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CHAPTER 6

THE AGE OF THE SPIRIT

Anticipating the Messiah, the rabbis of Jesus’s day (at least the Pharisees) divided time into two ages: “this age” and “the age to come.” Jesus invoked this division of history (Matt 12:32; Mark 10:30; Luke 18:30; 20:34–35), as did Paul (1 Cor 10:11; Eph 1:21; 2 Tim 3:1; Titus 2:12), Peter (1 Pet 1:20) and the writer to the Hebrews (Heb 1:2; 9:26). Echoing Jesus’s Olivet discourse, John warns, “Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour” (1 John 2:18 ESV).

In short, this is the age of the Spirit: “these last days” of “this present evil age.” The “age to come” dawned when the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead and, in turn, was poured out upon the earth by the ascended King. History is therefore divided not only by Jesus’s messianic mission but by the coming of the Spirit. He brings judgment, but in this phase it is inward conviction, leading to repentance and faith, until the Son of Man returns, wrapped in the glory cloud. Even the Qumran community seems to have drawn from the prophets significant threads of this radical division between the two ages. Not only did they refer to this distinction, but they claimed to be the new Adam, preparing to become the new Eden by their rigorous moral code. “As presumptuous as their claims may seem,” notes John Levison, “they did not hesitate to wrest these claims from their Jewish brothers and sisters in order to lay exclusive claim to a belief that the spirit of holiness cleanses and incorporates individuals, fills the temple community, and will cleanse the faithful as a precursor to the inevitable new creation.”1

The apostles were both more pessimistic and more optimistic than their Qumran compatriots. They were more radical in their conviction of the impossibility of entering the age to come by obedience to Torah, yet they were more radical in their confidence that God had returned to his exiled people and land in the person of the incarnate Son and with the Spirit’s filling of the true end-time sanctuary at Pentecost. The postfall creation—this present evil age—has no power to re-create itself any more than any one of us can raise the dead. Despite all the pomp and press, this present evil age is falling apart at the seams, decaying, dying, and fading. How do we know? Because the prophets foretold that the Spirit would be poured out “in the last days,” and Peter announced its fulfillment at Pentecost. Just as our sin-and-death-soaked bodies must die and be buried, this present age—the history of Adam—must die before the final resurrection of all things in the new creation. In this era, the Spirit is building a temple that is in this world but is not of this age—far more glorious, with Christ for its cornerstone.

EXPERIENCING THE SPIRIT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

If the Holy Spirit is Lord and life giver, does he work in the same way throughout the history of redemption? If there are differences, especially between his work in the Old Testament and the New Covenant, are they qualitative or merely quantitative? After addressing these questions, this chapter explores our relation today to Pentecost and the church as depicted in the Book of Acts.

Spirit and Covenant

Of first importance in understanding the Spirit’s role prior to Christ’s advent is to identify the covenantal context in which he is operative. As Paul indicates, there are “two covenants” (Gal 4:24) that dominate the Old Testament horizon: the Abrahamic and the Sinaitic, “the promise” and “the law.” Reformed (federal) theology distinguishes between the covenant of works, made with humanity in Adam, and the covenant of grace, with Christ as the mediator.2 The question, though, is to what extent the Sinai covenant displays the characteristics of a covenant of works (or law) over against the purely gracious promise that God made to Abraham, fulfilled in Christ, and dispensed to us in the new covenant. On this particular point there has been considerable debate in the history of Reformed reflection, as in other traditions. I have waded into these exegetical controversies myself.3 Below and in the notes, however, I will only summarize some of my conclusions that impinge directly on this topic.4

As we have seen, the Spirit was at the center of the judicial actions associated with the covenant with Adam (Gen 3:8), and the same was true of the Sinai covenant. The glory cloud led the covenant people through the waters on dry ground, through the wilderness to Sinai and from Sinai to Canaan, where he took up residence first in the tabernacle, then in the temple. Without his presence, Israel is like any other nation, as Moses recognizes in his plea for the Lord not to withdraw his presence (Exod 33:15). Wherever the Spirit takes up residence, there is judicial approval (separation from the nations as God’s holy nation) and creative power (the land is flowing with milk and honey along with righteousness, peace, and long life). Where he executes the curse sanctions, there is judgment (lo’ ‘ammi, “not my people”) and death (the land is made into an unsubdued wasteland—a tohu wabohu, without form and void). “But like Adam they [the Israelites] transgressed the covenant . . .” (Hos 6:7 ESV) and, also like Adam, were exiled from the land after the Spirit evacuated the temple.

As the New Testament interprets the Old, the new covenant anticipated by the prophets is not a continuation of the Sinai covenant. Rather, we see stark differences, especially in our Lord’s series of judgments when he pronounced the covenant curses (“woes”) on the nation’s religious leaders in Matthew 23 and, indeed, on the nation itself, prophesying the destruction of the temple in chapter 24.

As in the Abrahamic covenant, the mediator of the new covenant is not a mere prophet like Moses but is God himself: the eternal Son who is also Abraham’s offspring (Gal 3:20; Heb 3:1–6).5 There are other significant differences: The Sinai blessings are temporal, conditional, and limited to a particular geopolitical nation, while the Abrahamic/new covenant blessings are everlasting, unconditional, and global. These contrasts serve as the basis for the apostolic contrast between “the law” (i.e., the terms of the Sinai covenant, sworn by the people, with Moses as mediator) and “the promise” (God’s unilateral oath in Christ the Mediator). As the apostle Paul says, “Law” and “promise” refer to “two covenants,” represented by two different mediators, two different mothers (Hagar and Sarah), and two different mountains (Sinai and Zion; see Gal 4:23–26). The writer to the Hebrews labors the point that the law of Moses—and everything pertaining to it (the land, the temple, the sacrifices, and the commands governing individual and social life in the theocracy)—was a typological shadow. “But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises” (Heb 8:5–6 ESV). It is the same point made in the first chapter of John’s Gospel: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).

When the prophets prosecute God’s case against Israel as a national theocracy, the basis of exile is the Sinai covenant. Yet beyond this they look back to the second promise that God made to Abraham and look forward to a new covenant that will be “not like the covenant” that the people swore at Sinai (Jer 31:32). God will unilaterally circumcise the hearts of his people, the Spirit will indwell them (writing the law on their hearts), and all of this on the basis of the forgiveness of their sins. His covenant people “will inherit the earth” (Matt 5:5), not just a sliver of real estate; in fact, the distinction between heaven and earth will disappear (Rev 11:19; 21:22).

The covenant of law (Sinai) is now designated the “old covenant.” “In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete” (Heb 8:13). We have not come to Mount Sinai but to Mount Zion—the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:22). This is the point of the contrast between the letter and the Spirit in 2 Corinthians 3.

The Old Testament believers longed for redemption from the curse that the law was unable to overcome and for an outpouring of the Spirit that would change the face of the world. Moses’s longing in Numbers 11 for the day when the Spirit would be poured out on all of God’s people was played fortissimo in the prophets as they announced the “new thing” that God would do “in the last days.”

It was this hope of Moses that Peter saw being fulfilled not only with thousands of Jewish converts (including some priests) but with the conversion of the gentiles. Peter rebuffed the circumcision sect decisively at the Jerusalem Council, declaring God’s fulfillment of his promise “that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:7–9 ESV). Peter even casts the circumcision party as the faithless generation in the wilderness: “Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will” (Acts 15:10–11 ESV, emphasis added).

