YEAR OF SAINT PAUL       By Aggie Neck     Seventh in a series of   Reflections on the Life of Saint   Paul    For the Jubilee Year of St. Paul    June 28, 2008-June 29, 2009

ST. PAUL AND THE HOLY SPIRIT

“No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3).
As St. Paul wrote these words to the Corinthians he was speaking from experience. As we remember his journey from unbelief to believer we can see why. His first encounter with Jesus the Lord on the way to Damascus was dramatic. Three days later Ananias was sent to him and proclaimed these words: “Saul, my brother, I have been sent to you by the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the way here to help you recover your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 9:17). Until this happened Saul could not say with his mouth or in his heart that Jesus was Lord.

The majority of what Scripture tells us about the Holy Spirit in the New Testament was written by St. Paul. “The Spirit we have received is not the world’s spirit but God’s Spirit, helping us to recognize the gifts he has given us. We speak of these, not in words of human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit” (1 Cor 2:12-13). “For this reason I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God bestowed when my hands were laid on you.  The Spirit God has given us is no cowardly spirit, but rather one that makes us strong, loving, and wise” (2 Tim 1:7).

These words show us the deep belief in which Paul was now rooted. That was the belief that it was only with and in the power of the Holy Spirit that he, and those who follow Jesus, were able to live fully the ‘New Way’ that he had fought so hard to eliminate. He urged all those he evangelized and brought to the Lord to “Pray at every opportunity in the Spirit.” “The Spirit too helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in speech. He who searches hearts knows what the Spirit means for the Spirit intercedes for the saints as God himself wills” (Rom 18:26-27).  St. Paul was teaching with certainty that our prayers are most powerful when done in and through the Holy Spirit.

The beautiful words he writes show the depth of what he had come to know and believe by experience.  “You must know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is within - the Spirit you have received from God” (1 Cor 6:19). “The kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power” (1 Cor 4:20).

This last quote reveals to us a hope, now and in the life to come. “The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. All of us, gazing on the Lord’s glory with unveiled faces, are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image by the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:17-18).

 

© National Service Committee 2009