Grace and Law, What's the Difference?

The beginning of the church-age can be understood in conjunction with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. Jesus had promised that the Helper would come after his departure (John 16:7), and He came on the day of Pentecost. This indwelling is described in Acts 2:1–4 which says:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they (the apostles and hundred and twenty from Acts 1:15) were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance. (NASB)

After this encounter, those who received the Spirit were speaking to Jews who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the festival of Pentecost. It was during this celebration of God’s provision that God would begin to bring salvation worldwide.

This is the gift that was made available through Jesus’s death and resurrection. God now gives the Holy Spirit to all who ask. Luke 11:13 says, “[i]f you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?’” As a good father knows to give good gifts to his children, “[i]ndeed, [YHWH] will give them, most especially the gift of the Holy Spirit, to those who keep asking [H]im” (Gundry 280). Wicked (sinful) fathers know they are responsible to give good gifts to their children. “Because God the Father is good rather than evil, [H]e’s more likely than human fathers to give good gifts” (Gundry 280).

It is the good gift of salvation that is lived out in the book of Acts. Because of Luke’s authorship of both Luke and Acts, readers can observe how the sending of the Holy Spirit has come about and how it is to be lived out by believers today. Luke and Acts give the needed context for believers to know how the church is to function in response to the work of the Spirit.

Works Cited

Gundry, Robert H. Commentary on the New Testament: Verse-by-Verse Explanations with a Literal Translation. Hendrickson Publishers, 2010.

NASB. New American Standard Version. The Holy Bible. Lockman, 2013.

This article was originally written for Assignment 7-2 of The New Testament and Theology taught by Professor Joel Jupp (Moody Distance Learning)