion of the church and this is what I mean
when I say that mission is not just church extension Cornelius is not simply absorbed into the church as Peter and the Jerusalem fellowship understand it not at all mission is not simply the church extending itself putting out its own powers drawing people into its fellowship there is that aspect of it but that does not describe mission in its fullness mission is a fresh creative activity of the Holy Spirit by which the church itself is changed but
that change takes place through the action of the Holy Spirit in the life of people outside the church who by the preaching of the gospel are brought into the new reality and the church as it is at any one moment in history whether there in the first century or now in the 20th century the church as it is at any one moment in history is not in itself as it is the whole embodiment of God's kingdom
it is only the sign the foretaste the instrument which itself has to be changed by the action of the Holy Spirit but that action of the Holy Spirit is the action of mission it is through the coming of the Gentile that the church is changed it is through but it is not just the action of Cornelius it is the in the life of Cornelius which changes the church and this seems to me to be a very
very important part for our theology of mission that mission is not just church extension it is not that you so to say open the gate invite some more people in and shut the gate again and the church remains as it was it is a new action of the Holy Spirit now I think that we're going to come back again to these Johannine passages where I think we have the supreme theological interpretation of all this but if
you look again at the following chapter in John 16 you have the further development of the doctrine of the Spirit first of all in John 16:8 and following when the Spirit comes he will convict the world of sin of righteousness and of judgment the Spirit will directly convict the world prove the world wrong in its ideas of sin and the righteousness and of judgment and then in verses 12 onwards I have yet many things to
say to you but you cannot bear them now when the Spirit of truth comes he will guide you into the truth as a whole the church as it is at this moment can only be a sign of the truth as a whole it cannot embody the truth as a whole this little company of men of this particular Jewish culture at this particular moment in world history cannot embody the truth as a whole the truth as a
whole can only be embodied in the church when the mission of the church is complete when all the nations have brought their treasures into the church and it the work of the Holy Spirit to guide the church into the truth as a whole through the action of the mission the Spirit will take the things that belong to Christ and show them to the church and all that the Father has belongs to Christ verse 15 all that
the Father has all the riches of human culture and wisdom and experience all belong to the Father and it will be the work of the Spirit through the mission of the church to take all these things and bring them as it were to the feet of Christ in the fellowship of the church so the story of Peter and Cornelius prepares us for the much wider extension of the same principle namely for the problems that arose through
the development of the Gentile mission this action of Peter in the house of Cornelius is of course the first breakthrough into the Gentile world up till now it is taken for granted that only Jews only members of the household of Israel are the heirs of the kingdom this is the first breakthrough it is a radical conversion of the church to recognize that this is not so that the the Gentiles also are called into the fellowship of
the family of God but now there is a new initiative and once again the Holy Spirit is the initiator chapter 13 in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manean a member of the court of Herod and Saul while they were worshipping the Lord and fasting the Holy Spirit said set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them the
Holy Spirit calls them to a new mission and so verse 4 being sent out by the Holy Spirit they went down to Seleucia and from there sailed to Cyprus and so we have the beginning of the great Gentile mission the Holy Spirit is the initiator and as we know from the story of Acts the a new issue very quickly presents itself are the Gentile converts to be circumcised now it would seem that the answer to that
question is absolutely obvious if you look at Genesis 17 the initial giving of the law of circumcision nothing could be plainer than what scripture says and please remember that the church has in its hands no Bible except what we call the Old Testament nothing of what we call the New Testament is written at this time the only Bible in the hands of the church is what we call the Old Testament and here it stands written Genesis
17 seven I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant for your descendants and verse 10 this is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you every male among you shall be circumcised and then verse 14 any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people he has broken
my covenant now you cannot find a text of scripture that is more plain than that and it would seem that this clearly means that the Covenant of God is for the circumcised but in the case of the law of circumcision there was no action of Jesus to suggest any doubt about this Jesus himself had been circumcised there is no word of Jesus that in any way questions the enduring validity of that law so that the argument
that the Gentile converts must be circumcised had enormous strength and if ever there was an argument about which one could quote absolutely unambiguous scripture surely it was this one and yet as we know Paul argues that in fact if the Gentiles are to be circumcised they are cut off from Christ Paul as you know in Galatians is extremely intransigent he says to the Gentile converts if you accept circumcision you are severed from Christ no halfway about
