Pentecost: the descent of truth
By Andrew Symes, Anglican Mainstream:
Jesus predicted many times that the Holy Spirit would come after his death, resurrection and ascension. In John 16:13 we see one of those prophecies:
When he, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.
What did that mean? What kind of truth will the Holy Spirit guide us into? What is truth anyway?
There are several ways that truth is understood or defined today. The first says truth is objective, it can be calculated and measured, it is the realm of scientific facts, historical facts, evidence, reason, logic. Truth is not to be clouded by feelings or opinions. So, if I say 1+1=2, that is truth. If I say that these flowers are beautiful, or Jesus is Lord, those are personal feelings and opinions. I can only be sure of facts, so what I need is more knowledge. The way to solve the world’s problems and my problems is more education, better technology.
Another approach says truth is much more subjective. We construct our own truth from our feelings and the situations we find ourselves in. How you feel about something may be more important, more relevant and therefore more “true” that a so-called “fact”. So, 1+1=2 can be truth, Buddha is Lord can be truth, “I am born in the wrong body” – if its true for you, its true! Carl Trueman and others have shown that this understanding of truth is closely connected to our sense of identity; my “lived experience’ defining who I really am, a unique individual to be constantly “expressed”.
There is a third approach, which is to discover truth democratically, ie by majority opinion, often swayed by influencers. A wise voice of truth is not heard if not trending on social media. Conversely, by this measure, believing the “wrong” truth, the idea not approved by the “Party” or the elite formers of majority opinion, may be dangerous and should be suppressed.
Which one is the truth that Jesus was speaking about when he said “the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth”? Is he talking about truth as in scientifically proven facts? Or as in a certainty of feeling with endless options? Or “everyone is saying it – therefore it’s self-evidently true – other views are harmful and should be banned”.
It’s none of these of course. Truth originates in the trinitarian God. Jesus did not merely claim to be a teacher of truth, but he said “I am the truth”. So to know the truth is first an encounter with the source of truth, an encounter which is life-changing. But it goes deeper than that. The disciples encountered Jesus as Truth when he was on earth, but he was another person, separate from them, and he left them. At Pentecost, Truth descended: the Spirit of God returned and actually entered the lives of the disciples – a more profound experience of the truth than seeing Jesus face to face. After Pentecost, in the book of Acts, we are told of people “receiving” the Holy Spirit and indeed in the Gospel of John, it says in chapter one that those who believe in Jesus and receive him will be counted as children of God. In other words, truth is nothing less than the experience of “Christ in you, the hope of glory”.
Then there is the factual, cognitive aspect of truth. To know the truth is to be gripped with wonder about God’s character and his actions. So on the day of Pentecost when people were filled with the Spirit they “declared the wonders of God” in different languages. And afterwards, when people gathered round to see what was going on, Peter preached, beginning, “Let me explain this to you – listen carefully to what I say”. Yes there was emotion, and experience, but Peter wanted to ground it in facts that we grasp with our minds. The truth is contained in a message – the fact that human beings are sinners and rebelled against God, but God sent his Son to die and to rise again to forgive sin and to reconcile people to God, and that’s what we find in Peter’s sermon. The Holy Spirit was guiding the people into truth through the sermon of Peter as well as through the tangible experience of God in their midst.
And so thirdly, truth is right action. The Holy Spirit enabled those who received him to do God’s will. Jesus said just before his ascension “when the Spirit comes, you will be my witnesses” and so truth is not just experience and knowledge but action in the world. The Holy Spirit gave a sign of this when he enabled the believers to talk in different languages, and the people visiting Jerusalem from different parts of the world understood them, showing that God’s intention was that eventually his message would be taken to all corners of the globe. And if we follow the book of Acts, it tells us the story of the Holy Spirit guiding the apostles in their mission to Jerusalem, Samaria and the ends of the earth, promoting the growth of the Kingdom of God.
The “truth-in-action” of the Holy Spirit is also seen in the behaviour of Christians in their local communities. Just a few verses at the end of Acts 2 gives us a flavour of what was happening in the early church. Miracles, love, fellowship, prayer, sharing of resources. This is the truth that the Holy Spirit was guiding his people into – truth experienced, truth known and truth that can be seen in changed behaviour.
So that was the early church on the day of Pentecost. What about us?
Firstly, what about the truth of our experience of God? While being thrilled by grasping the facts of the gospel and understanding what God has done for us is a work of the Holy Spirit, knowledge about God, or doing good works for him, is not necessarily the same as a life-changing and ongoing encounter with him. As the church continues to be made aware of dreadful failings of those leaders respected for their head knowledge of the bible, we realise the danger of hearts puffed up with knowledge and power being hardened to the Holy Spirit, the Lord, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
Secondly, is our experience grounded in the truth of the revealed word? One of the causes of crisis in the Anglican Communion and other mainline denominations, is that the fake “truth” of the experience of the untrammelled self is now the majority opinion, which trumps what God has clearly said, and even trumps what science clearly demonstrates in some cases. The Holy Spirit does not lead the church into “new truth”, cancelling the teaching of the prophets and apostles. Rather he convicts and applies what is eternally true, for us today. In addition, he calls the church to teach and demonstrate the truth, and resist error – not to make a virtue of trying to accommodate truth and falsehood with each other!
Thirdly, when we know the truth, the Holy Spirit reveals truth to the world through our actions. Those disciples were slow, ignorant, and fearful, but after the coming of the Holy Spirit, they were on the ball, witnessing, organising, performing miracles. And so today, the Holy Spirit brings about transformation in the same way- here and here are two recent examples of how people can be supernaturally helped to move from a false self-understanding and wrong, destructive behaviour, to life in its fullness. People find new purpose in life. As the Spirit guides his people into truth they become united, they care for each other, they have an outward focus, on mission.
O thou who camest from above, that pure celestial fire to impart, Kindle a flame of purest love on the mean altar of my heart.
(Charles Wesley)
So Spirit come! put strength in every stride,
Give grace for every hurdle.
That we may run with faith to win the prize
Of a servant good and faithful.
(Keith Getty and Stuart Townend)
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