Search Results for: spiritual gifts

7 Stabilizing Principles in a Chaotic World, Part 4

July 23, 2018 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Number 3: Giftedness. You can’t do everything, but you can do something. Do what you can.

A consequence of providence is that God has directed in your life as well as in the life of the planet. Your conception, birth, and life circumstances are not random or accidental; they are purposeful, and better yet, those purposes come from a good and great person, whose interest in you is entirely benevolent.

There are people in Scripture of whom that is said specifically. Jeremiah comes most easily to mind (Jer 1.4-10); God created him for a specific purpose. Of course, we’re not all formed for the same purpose he was; but if you’ll think about the arc of the biblical storyline, everybody fits into the story, bringing it to its next level of development. Purpose runs through all of it.

Now, we’re not part of biblical history; we’re a couple of millennia later. But the biblical story itself indicates that we’re part of the plan too. First, Jesus clearly thought of those of us who would believe on him later, and he prayed for our success in his plan (John 17.20-26). And second, the extensive biblical material on spiritual gifts (Rom 12, 1 Cor 12-14, Eph 4, 1 Pet 4) indicates that the Spirit has gifted each of us individually according to his purposes for us in his church, the body of Christ (1 Cor 12.4-11).

The fact that there have been some odd teachings about spiritual gifts over the years doesn’t mean that spiritual gifts themselves should be downplayed or viewed with suspicion. God has gifted you—if you are a believer—in specific ways to enable you to serve him.

You’re good at something. Or somethings. By divine design, and for powerful purposes. You may need to get some experience before you become really facile at what you’re good at (2 Tim 1.6), but the gift is there.

What does all this have to do with the chaos of the present?

Everything.

Perhaps you’ve experienced an event where everything was moving so fast that you just froze. Had no idea what to do. There are people whose professions put them in those situations all the time. EMTs arriving at a multi-car accident scene—what do you do first? They’ll tell you that they have to fall back on their training; they have to stay calm and work through the processes that they’ve been taught. Survey the scene to ensure that it’s safe to enter. Then survey the victims to determine which ones are beyond hope. (There are ways to do that, the details of which, for the sake of the squeamish, I won’t go into here.) Then move to those in need of the most rapid intervention—typically, those not breathing.

And so on. Do what you’re trained to do, one thing at a time. Make the difference you can make.

I suspect you’re not an EMT, but you’re very much in a parallel situation. You come across things every day that you find grievous, or fearsome, or enraging. How do you respond?

Well, you can be a sucker, and just get angrier, which is what the social-media poster likely wants you to do.

Or you can do something. You can make a difference.

What can you do? Well, that depends on who you are, and how God has gifted you.

Are you a bulldog, with a character that radiates rugged persistence? Then find a need that’s going to take some time and energy to accomplish—just one need—and work on that.
Are you characterized by mercy, a heart that breaks for the pain you hear about? Then pick one of those situations that’s within your reach—in your community, in your circle of acquaintances, connected to you in some way—and make the connection and help bring grace and peace to the hurting.
Are you more of a thinker than a doer? Then do some thinking about the thing that troubles you, and propose a solution or two, and get it out to the people who can make a difference. (As I’ve said before, if you’re not a thinker, shut up and do the things you’re good at. :-) )

You can sit there and stew, giving in to the fear or the anger or the frustration.

Or you can do some good, based on God’s kind providence in your life.

Which is the better choice?

Well, if everyone around you really is in the image of God, then I think the choice is obvious.

Bloom where you’re providentially planted.

Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

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Demystifying Discipleship, Part 4: What, and Where / How?

January 15, 2026 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Why Disciple? | Part 3: When?

As I anticipated in the previous post, I think a couple “journalism questions” remain for our survey of discipleship:

What happened when you were converted?

Where do you go from here?

And because I’ve written on these questions here before, I think a couple of links and a comment or two might be sufficient for this post.

We begin discipling a new convert by explaining to him where he is, or what happened to him when he came to Christ in repentance and faith (or, in today’s common expression, “got saved”). God was doing things in his heart before that happened, and a whole raft of things, many of which he didn’t notice, happened to him at the moment of conversion. And God’s work will continue in him in the days ahead, and for the rest of his life.