It is therefore because of God’s pledge to Adam and Eve after the fall and to Abraham and Sarah that there was any hope of God’s saving presence rather than judgment. Looking to Christ from afar, the old-covenant saints believed in realities that they themselves had not experienced. They could actually enjoy the heavenly blessings only together with us—that is, with the dawning of the new covenant (Heb 11:40). Justified through faith, they were preserved and kept by the Spirit. At this level, the difference seems more quantitative than qualitative. Yet the Spirit’s presence was also conditioned on the national-theocratic level by the provisional, temporary, and contingent nature of the Sinai covenant.

Though resting upon Moses, the Spirit led the whole people corporately to the promised land by pillar and cloud. The Spirit filled the earthly temple, spreading his holy rays throughout the land. The Spirit would come upon prophets, priests, and kings at various times to empower them for a significant mission. Nevertheless, the Spirit’s presence—like the Sinai covenant itself—was always dependent on national obedience. When grieved, he could withdraw himself, as he left Saul. In his confession of sin, David also prayed that the Lord would not take his Holy Spirit from him (Ps 51:11). It was not that David feared losing his salvation but rather the Spirit-anointing for royal office. Furthermore, the Spirit evacuated the temple when the nation had thoroughly violated the Sinai treaty.

But this was not the end of the story. The Spirit who heaped up the waters and made dry land to appear in creation, in the “new creation” after the flood and in the exodus from Egypt, will do it again once and for all in the future. There will be a new exodus and a new conquest.

In Isaiah 34 we learn that it will be a day of “confusion and emptiness” for the wicked—terms reminiscent of the creation account. But God promises in this passage to bring all the animals, each with its mate, into the new creation by his Spirit: “For My mouth has commanded it, and His Spirit has gathered them. . . . They shall possess it forever” (vv. 16–17 NKJV).

But this future outpouring of the Spirit depends on the advent of the Messiah:

Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his teaching the islands will put their hope. This is what God the LORD says—the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out, who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it, who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it:

“I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. . . .” Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise from the ends of the earth. (Isa 42:1–7, 10)

In a remarkably Trinitarian passage, the preincarnate Christ says, “ ‘Draw near to me, hear this: from the beginning I have not spoken in secret, from the time it came to be I have been there.’ And now the Lord GOD has sent me, and his Spirit” (Isa 48:16 ESV). In the words that Jesus will apply to himself, Isaiah prophesies: “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor . . . to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD” (Isa 61:1 NKJV). So we see the close relationship between the Spirit and the anointing for the sacred task of witnessing to God and his plans. And then the Father who sent the Son will also send the Spirit at the Son’s behest.

Ezekiel prophesies even more broadly of the Spirit’s outpouring: the sprinkling with “clean water” and gift of “a new heart.” “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them” (Ezek 36:25–27 NKJV). The law will not be a bare command but will be accompanied by the gospel and the Spirit’s regenerating work in the hearts of all of the Lord’s people, from the least to the greatest. In Ezekiel especially, the sound of God’s voice is like “the roar of rushing waters” (Ezek 1:24; 43:2). There is an almost deafening sound of rushing wind as the glory cloud, teeming with cherubim and seraphim, descends. “Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard behind me the voice of a great earthquake: ‘Blessed be the glory of the LORD from its place!’ It was the sound of the wings of the living creatures as they touched one another, and the sound of the wheels beside them, and the sound of a great earthquake” (Ezek 3:12–13). Throughout the prophets, and especially in Joel 2 (which Peter’s Pentecost sermon cites), the Spirit’s advent “in the last days” is something unheard of in the previous history of Israel.

The Holy Spirit had already made his debut in Jesus’s ministry. When it began, Jesus announced that he is the Spirit-anointed Servant who fulfills the typology of the Year of Jubilee (Luke 4:16–21). Later (Luke 10), Jesus sends the seventy out to proclaim good news to the surrounding towns, going ahead of Jesus, two by two. We are meant to recall the appointment of the seventy elders to assist Moses in Numbers 11:25. A portion of the Spirit that was upon Moses would be given to the elders. Similarly, here the Spirit is upon the seventy disciples, and they return with the report that even the demons are subject to them in Christ’s name. However, this was but a preview of the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost.

On one hand, therefore, we must affirm that the believers of old were not only under the old covenant ministry of Moses; they (including Moses) were also the spiritual children of Abraham through faith alone (Rom 4:11–12; Gal 3:6–14, 23–29). Especially in its running controversy with Anabaptists, Reformed theology has emphasized the unity of the one covenant of grace. Such a view seems to me entirely proper as the baseline for thinking about the history of redemption. There is no break in the Abrahamic covenant of promise across the two Testaments.

On the other hand, there is a clear discontinuity—even contrast—between the Sinai covenant and the Abrahamic and new covenants. The old covenant is the ministry of “the letter that kills,” “the ministry of condemnation,” “the ministry of death,” while the new covenant is the ministry of “the Spirit [who] gives life,” “the ministry of righteousness” (2 Cor 3:6–9 ESV). “For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. . . . For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory” (vv. 9, 11 ESV).

This contrast is the heart of Paul’s argument in Galatians, which reaches a crescendo in Galatians 3:17–18 (ESV): “This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the [Abrahamic] promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.” It is striking that we find both of these points—continuity of the covenant of grace and discontinuity between old and new covenants—in the same two passages (Romans 4 and Galatians 3 and 4). This point of contrast is not unique to Paul. Jeremiah says that the “new covenant” is going to be “not like the covenant” of Sinai “that they broke” (Jer 31:31–32 ESV). In the new covenant, God is the promise maker: he will write his law on the hearts. “And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. . . . For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (vv. 33–34).

This line of argument is no different from John the Baptist’s own testimony to Jesus’s incomparably greater dignity. The Fourth Gospel uses a present participle for the Baptizer’s announcement that Jesus “is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit” (John 1:33 ESV); it is part of the Messiah’s identity in distinction from John’s ministry, which still belonged to the old order.6

Therefore, the key interpretive question is not whether to embrace continuity or discontinuity in the abstract but to determine the sense in which there is continuity (Abrahamic promise/new covenant) and discontinuity (Sinai law/old covenant). The proper emphasis on the unity of God’s saving plan should not keep us from recognizing the clear discontinuities in its historical unfolding as indicated by Scripture.

Differences between the Spirit’s Presence in the Old and New Covenants

The two main coordinates, then, for discerning the newness of the Spirit’s work since Pentecost are covenant and eschatology. Having distinguished the covenants, we turn now to the eschatological turning of the times. The sheer repetition in the prophets of God’s promise to “pour out” his Spirit in the last days (Isa 32:15; 44:3; Ezek 39:28–29; Joel 2:28) indicates a qualitatively new manifestation of the Spirit in the future. Elijah may have given to Elisha a double portion of the Spirit that was upon him (2 Kgs 2:9), but Jesus was given the Spirit “without measure” (John 3:34 ESV). And, as baptism visibly signifies and seals, we are sharers in Christ’s anointing. As the Heidelberg Catechism instructs, Jesus is “Christ” because he is the one anointed by the Spirit as Prophet, Priest, and King, and we are called “Christians” because through faith we “share in his anointing.”7

However, even Jesus received this anointing prior to the eschatological fullness of the Spirit’s outpouring and indwelling that his resurrection and exaltation achieved for us. Before the Spirit could be poured out to create the living stones of the end-time sanctuary, Jesus—the cornerstone—had himself to be glorified. So something fundamentally new was experienced at Pentecost than even had appeared in the ministry of Jesus on earth. Jesus can even promise his disciples that they will do “greater works” than the signs he was performing—precisely because he was going to the Father in exalted glory and would send the Spirit from the Father (John 14:12). The explosive effects of the apostolic mission, still reverberating to the ends of the earth, is confirmation of this staggering promise.

