THE HOLY SPIRIT'S SPECIAL WORK

'To persuade a poor, sinful soul that God in Jesus Christ loves him, delights in him, is well pleased with him and only has thoughts of kindness towards him is an expressible mercy.

This is the special work of the Holy Spirit and by this special work we have communion with the Father in his love, which is poured into our hearts.'

John Owen, Communion with God, p.210. 

SANCTIFICATION

'It is the universal renovation of our natures by the Holy Spirit into the image of God, through Jesus Christ.'
John Owen in Kelly M Kapic, You're Only Human, p.164.

YOU NEED GOD'S SPIRIT TO BE A BALANCED CHRISTIAN

'...in the flesh we can stress purity without love or we can stress the love of God without purity, but ...in the flesh we cannot stress both simultaneously. In order to exhibit both simultaneously, we must look moment by moment to the work of Christ, to the work of the Holy Spirit.'

Francis A Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World, p.45.

HOW GOD'S SPIRIT DISCIPLES THROUGH GOD'S WORD

The Holy Spirit, therefore, has generously and advantageously planned Holy Scripture in such a way that in the easier passages He relieves our hunger; in the more obscure He drives away our pride. Practically nothing is dug out from those obscure texts which is not discovered to be said very plainly in another place.'

Augustine of Hippo in Mark D Thompson, A Clear and Present Word: The clarity of Scripture, p.110.

UNION WITH CHRIST AS A MARRIAGE

'...becoming a Christian means more than believing Christ did certain things for you long ago. It means that Christ joins his life to yours in such an intimate and comprehensive way that the prevailing metaphor for this union in the Bible is marriage (Eph. 5:32). It's a metaphor, but it's not only a metaphor because the Holy Spirit, the bond of this connection, it is not metaphorical. The Holy Spirit is real, which means if you are "in Christ," Christ has truly made himself one with you.' 

Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God, p.71. 

GOD'S SPIRIT IS NOT AN OPTIONAL EXTRA

'...we cannot see the Spirit as an additional extra to our life that we engage with if we feel like it; the Spirit is vital to the very breath of the Church and the gifts of the Spirit are the means by which the body breathes full life-giving breaths. More importantly, without the gifts of the Spirit, the Church pants for breath and struggles to function as it should. The body of Christ, just like each one of our bodies, needs the Spirit to live.'

Paula Gooder, Body, p.128. 

OUR DEPENDENCE ON GOD'S SPIRIT

'It is not our ability to think or speak that enables us to engage with God. It is God's Spirit poured into us and entwining with our own spirit that does that.' 

Paula Gooder, Body, p.81. 

THE TRINITY

'It is important to note that there is no moment when Jesus Christ expressly reveals this doctrine. It was overheard, rather than heard. It was simply that in the gradual process of intercourse with Him, His disciples came to recognize Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as included in their deepening and enlarging thought of God.' 

Charles Gore in Fred Sanders, The Triune God, p.73. 

THE TRINITY & THE BIBLE

;...the Trinity is in the Bible because the Bible is in the Trinity.'
Fred Sanders, The Triune God, p.44. 

THE TRINITY & REVELATION

'Knowledge of the Trinity is inside knowledge given by insiders.'
Fred Sanders, The Triune God, p.38. 

PREACHING & THE HOLY SPIRIT

'...in preaching the Spirit speaks through a Spirit-given Word, by means of a Spirit-formed preacher to a Spirit-indwelt people. At every point the preacher is hemmed in by the work and life of the Spirit.' 

Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p.169. 

THE HOLY SPIRIT

'The Holy Spirit has been called, "the Lord, the giver of life," and drawing their power from that source, saints are essentially life-givers. To be with them is to become more alive.'

Frederick Buechner in Rebecca Konydyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices, p.57.

THE HOLY SPIRIT

'The Holy Spirit is God's present-tense guarantee that in due time he will deliver the full restoration for which his people are waiting.' 

Jason B Hood, Imitating God in Christ, p.111. 

THE ASCENSION

'You ascended from before our eyes and we turned back grieving, only to find you in our hearts.'

Augustine of Hippo in Timothy Keller, Encounters with Jesus, p.179.