He needs to know these things in order to understand his place in God’s plan now.

I’ve written about those things in this series, using the analogy of opening presents at Christmas. It’s a long series (22 posts!), because it needs to be.

We conclude by answering the question “Where do we go from here?” To some degree the last few posts of the series linked above will help to answer this question—there’s progressive sanctification and filling and glorification—but our new brother will need some help with getting there—with fulfilling his responsibilities in the shared (“synergistic”) work of progressive sanctification.

For these helps, I suggest another earlier series, in which I use the analogy of working out, or building muscle. That’s just 6 posts, covering what we call the three (or maybe five) “means of grace.” It’s a subject that I think is taught less clearly than it ought to be these days.

May we all comprehend, and apprehend, our inheritance and our responsibilities in this remarkable spiritual journey.

Photo by Nathan McDine on Unsplash

Demystifying Discipleship, Part 1: Introduction

January 5, 2026 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

We hear a lot about discipleship in the church these days. Pastors and teachers often point out that discipleship is the focus of the Great Commission (we’ll get to that in a bit), but a recent Barna study (2022) concluded that while about 56% of Christians are being discipled, only about 33% are discipling others.

A couple of caveats.

Accurate surveying is a complicated business; minor inattention can produce huge errors, and every survey that does its statistical work prudently will report a certain “margin of error,” usually 3 to 7 percent, based on sample size and other factors. (The margin of error in this study is +/- 1.5% at 95% confidence.) But even a very large sample size can yield unreliable results—as is the case in virtually every Facebook poll, in which the respondents self-select. That said, Barna is a well-regarded research group.

Nowhere does the article report how Barna defined “Christian”; it says simply that the respondents self-identified as Christian. (I didn’t read the study itself, which is behind a paywall.) Given Barna’s history, I think it’s safe to assume that they were interacting with evangelicals.

The article also doesn’t define “discipleship,” though I’m sure the study itself does. Given that only 56% percent of Christians are “being discipled,” I’m confident that the definition does not include pulpit ministry.

With those factors in mind, I think we can take the percentages as reasonably accurate. That said, though the percentage of Christians who are being discipled is significantly higher than the percentage of those who are discipling others, I still think it’s lower than it ought to be; and the number of those discipling others is disturbingly low.

When a subset of the survey group was asked why they’re not discipling anyone, the most common response was that they didn’t think they were qualified. I rather suspect that apathy and/or fear play a larger role than the survey indicates, but because people are not likely to give answers that find fault with themselves, I doubt that any survey would yield reliable data on that question.

So then. A large percentage of self-proclaimed Christians are rendering only casual obedience, if that, to Jesus’ last command.

Maybe we should try to clarify, in a few posts, what discipleship is all about.

I plan to proceed by tracking the basic journalistic questions:

Why should we disciple others?

What does discipleship consist of?

When should we call for a decision in evangelism?

What should we teach the disciple about salvation? (This will consist of a blog series I posted some years ago. A link will suffice.)

How should the disciple be enabled to grow? (This too will be an earlier series on this blog.)

We’ll start down this path next time.

Part 2: Why Disciple? | Part 3: When? | Part 4: What, and Where / How?

Photo by Nathan McDine on Unsplash

On Discipline, Part 1: Perspective

July 22, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

No, I’m not referring to child-rearing, but to how we discipline ourselves. It’s a truism that if you aim at nothing, you’ll certainly hit it. Pretty much everybody understands that you have to set goals, and then persist in pursuing them, in order to accomplish anything worthwhile.

There’s a whole industry of advisors, people who are happy to coach you on making the best of life—whether on the secular side or on the spiritual. Reading these works discerningly and thoughtfully can be highly profitable.

More reliably, though, the Scripture addresses this topic extensively. A series of blog posts is not the place for a comprehensive survey of the biblical theology of personal discipline, but it’s reasonable to focus on a single passage that concentrates on the idea.

I find such a passage in Philippians 4. It’s a concise presentation, and a familiar one; many Christians have memorized the passage, or at least parts of it. In verses 4-9, I find a list of five aspects of our lifestyle—what the King James translators called “conversation”—that we ought to discipline in certain ways. Lord willing, I’ll devote a post to each of the five.

The section opens with Paul’s goal for his (and our) perspective:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice (Php 4.4).