it and the grounds on which he argues it are that you cannot understand the provisions of Genesis 17 without taking them in the context of the promise of Genesis 15 where God establishes his covenant with Abraham on the basis of a and Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him for righteousness and Paul's argument is that that covenant of promise and faith precedes the covenant of circumcision and therefore has priority over it and therefore he
said that the Gentile who accepts circumcision is denying the faith and is severed from Christ well as we know there was a tremendous controversy in the church we know that from the Jerusalem Church people went out after Paul visiting the congregations that he had founded and telling them and one can imagine how persuasive this must have been this Paul has not given you the full gospel he has not told you the whole truth if you want
to be part of the family of God you must obey the fundamental law of the family and there it is and well to suggest that an uncircumcised pagan can be part of the Israel of God could be just one sentence just contradiction of the plain text of scripture and they had an enormously strong case and we know of course from Galatians the kind of arguments that Paul marshalled against it but then as you remember the whole
issue comes to a climax in the council at Jerusalem recorded in Acts 15 and in the arguments of that council the crucial argument is the gift of the Spirit Acts 15 verses the Apostles and elders were gathered together to consider the matter and after there had been much debate Peter rose and said to them brethren you know that in the early days God made choice among you that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word
of the gospel and believe and God who knows the heart bore witness to them giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us and he no distinction between us and them but cleansed their hearts by faith now therefore why do you make trial of God by putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear but we believe that we shall be saved through the
grace of the Lord Jesus just as they will and all the assembly kept silence as they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles the crucial argument is God bore witness to them giving them the Holy Spirit as he did to us and you have the same argument at the crucial point in the letter to the Galatians if you look at Galatians the first two
chapters are concerned with Paul's own position and the personal attacks made on him and then at the beginning of chapter three we come to the main argument and Paul begins his argument this way Galatians three one oh stupid Galatians who has bewitched you before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified let me ask you only this did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith that is
the crucial argument did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith it is the presence of the spirit as the fresh act of God coming through the preaching of the gospel you before whom Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified the preaching of the cross the preaching of this astounding message that the power and the wisdom of God are present for the world in this crucified man this astounding
gospel which overturns all religious ideas as we have understood them and which becomes the occasion for this new power breaking into the life of men the power of the spirit Paul asks this simple question do you not recognize that that was the decisive point the coming of the spirit a new creative act which is recognizable unmistakable decisive the spirit is sovereign over the mission now this of course has the most enormous consequences for Paul's understanding of
the mission first of all it means that Paul does not lay down any legal code he does not give them a new law so they remain gentiles but they are gentiles who have received the spirit let's remember again what the law means to the jew the torah the hedge of the law that precious gift of God by which he had established a little area of cleanness in an unclean world the hedge of the law by which
God protected his people and enabled them to live as it were in in a clean place in the midst of the uncleanness of the pagan world and it was a very unclean world as we know now Paul doesn't hesitate to say the shocking thing that God himself has broken down that hedge the mission of the church is not to bring more people inside that head on the contrary God has broken down the hedge and established a
new kind of reality by the power of the spirit and therefore Paul does not lay down the law for his new converts he simply insists upon the reality of the spirit and therefore also you do not find anywhere in the new testament that phenomenon that has become so familiar to us the younger church there is no younger church which looks for direction to a mission board in Antioch there is no missions inspector going out from Antioch
to keep the younger churches in line so to speak the church is treated as adult from the very beginning according to acts Paul after his first missionary journey you remember at the end of the first missionary journey acts 14:23 Paul and Barnabas returned through the cities they had visited and appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting and committed them to the Lord in whom they believed in other words these younger churches had
their first converts ordained to the ministry within a few weeks of their first conversion there was no question as there has been in modern missions of taking decades of so-called training before the church was considered fit to have its own ministry what is this so-called training it is the ministry of the law it is the conforming of a people to our image laying down our law a very crucial example of that has been the
whole question of polygamy in Africa the modern missionaries to Africa have assumed that an essential part of the mission of the church has been to lay down the law of monogamy and that until that law is accepted you do not have a Christian church and there is a very very interesting incident in the by John Taylor the church in Uganda is very much in our minds these days it has been from the beginning a martyr church
