One looks in vain for the promise of the Spirit in the great promises of the Old Testament. The promises given to Abraham, Aaron, and David make no mention of the Spirit. For example, in Genesis 12:3l, God promises Abraham posterity (a nation), a great name, and blessing, but he does not promise the Spirit. Not even many messianic prophecies (like Isa. 53) mention the Spirit.

The promise of the Spirit first appears in connection with end-time prophecies in Joel and Ezekiel.1 The two prophets present two complementary but different concepts of the Spirit: miraculous and moral.

Joel highlights the miraculous aspect of the Spirit’s work. Joel 2:28 prophesies: "And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions."2

These types of supernatural occurrences of the Spirit have strong antecedents in the experiences of Israel’s charismatic leaders, such as the judges, Saul, and the prophets. Joel’s point is that in the end time ordinary people, indeed even slaves, will be able to experience the supernatural power of the Spirit. What Acts 2:17–22 spotlights is precisely this miraculous and democratic nature of the outpouring of the Spirit.

In something of a contrast, Ezekiel’s prophecy represents the moral aspect of the work of the Spirit.3 Without excluding the supernatural, Ezekiel sees the transformation of the heart as the primary work of the Spirit. This is evident from the way the prophecy in 36:25–27 has been structured. Verse 25 promises cleansing from idolatry. Verse 26 promises a transformation the people’s hearts through the Spirit. Verse 27 promises resultant obedience. Then, in verse 28, promises concerning restoration of the land begin.

Ezekiel’s intent is clear. The restoration of the land will come only after the Spirit has transformed the hearts of the people. Ezekiel prophesies: "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.…And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses; and I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you."4

A careful reading of Ezekiel 36 reveals that it contains numerous allusions to the Levitical system of purification. For example, the mention of "uncleanesses" in the passage just cited (v. 29) is one such allusion. A key function of the sanctuary and its rites was purification of the land, which was susceptible to defilement through human subjects who came in contact with various sources of impurity that included bodily secretions, like menstruation.

Leviticus generally does not attach moral significance to these impurities. What Ezekiel is trying to do in chapter 36 is to recast the language of the purity laws in moral terms. For example, Ezekiel uses the metaphor of menstrual impurity to describe the defiling effect of Israel’s sinful conduct upon the land. "Son of man, when the house of Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their doings; their conduct before me was like the uncleanness of a woman in her impurity" (36:17).

The corpse was considered the most defiling of all impurities. Accordingly, it is possible to take the allusion to hardness in connection with the heart in Ezekiel 36:26 as a reference to a corpse. The flesh of a corpse is hard and unresponsive. In stark contrast, the flesh of a living person is supple and soft. The vision of the resurrection of the dry bones in the next chapter (chap. 37) is further evidence that corpse impurity is not far from Ezekiel’s mind.

The metaphor of a stony heart and a fleshly heart in 36:26 points to the need for eliminating the most threatening source of impurity from our existence—death in the human heart. The callous unresponsiveness of the selfish heart is the most hidden, yet most immediate cause of human moral impurity. Therefore, for Ezekiel, the essence of Israel’s worship is the purification and the softening of the heart through the Spirit. Like the priestly rites of purity, the Spirit of God sanctifies us through removal, as it were, of corpse impurity from our hearts.

New Testament writers took the early church’s experience of transformation through the Spirit as the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s and Jeremiah’s prophecies of the New Covenant. Acts describes the Pentecost experience not only as a miraculous event, but also as a life-changing one. It changed Jesus’ cowardly, bickering disciples into a people united in love and gladly sharing their possessions with one another. Acts is depicting this sudden change as the fulfillment of the new covenant promise. Paul also writes: "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law" (Gal. 5:22–23).

The Bible opens with a scene of the Spirit hovering over the primeval waters to imbue life to the lifeless earth (Gen .1:2). The Bible closes with a scene of the Spirit inviting the thirsty to come and drink the water of life (Rev. 22:17). The Spirit is the divine Agent who imparts life to the dead, animates the inanimate, and brings order to the inchoate. New Testament writers understood the Spirit as the sign of the new age, which was to be marked by the resurrection of the righteous dead. In other words, the early Christian community understood and articulated its experience of the Spirit as an experience of the resurrection.

Yet New Testament writers were no wild-eyed enthusiasts. They quickly discovered that the experience of the Spirit did not always bring order to the community or reform the reprobate. Human interventions in the form of letters, administrative decisions, envoys, and summaries of beliefs were needed in order to stabilize and give direction to the nascent church.

How to negotiate the tension between the need for control and correction, on the one hand, and the need for the freedom and motivation of the Spirit, on the other, is a question that has perplexed everyone whose community began on a charismatic note.

Notes and References

1. Most commentators today believe that Joel was a post-exilic prophet.
2. Emphasis supplied; all Bible quotations are from the Revised Standard Version.
3. Inasmuch as everything the Spirit does is spiritual, this essay has avoided use of the term spiritual to minimize confusion.
4. Ezekiel 36:26, 29; emphasis supplied. Yet this is where many Jewish-Christians of the early church went astray. They mistakenly took the Pentecost experience to be the beginning of the restoration of the land promised by Ezekiel. It was Paul, among others, who brought out the universal implication of the church’s experience of the Spirit.

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