Chapter 12

Jesus, the Spirit, and the Ministry of Jesus’ Disciples

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The impetus for this chapter is the question, “Why were Jesus’ disciples able to minister in power before they were filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost?” The answer to this question highlights a fundamental  insight about our relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and our participation in Jesus’ ministry. 

I have always assumed, based on the experience of Jesus and the post-resurrection church at Pentecost, that the coming (or outpouring, baptism, infilling, etc.) of the Holy Spirit was a necessary precondition or prerequisite for the initiation of power for ministry in New Testament believers. 

According to the gospel records Jesus didn’t do signs and wonders, or announce the Kingdom in the power of the Holy Spirit, until after the Spirit came upon him when John baptized him in the Jordan river (Matthew 3:16). Likewise, it was not until after the Spirit was poured out on the disciples at Pentecost, fulfilling the prophetic promise of Joel (2:28), that all the believers began to experience God’s powerful presence and they began to preach and minister in God’s power.

But an odd story element in the Gospel narratives caused me to look again at what it means to participate with Jesus in the work of the Holy Spirit: the disciples operated with power before Pentecost, and even before Jesus’ breathed on them and said, “receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). For example,

And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal…And they departed and went through the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere. (Luke 9:1-6)

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go…Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’  (Luke 10:1-9)

If the experience of Spirit baptism (or any of its synonyms) was not a necessary precondition to minister in God’s power, how do we understand these incidents? Perhaps we can start with the observation that the common factor between the disciples' experiences before and after Pentecost was the presence of Jesus himself with them. 

The Presence of Jesus with His Disciples

In this chapter, I want to go into more detail about a topic I introduced in chapter 10, where I wrote, 

You are not alone; Jesus is with you just like He was with the first disciples because He is in you. They ministered in power with Jesus because He was with them and gave them authority and direction to help Him do the works the Father gave Him to do. Jesus enabled them to participate with Him in the power of God. Jesus is with you and continues this same dynamic from generation to generation.

Let’s begin with the observation that the Holy Spirit, who comes to live within every believer, is the spirit of Jesus.

And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” (Galatians 4:6)

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8:9–11)

To say "the Holy Spirit is Jesus" does not minimize or ignore the mystery of the Trinity by conflating the Holy Spirit into the person of Jesus. Nevertheless, the first disciples recognized that Jesus was still with them in their experience and relationship with the Holy Spirit.

The presence and work of the Holy Spirit were seen in essentially relational terms; the Spirit was Jesus in their lives. Jesus had promised that he would come to them (John 14:15-18), and this promise was fulfilled with the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Furthermore, spiritual gifts are not add-ons that augment and empower people to do signs and wonders. Instead, Jesus, whose Spirit resides within each believer, is continuing to do the works of His Father by partnering with His disciples in the same process of delegation and collaboration that was the experience of the first disciples.

Partnering with Jesus’ Spirit

 1 Corinthians 12 is recognized as an essential New Testament source of information about ministry with Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12:7 provides a foundational insight into how we minister with Jesus in the power of God. Here is how Paul said it, 

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. (1 Corinthians 12:7) (emphasis mine)

Paul’s word choice in this sentence is significant. In verse 7, he uses a word translated into English, “manifestation.” The Greek noun Paul used is “phanerosis,” which comes from the verb “phaneroō” and means “to make visible, make clear.” The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines manifestation as “an event, action, or object that clearly shows or embodies something.” 

And what do spiritual gifts show or embody?  Experiencing spiritual gifts means seeing the Holy Spirit at work, which we know is the spirit of Jesus. When the power of God enables you to serve others through prayer for healing, prophetic words, and revelations of God’s love and wisdom, you are observing the work of Jesus in you, loving others through you. 

What do you see when you read I Corinthians 12 with the understanding that Jesus is the spirit living within His disciples? You don’t see humans becoming augmented individuals as spiritual gifts and spiritual powers are given to them. Instead, spiritual gifts are Jesus speaking or acting from within His disciples as He continues doing the works of His Kingdom on earth. 

