The Face Of The Deepনমুনা

The Spirit Who Sanctifies

“What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit,” Jesus tells Nicodemus in John 3:6. And yes, what the Spirit plants and waters is spirit, as surely as apples bear apples, and olives bear olives, and rose hips hold a thousand roses under the blood red skin.

This is why God delights to call his redeemed brothers with Jesus the “firstborn.” I used to balk a bit when the Bible used the term for God’s anointed one, implying that his anointing with holy oil extended to his people. Doesn’t it seem a bit presumptuous? “King” I can understand, “adoptive father,” “brooding mother hen,” “conqueror.” But older brother? Surely not.

But there can be no other way. The whole church, made by the Spirit into Christ’s one body, built by the Spirit into a single temple resting on the Cornerstone, must be made of the selfsame anointed nature as that of Jesus. It is a profound mystery, without doubt, but it is an inevitable one for the God who seeks to see himself born infinitely in the eyes of the human family. Male and female, we were made in his image in the beginning, were purchased by his image whom we strung upon the cursed tree, and conformed into his image every day that the Spirit’s fruit is born and borne in us. In limitless grace, we are fruit after God’s kind, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Some may be further germinated than others, but just as grains of wheat that fall into the earth and die hold all the promise of limitless harvest under the husk, so do we, or at least this is what the Spirit would have us believe. And to aid belief? Well, one of us has borne fruit already, a tree big enough to heal the nations, and his name is Jesus of Nazareth, and his nature is yours, Paul says, if you have been buried with him.

All sons and daughters of God who look to Jesus as Lord and Older Brother share in his nature through the sanctifying Spirit, the rich oil of holiness.

Now though, we must live like it in a fallen world.