as it is now a martyr church in which thousands of its leaders are being slaughtered today and its great archbishop murdered the other day by general Amin the church in Uganda has been a martyr church from the beginning and the very first converts who were young men from the court of the king the kabaka paid for their faith by death in the very early days of the church well John Taylor brings out a very revealing story
of how there was a clash between the missionaries and these first converts the missionaries took the view that there could be no possibility of baptism and church membership as long as there was polygamy that anyone who wanted to be a Christian must put away all his wives above the first one if he was a Christian and these young converts said no polygamy is so deeply rooted in our culture that to try to destroy polygamy immediately will
be to do more harm than good which is surely the truth because the women who are put away have no future except to become prostitutes but says they the real issue for us is slavery slavery is the real evil in our society and there can be no Christians who have anything to do with slavery the missionary said no no no not at all slavery is the thing which takes time Saint Paul tolerated slavery and it took
before the Christians in Europe came to the conclusion that slavery was incompatible with the gospel so slavery can take time this is something which must work itself out but polygamy now and these young converts said on the contrary polygamy will take time but slavery now now of course the question is who has the right to decide that question modern missions have assumed that the missionary has the right to decide I believe that scripture teaches us that
it is the convert who has the right to decide but anyway that's just a vivid illustration of a much much broader issue that runs right through the whole of our understanding of missions if we accept seriously this concept of the Holy Spirit himself as the missionary who himself takes the initiative and guides the church then there can be no place for this idea of the younger church which remains under the control of the missionary which has
to be trained up so that after two or three decades it will be in a position to have its own ministry to make its own decisions and have its own leadership and of course the scandal of it is that in fact missions largely were unwilling to relinquish control of the younger church not entirely but largely unwilling to relinquish control of the younger churches until the political situation around them made it impossible to do anything else I
have vivid memories of my own experience as a young missionary coming to South India 40 years ago and discovering the kind of pattern by which the mission worked we were working in a rural area there were two or three dozen village congregations in the area each congregation was under the control or leadership of a local teacher who lived in the village and conducted the school and ran the congregation and then since the mission was going through
a financial crisis as most missions generally are the rule had gone out that there must be no additions to the budget which meant of course that there could be no preaching because the standard understanding of the way that church grows was that you go around the villages preaching the gospel if a village responds and says yes we would like to become Christians we would like to know more about this faith then the next step was that
you appointed a catechist to go and live in that village and teach them and then when the catechist was satisfied that they had learned enough you baptized them and then you kept them for two or three years more in a kind of probationary period and then when you were satisfied that they'd learned enough you confirmed them and you received them to holy communion but they still remained a congregation under the charge of a paid catechist trained
by us in our seminary taught to have our values and our ways of doing things our ways of keeping accounts our ways of running a meeting our ways of deciding moral questions a man whom we could trust to put over these ideas to this younger church the consequence was twofold one that these village congregations as i saw them didn't regard themselves as the holy catholic church in that place they regarded themselves quite rightly as being outstations
of organization of which the headquarters was in the town a few miles away and secondly as i say that there could not be any evangelism because if you went around preaching the gospel and people came and said we want to become Christians you had to say sorry we can't take you because we don't have the money to pay for a catechist to teach you and therefore you have to rewrite the great commission go ye into all
the world and preach the gospel to every creature provided and provided only that you have a surplus in your budget but not otherwise well i felt there must be a logical flaw in the thing somewhere and it was through reading the writings of roland allen which i've included in this bibliography that i painfully came through to see that there is a quite other way that the church can grow and i learned as i went on to
reject altogether that model i found as i went on that when a group of people came asking for baptism if you were patient enough and were willing to listen and let and wait you would always discover that somehow or other the holy spirit had touched some life or lives in that village you would very quickly or not very quickly but you would eventually discover that there was somebody there who who had been touched by the spirit
it might be a vision it might be an answer to prayer it might be a word that he had heard spoken it might be something that he had read in a he might have got hold of a gospel portion and read it but something has happened in his life which has kindled in him this desire and which has kindled a similar desire among his neighbors and and relations in the village now this man might be an