The coming of the kingdom is associated not only with the coming of the King but with the sending of the Spirit. Just after reporting Jesus’s baptism (with “the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove” [Mark 1:10 ESV]) and temptation (“The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness” [v. 12 ESV]), Jesus begins his public ministry by “proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (vv. 14–15). Our Lord’s anointing by the Spirit inaugurates the kingdom in power (John 3:34; Acts 10:38), but the oil drips down his neck to his entire body, anointing all of his people, beginning at Pentecost.

We have seen that the verb that Mark uses in the temptation narrative is particularly strong: Jesus is “driven out” (ekballei)—even “cast out” is not an exaggerated translation—by the Spirit (Mark 1:12). As Ferguson notes:

His testing was set in the context of a holy war in which he entered the enemy’s domain, absorbed his attacks and sent him into retreat (Mt 4:11, and especially Luke 4:13). In the power of the Spirit, Jesus advanced as the divine warrior, the God of battles who fights on behalf of his people and for their salvation (cf. Ex. 15:3; Ps. 98:1). His triumph demonstrated that ‘the kingdom of God is near’ and that the messianic conflict had begun.8

Jesus is driven out by the Spirit into battle to drive out the ancient serpent from God’s garden. Even the demons seem to know that their free reign in the world is about to end (Matt 8:29). When the Son of Man casts out the demons, you know that the kingdom has come (Matt 12:25–29). The strong man (Satan) has been tied up so that his dark castle can be looted, its dungeons emptied, and the spoils distributed to his former victims (Matt 12:29). This is the force of those prophetic words that Jesus assumed to himself from Isaiah 61:1 (ESV): “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me . . .” (Luke 4:18). Yet it is clear that it is only with his ascension—“exalted to the right hand of God”—that Christ, “having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit,” has now at Pentecost “poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing” (Acts 2:33 ESV).

In addition to Jesus’s teaching, the apostles interpret Pentecost as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy and not simply as a continuation—even a heightening—of the Spirit’s work in previous days. The Holy Spirit will descend in power when the glorified King gives the word. As Paul’s ascension theology in Ephesians 4 makes clear, it is only with the triumphal entry of the Warrior-King into the heavenly throne room that the spoils of victory can be distributed liberally to those whom the Father has chosen as his coheirs. And in this light, even the love command takes on a new aspect as a result of the turning of the times:

Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. (1 John 2:7–8, emphasis added)

It is not simply that the Spirit brings communion with Christ and therefore with his members but that there is an eschatological turning point in history. Love is not just a bare command, without the power to fulfill; it is a living reality that is “true in [Christ] and in you, because” of this dawn of the new age in the Spirit. We are reminded of John 15, where Jesus grounds his command of sibling affection in the present reality of their already being united in one vine. We should bear in mind that this was not a separate sermon but belongs to the discourse on the coming of the Spirit. The communion of the saints in this age is a reality that transcends the covenantal bonds of the Israelites as a national theocracy. Love is possible in this age in a way and to a degree that eluded the saints of old.

We may wonder why this unique outpouring of the Spirit occurred in “these last days.” Why not long before? Why did the Father not send the Spirit in this way when Moses cried out for it? Or when John was preparing the way—or at least when Jesus proclaimed his kingdom? The timing was not arbitrary. Just as Jesus died “at the right time”—that is, “while we were still weak,” still “enemies,” and “the ungodly” (Rom 5:6–10 ESV)—so also the Spirit is poured out at just the right time. We have considerable indications about what made it the right time. The Spirit, after all, is the perfecting agent of God’s works. The Spirit had first to unite the Son to our flesh in order for there to be one who would render faithful obedience to the Father on our behalf, bear our guilt, and be raised and glorified for our justification and glorification. It is not to the eternal deity that the Spirit unites us but to his glorified humanity. As Ephesians 4:8–10 confirms, the exalted King had to enter his glory before he could dispense the spoils of victory.

John 7:37–39 makes this same point. At the climax of the Feast of Booths—the water-drawing ceremony celebrating the miraculous provision of water from the rock in the wilderness, Jesus identifies himself as that Rock (cf. 1 Cor 10:4). Just as he gives himself as true food and drink (John 6), he now adds that “whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:38–39 ESV). Literally the text reads “for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” Appropriately, the ESV translators supplied the implicit verb, but the stark form of the original underscores the contrast between the Spirit’s work after Jesus was glorified and before. “What then can it mean to say that the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified (John 7.39),” Augustine asks, “except that that giving or bestowal or sending of the Holy Spirit was going to have some special quality about it that there had never been before?”9

As late in the story as his farewell discourse, Jesus told the disciples that the Holy Spirit was already “with” them, but in the future he will be “in” them (John 14:17).10 Indeed, he promises, “I will come to you,” referring to Pentecost, as we have seen (John 14:18). Thus not even during his ministry to this point has there been a fulfillment of the Spirit’s outpouring that we see at Pentecost. It is not merely a gradual intensification of the Spirit’s presence, as it was in Jesus’s ministry. Rather, Pentecost inaugurates a qualitatively new era. It is so new that not even the Twelve are ready to be witnesses to Christ until that day, and they are told to wait for it. Because of this new mode of the Spirit’s presence, there will also be an unprecedented intimacy with Jesus—and with the one we are now entitled to address in him and with him as “Father.” This whole level of the experience of intimacy with the triune God is new in the history of redemption. It is different not only in its extensiveness (all of the people now anointed prophets, priests, and kings) but in its intensity (beyond the nearness that even Abraham, Moses, and David experienced).

Jesus Christ is Lord, the victorious and exalted Son of the Father, who reigns over history. Previously, he himself had been the beneficiary of the Spirit’s work, but now he is the benefactor, sending the Spirit (with the Father) from his heavenly throne. Therefore, the missions of the Son and the Spirit are mutually dependent. Christ’s ascension is not simply an exclamation point to the resurrection but a new redemptive-historical event in its own right. According to Luke, John, and Paul, the ascension-glorification of Christ was the basis for the sending of the Holy Spirit. Christ first had to be made like us in every respect (except for sin) and in that nature fulfill all righteousness to become the eschatological firstfruits. Having accomplished this mission for us in the power of the Spirit, the time is right not only for Jews but for the remnant from all nations to be united to Christ as his redeemed body.

Now we come closer to answering the question about the continuity between the Spirit’s work before and after Pentecost. Surely the episodes in which the Spirit is said to be “upon Christ” (Matt 12:18; Luke 4:18) or joins his benediction to the Father’s at Christ’s baptism or empowers Christ in word and deed are at least a quantitative advance on the bestowal of the Spirit in the past. And surely the event in John 20:22–23 is significant: “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.’ ” It is significant that Jesus did this after his resurrection. For now he is not simply another man (adam) who like the first was a “living being” who died, but Christ is the last Adam—the eschatological life-giving Spirit (1 Cor 15:45). He not only receives the breath of life from the Spirit as the first man had (Gen 2:7) but is the source of resurrection life for all.