In other words, spiritual gifts occur when Jesus does the same things He did with the first disciples today. Jesus is still at work as He fills the church and His body, empowering and guiding us to join Him in His mission. 

Does this seem strange? Is Jesus within us but working through us? It shouldn’t; this same dynamic was the first disciples’ experience. 

How the first disciples experienced “Ministry with Jesus”

In the gospels, Jesus lived with the disciples; they were in His physical presence, heard His physical voice, and responded to His words. Jesus (with them) authorized them to speak and act with His authority (Matthew 10:1) and to go and do the works that He was doing; that is, He delegated work to them. They obeyed Him, and God’s power backed them up. 

Then Jesus was killed in front of them, resurrected from the dead on the third day, appeared to them on multiple occasions, and ascended to the Father. Fifty days later, the promised Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples during the Jewish feast of Pentecost. As we have seen, this out-poured spirit was the spirit of Jesus, who now lives within all disciples. 

But the change of location (before, He was just with them, and now, He is within them) didn’t change the nature of their work or their responsibility to Jesus. Jesus continued to speak to them and authorize them to go and speak and do His works in His name, and the power of God continued to back them up. The evidence that this was how they saw it is all through the New Testament.

For example, they believed that Jesus continued to partner with them to minister to others.

For I will not speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed. (Romans 15:18)

Furthermore, they continued to hear Jesus speak and give them direction in ministry.

And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.  And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. (Acts 16:6–7)

Let’s look at how Jesus “delegated” His ministry to the first disciples to understand how He does it with us today.

Delegation and Ministry with Jesus

To begin, Jesus claimed His work was an expression of delegated authority.

So Jesus answered them, ‘I tell you the solemn truth, the Son can do nothing on his own initiative, but only what He sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.’ John 5:19  

John 5:19 is often used to argue that if we are to follow Jesus’ example and learn from Him how to minister in the power of God’s Spirit, we too need to focus our attention on trying to discern what the Father is doing or saying as the basis for any ministry actions we may take. That is not bad counsel, but I would suggest a deeper insight, which I have found helpful. 

When Jesus sent the disciples out with authority to preach and heal, they obeyed Jesus’ word. If, as John 5:19 declares, Jesus only did what He saw the Father doing, then what He did with the disciples is another example of John 5:19 in action. 

We can assume that Jesus saw what the Father was doing with the disciples and sent them out to preach and heal. When Jesus gave the disciples their ministry assignments, He partnered with them to do what He saw the Father doing. 

The disciples’ ability to minister in the Holy Spirit was not a new capacity to wield God’s power that was added to them, which they could then carry as their own. Instead, their work was contained within the scope of Jesus' ministry, as Jesus did what the Father was doing. In other words, Jesus told them what the Father was doing, and when they obeyed Him, they collaborated with Him to implement the Father’s purposes. 

My conclusion is this: Jesus’ change of location relative to the disciples (before, He was just with them, and now, He is within them) didn’t change the nature of their work or their responsibility to continue the ministry Jesus delegated to them. Post-Pentecost, He continued to speak to His disciples and authorize them to go and speak and do His works in His name, and the power of God continued to back them up. 

Therefore, the experience of the power of the Holy Spirit and what we call spiritual gifts in the church today is not an augmentation that comes upon us from outside but is the work of Jesus in and through us.

Our ministry in the power of God today continues to be one of cooperation and partnership with Jesus. When we operate in spiritual gifts, we are not exercising new superpowers somehow imparted to us. We cooperate with Jesus, who continues His work in and through us. We are, after all, His body. 

So What! Why does this matter?

When we understand our relationship with the indwelling Spirit of Jesus, we can better avoid ignorant, foolish behavior and attitudes that only damage our witness and hurt people rather than help them. Also, finding and maintaining balance and stability in life as we follow and serve Jesus is easier.  

Avoiding Pride and Arrogance

We are not independent from Jesus; we are utterly dependent on Him. Through Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, God made it possible for us to be born again to live the life Jesus lived and join Him in doing the works of His Father’s kingdom on earth as in heaven.

