The Holy Spirit and power to do good

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Power, basically, is neutral. It simply means the ability to do things. Power is needed if you are going to do anything good, as well as if it is used for evil. Power is the capacity to accomplish goals, or to influence the outcome of events and processes. That is why, when you find that you are unable do either of these things (accomplish your goals or influence events), you feel literally “power-less.”

Power, then, is effective action, making a difference, influencing events, changing the way things are or will be. It is not surprising, then, that the Spirit of God in the Old Testament is commonly linked with power, for the biblical God is nothing if not effective in action and in bringing about change! Indeed, when the Israelites spoke of the Spirit of Yahweh, it was often simply a way of saying that God himself was exercising his power on the earth, either directly or, more commonly, through human agents. The Spirit of God is God’s power at work—either in direct action or in empowering people to do what God wants to be done.

Empowering people. That’s when the trouble starts. For human beings are not machines or robots. We are people to whom God has given the very risky capacity for making up our own minds about things and exercising our own choices. That was the power God gave us when he created us, and sadly we abused it right up front. We took power into our own hands by rebelling against God’s authority, rejecting his instructions and choosing to decide for ourselves what we will consider good and evil. The result of this tragic exercise of our own power, which is usually called the Fall and is described in Genesis 3, is the terrible mess that we now live in. Every aspect of human life (spiritual, physical, intellectual, emotional and social), has been corrupted by sin. So all our boasted power is, spiritually speaking, our weakness—the weakness of sinful human nature.

And yet, it is human beings like us that God chooses to empower through his Spirit. The men and women in the Bible whom God empowered were just as much fallen sinners as you or I. With the single exception of Jesus Christ, to say that somebody was filled with, or empowered by, God’s Spirit did not mean they were sinless, or that everything they subsequently did was morally perfect or precisely what God wanted in every respect. For when God’s power and human weakness were combined in a single sinful human being, the results were not always predictable and were sometimes downright ambiguous. The reason is that the person in question, even when empowered by the Spirit of God, was still a fallen, sinful human being like you or me. If that was true in the Bible, how much more is it still true today?

Wright, C. J. H. (2006). Knowing the Holy Spirit through the Old Testament (pp. 35–37). Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.

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