The Foundation of Full of Eyes – IV
The Necessity of the Holy Spirit
“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
– 2 Corinthians 3:18
God created reality to communicate His glory, and Jesus Christ is the supreme manifestation of that glory, however, apart from the enlightening work of the Holy Spirit, God’s glory – especially in Christ – remains veiled to us. The Spirit alone enables us to see God’s beauty in scripture and to understand what is taught there (2 Cor. 3:14-18). He alone brings redemptive conviction to the human heart (John 16:8-11), strengthens us to grow in Christ (Eph. 3:16-19), ignites worship in the inner man (Eph.5:18-19), and is the spring of living water who fills the believer with the soul-quenching, life-giving knowledge of God in Christ (John 7:37-39, 16:14).
The Holy Spirit is necessary because the human soul cannot see God in Christ as glorious apart from His sovereign enabling.
Not only are we dead to God apart from the working of the Spirit, but there can be no true and eternally effective ministry apart from His anointing. Our Lord Himself was anointed by the Holy Spirit upon the inauguration of His earthly ministry (Lk. 3:22) and Christ’s God-glorifying work is tied to the Spirit’s presence with Him (Matt.12:28, Lk. 4:14-18). And again at Pentecost and following, it is the Spirit’s anointing that emboldens the disciples for their God-exalting, Christocentric preaching (Acts 4:8-10, 31; 6:5; 7:55).
The Holy Spirit is necessary because we cannot point anyone to Christ or do any eternal good apart from His sovereign enabling.
The recognition that the Holy Spirit is absolutely necessary in all eternally effective ministry will affect the art of Full of Eyes in at least these four ways:
- We will seek to be led by the Spirit to make war on our sin (Romans 8:13-14), violently putting to death those things in us that grieve Him (Matthew 5:29-30, Ephesians 4:30-31), and seeking the fruit of His work in our lives (Galatians 5:22-23).
- We will operate from the assumption that, apart from the Spirit’s anointing, our best work will be powerless, unable to move even the most sensitive heart to faith in Christ. Therefore we will pray regularly for the Spirit to work in and through us and our art.
- We will strive to walk in the Spirit. To this end we will create our art in accordance with the APTAT model set forth by Pastor John Piper.[1]
- We will seek to faithfully glorify Jesus Christ and to present His gospel as it is set forth in scripture, since it is the proclamation of the biblical Christ and the biblical gospel that the Spirit rejoices to empower (John 16:14, Acts 4:29-31,10:34-44).