That this scene in John 20 is an ordination service seems implied by the fact that they are now entrusted officially with the power of the keys: no longer merely disciples, they are the apostles. Andrew Lincoln argues that John’s Gospel compresses into one day all the events that Luke spreads out in chronological detail (the resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost).11 Though this is a plausible interpretation, it seems to me rather that John 20 reports a distinct episode with the Twelve as the unique nucleus of witnesses in anticipation of the ever-broadening concentric circles that include all the faithful. Before, Jesus forgave sins directly, bypassing the temple—thereby provoking the ire of the religious leaders (Mark 2:7). But now he is giving the Twelve this authority. Then, with Pentecost we find the prophesied outpouring of the Spirit on all and the ministry of the keys being exercised through ordinary pastors and elders—indirectly, through the calling of the church, rather than immediately by the direct calling of Christ.

In these passages we discover intimations of something new, a gift that exceeds anything in previous eras. We cannot help but sense that a qualitative change occurs with Pentecost. It not only distinguishes the new covenant from the old, but distinguishes the disciples’ endowment of the Spirit in John 20 from the one that they receive together with all the Lord’s people at Pentecost. Indeed, after the Spirit is poured out, bringing inward conviction of sin and faith in Christ, the proclamation of the gospel will yield far greater success than it had in Jesus’s earthly ministry. So Jesus prepared them even now (in John 20) by authorizing them to bind and loose in his name. At this moment the true Israel was standing on the verge of the greater conquest. It was necessary for our salvation that he be exalted and enter into his glory. And it was just as necessary that the Spirit be given in order to unite us to him as sharers in his estate.

The Spirit had not been given, even during Jesus’s ministry, in the way that he would be “poured out” at Pentecost. Since Moses’s hope for the Spirit’s being poured out on all the people is repeated as late as the Minor Prophets (e.g., Joel 2) without any appeal to a previous era of analogous outpouring and indwelling of the Spirit, we have no reason to believe that God answered Moses’s request until Pentecost. God went beyond the request, putting his Spirit in, not just on, all of his people. As Cyril of Alexandria explained, “Certainly the holy prophets received in abundance the enlightenment and illumination of the Spirit, capable of instructing them in the knowledge of future things and in the understanding of mysteries; nevertheless, we confess that in the faithful of Christ there is not only an illumination but also the very dwelling and abode of the Spirit.”12

Given this connection between the giving of the Spirit and the forgiveness of sins, one way of tracing the continuity and discontinuity of the former is by comparison with the latter. In the fourth century, Cyril of Jerusalem noted this close association of the gift of the Spirit and the forgiveness of sins. However, he distinguishes John’s baptism as bestowing “only the remission of sins,” quoting Romans 6 as the culmination of the Spirit’s gifts in baptism.13 Like Cyril, Calvin says that the gifts of the Spirit “poured out on those who had received John’s baptism differ from the grace of regeneration.”14 I do not disagree. In my view, though, the difference is not between the gifts that are given: namely, forgiveness without the Spirit’s indwelling presence. Like the sacrifices, the “baptism of repentance” brought forgiveness of sins only in virtue of faith in the coming Messiah: that is, only typologically, inasmuch as John is the forerunner of Jesus. John’s own testimony to Jesus as the one who baptizes with the Spirit suggests that this gift, along with remission of sins, is only realized fully in the ministry of Christ that culminates in Pentecost.

There are clear passages indicating that “the forgiveness of sins” is unique to the new covenant (“remember their sins no more”; Jer 31:34). This is not because Old Testament saints were under God’s wrath but because God overlooked their sins; he covered them over through the sacrificial system. This I take to be Paul’s point in Romans 3:25 (ESV), referring to Christ “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” They were forgiven truly but only by anticipation and were not yet propitiated in history. The old covenant was successful only to the extent that it directed faith and hope toward Christ, but it could not in itself bring this reality into history. These sacrifices could never “take away sins” once and for all. They had to be offered repeatedly, reminding the worshiper’s conscience of transgressions (Heb 10:1–4). “But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (vv. 12–14). From there, the writer quotes Jeremiah 31:33, which I have cited above, linking forgiveness and the gift of the Spirit.

If this is accurate, then Old Testament believers were forgiven and justified through faith in the one to whom the sacrifices pointed (continuity); however, the sacrifices could not themselves provide this experiential assurance to the conscience (discontinuity). On the contrary, the Mosaic covenant by itself could only keep the covenant people under supervision until they reached their maturity and could inherit the estate by promise (Gal 3:24–25). Kuyper seems to confirm this conclusion. He argued that the energies of the Spirit at Pentecost worked retroactively in the lives of the old covenant saints.15

The analogy of the typological sacrifices still does not account for all of the differences, qualitative as well as quantitative, but it may provide an important clue for understanding how it was that Old Testament believers experienced regeneration while nevertheless lacking the fullness of the Spirit that God promised for the latter days.

The Spirit was present in the whole nation but representatively, through anointed prophets, priests, and kings. Most evidently, the Spirit indwelled the temple. However, the Spirit is now present not only in a corporate sense, through representative officers, and in an earthly capitol, but indwells every believer. Because we are in Christ, and the Spirit who anointed him has also anointed us in him, we are prophets, priests, and kings. This opportunity was held out to the nation of Israel as well. Just before the giving of the law, God tells Moses to announce to the people, “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod 19:5–6 ESV). It was a goal, not a present possession, and it was conditional. By contrast Peter declares, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Pet 2:9–10 ESV).

If we see the giving of the Spirit as inextricably linked to the forgiveness of sins in the new covenant, there is warrant in saying that, on one hand, the Old Testament saints enjoyed the Spirit’s presence just as they received God’s pardon: as the types and shadows led them by faith to the reality.

Yet beyond and, indeed, underlying this national life of Israel there was also the continuation of the Abrahamic promise, with the election of particular individuals within the holy commonwealth to inherit the everlasting promise. This I take to be the basic argument of Romans 9–11. John Owen points out that “the condition of all men, as unregenerate, is absolutely the same” ever since the fall; consequently, so is the condition of the regenerate. “Men may be more or less holy, more or less sanctified, but they cannot be more or less regenerate.”16

I concur, then, with John Stott’s conclusion that Old Testament believers were justified (Rom 4:1–8, based on Gen 15:6 and Ps 32:1–2), which assumes regeneration. Further, “they claimed to love God’s law (e.g., Ps 119:97). Since the unregenerate nature is hostile to God and resistant to his law (Rom 8:7), they seem to have possessed a new nature. We sing the Psalms in Christian worship because we recognize in them the language of the regenerate.”17 And yet, Stott adds that “the Holy Spirit came upon special people for special ministries at special times.” He continues:

But now his ministry is wider and deeper than ever it was in Old Testament days. . . . First, all believers of all flesh now share in the blessings of the Spirit. Second, although Old Testament believers knew God and experienced a new birth, there is now an indwelling of the Spirit which they never knew, which belongs to the new covenant and the kingdom of God, and which both the prophets and the Lord Jesus promised (Jer 31:33; Ezek 36:26–27; John 14:16–17; Rom 14:17). Third, the Holy Spirit’s distinctive work now relates essentially to Jesus Christ.18