Our view of things, he says, should be consistently joyful.

Several things to note about that.

First, this is Paul writing. He has not had an easy life; as he has already noted in this short epistle, he has sacrificed early professional success to follow Jesus (Php 3.4-11), and a few years earlier he has listed for the church in Corinth a litany of hardship (2Co 11.23-29). Even as he writes these words, he is under house arrest in Rome, waiting for a hearing before Caesar that threatens capital punishment. He is not speaking platitudes.

Second, he is writing to Philippi, a church founded out of a night in prison, an earthquake, and government opposition (Ac 16.13-40). He is about to say that this church has already given sacrificially to support his ministry from a distance (Php 4.16). There is nothing flippant or casual about what he is asking them to do.

Rejoice, he says. No, I really mean it, he repeats.

And furthermore, rejoice all the time.

Rejoice in the good times; rejoice in the bad. Rejoice in success; rejoice in failure.

Rejoice in house arrest. Rejoice in the inner prison.

Interestingly, Paul lives that out. He has already written here that his arrest has yielded good things (Php 1.12-14), and he will go on to say that there are now saints in Caesar’s household (Php 4.22)—though we don’t know whether they became saints as a direct result of his appeal to Caesar.

Now for the fifty-dollar question—how does he do it? How does Paul rejoice in the midst of suffering and injustice greater than you (probably) or I have ever experienced? And by extension, how are we to “rejoice … always”?

The ellipsis provides the answer: “rejoice in the Lord always.”

There’s a lot packed into that tiny prepositional phrase.

What does it mean to “rejoice in the Lord”?

At its purest, it means simply to rejoice in God himself—who he is, and what he does. Meditation on him brings great delight.

But God knows that we are dust, and he understands that we are consistently motivated by self-interest. He graciously works benefits to us, in which we can then rejoice. The blessings of salvation are profitable topics for meditation, as are answers to prayer. (Sidebar: if you don’t pray much, or at all, you’re depriving yourself of the joy that comes from seeing prayers answered.) The confidence that comes from following his will, even through valleys (Ps 23.4), is reason to rejoice. It’s a great gift to know that, really, everything’s going to be OK, and the hard times will eventuate in great good.

So our first step of discipline, according to this passage, is in our perspective: we discipline ourselves to see all things as causes for rejoicing.

This is life-changing.

More next time.

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Continuous Improvement, Part 2: Inch by Inch

January 18, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: No Fear

Deming’s fourteen principles included a second one that has greatly influenced my thinking: being satisfied with slow, iterative change, so long as it is constant because it is built into the system. That, too, reflects something in God’s relationship with us.

During Jesus’ earthly ministry, he has three years to save the world. We would certainly feel a lot of pressure in that situation. And that pressure would be compounded if we had to set up a system that would perpetuate itself for thousands of years—particularly if we found that our disciples unanimously and continuously Just Didn’t Get It.

A remarkable thing about Jesus’ ministry is that he never seems to be in a hurry. As he’s traveling through Galilee, he sees a funeral and stops to raise the lone widow’s only son back to life again (Lk 7.11-17). As he’s walking to a village to heal Jairus’s daughter (Lk 8.41-42), he pauses and asks, “Who touched me?” (Lk 8.45). And he takes time to talk to the woman, to comfort and encourage her. Though he sometimes expresses frustration over the thickheadedness of his disciples, he doesn’t fire them and look for someone else. At the end of his earthly ministry, though they are still essentially numbskulls, he instructs them patiently and at length about what’s coming next and what their responsibilities will be.

A little improvement here, a little improvement there. That’s good. We’re moving in the right direction.

It should be no surprise, then, that he works with us in the same way. At our conversion, a lot happens from the divine side, but we’re still just babies, dependent on constant care, feeding on milk and not solid food (He 5.12; 1P 2.2). Yet God has committed himself to us for the long term, uniting our efforts with his in the lifelong process called sanctification (Php 2.12-13). With our active participation, he begins to conform us to the character of his Son, a process that will take our entire lifetimes, even with the Spirit’s empowerment. And even at the end, we still won’t be there, and God will have to take us the rest of the way to perfect Christ-likeness—and he certainly will (1J 3.2).

