When I went to seminary, I learned just enough about the Holy Spirit to render him irrelevant in my life. I knew enough to confess the Holy Spirit as God, the Lord and giver of life, but I could not discern how the Spirit actually shaped my everyday life. Theologian Heribert Mühlen once warned against falling into an atheism of the Third Person, and sadly, many Christians formally confess the Spirit as God but deny the experience of the Spirit by living as if he is irrelevant.
Over the years, I have heard a recurring question from church members: “What does life in the Spirit look like?” They wonder whether the Spirit’s presence can be grasped only by a few privileged people—academics with graduate degrees in biblical studies or specially anointed spiritual elites who witness extraordinary miracles and transcendent experiences. They are looking for a grammar of the Spirit to help them in their everyday spiritual journeys.
Pastors often speak about spiritual matters through difficult-to-grasp, abstract concepts such as grace, law, sanctification, good works, Christlikeness, or holiness. Understandably, they struggle to make life in the Spirit relatable and tangible for churchgoers.
How can pastors help their people envision God’s work in their lives through the Spirit and invite them into that story? Thankfully, early church fathers can be a great resource. Pastors like Irenaeus, Ambrose, and Basil often used word pictures to depict what life in the Spirit looks like and invite their hearers into such life. In their preaching and teaching, they gave us a visual feast of illustrations. They painted pictures of the Christian life that involve death and resurrection, spiritual warfare, and Sabbath rest.
Let us look at some examples from church fathers of the fourth century, a period in history when many theologians wrote treatises, sermons, and letters on the Spirit and the spiritual life. In their writings, these voices from the past combined conceptual arguments with devotional images to depict and demonstrate holiness for believers in whom the Spirit of Christ dwells.
Irenaeus of Lyons: The Word and the Spirit are hands
Picture God as a creative sculptor. The Garden of Eden is his studio. After days of wonderful artistic endeavors and before taking time to behold the beauty of his handiwork, a last stroke of genius: With his hands, the sculptor shapes Adam from the ground and breathes life into him, creating humans in his own image and likeness.
A consensus emerged among early church fathers that the breath of God, which made Adam a living being, refers not only to Adam’s spirit-soul (in contrast to his flesh-body) but also to the Holy Spirit who makes fellowship with the Creator possible (Gen. 2:7; see also John 20:22; 1 Cor. 15:45–49). Bearing the image of God involves bearing God’s own Spirit. This brings humans into a profound, life-giving spiritual relationship with the Creator.
But humanity fell into sin and lost communion with God. Therefore, the divine plan of salvation must involve the restoration of God’s image in people. The Spirit, lost by Adam, needed to be returned to humanity. But how?
Irenaeus of Lyons (circa 130–200) explains that the Father uses his “two hands”—the Word (Son) and the Spirit—to vivify humans (by restoring in them the image of God that Adam lost in the Fall) and to bring them back into fellowship with himself. The Son takes on himself the flesh (human nature) of Adam and is anointed with God’s Spirit so he can redo Adam’s failed history. The Son becomes the new Adam to give us the Spirit of new life.
Referring to the baptism of Jesus, Irenaeus has a beautiful way of describing what the Spirit’s descent and anointing on the Son means for humanity. In Against Heresies, Irenaeus writes:
Wherefore He [the Spirit] did also descend upon the Son of God, made the Son of man, becoming accustomed in fellowship with Him to dwell in the human race, to rest with human beings, and to dwell in the workmanship of God, working the will of the Father in them, and renewing them from their old habits into the newness of Christ.
Inseparably united to Christ as his dwelling place, the Spirit of God becomes used to dwelling once again with the race of Adam. Or as Athanasius of Alexandria (circa 296–373) once put it (in Against the Arians), the Savior is “anointed with the Spirit” in the flesh so “He might provide for us … the indwelling and intimacy of the Spirit.”
Irenaeus’s image of God’s two hands encourages us to think of the Holy Spirit as a hands-on person who dwells and rests in us like he did in Christ’s human nature. He shapes us to be like Christ. As new creatures, we are invited to yield to the hands of the potter (Isa. 64:8; Jer. 18:6), to be molded or sculpted by God’s Spirit to grow into Christ’s likeness. The Spirit works even now to conform us to Christ in his death and resurrection (Rom. 8:9–11). He forms us to die to the old, sinful creature’s ways of life and habituates us to a new life in Christ according to the Father’s will (Rom. 6:4).
Ambrose of Milan: Your soul is a heel and a foot
For Ambrose of Milan (339–397), a theologian and bishop, the Holy Spirit is the rain from heaven that gives life to thirsty pilgrims in times of spiritual drought. As we journey through perilous deserts where we are tempted by evil, the rain of the Spirit cleanses us from sin and preserves us from spiritual death. In his work On the Holy Spirit, in a prayer to Jesus for the gift of the Spirit, Ambrose asks,
May the drops from You come upon me, shedding forth grace and immortality. Wash the steps of my mind that I may not sin again. Wash the heel of my soul, that I may be able to efface the curse, that I feel not the serpent’s bite on the foot of my soul.