Sharing Stott’s basic conclusions, I think nevertheless that Sinclair Ferguson brings out more clearly the tension between continuity and discontinuity. On the one hand, he rejects the idea that “there is a major dichotomy between the Spirit’s ministry in the old and in the new covenants.”19 Although Nicodemus did not understand the meaning of the new birth (John 3:4), Jesus said that he should have had some knowledge of it especially from the prophetic expectation of the Spirit’s regenerating work in the new covenant. On the other hand, Ferguson warns against “flattening the contours of redemptive history, and of undermining the genuine diversity and development from old to new covenants.” He continues, “Paul’s teaching in 2 Corinthians 3 indicates that there is an epochal development from the old to the new, precisely in terms of the ministry of the Spirit.”20 As with the Son, “there is an incompleteness about the Old Testament’s revelation of the Spirit. . . .”21 Ferguson writes:

The Spirit had been active among God’s people; but his activity was enigmatic, sporadic, theocratic, selective and in some respects external. The prophets longed for better days. Moses desired, but did not see, a fuller and universally widespread coming of the Spirit on God’s people (Nu. 11:29). By contrast, in the anticipated new covenant, the Spirit would be poured out in a universal manner, dwelling in them personally and permanently (cf. Joel 2:28ff.; Ezk. 36:24–32). There is more to this principle than may appear at first glance. For it is not only because of Christ that we come to know the Spirit more fully, but actually in Christ.22

Ferguson adds:

The baptism that Jesus received in Jordan and the baptism that he initiates at Pentecost are epochally different, yet intimately related. . . . What John the Baptist could not understand clearly himself was that the ‘fire’ of which he spoke would fall upon the Messiah himself, in the judgment-dereliction of the cross [see Luke 12:49–50]. In fact, later John expressed his doubts about the significance of Jesus’s ministry, apparently because it lacked ‘fire’ (Luke 7:18–23). Luke’s researches were not lacking then, when, in his record of Jesus’s post-resurrection words to the disciples about being baptized with the Holy Spirit, he makes no mention of fire. Its flames had been exhausted in Christ. Part of the symbolism of the ‘tongues of fire’ which the disciples saw on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:3) may well lie in the hint that this is a baptism of gracious rather than of destructive power because of the judgment which Christ had vicariously borne in his passion.23

John Owen refers to “the times of the gospel” anticipated in the prophets. “But wherever it is mentioned, the time, state, and grace of the gospel are intended in it: for the Lord Christ was ‘in all things to have the preeminence,’ Col. i. 18; and, therefore, although God gave his Spirit in some measure before, yet he poured him not out until he was first anointed with his fullness.” The Spirit was given in various ways before, “but not in the way and manner that he intended now to bestow him.”24 With a little more specificity, Owen adds:

Whatever the Holy Spirit wrought in an eminent manner under the Old Testament, it had generally and for the most part, if not absolutely and always, a respect unto our Lord Jesus Christ and the gospel; and so was preparatory unto the completing of the great work of the new creation in and by him . . . for the chiefest privilege of the church of old was but to hear tidings of the things which we enjoy, Isa. xxxiii. 17.25

Just as the object of Abraham’s faith is the same as ours yet dimly understood from his vantage point in redemptive history, Owen argues that the regenerate saints in the Old Testament had far less understanding of regeneration. Jesus upbraided Nicodemus not because he knew nothing of a “reformation of life,” dear to the moralistic deists of Owen’s day (and ours), but because he, being a teacher of Israel, was unaware of the new birth.26 And yet, “Although the work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit was wrought under the Old Testament, even from the foundation of the world, and the doctrine of it was recorded in the Scriptures, yet the revelation of it was but obscure in comparison of that light and evidence which it is brought forth into by the gospel.”27 Furthermore, Owen adds that “more persons than of old were to be made partakers of the mercy of it. . . .”28

Yet there is something beyond regeneration that is given at Pentecost. Owen continues:

But this dispensation of the Holy Ghost whereof we now proceed to treat is so peculiar unto the New Testament, that the evangelist speaking of it says, ‘The Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified,’ John vii. 39; and they who were instructed in the doctrine of John the Baptist only, knew not ‘whether there were any Holy Ghost,’ Acts xix. 2.29

The fathers under the old covenant, according to Hebrews 11:13, 39, “ ‘died in faith, not having received the promise’; that is, the thing promised was not actually exhibited in their days, though they had the promise of it, as it is expressly said of Abraham, chap. vii. 6.”30 Owen says further:

The promise, therefore, itself was given unto the Lord Christ, and actually received by him in the covenant of the mediator, when he undertook the great work of the restoration of all things, to the glory of God; for herein had he the engagement of the Father that the Holy Spirit should be poured out on the sons of men, to make effectual unto their souls the whole work of his mediation; wherefore, he is said now to ‘receive this promise,’ because on his account, and by him as exalted, it was now solemnly accomplished in and towards the church.”31

Even in the ministry of Jesus, the Spirit is active in a degree superior to prior history, and yet Jesus himself introduces a qualitative distinction between pre- and post-Pentecost. Even his act of breathing on the disciples to receive the Holy Spirit was but a harbinger of the gift of the Spirit. Whatever continuities Scripture affirms, they cannot override the fact that Pentecost was, quite literally, the watershed in history. The river of life had yet to gush from its heavenly springs “for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39 ESV). Jesus said, “[The Holy Spirit] lives with you and will be in you” (John 14:17). Only at Pentecost is it said in the present tense, “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:4).

PENTECOST: THE DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES

As we have seen, the disciples found it difficult to understand Jesus’s words, even in the farewell discourse, not because they were duller than we but because they were working with a different paradigm. For the most part, the prophets envisioned the coming of the Suffering Servant, the gift of the Spirit, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, and the everlasting messianic reign as one event. Sitting in jail awaiting his beheading, John the Baptist was understandably confused. He sent some of his disciples to ask Jesus directly: “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Matt 11:3 ESV).

In a crucial sense, John’s expectations were exactly right: these outcomes of the Messiah’s ministry are all phases of a single operation. Even the resurrection of the dead has begun with Jesus as the “firstfruits”; the last judgment has been inaugurated with the Spirit’s convicting and justifying work; and the age to come has indeed dawned in this present evil age. However, as Jesus taught clearly in the Olivet discourse (Matt 24), there is between his two advents an intermission in which the Spirit empowers his witnesses and their hearers to be brought into the kingdom of Christ—even gentiles—before the dreadful day of the LORD.

There is another stumbling block to the disciples’ understanding. It is clear enough from the Gospels that the evangelists saw Jesus’s work as a fulfillment of the exodus-conquest-rest pattern under the leadership of Moses and Joshua. This pattern echoed creation in the past and points forward to the messianic age in the future. And yet, it was only afterward that they could interpret Jesus’s ministry as its fulfillment. Indeed, until Jesus presented himself as raised, the disciples exhibited the disillusionment that Albert Schweitzer imputed to Jesus himself (Luke 24:13–16).32 “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel,” they told the Lord whom they did not recognize (v. 21). What is more, there were rumblings afoot that Jesus has been raised—it was all very confusing. “And [Jesus] said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ ” (vv. 25–27).

