Will the Real Holy Spirit Please Stand Up? Discerning the Holy Spirit from the Spirit of the Age

Last updated on: January 4, 2017 at 10:49 am by Paul Louis Metzger

Will the Real Holy Spirit Please Stand Up? Discerning the Holy Spirit from the Spirit of the Age 2017-01-04T10:49:43-08:00 Paul Louis Metzger

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The American television panel game show To Tell the Truth features three people claiming to be the same person, two of whom were pretenders. In the show, four celebrities try to discern which of the three is telling the truth. At the end of the show the real person is asked to stand up and be identified: “Will the real [person’s name] please stand up?” To Tell the Truth has aired in various incantations since 1956. The 2016 version will air on June 14.

I wish a similar show would run for discerning which spirit claiming to be the Holy Spirit in our age is the real one. Christian Smith writes that in our Moralistic Therapeutic Deistic age, young people do not view God as filling and transforming them through his Spirit. Rather, as referenced in a previous post, God is rather like a synthesis of a “Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist.” Thus, it should come as no surprise when a teenager said that religion matters to him “Cause God made us and if you ask him for something I believe he gives it to you. Yeah, he hasn’t let me down yet. [So what is God like?] God is a spirit that grants you anything you want, but not anything bad.”[1]

While the Jesus recorded in John’s Gospel claims that “God is spirit,” he also indicates that his worshipers worship him in spirit and in truth: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24; see also verse 23). Truth matters in the worship of God. In like manner, truth matters in discerning which spirit is the Holy Spirit. How do we discern between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of the age?

According to the New Testament, there is a vital and intimate connection between Jesus and the Holy Spirit. One cannot ultimately “have” Jesus without the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Spirit without Jesus (See Romans 8). While there are different progressions in faith recorded in the New Testament, such as the disciples “having” Jesus before Pentecost (See Acts 1 and 2), ultimately they experience the two together. In John’s Farewell Discourse, we see again the close connection between Jesus and the Spirit. The Spirit is a counselor of the same kind as Jesus, and he is responsible for taking from Jesus and reminding and making known to his followers his teaching after Jesus ascends to the right hand of God (See John 14-16).

John’s Gospel also indicates that the Spirit convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:7-11). While the Spirit does not master in guilt trips, the Spirit does not function as a cosmic therapist who tells us “I’m okay. You’re okay.” Further to Smith’s point above, the Spirit fills and transforms us after leading us to repentance from sin through faith in Christ Jesus.

The Spirit’s filling involves fruit that is righteous in contrast to the fruit of the flesh. Notice the contrast:

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law (Galatians 5:19-23).

The gifts of the Spirit recorded in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 sandwich the most excellent gift of the Spirit—1 Corinthians 13’s discussion of love. The Holy Spirit’s gift of love is radically different from what often passes for love in our culture. The Holy Spirit who shares God’s love with us also shares the love of the Father with the Son and that of the Son with the Father from all eternity, and indwells Jesus as well as his people in holy love. But such love is never reclusive or insular; it always flows outward toward others in the world. We find such love on display in Jesus in Matthew 12 and Luke 4: the all-powerful, humble Spirit moves us, not to seek anything we want, but what others desperately need—the all-encompassing freedom that comes from life with God in Jesus. When the Holy Spirit stands up, pride falls and the broken-hearted rise with hope in Christ. Will the real Holy Spirit please stand up?

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[1]Christian Smith, “On ‘Moralistic Therapeutic Deism’ as U.S. Teenagers’ Actual, Tacit, De Facto Religious Faith,” page 50: https://www.ptsem.edu/uploadedFiles/School_of_Christian_Vocation_and_Mission/Institute_for_Youth_Ministry/Princeton_Lectures/Smith-Moralistic.pdf.

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