He Gave Them the Spirit (Part Three)

He Gave Them a Meal (Part One) He Gave Them a Cross (Part Two)

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Acts 1.8

“This passage,” expalins Ajith Fernando, “shows us how important the Holy Spirit is to our understanding of mission and how important mission is to our understanding of the Holy Spirit.”


As I mentioned in previous posts, Jesus gave his disciples a meal to explain his impending death. He gave them a cross to express the exacting cost of living for the kingdom. Now Jesus promises to give his disciples the Spirit to empower them for his mission.

So we see, God’s mission and God’s Spirit are irrevocably intertwined. And as Ajith Fernando reminds us above, we cannot truly understand the mission of God if we do not appreciate the importance of the Holy Spirit in that mission. And we cannot truly appreciate the Holy Spirit if we neglect the mission he empowers us to be a part of. A read through the book of Acts confirms that the purpose of being filled with the Holy Spirit is to empower his disciples to preach the word of God everywhere and in all circumstances.

As the Spirit of Pentecost empowers God’s prophetic community for mission, so the Spirit of missions is relational. God entrusts his message with his people. God empowers his people with his Spirit. Therefore, missions must be incarnational; it must be relational.

As a missionary, may I be so bold to proclaim that there is no substitute for sending real people into all the world to bring God’s message by his Spirit, because the message we need to share is this: God is reconciling the world to himself through Christ. Therefore like Christ, our ministry and our methods must be incarnational; they must be relational. Nothing less will do. As his disciples we have the responsibility to be incarnate with his message and empowered by his Spirit to go into all the world.

Although it is tempting to believe that Jesus’ commission to all nations is a new development in the missio Dei, it is not. The mission of God has always included the nations beyond the called and faithful remnant. It has always included reaching out with compassion and hope to the poor, the captive, and the oppressed. What is new is the promise of power to all believers (regardless of social status, nationality, age, or gender) to expedite the mission.

This power though, is not the consequence of an inanimate energy source, but rather the manifestation of the Spirit of Christ. No less than the abiding presence and power of the Holy Spirit is adequate to accomplish this exceptional mission to all nations.

To accept the gift of the Spirit as they did at Pentecost and throughout Acts necessitates an intentional missions objective, for the purpose of Pentecost is to clothe believers with power to be witnesses to all the nations. For a believer to claim to be filled with the Spirit and yet have no inclination for the mission of Jesus simply makes no sense.

Today, if we want to be a part of God’s missional, prophetic community – to be empowered by his Spirit to send and to go and to make disciples – then once again let us ask God to fill us with his Spirit. But to ask for the baptism of the Holy Spirit intrinsically implies that the recipient of the gift will accept the mission, the method, and the power to go to the ends of the earth!

Ajith Fernando, Acts, The NIV Application Commentary, Zondervan: 2009, Kindle Edition