After making himself known in the breaking of bread (the same grammatical formula as the institution of the Supper), Jesus opened their hearts to understand that his death was not simply his own but was a substitution for them, and that his resurrection really was the beginning of the new creation. And when the Spirit descended at Pentecost, everything fell into place. The exodus-conquest-rest pattern exhibited in creation and played out in the nation’s founding events foreshadowed a greater exodus-conquest-rest than temporal prosperity in Eden or Israel. They were eyewitnesses to the birth of nothing less than the new creation.

The allusions to the giving of the law at Mount Sinai in Acts 2 are obvious, with “its repeated emphasis on the sound, and the ‘descending of God upon it in fire,’ ” notes Luke Timothy Johnson.33 However, instead of terrifying the covenant people so that they beg that no further word be spoken, the Spirit’s descent at Pentecost brings comfort, empowerment for witness, and unity in the gospel—which prepare the disciples for their witness to the world. We have not come to Mount Sinai but to the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:18–29). Henceforth, Christ’s followers will not only hear the word gladly but will proclaim it joyfully even to the point of martyrdom. However, in my view the echoes of Ezekiel are even more pronounced. As in the prophet’s visions, there is God returning to his end-time sanctuary that he has evacuated. “And the sound of his coming was like the sound of many waters, and the earth shone with his glory” (Ezek 43:2 ESV). It also looks forward to the vision of heavenly worship in Revelation 14:2 (ESV), where “a new song” is sung: “And I heard a voice from heaven like the roar of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder.”

The prophecies of the regathering of scattered Israelites in Jerusalem reach their fulfillment not in the restoration of a geopolitical theocracy but in the erection of the end-time sanctuary. At Pentecost, the Spirit announced his decisive advent with wind and fire—yet not a destructive wind or consuming fire. The flames of fire appear over each believer as a pillar of testimony, making the whole community witnesses to Christ. They are not only enveloped in the glory cloud but are indwelled and empowered by the Spirit. And what is the consequence of this eschatological outpouring? The apostles proclaim Christ. Filled with the Spirit, they “began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:4 ESV).

The Gift of Tongues: What Was It?

Before we ask whether the gift of tongues continues in our day, we should not take for granted that we agree on what they were in the first place. Greek religion knew of ecstatic utterances—that is, trance-like speaking of unintelligible sounds, but glōssai (“tongues”) refer to known languages. Luke says that the believers at Pentecost spoke “in other tongues” (Acts 2:4) and the hearers marveled not that they were speaking unintelligible words but rather asked, “And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?” (Acts 2:8 ESV).

From the days of Plato’s Socrates, divine inspiration was associated with ecstasy. To the extent that the spirit (daimonion) possessed one, such as the prophetesses at Delphi, the person’s own agency was suspended. Plato says that in Socrates’s view “the greatest of blessings come to us through madness, when it is sent as a gift of the gods,” in contrast to what they speak when they are “in their right minds.”34 It is “an enthusiastic spirit (pneuma enthousiastikon)” that possesses one, according to Strabo, Plutarch, and other Greek and Roman writers.35

In sharp contrast, Levison notes that “there are but slivers of ecstasy, if any at all, in Israel’s corporate memory.” It appears a bit in Philo, Josephus, and 4 Ezra, but especially in the Liber antiquitatum biblicarum, under heavy Greco-Roman influence.36 However, the apostles—like Israel’s prophets—are not placed in a trance or overwhelmed by the Spirit. Rather, the Spirit empowered them to proclaim the intelligible message of the gospel. Stephen was “a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 6:5), and the result was his proclamation of the gospel from the history of Israel leading up to Christ. Levison continues:

These men, in short, are the heirs of Bezalel, whom God filled with spirit, wisdom, intelligence, and knowledge (Exod 31:3), of Joshua, who was full of spirit of wisdom (Deut 34:9), of Daniel, who had spirit to the nth degree and wisdom like the wisdom of God (Dan 5:11), and of Ben Sira’s scribe, who is filled with a spirit of understanding through the arduous labor of study, prayer, and meditation (Sir 39:6). Here, then in the Jerusalem church lies an authentic vestige of the scriptural perspective that a disciplined spirit within yields a harvest of wisdom.37

In the Old Testament, the Spirit is the giver of life but also of knowledge and wisdom. Far from suspending their judgment and reasoning, the Spirit heightens their natural gifts and reveals truths to their minds. It is striking how many New Testament references focus on the Spirit as teacher (Luke 12:12; John 14:25–26; 15:26; 16:13; Acts 20:23; 1 Cor 2:6–16; Eph 3:5; Heb 9:8; 10:15).

Further, the Spirit equipped the apostles and then the whole community to be witnesses to Christ. “For it is the Spirit of prophecy who bears testimony to Jesus” (Rev 19:10), just as Jesus promised in his farewell discourse: “He will bear witness of me” (John 15:26). You know that the Spirit is present wherever the gospel is preached and confessed, says John: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already” (1 John 4:2–3 ESV).

What then are the “other tongues” at Pentecost? They are languages known to the hearers but not by the speakers.38 Levison points to the similarity between Luke’s phrase heterais glōssais (“other tongues”; Acts 2:4) and the preface of Ben Sira’s grandson to his forebear’s translation of Sirach from Hebrew into Greek, “using the words eis heteran glōssan in the context of describing the difficulties of translation.”39 Also, in Acts 10:46 Peter and his Jewish associates heard gentiles (including Cornelius) praising God in tongues. “There must have been a comprehensible dimension to this sort of speaking in tongues, for Peter and his Jewish companions were able to recognize that the ability to speak in tongues was associated with the comprehensible act of praise.”40

Luke avoided “making ecstatic tongues-speaking the sine qua non of the early church,” says Levison, “for the introduction of speaking in tongues at Pentecost rather than speaking in other dialects would have drawn exclusive attention to the ecstatic dimension of inspiration, and it may have allowed Luke’s readers to draw a conceptual bee-line from Pentecost to the practice of tongues-speaking at Corinth.”41 He continues: “Though the Corinthians may have regarded such tongues-speaking as the language of angels, they certainly employed the practice to generate a communal hell in which a gift that, according to Paul, was intended to lift the whole church became the hinge pin of spiritual hierarchies.”42

Paul’s discussion of tongues in 1 Corinthians must be interpreted in the context of a disciplinary letter. The Corinthians were immature, proud, chaotic in worship, and undisciplined in their lives. His rebukes point to tongues speaking in public worship as contributing to this set of problems. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor 13:1 ESV).

Prophecy is better, he says, because it builds up the church (14:5). As in the Old Testament, for Paul the Spirit is associated with knowledge, understanding, and wisdom—centering on Christ as God’s wisdom. The Spirit inspires apostolic witness and empowers the community as witnesses to the gospel. Thus intelligibility is essential to the Spirit’s ministry, which is remarkable when we recall that Greeks (and Romans) prided themselves on reason and yet fall back ultimately on unintelligible gibberish to determine their destinies. “Now, brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching?” (v. 6 ESV). Otherwise, it is like chaotic noise rather than instruments playing “distinct notes” (vv. 7–8 ESV). “So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air” (v. 9).

The Corinthians seem to have confused the gift of tongues with pagan ecstasy. The similarity of tongues here to the “other languages” at Pentecost seems apparent: “There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning, but if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me. So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church” (vv. 10–12 ESV). The problem with tongues apart from interpretation is that a foreigner does not know the language.

It is quite clear that in public worship at least there is nothing to be done that is unintelligible and does not communicate truth to the mind. When Paul says, “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful” (v. 14), he is not giving a positive definition of tongues. Rather, he is speaking of its inadequacy in public worship. “What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also” (v. 15).