He knows, of course, that all along that lifelong pathway we’ll stumble, sometimes from weakness, sometimes from inattention, sometimes from sheer bone-headedness. Even Paul didn’t do any better than that (Ro 7.14-25).

But our Father is utterly committed to our long-term reclamation, and he is in this with us for the long haul. He knows our dusty frame (Ps 103.14), and he knows that we’re going to progress in tiny steps, and that sometimes we’ll take steps backward. Though we are frustrated by the fickleness of our love for God and by the consequent inconsistency of our spiritual growth, he is not.

Why not?

Because God’s plans are never frustrated.

And because he loves us.

We’re going to get there, by God’s grace and with his empowerment. You can take that to the bank.

So, every day, we seek continuous improvement. As my pastor said recently, we just take the next step. What that next step is, is different for each of us, but by God’s grace we can see that far, and we can take the step in confidence that he will empower it.

I hope you don’t take this brief series to imply that God is following Deming’s fourteen principles; God is what he is timelessly, and Deming, through common grace, is following God’s principles rather than vice versa.

It shouldn’t surprise us that God is the perfect Father, the perfect Master, the perfect Director and Accomplisher of his good and eternal plans—that he has delivered us from all fear and empowered us to become like Christ, no matter how long it takes or how slow and inconsistent the process.

Take the next step, with confidence.

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On Fun, Part 3: Loving Your Neighbor

October 5, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: It’s Good | Part 2: On Purpose

Jesus told us that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mk 12.30; Lk 10.27). As we saw in the previous post, we can and should do that in the fun times as well as in the serious ones.

But Jesus, unbidden, identified the second greatest commandment as well: love your neighbor as yourself (Mk 12.31; Lk 10.27). Is it possible for us to do that when we’re “just having fun”?

I think the question pretty much answers itself. If God’s goal for me is being like Christ, then that’s his goal for everybody I know as well. And if I can make my rest and pleasure purposeful for myself, then I can make it purposeful for my friends and associates too.

I can think of a couple of ways to do that.

First, Paul tell us to be sure that we “edify” our brothers and sisters in Christ—that is, we build them up, make them stronger. We can spend some time thinking about how we strengthen their spiritual walk through our shared entertainment experiences. For example, what are your friend’s strengths or gifts, and how can your shared leisure experiences reinforce those gifts? Is he a “people person”? Then how about doing things that bring you across the paths of others, where he can instruct, encourage, enjoy? Can he teach friends how to build a campfire, cook on it, set up a tent? I believe there’s an obvious activity that could serve that purpose. What if he’s more solitary, bookish? How about reading a book together? Visiting a historical site? Playing Ticket to Ride or Settlers of Catan?

Now, I know that many readers of this post will think this sounds unbearably dull. Of course. I’m intentionally trying to give examples for the hard cases. You and your friends can certainly come up with options that fit your personalities and interests more specifically. My point is that you should give it all some thought, rather than just “hanging out” unimaginatively.

I said I had a couple of ways. Here’s the flip side. The opposite of building up is tearing down. We also need to be sure that we don’t cause spiritual damage to our friends by the choices we make in having fun. What are the things your friend struggles with spiritually? (You don’t know? Then it’s time to add some substance to your friendship by talking about your spiritual strengths and weaknesses, victories and struggles.) If he has a problem in an environment dominated by bikinis, then you probably shouldn’t be going to the beach. If he’s tempted to isolate himself from others, thereby avoiding the need to love his neighbor, then maybe video games aren’t the wisest choice.

In a similar vein, we need to respect the consciences of our friends. I’ve touched on that before; let me say here that there is no legitimate place for us to encourage friends to do things that they don’t think they should do—even if we’re convinced that they’re mistaken, and their consciences are being unnecessarily strict with them. When you violate your conscience—in effect, tell it to shut up—you’re weakening it for the next time. Do that enough times, and eventually it won’t speak up at all anymore—and that, my friend, is not a place you want to be. And so it’s not a place you want your friends to be either.

So you engage in activities that you can all enjoy, that will increase your effectiveness as followers of Jesus, that will provide you all with the kind of pleasure and relaxation that God wants you to have.

There’s another general consideration I’d like to address, and then some more specific questions we can ask ourselves as we make our choices.