Ambrose imagines the soul as a heel and a foot that can be exposed to the Serpent’s bite. He reminds believers to be watchful in the wilderness lest they give in to the Devil’s seduction and curse. We all have a spiritual Achilles’ heel, so to speak: those areas of vulnerability where the Devil is most likely to attack us and we are most likely to fall. The Christian life is one of vigilance and resilience in the desert, where the refreshing rain of the Spirit becomes our life-giving oasis and source of strength amid spiritual attacks.
While our souls may be as vulnerable as bare feet, Ambrose’s images indirectly invite us to think of God’s promise that Christ, the seed of the woman, would crush the Serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15) so that God might also crush Satan under our feet (Rom. 16:20). Just as Christ was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by Satan, so also those who are led by the Spirit of Christ into their deserts suffer the Serpent’s attacks. But we also stand firm in Christ’s victory over the Evil One (Luke 4:1–13; Heb. 2:14–18).
Basil of Caesarea: Your mind is an eye
Basil, bishop of Caesarea (330–379), in a letter to his friend Gregory, reflects on lessons he drew from a short experience in monastic retreat. Although he admits his lack of appreciation for the life of solitude, he sees retreat as an important form of Christlike self-denial, of dying to the anxieties of the world to make room for the mind to focus on God and apprehend his truth:
We must strive after a quiet mind. As well might the eye ascertain an object put before it while it is wandering restless up and down and sideways, without fixing a steady gaze upon it, as a mind, distracted by a thousand worldly cares, be able clearly to apprehend the truth.
How easy it is for the mind to lose focus on what is important. Distracted by too many things, a wandering eye becomes restless. Where, then, can a restless soul find rest?
For Basil, the first step in sanctification is to find quiet—the kind of solitude that rests in God’s Word. Retreat is not an excuse to leave the world but rather a time to leave the cares of the world to receive from God what is needed to engage the world rightly. The point of detachment is not to neglect one’s duties but to make room for the Spirit to form us and help us flourish.
Basil’s teaching on quiet and solitude is an invitation to embrace the spiritual sense of the Sabbath. He calls us to be still in God’s presence and rest in the beauty of his Word.
This is a call to see the Spirit’s work in us with a new set of eyes, fixed in a steady, restful gaze amid the distractions of life. It is a call to be like Jesus, who did not allow his work to get in the way of his time with the Father in prayer. Even when the crowds gathered to hear him and be healed of their sicknesses, Jesus withdrew to deserted places to pray (Luke 5:15–16). Like Jesus, we are guided by the Spirit in our labors and encouraged not to neglect time in deserted places with the Father.
The spiritual grammar of life the Spirit
We can learn from master preachers and teachers like Irenaeus, Ambrose, and Basil as they tell the story of life in the Spirit in ways that teach hearers about the sanctified life—not only at a conceptual level but also viscerally, in their own lives. These fourth-century fathers offer a spiritual grammar—a vocabulary—that can help people in any era discern what life in the Spirit looks like.
Imagine, for example, how a sermon on the work of the Spirit could come alive for listeners if, instead of merely saying, “The Spirit indwells all who follow Christ,” the preacher painted a visual picture like “God molds us like a potter at the wheel. The Spirit, who dwells in us as he did in Christ, shapes the contours of our lives to more closely resemble Christ.”
Consider the difference it would make in how a pastor prayed with others if instead of simply saying, “Lord, guard us from the temptations and attacks of the Evil One,” the pastor prayed something like “Protect our exposed and tender souls like steel-toed boots on bare feet. Send your healing grace to soak the parts of our lives that are dry, cracked, and callused. Help us stand firm with you, Christ, and grant us spiritual victory as you stamp on the Serpent’s head.”
What if, in pastoral counseling, a minister were to ask not only “Do you have a daily quiet time with God?” but also “How do the distractions of modern life keep you from focusing singularly on God? Where could you lean on the Holy Spirit as you take time on a regular basis to tune out the static and find rest in God?” By offering a variety of images and word pictures, pastors can correct the false notion that there is only one way to talk about life in the Spirit.
I once led a Bible study in which one person said, “I am on the brink of burnout.” Another said, “The Devil is tempting me to doubt God’s promises of provision.” Yet another said, “I need the Lord to shape me to die to self so I can be a more forgiving spouse.”
In response, I introduced participants to a variety of images and word pictures from the church fathers and from Scripture depicting the Spirit’s work. These individuals required descriptions of the spiritual life as vivid and diverse as their unique needs.
Through the vibrant and surprising images given, each person received direction critical to his or her situation: Pray to the Holy Spirit for renewal from Adam’s old ways. Pray to the Spirit for refreshment and resilience amid spiritual struggles in the deserts of life. Pray for Sabbath rest to receive God’s gifts amid the busyness of life and all its distractions.
By using such images of life in the Spirit of Christ in our teaching, sermons, and prayers, we, like the early church fathers, can capture our people’s imaginations. We can show them how the Spirit shapes them in the image of Christ even now, to the glory of God and the benefit of our neighbors.
Leopoldo Sánchez is a professor of systematic theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He’s the author of the T&T Clark Introduction to Spirit Christology and Sculptor Spirit: Models of Sanctification from Spirit Christology.
This article is a part of our fall CT Pastors issue. You can find the full issue here.