It is inconceivable to Paul that any act of worship should circumvent knowledge or suspend the mind of the worshiper. “Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say ‘Amen’ to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up” (vv. 16–17). We do not come to church to engage in private devotions together but to build each other up and witness to outsiders. “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you,” Paul writes. “Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue” (vv. 18–19).

Paul is forbidding virtuoso performances of personal spirituality. The goal of all spiritual gifts is public wisdom that builds up, not private ecstasy that puffs up. “Or was it from you that the word of God came? Or are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized” (vv. 36–38). The people he had in mind regarded themselves as spiritual elites, when in truth they were immature, proud, and divisive. “Brothers, do not be children in your thinking . . . but in your thinking be mature” (v. 20).

Just at this point Paul introduces a surprising point about the redemptive-historical significance of tongues:

In the Law it is written, ‘By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners will I speak to this people, and even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord’ [Isa 28:11–12]. Thus tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is a sign not for unbelievers but for believers. (1 Cor 14:21–23)

By invoking Isaiah 28:11–12, Paul is identifying tongues as a sign of temporary judgment. In Romans 11, he argues that a “partial hardening” has occurred among his fellow Jews “to make Israel jealous.” When the “fullness of the Gentiles” is brought in, then the Spirit will soften the hearts of ethnic Jews, “and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!” (vv. 11–12 ESV).

For now, then, tongues is a sign of judgment especially in the sense that foreigners—gentiles—are preaching the gospel even to the Jews, a gospel that the Jews themselves should have embraced first and foremost. Pentecost did not result in a full-scale conversion of the Jewish people, but it did set into motion the end-time ingathering of a remnant from Israel and the nations. The Jewish believers would now be witnesses to the gentiles, and together with the gentiles they would proclaim the gospel in tongues previously unknown to the Jews. But, Paul adds, this is precisely why prophecy (i.e., preaching) rather than speaking in foreign tongues should be used in public worship. Otherwise, if “outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds?” (1 Cor 14:23 ESV). However, when they hear intelligible preaching and teaching of the word, they will be convicted and believe that word: “So, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you” (v. 25 ESV).

Whatever it means to speak in tongues, Paul says that it must not circumvent the mind and it must not take place in public worship apart from interpretation. “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (v. 33 ESV) and “all things should be done decently and in order” (v. 40 ESV). In any case, speaking in tongues is inferior to prophecy and teaching. (In the list of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, led by the ministry of the Word, it comes in last and is not even mentioned in the list in Romans 12.) In view of verses 10 and 11, I am inclined to think that Paul also thought of tongues as the intelligible utterance of the gospel in actual languages unknown previously to the speaker.

The remarkable thing about tongues in Acts 2:4 is that the foreigners gathered there hear the gospel, each in his own language. This report is followed by a “table of nations” (vv. 8–12), echoing the table of nations in Genesis 10:1–32 where the Spirit descended in judgment to confuse the languages and scatter the proud builders of the tower of Babel. Now the Spirit is descending in grace rather than judgment, to unite rather than divide, and to enable everyone to understand the gospel without subverting the differences of language. Spiritual gifts, including tongues and their interpretation, are given “for the common good” (1 Cor 12:7).

The Spirit hereby equips the church to be witnesses to Christ—that is the whole purpose of Pentecost. Furthermore, this speaking in other languages was meant to be a sign. Miraculous signs are not normally ongoing events but remarkable signposts of something new that God is doing. Here, it is the sign, first of the ingathering of diaspora Jews. Yet as Acts unfolds, it is the harbinger of God’s ingathering of the nations, crossing all ethnic and linguistic barriers. The Glory-Spirit breaks down the walls that had been symbolized by the partitions of the temple itself, which separated the court of the gentiles from that of the Jews, for now the true sanctuary is in heaven where we are raised and seated with Christ (Eph 2:11–22).

The Goal of Prophecy

Paul’s focus was on the message of the gospel. Everything—in worship, outreach, discipline, and the order and offices of the church—is to lead toward the building of the church and its proclamation of this gospel to the ends of the earth. As Levison observes:

It is not merely the demeanor of the messenger or the miracles accompanying Paul’s speeches that the rulers and rhetoricians of this age cannot comprehend. They simply cannot grasp that God’s power can be demonstrated in the weakness of the cross. That is, unbelievers simply cannot accept the central content of the gospel. This is the content that the spirit reveals; this is the lesson that the spirit teaches. . . . Yet the contrast between the spirit of the world and the spirit of God leads away from the arena of experience and toward the cross-centered content of Paul’s preaching. Paul appears to recognize how easy it may be to lose sight of the content of preaching in the presence of powerful experiences of miracles. However, to allow an overpowering experience of the spirit, however wholesome it may appear to be, to eclipse the importance of content is to truncate the work of the spirit that is from God, for this spirit is no less a revealer and a teacher than it is the inspirer of miracles and the source of an experience of adoption.43

Those gathered in the upper room will indeed be the “firstfruits” of the harvest. Visitors to Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost were witnesses to this remarkable event. They were confused not because they did not understand the message but because each person was hearing this gospel in his or her own tongue, with power, from uneducated Galileans (Acts 2:7–12). As in every harvest, there is wheat and chaff. God’s saving acts always divide, as they do here (v. 13). Some believe and are saved (which again underscores that they understood what was being said); some reject and are judged. These “others” who mocked could only attribute this strange event to drunkenness.

The climax of this outpouring of the Spirit is a sermon by Peter (Acts 2:14). He had denied even knowing Jesus, but now he is proclaiming Jesus as the Christ. And he is doing so on the steps of the temple itself. Moreover, his message is full of power and conviction. Everything that Jesus said about the Spirit’s work is evident here. Peter is the external preacher, while the Spirit inwardly convicts.

Three things are remarkable about this. First, it is a measure of how seriously God takes preaching. Today, we might be inclined to think of other effects of such a momentous fulfillment of prophecy concerning the outpouring of the Spirit. But, as Ezekiel 37 reminds us, it is by preaching that the Spirit miraculously raises those who are dead in trespasses and sins. Nothing could be more spectacular, miraculous, and dramatic than that which happens whenever the gospel is preached. The second remarkable point is how Peter constructs his sermon. Jesus had rebuked the Pharisees for thinking they had mastered Scripture, even though they failed to see Christ as the center of its message (John 5:39). After his resurrection, on the Emmaus road, he opened the Scriptures with his disciples and showed them how everything pointed to him (Luke 24). And now Peter preaches the first public sermon of the new covenant, and it is a promise-and-fulfillment sermon with Christ at the center. He weaves together Old Testament passages and their New Testament fulfillment, and this is the pattern for the rest of the apostolic sermons in Acts. This is precisely the preaching that will form the New Testament text.