Next time.

Photo by MI PHAM on Unsplash

Part 4: Down with Slavery | Part 5: Question Everything

In Christ, Part 3: More Pictures

May 8, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Pictures

A picture of our union with Christ that illustrates the concept richly—and, I suppose is for that reason the most often-repeated metaphor of the concept—is that of a head and a body.

Paul particularly likes this image. He builds his key ecclesiological work, Ephesians, around it; from the very beginning, he climaxes his description of “all [the] spiritual blessings” (Ep 1.3) God has bestowed on his people with the observation that since Christ has been resurrected and exalted at the right hand of the Father (Ep 1.20-21), he is now the head of the church, which is his body (Ep 1.22-23).

He develops the concept in the next chapter by noting that in our conversion we are raised together with Christ (Ep 2.5-6). He addresses this specifically (though not, as the larger context makes clear, exclusively) to the Gentiles in the Ephesian church (Ep 2.11), exclaiming with wonder in his voice that the formerly alien peoples are now united with believers from God’s longtime chosen people, Israel (Ep 2.12-18). The partition in the Temple courtyard that had excluded Gentiles at the threat of immediate execution was now—spiritually, at least—demolished, and would be physically demolished in just a decade.

This is the first and most obvious teaching of this metaphor: if diverse peoples are all “in Christ,” then they are one with one another as well, despite their apparently insurmountable differences. Paul notes that even the angels are driven to glorify God by the sight of erstwhile enemies—Jews and Gentiles—uniting in worship to God (Ep 3.10). As I often say to my students, “What does it take to astonish people who go to work in heaven every day?”

The metaphor has other implications. We have a firm foundation, and the resultant stability, because we are in Christ (Ep 2.20). We are holy—set apart, special—because we are in the ultimately holy One (Ep 2.21). We are a fit habitation for the Holy Spirit (Ep 2.22). We have confident boldness in his presence (Ep 3.12; cf He 4.16). We have power (Ep 3.16). We have understanding (Ep 3.17-19). We bring him glory (Ep 3.21).

These are the facts. But Paul isn’t one to stop with just the facts. In the second half of his letter, he moves to the application, the response: if this is true, what should we do about it?

And here he gets meddlesome. It turns out that we can’t just sit back and enjoy our situation, our privileges, our blessings. With these privileges comes great responsibility.

As members of the body, we’re designed—and obligated—to work together.

Despite our differences.

As the angels have observed, that’s the whole point.

That’s how we bring him glory.

Since there’s one body (Ep 4.4), with diverse gifts (Ep 4.11), we need to work together, in concert, as a single organism, coordinated, graceful, mature, gainly. We need to grow up together so that the body is the right size for the head (Ep 4.13)—so that we’re rightly proportioned as a body with a perfect head.

Part of that is taking care of each other. When you get something in your eye, your finger recognizes that it is gifted to get foreign objects out of sensitive areas, and it springs into action to help out its fellow member—even though the foreign object isn’t causing the finger any discomfort whatsoever.

And so in the body of Christ we all exercise our gifts for the benefit of differently gifted members—and we accept their ministry in areas where we need help as well.

And we DO need the help.

Paul develops this metaphor further later in this epistle (Ep 5.30) and in other epistles, including one to the church the capital of the Empire (1Co 12.12-27; Ro 12.4-8). It’s a Big Idea.

And so, it turns out, we have work to do.

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On God as Our Father, Part 3: Provision

March 2, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Likeness

What else does is God for us, because he is our Father?

I suppose the most obvious thing a father does for his family is to provide what they need. Often the first thing a wife will say to commend her husband is that “he is a good provider.” That’s expected in cultures all around the world. The father will see to it that his family has a place to live, and food to eat, and clothes to wear. And that makes sense: since the mother is typically tasked with the care of the children, and since, at least in cultures where most paid work requires physical labor, the father is the physically stronger of the couple, it falls to the father to “bring home the bacon.”

Our heavenly Father isn’t bound by either of those constraints, but he still provides for us his children, and abundantly. Jesus has already noted that he gives rain to the just and to the unjust (Mt 5.45), but that’s just the beginning. I’ve written before on the fact that everything we really need—both physical and spiritual—is free, thanks to God’s provision. But Jesus takes it beyond common grace.

