Tuesday, June 2, 2020

A Seal and Guarantee

“In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” – Ephesians 1:13-14

The Holy Spirit is a seal and a guarantee. In classical times, a seal had four functions. It provided security: a sealed letter meant it had not been tampered with. It provided authentication: a seal was like a signature, carrying the full authority of its owner. It certified genuineness: it meant a document was the real thing, not a duplicate. It served as identification: the design of a seal was unique to its owner. The Holy Spirit signifies that we belong to God and are under his authority. He reassures us of our identity and of the genuine reality of our spiritual state. He both teaches us these truths, and displays them to others.

The Holy Spirit is also a guarantee. This word was a Semitic loan word that indicated a down payment that would be forfeited if the purchase was not completed or service not rendered. I think about how it feels to put down a nonrefundable deposit: that’s when I really know whether I want something or not, isn’t it? God has put the Holy Spirit like a nonrefundable deposit into us, a first installment and a sure promise of the inheritance to come. The word for “guarantee” in modern Greek also means “engagement ring”: something beautiful and of high value which proclaims one’s love and future intentions towards someone. 

The down-payment is not the purchase; the diamond is not the marriage. They foreshadow an experience that will be much greater in scope. The Holy Spirit works in us, and in the church as a body, the way God will one day work in the new heavens and earth: to secure it for his own, to stamp it with his authority, to bring about true eternal reality, to identify it in every way with his own radiant glory. The Holy Spirit, writes N. T. Wright, comes and takes “residence in the actual physicality of Christian believers as the advance statement of God saying, ‘I am doing this now because one day that’s what I am going to do to the world. This is how it is going to work.’”

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