"As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. Then I remembered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?” Acts 11:15-17.
Peter recounts to his fellow Jewish believers how God had showed him that He had chosen to include Gentiles in his called-out people by the way in which, as he had witnessed, they had also received the Holy Spirit - just as the Jewish believers had.
All of what Jesus did on the cross to justify us has to be received by faith or it will not be received at all - without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). But we know that the nature we inherited from Adam (see yesterday's mediation) is a nature that does not believe (1 Corinthians 2:14). It’s a nature that finds nothing lovely or valuable in Jesus.
Something super-natural (more than merely natural) has to overcome our natural proclivity to unbelief. And that something is the Holy Spirit of God. The first work of God on the soul of a person is a powerful redirection of the soul’s inclination away from Jesus, toward Jesus. That means that without God’s powerful Spirit-moving intervention we would never come to faith in Jesus.
The Spirit of Jesus Christ comes to a person and reveals to the eyes of their hearts the surpassing worth of Jesus (Ephesians 1:17-18). That is a gift according to Peter. It’s not something we can work in ourselves. It’s not something we decide would be good for us. It is a sovereign gift of God to a sinner. It is a gift that transforms; a gift that rebirths; a gift that calls; a gift that regenerates the human soul to receive, by faith, the gift of Jesus’ justifying work (Titus 3:5). We need this gift of the Holy Spirit every bit as much as we need the gift of Jesus’ blood poured out for us on the cross, or else we cannot be saved (see this meditation).
Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit which means that his incarnation is the work of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18). And Jesus is the one who sent forth his Spirit when he ascended on high. If Jesus hadn’t come by the Spirit, he wouldn’t have sent forth his Spirit, and we wouldn’t have received that enabling gift to our hearts (John 15:26). And that same Spirit is the Holy Spirit who will raise our bodies from the dead in the future, just as he raised Christ from dead in the past (Romans 8:11).
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