He delights to give to his children, to meet their needs, and even to give them extra. Jesus tells us to just ask the Father, and he will give us what we need: “pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you” (Mt 6.6). Just earlier, he has said that if we make charitable contributions in secret, the Father will reward us (Mt 6.4). There are other references to the Father’s “reward” in this chapter (Mt 6.1, 18). And he knows what his children need even before they ask (Mt 6.8).

Then Jesus gives his disciples a pattern for daily prayer—what we’ve come to call “The Lord’s Prayer.” We call on our Father (Mt 6.9), and we ask him for “our daily bread” (Mt 6.11)—because even though our earthly father goes to work to bring home the bacon, his ability to do so—and our ability, once we’re working—comes from God, both in his giving of health and strength and in his providential direction.

Now Jesus uses an earthy illustration to set his point. Look at the lilies, he says; they don’t do anything to provide for themselves, yet the Father arrays them in clothing of unsurpassed beauty. Look at the birds; they do no agriculture whatsoever, but the Father sees that they always have food when they need it—seeds, berries, a worm or two. Even when nature is broken by sin, “red in tooth and claw,” as Tennyson put it, the creatures of the earth manage to survive and even thrive on the Father’s generous provision.

Jesus is using here a rhetorical device called an a fortiori argument, working from the weak to the strong. If the Father provides for birds and flowers, how much more will he provide for his actual children?

He makes the point again in the next chapter—

If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! (Mt 7.11).

And it goes even further. If he will provide our temporal, physical needs, how much more the eternal, spiritual ones? He justifies us, declaring us to be perfect, as he is perfect (2Co 5.21); he sanctifies us, setting us aside as his special treasure (1P 2.9), and progressively conforming us to the character of his Son (2Co 3.18); and one day, no matter how far we are from the finish line of perfection, he will take us the rest of the way (1J 3.2), by his grace, because that’s what we need.

That’s what fathers do.

Part 4: Oversight | Part 5: Accountability

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On Spirit Baptism, Part 2: Clearing Up Some Longstanding Confusion

February 16, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Basic Data

In the previous post I noted two consequential facts we get from the biblical data on Spirit baptism:

The fact that Jesus is the one baptizing (Mt 3.11), but the event doesn’t happen until after he returns to heaven (Ac 1.5)
The fact that the baptism places the person into the body of Christ (1Co 12.13)

The first fact tells us that Spirit baptism is a spiritual rather than a physical experience; Jesus, ascended to heaven and seated at the right hand of the Father, immerses us (there’s my Baptist bias showing) into the Spirit. Figuring out what exactly that means is difficult, because this is happening in the spiritual realm, but I read it as associating us closely with the Spirit as an initiation of his (the Spirit’s) work in us—most especially indwelling (Jn 14.17; 1Co 3.16; 6.19) and the related works of convicting, teaching, and sanctifying (2Co 3.18). Perhaps it’s associated with sealing (2Co 1.21-22; Ep 1.13-14; 4.30) as well.

The second fact is a key truth, one that settles the disagreement between Charismatics and Evangelicals. Spirit baptism is the mechanism, if I can put it that way, by which believers are placed into the body of Christ. Now, “the body of Christ” includes all Christians—

Our verse says that: “by one Spirit are we all baptized …” (1Co 12.13).
Paul tells the Roman church that “we … are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another” (Ro 12.5).
He tells the Ephesian church that the Father “gave [Christ] to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all” (Ep 1.22-23).
He tells them further that “Gentiles … [are] of the same body, and partakers of [God’s] promise in Christ by the gospel” (Ep 3.6).
He tells the Colossian believers that “[Christ’s] body … is the church” (Co 1.24).

And in the close context of our passage, Paul says that

“Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular” (1Co 12.27), and
“The … Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills” (1Co 12.11 NASB).

These passages demonstrate that every Christian is a member of the body of Christ, by definition. That means that the believer must be placed into the body at the moment of his conversion; if the placement occurred later, there would be some Christians who aren’t yet in the body of Christ.

And how are we placed into the body of Christ, the church? By Spirit baptism.

So when and how often does Spirit baptism occur? Once, to every believer, at conversion.