EXPECTATIONS OF GOD'S LOVE

'It seems to me that the moment the Holy Spirit blows through may be far less spectacular, and require far less from us than dreadful self-preparation and self-abandonment… I was a Narnia-loving child. And one of the things I found hardest was [Lewis’] insistence on a kind of frantic willingness to dissolve yourself, to rush towards Aslan and have your head bitten off if necessary. Sometimes I think that is an artefact of the fears and protections of the person speaking. Take John Donne, another extremely egotistical Christian, who said he wouldn’t be chaste unless God "ravished" him. Well, maybe what God wanted to do was to take John Donne out to the movies and kind of gently inch His hand along the back of the seat. The fact that Donne imagined having his clothes ripped off on a picnic blanket - that’s his problem, not some kind of operating requirement of the Holy Spirit.'

Francis Spufford at: http://unapologetic-book.tumblr.com/

THE HOLY SPIRIT & JESUS

'...we ask: what could the Spirit of God contribute to the deity of Christ? And the answer we must give is: Nothing! As God he possesses every quality infinitely, and nothing can be added to him. So then we ask instead this question: what could the Spirit of God contribute to the humanity  of Christ? The answer is: everything of supernatural power and enablement that he, in his human nature, would lack. The only way to make sense, then, of the fact that Jesus came in the power of the Spirit is to understand that he lived his life fundamentally as a man, and as such, he relied on the Spirit to provide the power, grace, knowledge, wisdom, direction, and enablement he needed, moment by moment, and day by day, to fulfill the mission the Father sent him to accomplish.' 

Bruce A Ware, The Man Christ Jesus, p.34. 

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

'The Christian life still entails obedience. It still involves a fight. But its a fight we will win. You have the Spirit of Christ in your corner, rubbing your shoulders, holding the bucket, putting his arm around you and saying before the next round with sin, "You're going to knock him out, kid." Sin may get in some good jabs. It may clean your clock once in a while. It may bring you to your knees. But if you are in Christ you will never be knocked out.'

Kevin DeYoung, The Hole in Our Holiness, p.105.

THE CROSS

'Justice requires that satisfaction be made; we were and we are in no position to make such satisfaction. Jesus Christ actively intervenes on our behalf; he freely takes our part in healing the breach between God and humanity by the sacrifice of the cross. To speak of a collusion between the persons of the triune God suggests the word "conspiracy." It is a helpful word when we remember that conspire means, quite literally, "to breathe together." In the beginning God breathes life into Adam; Jesus breathes life upon the disciples and says, "Receive the Holy Spirit." The triune God conspires for our salvation. The entire plan is love from beginning to end, and the fullness of God  - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - is engaged every step of the way. It is not an angry Father punishing an innocent Son, with the Spirit on the sidelines helplessly watching. No, it is the Father, Son and Spirit conspiring together to save us from ourselves. At the Father's command, the Son goes forth in the power of the Spirit to become one of us. On our behalf, as Representative Humanity, he lives the life of perfect obedience that Adam - and all of us "in Adam" - failed to live. And he completes that life by dying the perfect death.'

Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon, p.221.  

WORD & SPIRIT

'....to proclaim Christ in living power it is necessary for us to depend on him in a double way. On the one hand, for accurate knowledge of the incarnate Word which he inspired through the Spirit and which is the continuing instrument through which his mind is made present among believers. On the other hand, for illuminated understanding of the written Word, who is alone to enliven the dead conceptual knowledge of the fallen human mind through the sanctifying operation of the Holy Spirit, and to focus it existentially so that it will be wisdom in the biblical sense and not mere knowledge.'

Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life, p.279.

GOD'S LOVE

'Wilt thou love God, as he thee? then digest,
My soul, this wholesome meditation,
How God the Spirit, by angel's waited on
In heaven, doth make his temple in thy breast.
The Father having begot a Son most blessed,
And still begetting, (for he ne'er begun)
Hath deigned to choose thee by adoption,
Coheir to his glory, and Sabbath's endless rest;
And as a robbed man, which by search doth find
His stol'n stuff sold, must lose or buy it again:
The Son of glory came down, and was slain,
Us whom he had made, and Satan stol'n, to unbind.
'Twas much, that man was made like God before,
But, that God should be made like man, much more.'
John Donne, Poems and Devotions, p.52.