There is a tendency toward pride or arrogance when we see the power of God and ministry through the modern cultural assumptions of our autonomy and independence. It is easy to become arrogant if I see myself as an augmented human with powers and supernatural abilities. But it is difficult to become arrogant if I see myself in union with Jesus, totally dependent upon Him, and happily so. There is no arrogance if I only collaborate with Christ; every exercise of power by word or action is an experience of partnering with Jesus, who said,

“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in Him, He it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5 (ESV)

Escaping the trap of Insecurity

Likewise, we can avoid the trap of insecurity. If we inappropriately see ourselves as autonomous individuals who have received gifts and powers from God, what do we think when we see others with gifts that we do not have but want or who far exceed us in scope and effectiveness? The trap is to judge ourselves as inferior or less loved by God. Perhaps if we work harder, pray more, and believe more sincerely, God will give us more. We quickly become envious of others with more extraordinary gifts; worse yet, we see them as superior to the rest of us. 

Building Realistic Expectations 

Are we limited in which spiritual gifts we can experience? Theoretically, no. Jesus may have many different ministries to accomplish in collaboration with us. While it may be the case that Jesus may give us similar assignments over and over, that doesn't mean He is limited in what work He may give us to do with Him. 

However, while we are encouraged to desire spiritual gifts, we are also counseled to be content and value whatever place and function God assigns us. 

“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” 1 Corinthians 12:4–7

“And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts.” 1 Corinthians 12:28–31

Anticipate Growth in Ministry Effectiveness

Can we expect to grow in our abilities to minister in God’s power? Absolutely! The true source of power for ministry is in the intimacy of our relationship with the spirit of Jesus, who dwells within us. The capacity to recognize His presence, voice, and ways will grow as we learn to love and trust Jesus more and more.

No Pressure to Perform 

Finally, You are not under any pressure to make anything happen. Your job is to pay attention to Jesus, listen carefully, and trust Him to speak or show us what the Father is doing, as He wills. 

Final Thoughts

You may have reached the end of this chapter and are thinking, wow, that was a lot of theological stuff to think about. It is essential to realize that our thinking leads to our actions; therefore, at least some time and effort is needed to think about our thinking.

Here’s how all of the ideas in this chapter work out for me in my real, day-to-day life. I use the following prayer to begin my day, and I have found it helpful in keeping my bearings in the middle of life’s stress, chaos, and distractions.

May I walk with you today, Jesus? May I see what you are seeing, hear what you are hearing, and help you as you do what the Father is doing today? Amen. 

Here are some questions for consideration and discussion. 

1. What has been your experience with the Holy Spirit when you have had opportunities to talk with or pray for others? 
   

2. Which idea(s) from this chapter are most challenging, and why? 
   

3. How does the key idea of this chapter, that ministry with Jesus is a matter of partnering with His indwelling Spirit, encourage or change your expectations for ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit?
   

Chapter 12 Daily Scripture Readings

How to spend some quality time listening to what Jesus would like to say through the scriptures:

1. In preparation, acknowledge the Lord’s presence and love for you and settle yourself before Him (in your mind and heart).

2. Read the day’s text carefully; take your time.

3. Reflect on what you have been reading with a listening ear – what word, phrase, or sentence speaks to you from the text?

4. Now, talk to the LORD about what you hear from this text. What has Jesus stirred in your heart?

5. If you were with Him walking from one Galilean village to another, what would you say to Him about this?

Mark 14:32-42

Mark 14:43-52

Mark 14:53-65

Mark 15:1-5

Mark 15:6-15

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There are two ways you can go deeper with this material, if you are finding this helpful.

First, read How to get the most from this book. I offer some suggestions about how to do more than skim the pages and move on with minimal impact.

Second, read How to use this book with a small group. This material was formed and proven in a small group setting that has been very effective at helping participants engage with Jesus at a much deeper and transformative level than is typical in our churches today.