Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

GORDON D. FEE

BakerAcademic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

Grand Rapids, Michigan

© 1996 by Gordon D. Fee

Published by Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.bakeracademic.com

Ebook edition created 2011

Baker Academic edition published 2011

Previously published in 1996 by Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 978-1-4412-3278-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Portions of this book are adapted from God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul, © 1994 by Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, Massachusetts.

for Maudine—

God’s gift of presence in my life,

in our fortieth year

Table of Contents

Preface

Overture

An Invitation to Read Paul Anew

1. A “Theology” of the Spirit?

The Spirit in Pauline Theology

2. God Revisits His People

The Spirit as the Renewed Presence of God

3. The Holy Who?

The Spirit as Person

4. God in Three Persons

The Spirit and the Trinity

5. The Beginning of the End

The Spirit as Evidence of the “Presence of the Future”

6. A People for His Name

The Spirit and the People of God

7. Conversion: Getting In (Part 1)

The Spirit and the Hearing of the Gospel

8. Conversion: Getting In (Part 2)

The Spirit at the Entry Point

9. Conversion: Staying In (Part 1)

The Spirit and Pauline Ethics

10. Conversion: Staying In (Part 2)

The Fruit of the Spirit

11. The Ongoing Warfare

The Spirit Against the Flesh

12. Power in Weakness

The Spirit, Present Weakness, and Prayer

13. To the Praise of His Glory

The Spirit and Worship

14. Those Controversial Gifts?

The Spirit and the Charismata

15. Where to from Here?

The Spirit for Today and Tomorrow

Appendix

Spirit Baptism and Water Baptism in Paul

Scripture Index

Preface

This book has had a checkered history. It is the book I had hoped to write some years ago at the invitation of Hendrickson Publishers, when they approached me to “expand slightly” the article on the Holy Spirit in the Pauline letters that appeared in the Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988). To my great surprise I discovered while writing this article that there was no book available on this subject. So I set out to write a book that would fill this gap.

But I was also anxious to support the conclusions set forth in the dictionary article. So I decided that I needed to give full and careful exegesis to every Pauline text that mentioned the Spirit or the Spirit’s activity. The result, God’s Empowering Presence (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994; henceforth GEP), was a massive tome, full of (necessary) ...