If you've just joined us, in these Saturday posts we've been looking at classics from The Briefing archive on the Holy Spirit. First we learned about the signs and wonders ministry of John Wimber. Then we looked at the issue of Christian experience and what the Holy Spirit has to do with it. Then we examined the foundations for how we should think about Christian experience. This week, we broaden our understanding of the Holy Spirit from yet another angle: the glory of God and the glory he shares with us. This is an excerpt from part 2 of Rob Smith's “story of the glory of God”:

2. The glory of God and the church of God

a) Christ's gift of glory

This brings us to the next chapter in the ‘story of glory’. The plan of God was never to simply display his glory and leave it at that, nor was it to glorify himself at the expense of his creatures. Rather, God's eternal commitment to glorify himself has always been with a view to sharing his glory with those “vessels of mercy” whom he “prepared beforehand for glory” (Rom 9:23). Put another way, God's eternal purpose to create and redeem a people for “the praise of his glory” cannot be rightly understood apart from our participation in that glory (Eph 1:12, 14; Rom 5:2, 8:30). This is both theologically mind-blowing and spiritually stunning. What it means is that Christ's glorification was not only for himself, but also for others.⁶

But how is it possible for sinful creatures to so obtain “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” that we actually become “partakers of the divine nature” (Rom 8:21; 2 Pet 1:4)? The answer is through the gift of the Holy Spirit. For as the victory of the crucified Christ is proclaimed, the now glorified Christ pours out the Spirit (the gift of God's own glorious indwelling presence) on all who believe in him (John 7:38-39). His purpose is that we might know the love that the Father and the Son have for each other from the inside—for the Spirit both “proceeds from the Father” and is “the Spirit of his Son” (John 15:26; Gal. 4:6). This reality is the denouement of Jesus' prayer: “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one” (John 17:22).

The Holy Spirit, then, is “the bond of our union with Christ, the one who comes from his side of the relationship over to ours and enables us to receive and to respond”.⁷ For this reason, he bears witness with our spirit that we are God's children, authoring and enabling the cry “Abba! Father!” (Rom 8:14-16). We thus have divine confirmation that we are “fellow heirs with Christ” and that our ultimate destiny is to be “glorified with him” (Rom 8:17).

b) Glory in the church

Far from leaving the temple theme behind at this point, the New Testament now develops it in a wonderfully new direction. The same Spirit who joins believers to Christ (the true temple) also unites us together in him, and in so doing, establishes the church (and every local expression of it) as “the temple of the living God” (2 Cor 6:16). As Paul says to the Corinthians, “Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.” (1 Cor 3:16-17).⁸

Of course, it is not as though the church has somehow replaced Christ; that is neither how the theology nor the imagery works. Christ is the “foundation” or “cornerstone” upon which the temple is being built (1 Cor 3:11; Eph 2:20). It cannot exist apart from him. As David Peterson remarks, “Christians in union with Christ fulfil the Temple ideal”.⁹ The Apostle Paul stresses this very point:

in whom [Christ] the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (Eph 2:21-22)

The church, then, is utterly dependent on its union with Christ and the indwelling of his Spirit if it is to be on earth what it is already in “the heavenly places” (Eph 1:3, 2:6). For, as Peter O'Brien notes, “glory can be ascribed to God only within the realm of Christ Jesus”.¹⁰ The new temple, then, must remain founded on Christ, the “cornerstone”, and faithful to the “truth as it is in Jesus” (Eph 2:20, 4:21). Filled with the Spirit, its mission is to build itself in love and so function as a witness to and a vehicle of praise to the glory of God in Christ (Eph 5:18, 4:16). This is why Paul prays,

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Eph 3:20-21)

Peter's way of speaking of the business of the new temple is in terms of the offering of “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 2:5). In the context of Peter's first letter, such sacrifices are clearly not confined to the gatherings of believers (although they are not excluded from them either), but must include “the whole pattern of obedient lifestyle set out in the central section of the letter” (i.e. 1 Pet 2:11-4:19).¹¹ Otherwise put, our glorification of God is both individual and corporate, public and private, involving our “social conduct, praise and evangelism”.¹²

⁶ RB Gaffin, ‘Glory’ in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, edited by TD Alexander, BS Rosner, DA Carson and G Goldsworthy, IVP, Leicester, 2000, p. 510.

⁷ T Smail, The Giving Gift: The Holy Spirit in Person, Darton, Longman & Todd, London, 1994, p. 61.

⁸ The word ‘you’ in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 is plural in each instance.

⁹ DG Peterson, ‘The New Temple: Christology and Ecclesiology in Ephesians and 1 Peter’ in Heaven on Earth: The Temple in Biblical Theology, p. 165. Emphasis his.

¹⁰ PT O'Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1999, p. 269.

¹¹ DG Peterson, ‘The New Temple: Christology and Ecclesiology in Ephesians and 1 Peter’ in Heaven on Earth: The Temple in Biblical Theology, p. 175.

¹² Ibid.

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