illiterate he might not be able to read all right but i took the view that that man is the man appointed by the holy spirit to be the catechist for this village and that i have trained in my seminary to tell them how they can become christians and that if one is patient enough to begin there and build on that and let that leadership grow and develop then you can have village congregations i'm talking about south
indian villages as i know them you can have village congregations which grow and develop with their own leadership under their own responsibility and we were able in i can tell you the story later if you're interested in in hearing it it's a long story with lots of lots of twists and turns to it but we were eventually able to persuade the church to allow us to ordain to the ministry of the word and sacraments these village
men who were simply continuing to earn their living as coolies as laborers in the village but who could become the leaders of their congregations ministering the word and sacraments at a very simple level but at a level which was relevant to the lives of those people now this helped me also to understand what i have called the prevenience or what my friend d.t. niles used to call the previousness of the holy spirit the previousness of the
holy spirit the missionary has to learn that the holy spirit has been there before him and that he has to follow where the holy spirit leads and build on what the holy spirit has done but of course we must also remember that while in the early part of paul's ministry we see him fighting this battle against the judaises in jerusalem for the spiritual independence of the gentile churches they are not to be simply younger churches controlled
from elsewhere they are not to be reproductions of the jewish church they are not to be judaised and they are to have their own independence standing in the gospel and yet on the other hand we see paul devoting the whole of the latter part of his ministry to knitting up the connections between the gentile and the jewish churches most of paul's later letters are dominated by the question of the great collection which he took the collection
in all the gentile churches which was brought to the church in jerusalem as a sign of the spiritual unity of the churches and when we read ephesians we see there the tremendous emphasis on the unity of jew and gentile within the one body of the church and perhaps we may have time to speak about that in a later lecture so that one must not take just one side of the picture um freedom and mutual responsibility both
of them not dependence not the domination of the younger church by the older not the dependence of the younger church on the older there is no trace in the new testament of funds being sent from antioch to the churches in galatia corinth or anti or athens on the contrary there is an awful lot about funds being sent back from these gentile churches to the church in jerusalem because as we know the church in jerusalem had faced
this tremendous poverty problem but the and it's it's the balance of mutual of freedom and mutual responsibility not just independence but but interdependence mutual responsibility of those who are equal and they are equal because they are sharers in the same spirit now i've looked very briefly with you at these verses in um in john and let me just remind you of them again and then look at some further verses in paul which as i think illustrate
this role of the spirit in in john 15 i drew your attention first of all to the promise of the coming of the spirit in the context of the rejection of the world they hated me without a cause but when the counselor comes even the spirit of truth he will bear witness to me this is parallel to the promise in mark that when you are dragged before kings and governors for my sake you are not to
be anxious because it is not you who speak but the holy spirit it is at the point of the world's hostility and rejection that this promise is given of a a witness that cannot be silenced and then you have in chapter 16 the promise of the spirit to convict the world to prove the world wrong this is the spirit going before the church and directly acting on the world but it is an action and here is
where i want to stress what seems to me to be very important the spirit can convert peter because cornelius is converted and cornelius is converted because of the preaching of the cross it is not that the spirit so to speak flickers around the horizon with no relationship to jesus that would not be in accordance with what the new testament says but what is clear is that the spirit so to say goes ahead of the church preparing
the way of the church through the preaching of the gospel and therefore acting directly on the world and then you have the promise in verses 12 to 15 of the spirit leading the church into all the truth and therefore also we have the emphasis of the spirit on the spirit as the arab bone the four tastes you have two places where that actual word is used by paul the first is in second corinthians 1:22 second
corinthians 1:22 it is god who establishes us with you in christ and has commissioned us he has put his seal upon us his spirit in our hearts as arabon as guarantee as advanced payment so to speak and then in galatians in ephesians 1:14 in him you who have heard the word of the truth the gospel of your salvation have believed in him you were sealed with the promised holy spirit which is the arab bone
of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it the spirit as the arab bone the four tastes this is ephesians 1:14 but you have essentially the same teaching if you look at roman's eight as i said last week roman's eight for my money is one of the most wonderful chapters in the whole bible in the sense of holding together this having and hoping this this already and not yet which is at the very heart as you were saying of the whole christian experience