Peter links Pentecost to Joel’s prophecy and then links this event with the person and work of Christ—his crucifixion, resurrection, and exaltation “to the right hand of God,” which then gave him the authority from the Father to send the Holy Spirit. Pentecost cannot be separated from Good Friday and Easter and can only be conceived in terms of the latter. As Richard Gaffin Jr. notes:

The great majority of references to the Holy Spirit are found in the last half of the NT. Approximately 80% are in Acts, the Epistles and Revelation, with only a relative handful in the Gospels. More significant is the nature of the distribution of references. In the Gospels, so far as the present work of the Spirit is concerned, the accent is on Jesus and his activity. For the disciples, the Spirit is largely a matter of promise, a still future gift. In Acts and the Epistles, however, emphasis is on the present reality of the Spirit as he is active in the church and at work in believers.44

First there must be a cross and resurrection; otherwise, we could not bear the descent of the Spirit. “Peter explains the coming of the Spirit by preaching Christ.”45 Gaffin continues:

The work of the Spirit is not some addendum to the work of Christ. It is not some more or less independent sphere of activity that goes beyond or supplements what Christ has done. The Spirit’s work is not a ‘bonus’ added to the basic salvation secured by Christ. Rather the coming of the Spirit brings to light not only that Christ has lived and has done certain things but that he, as the source of eschatological life, now lives and is at work in the church. By and in the Spirit Christ reveals himself as present. The Spirit is the powerfully open secret, the revealed mystery, of Christ’s abiding presence in the church.46

Also notice the “proclamation” character of the sermon (typical of all the sermons in Acts). Even the “application” part of the sermon is bounded by the proclamation of the promise:

Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. . . . Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call. (Acts 2:36–39 NKJV)

Perhaps before all of this the people would have expected the sort of preaching that merely instructs and guides, encourages and exhorts—yet none of this can convert. It cannot usher those who are spiritually dead into the age to come. Only the Spirit-inspired and Spirit-empowered announcement of the new thing that God has done to bring liberation can effect this work. This is not to discount exhortation and encouragement, both of which are replete in Scripture, but it is to suggest that to the extent that Christian preaching loses its “announcement” character, it ceases to be Christian by apostolic standards. It is also to suggest that to the extent Christian preaching forgets its dependence on the Holy Spirit who inspired the Scriptures, as well as regenerating and illuminating our hearts to embrace Christ, it becomes little more than a school or a motivational seminar.

The effect of such preaching was to expand the walls of this temple-dwelling of God’s Spirit exponentially. Even in the extraordinary ministry of the apostles, where the sign gifts were obviously in abundance, it was not by spectacular displays or clever techniques that the church grew, but by the ordinary means of preaching, prayer, sacrament, and fellowship (Acts 2:42–43). It is no wonder, then, that Jesus answered the disciples’ last query before his ascension, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” by telling them to wait in Jerusalem for the gift of the Spirit.

1. John Levison, Filled with the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 217.

2. This consensus is reflected in the Westminster Confession, chapter 7. For further context and description see Richard Muller, After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); idem, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), esp. volume 1, Prolegomena to Theology.

3. Michael Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009), among other places.

4. The Sinai covenant is an administration of the covenant of grace. That is, it is in service to the promise that God made to Adam and Eve after the fall, to Abraham concerning an heir in whom all the families of the earth would be blessed, and to the new covenant. The Sinai covenant was never an alternative way of salvation: by law rather than by promise. It was not a way of salvation at all. Rather, it was a temporary way station between the desert and Zion, as the church became a geopolitical nation as part of God’s larger plan to bring salvation to the ends of the earth. Like Hamlet’s play-within-a-play, the ministry of Moses—identified in Scripture simply as “the law”—is a parenthesis within the larger unfolding of the Abrahamic promise. Its laws, purification rituals, priesthood, and sacrificial cult form one vast typological system that pointed forward to Christ. Yet as typological, there is nothing in this system itself that actually takes away sins, regenerates, or bestows the Spirit. The Sinai covenant is strictly temporary and conditional, a geopolitical treaty between Yahweh and one nation in the land of Canaan. The Sinai covenant promised “long life” for the nation in the land of Canaan on the condition of obedience to the law through the mediation of Moses, not “everlasting life” in God’s heavenly kingdom through the mediation of Christ. Therefore, Old Testament believers obtained everlasting life on the basis of the (Abrahamic) promise rather than the (Mosaic) law, just as we do today.

5. See S. M. Baugh, “Galatians 3:20 and the Covenant of Redemption,” WTJ 66 (2004): 49–70.

6. John Stott, Baptism and Fullness, IVP Classics (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 30–31.

7. Lord’s Day 12, Questions 31 and 32.

8. Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit, Contours of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 48–49.

9. Augustine, The Trinity: Introduction, Translation and Notes, 2nd ed., trans. Edmund Hill; ed. John E. Rotelle, Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2012), 4.29.

10. Ferguson, Holy Spirit, 68.

11. Andrew Lincoln, The Gospel according to Saint John, BNTC (London: Continuum, 2005), 500.

12. Cyril of Alexandria, In Joannem 5, from PG 73.757 as cited in Aidan Nichols, Figuring Out the Church: Her Marks, and Her Masters (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2013), 159.

13. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Lectures on the Christian Sacraments: The Procatechesis and The Five Mystagogical Catecheses, ed. F. L. Cross (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986), 62: “John’s baptism bestowed only the remission of sins. Nay we know full well, that as it purges our sins, and conveys to us the gift of the Holy Ghost, so also it is the counterpart to Christ’s sufferings. For this cause Paul, just now read, cried aloud and says, ‘Know ye not that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death.’ ”

14. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Acts Vol. 1, trans. John King (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 451–52, on Acts 10:44.

15. Abraham Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, trans. Henri De Vries (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 51.

16. John Owen, A Discourse concerning the Holy Spirit, in vol. 8 of The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, 16 vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1965), 215.

17. John Stott, Baptism and Fullness, 35n5.

18. Ibid., 36.

19. Ferguson, Holy Spirit, 25–26.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid., 30.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid., 58–59. I would only add to this last statement that the reference to Jesus baptizing “with the Spirit and with fire” encompasses the final judgment as well, when those who do not trust in Christ must bear God’s wrath themselves.

24. Owen, Discourse, 114.

25. Ibid., 126.

26. Ibid., 210.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid., 212.

29. Ibid., 152.

30. Ibid., 192.

31. Ibid.

32. I refer to the argument of Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, trans. W. Montgomery, J. R. Coates, Susan Cupitt and John Bowman (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001). Of course, Schweitzer was aware of the resurrection narratives as well as the Olivet discourse, but in his view these were later traditions of teaching that attempted to overcome the facts of Jesus’s ineffectual death.

33. Luke Timothy Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992), 46.

34. Phaedrus 244A–B, as cited in Levison, Filled with the Spirit, 155.

35. Ibid., 155–56, 161, 173.

36. Ibid., 219.

37. Ibid., 242–43.

38. Levison notes, “Even the understanding of the scribes who wrote what Ezra dictated increased, for ‘the Most high gave understanding to the five men, and by turns they wrote what was dictated, in characters which they did not know’ (4 Ezra 14:42)” (Filled with the Spirit, 200).

39. Ibid., 341n13.

40. Ibid., 341.

41. Ibid., 337–38.

42. Ibid. Levison adds here: “Even the analogy of musical instruments Paul draws—flutes and harps and bugles are intended to give distinct notes (14:7–8)—bears a family resemblance to the analogy adopted by Plutarch’s Cleombrotus, in On the Obsolescence of Oracles 431B, to explain the demise of Delphi—‘when the demigods withdraw and forsake the oracles, these lie idle and inarticulate like the instruments of musicians.’ ”

43. Levison, Filled with the Spirit, 280–81.

44. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., Perspectives on Pentecost (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1993), 13.

45. Ibid., 16.

46. Ibid., 19–20.