Since the missionary enterprise started receiving scientific treatment, it became clear to its investigators that the goal of Christian missions is the conversion of the heathen and the planting of the Church. The mere affirmation of this fact immediately places the Holy Spirit at the very center of mission work since the conversion of the heathen can be effected only through Him; and, likewise, the planting of the Church anywhere is always a work in which He is the main agent.

Not only the book of the Acts of the Apostles but the entire history of Christian missions since the first century A.D. must be viewed as the history of the work of the Holy Spirit of God. This glorious truth, however, should never obscure the fact that a major role is also played by the human element, chosen by God as the instrument in the saving and sustaining task of the divine Spirit. Thus, as Harold Lindsell so aptly wrote: “. . . missions and the Holy Spirit are indissolubly linked together in the eternal plan of God. Men and missions must be rightly linked to the Holy Spirit. The work of the Holy Spirit can be finished in any generation for He awaits the moment to release His power when men place themselves under His control in the message, the methods, the outworking, and the completion of the task” (An Evangelical Theology of Missions, p. 215).

The fulfillment of Christ’s promise concerning the Holy Spirit is not to be viewed as a mere compensation to the discouraged apostles in the work they were commissioned to perform without the physical presence of the risen Christ; it was not just the spiritual advantage of another Immanuel after Christ’s return to the Father. The coming of the Spirit was inseparably related to Christ‘s building of His Church. It was with that in mind that the Son of God, in the midst of performing miracles, told His disciples, “Greater works than these shall ye do.”

It is interesting to note that immediately upon the descent of the Spirit at the Day of Pentecost Jesus’ prediction came to fulfillment: the 120 believers our Lord had left at the time of His ascension increased to over 3,000 through the preaching of Peter who was filled with the Holy Spirit. In the words of Professor Hendrikus Berkhof of Leiden: “Both the church as a community of men and the mission as an activity of men are the result of the creative missionary action of the Spirit” (The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, p. 30).

Just as Isaiah 63:14 proclaims the Holy Spirit as the real Guide of Israel during its desert pilgrimage we, as the Israel of God, must also acknowledge the same Spirit as our Leader, both in our individual as well as in our corporate life as the People of God, especially in the accomplishment of Christ’s mandate for which the Holy Spirit is the sole enabler.

In spite of this awareness proclaimed by the Incarnate Word and recorded in the Inscripturated Word, the Church of Jesus Christ has been guilty of living much of its life and of performing much of its ministry without absolute dependence on the Third Person of the Trinity and all that He provides. It is a characteristic of man’s heart to stress human mechanics at the expense of divine dynamics.

Harold Lindsell correctly observes that “the failure of the Church to be conscious of its divine Holy Spirit headship has prevented the Church from realizing its fullest destiny both internally and externally.” Later on he concludes that “a Spirit-dethroned Church will never have the vision of evangelizing the world because a Spirit-dethroned Church with a missionary vision is a contradiction in terms” (An Evangelical Theology of Missions, pp. 200, 203).

As we observe that not only as individual Christians but also corporately, as Christ’s Church, we may be guilty of “quenching the Spirit” through limiting His work or operating unaware of His full provisions, we must conclude that genuine missionary advances are possible only by looking more fully into the New Testament teachings on the Holy Spirit and taking into account the broad implications of those teachings.

Such New Testament understanding entails our acknowledgement of Him as God–the One who, in applying the redemption purchased by Christ to the sinner, works repentance in him, gives him faith, and enables him to appropriate in his life the abundance of Christ’s provisions achieved through His Cross and Resurrection. In the picturesquc language of Dr. Lorenz Wunderlich, the Lord of Life “has also constructed lifelines through which He not only offers the life of the Spirit to man but actually causes man to accept this life” (The Half-Known God, p. 59). The Holy Spirit Himself is to be viewed as the great missionary in all His activities.

His work, then, is not finished once He has brought a sinner from darkness into light. He indwells that transformed sinner forever, aiding him to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ as he seeks daily to die unto sin so as, daily also, to live unto righteousness. This is precisely the picture we encounter in the New Testament where, in the Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit is active in the expansion of the Church, especially in the pagan world of that time. After that we see Him, through the epistles, as the sanctifier and sustainer of those brought to faith in Christ, throughout their earthly pilgrimage (cf. Phil. 1:6).

Part of the Holy Spirit‘s work as Sanctifier involves the bestowal of gifts to the people of God. Even though the Spirit of God Himself is a gift, there are also other gifts with which He empowers God’s children for their varied roles in the Church and in the world. Berkhof Singularizes that when he states that “the Spirit, in bestowing his gifts upon men, is from the beginning aiming at their equipment for the great work of transmission” (The Doctrine of tile Holy Spirit, p. 36).

The greatest of these gifts, insofar the mission of the Church is concerned, is the perpetual availability of the Spirit’s power for the believer. Because the Church is continuously privileged to be a recipient of the Spirit’s power, it must he added that its perpetual duty shall remain witness–bearing to the ends of the world. Considering the age in which we live and the enormity of the missionary task still in the process of being fulfilled around the globe, we may do well cautiously to heed Bishop Lesslie Newbigin‘s suggestion to the effect that in our relationship with the Third Person of the Trinity, there must be “a willingness to trust the Holy Spirit to lead us in new paths and to create new forms of fellowship for new adventures in obedience” (The Relevance of Trinitarian Doctrine for Today’s Mission, p. 62).

In so doing, or in whatever else we do, it must be remembered that the Spirit of God will never operate in contradiction to the unabridged Word of God which He Himself inspired and has preserved throughout the centuries for the redemption of lives and the edification of the Body of Christ.

Among the apostles of our Lord and among others of His servants in the great periods of missionary advances, we notice that the gift of the Spirit effected in them an “internal necessity” to proclaim the whole counsel of God. May we, like them, exclaim with conviction, “We cannot but speak,” or “Woe unto me, if I preach not the Gospel.” The eternal validity of our ministries will depend on the extent of our dependence upon the power of the Holy Spirit and our obedience to the promptings of this same Spirit as we labor until Christ comes.

After a patstorate in N.J. and another in Johannesburg, South Africa, Dr. Lyra taught for six years on the college level, one of which was in the mission field of Singapore. He is now Assistant Professor of Missions at Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Mo.