[AI translation] I have often found that even in the minds of believers, there is a certain confusion when the Bible speaks of God as Father, then as Jesus, then as the Holy Spirit. How do these three relate to each other? Well, very briefly: Jesus is in some mysterious way the Father, and the Holy Spirit is in some mysterious way Jesus! So all three are the same one God! The Holy Spirit is the mysterious One who realizes for us the God who reveals Himself in Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the One through Whom the God who reveals Himself in Jesus comes to man as a living reality, speaks to him, enters into his heart and possesses him from within! It is understandable, then, that in the early church and even later, for about two centuries, the most important issue in the Christian churches was the presence or absence of the Holy Spirit. And the greatest feast of Christianity was Pentecost. Then it was slowly sort of forgotten, and the emphasis shifted to Christmas. Perhaps because it is easier to celebrate the birth of Christ than it is for us to be born again from our old lives. It is easier to give all kinds of Christmas gifts than to give ourselves to God in service. It is easier to talk about the coming of Jesus into the world once a year in a romantic mood than to go out into the world with His message as His messenger. Jesus' with-us-ness is something we only wish for, because it is good if He helps us to pull the stuck wagon of our life out of a rut, but He wants to be not only with us, but in us! Because Jesus is either with us or not with us... So the main question of Christianity today is the same as it was in the past: the presence or absence of the Holy Spirit! What is either man or the Church without the Holy Spirit or with the Holy Spirit? This is what the story we have read is about, and this is what I would like to talk about.So what does it mean to live without the Holy Spirit? There he meets some "believers". He engages them in conversation, and as he talks he senses that there is something wrong with them, something "wrong" with them... So he asks them a question. The most troubling question, the one that asks the most awkward: "Did you receive the Holy Spirit after you became believers?" The answer then reveals that Paul has got to the root of the trouble, for, behold, they reply, "Rather, we do not even know whether there is a Holy Spirit." Although I don't know what signs Paul saw that these people were lacking the Holy Spirit in their lives of faith, I don't know what these believers' lives must have been like without the Holy Spirit, but I think that the kind of Christian life we live is about the same as the life most of the churches live today... In other words, it's powerless, fruitless, joyless, unpeaceful, unloving, closed, shrinking - in other words, it's missing something, or rather Someone: the Holy Spirit - the personal, spiritual presence of the living God! And I beg you very much to take this lack very seriously! Let us not consider it just a priestly speech when I say that this lack is indeed a mortal lack! Because look, just as our body needs a certain biological charge, day after day, even several times a day: food, drink, so that the body can live, man, human life, needs something else as well, so that this life is not just biological life, not just a higher mammal, but truly human life. It is the life for which we are, for which we were created: the image and likeness of God, in a spiritual-spiritual way. So that it may be good and worth living! If one does not take on a biological charge, all sorts of harm can come from it. But if you don't get a spiritual charge from above, more and more trouble will come. Let me try to illustrate this with a picture. Let's think of the trolleybus. Trouble if the oil line is not working, it can burn out the bearings. Trouble if a wheel breaks, you have to replace it. Trouble if the door doesn't work, etc.... This is the "biology" of the trolleybus. But it can also have other problems: the pantograph coming off the overhead line. And that's a big problem, or even the cause of several problems at once: first of all, the trolley stops, the lights go out, the heating, the bell, the engine doesn't work... And if you're on a slope and the handbrake is weak, it starts to slide backwards.
Well, that's kind of how it is with us. There must be trouble around the biological charge of our lives. Low on grease or oil, squeaky wheels, springs not tight enough... But there could be other things wrong. It's that our life is falling apart - from above. And when that happens, the light goes out, there's a great darkness inside - and cold. We start to shiver, the bell doesn't ring, life becomes dangerous, and the biggest problem is that we stand still, we can't move forward, and if we are on a slope, we slide downwards without escape... Yes, when the overhead line is cut off, not just one problem, but many problems appear at the same time. Such is life without the Holy Spirit.
And such that without the Holy Spirit, it bears different fruit than by the Spirit. Another, similar to the original, the fruit of the Spirit, but not identical, not the same. Remember what fruits of the Spirit Paul lists? Love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, temperance. Well, in a life without the Spirit, this is what it looks like: sentimentality instead of love, a biting, artificial sentimentality. It's like artificial honey, sweeter than honey, but worse! - Instead of joy, intoxication, not an inward radiating cheerfulness, but a cheerfulness bought with money, evoked by external influences... Instead of peace, it's spasmodic self-control. Like the Fujairah, an icy roof on the outside, a volcano on the inside: a who's who. Not natural: instead of goodness, charity, which does not so much help the other, but shows itself off, loudly, boasting of the appearance of goodness. If we have no real energy from above, let us at least show it, so as not to appear weak. Instead of wisdom, we are philosophizing, reasoning, so no light from above, just arguing for ourselves and exhausting. It doesn't even solve any problems... - Instead of living faith, it's religionism. A legacy from our ancestors. A decoration for Sundays and feast days. No life lives and no life springs from it...
