Dr Paul Allen

  This segment of Eph 4 is verses 4–6, where Paul says, “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope at your calling—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” We can see that this passage is brought to us by the number 1; Paul is really emphasising the oneness of the body of Christ, the oneness of the church. Of course, this is an implication of much of the argument through chapters 2–3—Jew and Gentile being brought together [and] forming the one temple of God, the one building in which God would dwell by His Spirit. The Church as the Body of Christ So the oneness of God’s people has already been developed theologically. This is kind of a recap, emphasising the point in this chapter about the body of Christ. But it’s worth going through each of these elements that Paul lists. He says that “There is one body” in verse 4. In 1:22–23 he refers to Christ’s body as being the church, the people of G...

Here we have some of the most difficult and challenging verses of the Letter to the Ephesians in 4:7–10. Paul says, “Now grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of the Messiah’s gift. For it says: When He ascended on high, He took prisoners into captivity; He gave gifts to people. But what does ‘He ascended’ mean except that He descended to the lower parts of the earth? The One who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.” There are two difficult parts of this passage: first, verses 7–8 and what the quotation is all about from Psa 68; and then what on earth verses 9–10 is all about. The Reference to Psalm 68 First, the psalm. Paul is quoting from Psa 68:18. It’s important, whenever an OT citation is quoted in the NT, that we pause and think about the context of that passage because it’s been demonstrated that the NT authors often had the wider context in mind as they cited a particular text. So what is Psa 68 ab...

Martin Bucer (1491–1551) was among the first generation of Protestant Reformers, spending most of his ministerial life in Strasbourg and serving in later years as regius professor of divinity at the University of Cambridge.  This was his prayer:  Show me your grace and favour so that I may truly learn to hate my sins. Instead of lulling myself to sleep in sin, let me be so cast down in heart that I may confess with my mouth the honour, glory, and praise due to your holy name. In your great mercy, you instruct us by your holy word. For your name’s sake, then, allow your instruction to so lighten and clear our conscience that in due examination of all our holy life we may truly learn to be angry and displeased with all our former and corrupt living. Please draw near to us and guide our footsteps truly and perfectly in obedience to your holy laws and commandments. Send your holy angel to protect us; the enemy’s infernal army can never prevail against us. With strong faith in Jes...

 

 

 

“Without the Spirit we can neither love God, nor keep His commandments.”   The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is like any other mainline doctrine, both saturated with variety and overflowing with controversies. The Holy Spirit, being God, makes a rather unruly subject matter in that He is too incomprehensibly vast for us to tackle with full authority, especially in the brevity of this paper. As Clark Pinnock writes, In fact, of the themes of theology, the Spirit may be the most elusive of all. How does one speak at all of the power that enables us to know God? How can one put the Spirit-breath into a conceptual bottle? Yet, the graciously given presence of the Spirit is surely the most wonderful thing one experiences and that which brings God unspeakably close.  Yet scripture provides both a reasonable description of what the Holy Spirit’s interaction with His creation is, and what we might have as a standard expectation for our own understanding and teaching.  Regardin...

Anyone familiar with the debates over the doctrine of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit will know just how important this monograph is. James Dunn sparked an entire conversation with the publication of his doctoral research in 1970. Since its publication it this volume has become one of the most significant academic works on the issue and remains a standard of some importance. The evidence of its importance is seen in its careful exegetical work. Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a valuable academic work because it forces readers to wrestle with the actual details of the relevant passages on this much-debated doctrine. The book is a careful exegetical study of the various events and passages that provide the case study for this doctrine. Across the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, Dunn meticulously interacts with the lexical and syntactical issues of the text to make his case. His case simply being that baptism in the Holy Spirit was a conversion-initiation experience, contra Pentecostalism. He w...

Author: Paul Walker Without a doubt, the Pentecostal revival of the early 1900s and the Charismatic renewal, which had its beginning in the late 1950s, together constitute one of the most innovative and impactful spiritual renovations in history. But when we investigate this phenomenon, we must ask: 1) Why has this happened? 2) What is this doing? and 3) How can spiritual integrity be maintained? a, Why Has This Happened? The first reason has been an evident need for renewal of mission and purpose throughout the church and among its individual members. Second, in view of this need for renewal, there has been a definite movement on the part of sincere believers to recover the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit, which transformed and empowered the early Christians. Emerging from this movement has been an inbreaking of the Holy Spirit, accompanied by speaking in tongues, among believers in every major denomination, demonstrating that the baptism in the Holy Spirit is not a denomination or a...