On Pentecost the real miraclewas not the momentary wonderof people speaking languagesthey hadn't been taught,but the lasting miracleof people making connectionsdespite all their separations,discovering how they were alikedespite apparent differences,knowing...
The name bestowed upon Jesus is Lord, acknowledged in what may be the earliest form of the confession of faith among gentile Christians: Jesus is Lord (Rom. 10:9; Acts 2:36). Submission to the lordship of Christ, however, is not confined to the human realm; Christ is...
God’s Spirit is poured out upon a community of believers. The Holy Spirit is not a “personal” gift from God that each believer privatizes—”you can have your Spirit if I can have mine.” This same Spirit of one God “appeared among them—on each of them” as the...
To those in the church today who regard the Spirit as an exotic phenomenon of mainly interior and purely personal significance, the story of the Spirit’s descent at Pentecost offers a rebuke. Luke goes to great pains to insist that this outpouring of the Spirit is...