Gorman: "The Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ"

Paul everywhere assumes and occasionally states that all believers have the Spirit, and without the Spirit there is no Christian believer and no Christian community. The reception and experience of the Spirit is an act of God’s grace appropriated by faith. The Spirit is a “cure” to the rotten human heart: the Gentile heart is darkened by refusal to acknowledge God as God, and the Jewish heart has become hard and impenitent, and is thus in need of “circumcision.” The heart is the fundamental human problem, and thus the right target for repair; consequently, it is from the heart that human response to the gospel occurs, both faith and obedience. The Spirit is a fulfillment of the Hebrew biblical injunctions to circumcise the heart, as well as the fulfillment to the prophetic promises to remove Israel’s hard and stony heart and replace it with a new heart and a new Spirit, a heart of flesh. The “Israel of God,” the community of Jewish and Gentile believers, has received the promised Spirit, the Spirit’s heart-circumcision, and the law written on their hearts by the Spirit. This Spirit has renewed and reconstituted God’s people around Christ and now lives among them.

Gorman does a sweeping examination of Romans 8, one of the most prominent Pauline texts on the Spirit of God/the Spirit of Christ (henceforth “the Spirit”). The experience of being “in Christ” is that of “walking… according to the Spirit.” Believers are “led” or “guided” by the Spirit, an echo of the Old Testament times when God’s people were called to live as a journey in the way of YHWH, guided by the Law. The Spirit enables Christians to do that which, without the Spirit’s power, is impossible: fulfilling the “just requirement of the law.” To live “according to the Spirit” isn’t merely to have an external norm (such as with imitation) but with a power within, a power that acts to override—indeed, replace—the power of “the flesh,” the power of sin.

In the present, the Spirit powerfully brings life out of sin and death.

In the future, the same Spirit will give life to the dead in parallel to the raising of Jesus.

Because the Spirit forms a link between believers’ present and future experience, Paul refers to the Spirit as the “down payment” or “first installment” (Greek arrabon, a modern word for an engagement ring) of our future life with God. Paul refers to this act of recreation (transforming death into life) via the metaphor of “fruit”. In Galatians 5, Paul lists nine fruit, but tantamount is LOVE—understood as service to neighbor—and, also, FREEDOM. These are the chief works of the Spirit. The freedom of the Spirit, in fact, is the freedom to love, to become the servant of another.

Although the flesh with its passions and desires has been crucified, and although the experience of the Spirit is one of freedom and not living under the rule of the flesh, it is possible to allow our freedom to become “an opportunity for the flesh” (or an opportunity for self-indulgence, as the NRSV puts it). Gorman quotes New Testament scholar James Dunn: “Life in the flesh can very easily and quickly (and unconsciously) become life according to the flesh.” Although Christians have been transferred from life “in the flesh” to life “in Christ,” those passions and desires which have been crucified with Christ nevertheless we remain part of a world caught in the tension between Easter and Consummation, and we are subject to the attack of the old powers under which we used to live. In the face of such attacks, the believers’ death with Christ must be maintained and affirmed.

The Spirit of God is a “Spirit of Adoption”. The early Christians addressed God as Abba! (Father), and it’s the work of the Spirit to assure believers of their identity as “children of God.” Paul doesn’t sentimentalize the Spirit; yes, the Spirit relates us to God in an intimate way, and even helps us in our weakness or inability to pray. But there are two conditions. First, we must “put to death the deeds of the body.” The Spirit has an active killing function: the Spirit’s work isn’t just about adding “fruit” to our lives; it isn’t about remodeling but new creation, and as such it involves total destruction of the old to build the new. Through the Spirit, what took place decisively in the death of Christ is continually replayed in the life of the Christian: the believer dies to life “according to the flesh.” The Spirit propels us to put to death the flesh—and consequently live to serve and love God and others—and to suffer in the present. The second condition, then, is suffering with Christ: the Spirit links Paul to the cross, and through the cross to Christ in suffering and love. The Spirit marks and ‘seals’ people as God’s own possession, but only insomuch as they are marked by conformity to Christ’s death.

In 1 Corinthians, charismatic gifts became indicators or “litmus tests” of spirituality. Paul says that what matters is love, and in 1 Corinthians 13 he spells out this kind of look. The “mark of the spirit,” the right “litmus test,” is love, and a specific type of love: selfless, sacrificial, self-giving love. What matters, then, is cruciformity to Christ. Thus the criterion of the Spirit’s activity is cruciformity, understood as Christ-like love in the edification of others rather than oneself.