Yes, such is life without the Holy Spirit. It produces substitutes for the true fruit. It's as if it were real... His prayer, his sacrifice, his service, even his testimony is like the real thing. He shows himself as a believer, as not serving Satan, as the best disciple of the Lord... As if! - Yes, without the Holy Spirit we are all just as if believers... So the problem is somewhere inside, and the problem is that there is nothing inside! There's no power! Life is not moving forward. There's no light, no warmth, the engine's stalled, the trolleybus is stuck. The course of our life is always stuck like this, and many times, oh, so many times we slide backwards, down some slope... Of course, because the charge from above that would make our life true, complete, really worth living, is missing! Yes, this is the life of a believer who doesn't even know "if he has" the Holy Spirit.
The apostle Paul immediately noticed in these Ephesian men that something was wrong with their life of faith, because Paul already knew very well that those who asked for and received the Holy Spirit were beginning to reveal Jesus in a special way! And this peculiar way of revealing himself is what Paul is looking for in the Ephesians and he cannot find it. These people talk about Jesus, they believe in Him, but they are not like Him! This likeness to Christ is what many people are looking for in us too, and they do not find it. Of course, they may not even know what they are looking for, they are just looking. It is what we ourselves are looking for in each other, and even in ourselves. This likeness to Jesus in a very particular way, this manifestation of Christ in us, among us. Well, this is what we can only receive through the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament, we always see that what happens through the reception of the Holy Spirit is that the relationship of Jesus and the believer in Him to one another is essentially changed, so that they no longer walk with one another, meet, separate, are together somewhere, are not together somewhere, but are in one another. The believer in Christ and Jesus in the believer in Him become almost one, like true spouses who now share the same joys, sorrows, work, tasks, destiny - in fact, they are no longer two, but one! They are one in everything. The apostle Paul expresses the filling of the Holy Spirit directly to himself, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." This is the essence of Pentecost!
Jesus is present in the world today by living in people and continuing to work through them. He is not some floating, knocking, spiritistic séance soul. He is a Spirit at work today, a Spirit of love, a spiritual reality. He wants to be in you and in me! Here and now! Not tomorrow! Notice, when we read the Acts of the Apostles, do we not get the impression that Jesus is there, but instead we read Peter, John or Paul? They heal the lame, the sick, cast demons out of demoniacs. They?! No! It is the Spirit within them, the living Spirit of Jesus, of whom they have become instruments in a very special way.
You say this is an old story? Well, an old story indeed, but an eternal story. The Holy Spirit is as present and active today as it was in the apostolic age. Let me give you just one example among many. Recently an old retired pastor-teacher, the highly respected Prof. Gunning, died in the Netherlands. He has been commemorated in various newspapers. Among others, a very simple man. Here is what he wrote. One day someone said to me: if anyone can help you, it must be Prof. Gunning. But I dared not go to the house of such a great scientist. But someone gave him my address and one evening he came to see me. He brought me a book (not a religious book at all) and my daughter an apple. She stayed with me for a full hour, drank two cups of coffee and said it was just as good as the coffee at home. He came back to my place ten times after that, not a word about alcohol, but I couldn't reach for the brandy any more. Every time he came in, I was almost ashamed to death in front of him and felt terribly miserable. But he always treated me as his equal, almost as his superior. Before I could take my hat off to him, he was already ahead of me... When I had him, I always had to think of Jesus, even though he never spoke of Him..."
This is what it means when "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me!" When, by the Holy Spirit, Jesus lives in the believer so much that his very presence frees one from passion. Oh, how our lives could be if we could be filled with the Holy Spirit of Jesus again and again! Wouldn't it be good if our lives were truly life, worthwhile life, victorious life, life everlasting? The rich, servant life of the sons of God, instead of the stunted, mouldy religiosity that we have turned Christianity into! But we could! Yes, it could.
Because Jesus gives His Spirit to all who ask for it today, just as He did in the past! To everyone who asks! Because prayer, prayerful, yearning petition is the only sail that can catch the "rushing wind" of the Holy Spirit. Whoever asks, not so that he can use the Spirit's power for this or that, but so that the Spirit can use him as an instrument for what God wants. He who so asks, receives. "How shall your heavenly Father not give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" And if you don't get it, it's not that you're knocking and it's locked up, it's that He's knocking. Oh, since He knocks, and would give, how He would love to give, but it's locked downstairs! In a way your soul is closed. Some old, rusty padlock hanging on it! You know what it is. Or maybe your heart is so full of everything that there is no room for the Spirit of Jesus! You can only fill an empty bottle to the brim. A glass half full can only be half filled. But what is the value of the aspergillus that is filled with petroleum? It neither burns nor is it drinkable! It is something like our half-drunken life!
But he who truly asks, shall receive. How? Well, even the descriptors of the first Pentecost stuttered around the miracle of the Holy Spirit in pictures. It's like the rush of a rushing wind... Like two tongues of fire... Like a dove... Before each picture there is the word about. That is, the sound of the wind, but without wind; tongues like fire, but without fire; the shape of a dove, but not a dove... He expresses in images the impossible, the inexpressible. "Like", that is to say, wonderful, inexpressible, but real! So in a way. Somehow it will show you... They'll hear your stirring heart, they'll sense your luminous and warming life, your galvanized soul... Somehow it will be revealed in you, on you - Jesus! Perhaps you yourself will be most amazed.
So you don't have to go on living without the Holy Spirit, you can live with the Holy Spirit! Because Jesus gives His Spirit! It is free to ask! You are even free to force Him! He is free to say: Lord, I need, you see, you know I need your Spirit! More than bread! So ask! Let us beg for the Holy Spirit, and then thank Him, for He gives!
Amen!
Date: 17 May 1964, Pentecost