God Comes Closer

This past Sunday was one of my favorite days of the year: Pentecost. Pentecost is the day when Christians celebrate the events of Acts chapter 2, when, after Jesus ascends back to heaven, the Holy Spirit is first poured out on the Church. In John’s gospel, Jesus tells the disciples about this impending arrival of the Spirit, and he says a couple of things there that may sound pretty unbelievable.

Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. (14:12)

What is that supposed to mean? “Even greater things” than turning water into wine, restoring a man’s ability to walk, raising Lazarus from the dead? How are believers supposed to top that?

But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. (16:7)

It’s for our good? Why on earth would it be a good thing that Jesus leaves?

To me, these two verses go hand in hand. The reason Jesus’s going away to the Father results in his disciples surpassing the works he did (14:12) is that Jesus’s going away results in the arrival of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit (16:7).

But how can the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives rival having Jesus here, walking with us, working his miracles, changing lives?

Because Jesus walked with us, but the Holy Spirit dwells within us, closer than even Jesus could come.

That’s a theme in the story of scripture. After the first couple ate the fruit in Eden, they were expelled from the garden, creating a physical separation between themselves and their Maker. When the Lord took up residence among the Israelites in the tabernacle and then in the Temple, though, suddenly God was near again. Not many people could come very close to God’s presence in the inner sanctuary, but it was a first step in bridging that physical separation. With Jesus, God came even closer: now he was close enough to touch, to eat with, to cry on. And then came the Spirit: as close to us as God has ever been before.

Jason Byassee, who was teaching at Duke when I was in seminary, writes about this in his book Trinity: The God We Don’t Know.

There are two sendings of God into human history to give life and save—the Son and the Spirit (John 6:63). And each is better than the previous. Religious communities do have a tendency to look back to a golden era and romanticize a lost time. The church should not. We know greater things are yet to come. God not only grants us knowledge about himself, God progressively comes closer to us, fills us and our world with more of himself. First Son, then Spirit. With God, the best is always yet to come. (pp. 38-39)

Pentecost is the story of God coming closer, doing greater things in our lives than ever before, and—if we'll cooperate with the Spirit—doing greater things through us than this world has ever seen before.

You can listen to this week's devotional here: