Love and boldness - Page 3

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But that was only the beginning of all that Jesus did and taught, for before his Ascension he told his Apostles that they themselves would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them and they would be his witnesses, not merely in Palestine, but to the end of the earth.

So, on the Day of Pentecost according to Our Lord’s most true promise, the Holy Spirit who had been with the Apostles, now came and dwelt within them. And Our Lord also kept the rest of that promise, namely that he himself would come to them and in that day they would indeed know that he was in the Father, and they in him and he in them; and that both he and his Father had made their home in them (John 14:15-23).

So although the Holy Spirit was plainly distinct from Jesus, nevertheless he was so closely and actively associated with him that the early Christians, as we can see from the New Testament, could speak literally in the same breath of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus; of the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ; of Christ being in them and of the Spirit of God dwelling in them also (Acts 16:6-7; Romans 8:9-11).

And that is why the fruit of the Spirit in the soul of the Christian is nothing other than the character of Christ.  Or, to put it from another point of view: as the Manhood of Jesus throughout his earthly life was filled with the Holy Spirit, so his Body was the Temple of the Spirit and through the indwelling Spirit, God raised him up from the dead by supernaturalising his Body.  And ever since the Day of Pentecost the Spirit fills his mystical Body the Church, making it, as St Paul says, into a holy Temple in the Lord and a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:21,22).