There are several works of the Spirit that occur after conversion, some of which I’ve mentioned above. One I haven’t mentioned is filling, which appears to impart special strength to a believer temporarily, perhaps for a particular work (Ac 4.8; 7.55; 9.17; 13.9; Ep 5.18). The Charismatic position would be closer to the truth if it replaced its consideration of Spirit baptism with filling.

As it is, if a Charismatic believer asks me if I’ve received the baptism of the Spirit, I say, “Of course—when I got saved.” That can start a conversation.

So. If you are a believer, Christ has baptized you in, or with, the Holy Spirit. In doing that, he’s placed you into the body of Christ.

There are a good many implications of that fact. We’ll look at some of them in the next post.

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Unstable World, Stable God, Part 4: No Need to Aspire

November 28, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: It’s True | Part 2: Jesus Included | Part 3: No Need to Grow

Another reason that God doesn’t change, again based on his perfection, is that he doesn’t aspire to anything he doesn’t already have.

Now that we’re past Thanksgiving here in the States, the Christmas season is in full swing. Decorations are going up, lights are adorning the houses, and the retailers, who live or die by Christmas sales, are blasting their names out of every media outlet, hoping beyond hope that customers will come streaming into their stores, whether physical or virtual.

And those customers—assuming they show up—are there, mostly, for the children, the ones with visions of sugar plums, and Barbie Little Dream Houses, and Jurassic World Inflatable T-Rexes dancing in their heads.

There’s a part of me that heaves a sigh of relief that our children are grown now. And yet there’s another part that remembers those times fondly—the looks on their little faces when they saw the Hot Wheels tricycle or the big doll house or the lights on the Christmas tree or (later) the French onion clam dip with all the chips they wanted.

There’s something special about a little child’s scrawled Christmas list, and there’s something in every parent—I really think there is—that wants to get them everything they’re asking for. As a parent of young children I was honestly surprised at how aggressively tempted I was to spoil them.

I’m not talking about the bratty child in the grocery store checkout line who screams when he doesn’t get the candy he sees there. I’m talking about the stars in the eyes of the little beloved one who really wants something, over time, in an extraordinary way.

When our kids were small, I was planning a summer vacation and asked if there was any place in particular they’d like to go. The younger one, who was maybe 9 or 10, said, without hesitation, “Chicago.”

I thought it odd that a child of that age would have such a strong preference for a specific large city, so I asked, “Why?”

She said, “That’s where the American Girl Doll Place is.”

Aha.

So that summer our travel loop included the Windy City, and we spent a full day at the AGDP.

We also ate at our first Cheesecake Factory there. I think they liked that even better.

We love our children, and we love their aspirations—not just for Christmas gifts, but for life. Later I bought that same younger daughter a Middle English grammar, because she really wanted one. And her love for the Medieval has had far-reaching consequences in her life.

I remember taking the older daughter to her first opera at age 6—how at the overture she scooted forward in her seat and didn’t move for the rest of the performance, drinking it all in. That, too, changed her life.

Just as we want our progeny to mature and grow, we also want them to aspire, to reach, to advance, because we know that without aspiration of some kind, people fall far short of their potential.

But here’s the thing. God is fundamentally different. He doesn’t have aspirations for himself. He doesn’t need to improve his providential leadership skills. He doesn’t need to learn something new, just to broaden his mind. He doesn’t need to travel. He doesn’t need to learn a new language. He doesn’t need to read more kinds of books.

God doesn’t need anything. He is utterly complete in himself.

And that makes it all the more puzzling, amazing, that a long time ago he created. He created the cosmos, filled with all kinds of beauty and power. And in that cosmos, on (as far as we know) just one of its planets, he created life, along with all the elements and compounds necessary to sustain it. And into one species of that life, he placed his very own image.

And for that species, he aspires. He wants them—us—to achieve great things, big things, eternally significant things. He provides us with all the physical and spiritual power to do so.

Do you know the one thing that the Bible says that God “seeks”?

He seeks human beings, to worship him. He seeks them so committedly that in the person of his Son he became one of them, forever. And it is that God-Man who has told us this (Jn 4.23).

God doesn’t change, because he doesn’t aspire for himself.

But he does aspire for us.

Photo by Taylor Deas-Melesh on Unsplash