The Preaching Life

by William M. Greathouse

"The Preaching Life" is a regular feature of Preacher's Magazine where readers are privileged to sit in the classroom and read insights on current preaching models from some of North America's finest preachers. This workshop is presented by William M. Greathouse, pastor, teacher, administrator, and emeritus general superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene.

Pentecost Sunday (or Whitsunday) offers the pastor an opportunity to address pertinent issues in both culture and church. In our pluralistic culture, as well as among many Christians, religion is a purely private matter. Believe what you want, but keep it to yourself! John Wesley saw the threat of such thinking and warned: "To reduce Christianity to a private religion is effectually to destroy it." Pentecost Sunday affords the preacher an opportunity to address the issue.

On the Day of Pentecost "they were all filled with the Holy Spirit," while "tongues . . . as of fire . . . sat upon each one of them" (Acts 2:4, NASB; 3, ASV; emphases added). The gift of the Spirit is both corporate and personal. As Christ promised, the Spirit has come to dwell both "with" and "in" His Church (John 14:15-17). Having been "baptized by one Spirit into one body . . . we were all given the one Spirit to drink" (1 Corinthians 12:13). "Now you are the body of Christ," Paul says in conclusion, "and each one of you is a part of it" (v. 27, emphases added). The corporate gift must be personally appropriated.

Pentecost, furthermore, is missional, as Acts 1:1 implies. The ministry Jesus began in His body of flesh (here see Luke 4:14-21) He now continues, as its glorified Lord in His new Body, the Spirit-baptized Church (Acts 2:33). What Jesus' baptism was for Him (see Luke 3:21-23), Pentecost was and is for the Church (Acts 1:8; 4:31-35; 17:6).

Pentecost Sunday is also a great opportunity to proclaim the distinctive Wesleyan teaching of entire sanctification. Having come in recent years to understand sanctification as progressive, we are now in grave danger of failing to urge upon our people the new covenant promise of the Spirit in Ezekiel 36:25-27. Not only Wesley but also rabbinic Judaism and current biblical scholarship view this passage as the dispensational promise of a radical work of divine grace that displaces the "stony heart" (KJV) of a sinful disposition with a loving and obedient heart that sings, "I'll say yes, Lord, yes to Your will and to Your way" (Lynn Keesecker). Wesley spoke of Christian holiness as "The Great Salvation," which distinguishes the gospel from the Law (see Romans 8:1-17 as superseding 7:14-25). One generation of silence on entire sanctification, Timothy L. Smith warned, could seal its death among us. May we ever be found faithful!

As the full dawn of the Age of the Spirit, Pentecost brought the history of salvation to its glorious climax. As John Fletcher taught (and as Wesley agreed), the dispensations of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit not so much mark three ways that God has historically related to humankind as three stages on the Christian journey. These stages correspond to (1) "servants" of God who are still under the Law ("legal" believers--Galatians 4:1-3); (2) "children of God" who enjoy the witness of the Spirit ("evangelical" believers--Galatians 4:4-7); and (3) the entirely sanctified ("spiritual" believers--1 Corinthians 2:15-16; Romans 8:9) who manifest perfect love (1 Corinthians 13 and l John 4:12-19).

Are you and I living witnesses to this glorious promise? No question is more pertinent for us this Whitsunday, for we can no more witness to what we have not experienced than we can return from where we have never been!