Does Gospel-Centeredness Neglect The Spirit?

From http://dogmadoxa.blogspot.com/2011/02/does-gospel-centeredness-neglect-spirit.html

by Dane Ortlund

That's a criticism I hear from time to time. (By 'gospel-centered' I have in mind an approach to the Christian life that views the gospel of grace--perhaps crystallized best in 1 Cor 15:3-5--as not only the gateway into the Christian life but also the pathway of the Christian life.)

Isn't this whole way of thinking, the objection goes, focusing on the second Person of the Trinity to the neglect of the third? The objective to the neglect of the subjective? While taking nothing away from the gospel--what magnificent grace it is!--shouldn't we describe the 'center' of Christian growth, progressive sanctification, as the Holy Spirit?

Good questions!

Three responses--a tiny one, a small one, and a big one.

1. Tiny response

Yes, it is possible to neglect the Spirit.

2. Small Response

There is an appropriate multiperspectivalism to contemplating the 'center' of growth in godliness.

From one perspective the Spirit is indeed the center. From another perspective the gospel is the center. To use categories from historical theology, the Spirit is the center effectually. Yet the gospel is the center instrumentally.

To those who snort in response to such flabby/everybody-wins/postmodern 'multiperspectivalism,' may I ask a question--what is the center of the human body?

Answer: it depends on the perspective. From the perspective of geometry, somewhere around the belly button. From the perspective of neuroscience, the brain. From the perspective of biblical psychology, the heart. All are right. Complex realities such as the human body--or spiritual growth--will be greatly impoverished if only one 'center' is allowed, from only one perspective (along these lines see Vern Poythress' Symphonic Theology or John Frame's Doctrine of the Knowledge of God). This is not only a defense that gospel-centeredness is compatible with Spirit-sensitivity, but also a rebuke to some of us who have ourselves viewed growth monoperspectivally—only from the perspective of gospel instrumentality. I think I have fallen into this in the past.

In brief: the answer to the objection, 'The Spirit, not the gospel, is the center of sanctification!' is: 'Yes--if we're talking about effectual empowering.'

2. Big response

The main way I would respond to someone who thinks that self-consciously centering on the gospel in sanctification neglects the Spirit is to ask: What does the Spirit do?

'Well,' you say, 'the Spirit animates us, impels us, transforms us.'

Yes and amen. And how does the Spirit do that?

The New Testament's answer is: By giving us eyes to see the beauty of Christ. By opening our eyes to the wonder of the gospel. The work of the third Person is to rivet our eyes, in increasingly joyful astonishment, on the second Person.

Several passages teach this. I'll briefly cite three and reference a few more.

1. Throughout John 14-16, Jesus comforts the disciples by teaching them, among other things, that it is good for them that he go away, so that the Spirit can come. And how does Jesus describe the work of the Spirit? The Spirit 'will bear witness about' Jesus (John 15:26). The Spirit 'will glorify' Jesus (16:13-14). The third Person spotlights the Second Person. The Spirit’s animating impulse is not a raw, faceless power. The subjective work of the Spirit works in tandem with the objective work of Christ.

2. The most startling passage to me is 1 Cor 2:12. 'We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.' Why do we receive the Spirit? In order that (hina) we might grasp what we have freely received--the phrase 'freely given' is one Greek word, the verb form of the noun 'grace.' The Spirit opens our eyes to see what we have been ‘graced’ with. And note further the strongly Christocentric context of 1 Cor 2, both before and after v. 12--the Spirit opens our eyes to see what we have been graced with in Christ.

3. The seeing-metaphor I'm using in this post is explicitly used by Paul in 2 Cor 3, where he speaks of 'beholding the glory of the Lord' (Lord = the exalted Lord Jesus--note also 4:3-6) as what transforms believers. And all this 'comes from the Lord who is the Spirit' (not a conflation of Christ and the Spirit, but simply a most intimate association--cf. Rom 8:9-11). In brief: the Spirit effectually causes us to behold Christ in such a way that transforms us.

I'll leave the textual evidence at that, though there are other texts that reinforce the notion that one major role of the Spirit is to rivet our eyes on the gospel of what Christ has done in our place. Note, for example, Gal 5:4-5; Eph 5:18-20; Phil 3:3; 1 John 4:2-3; 1 John 5:6; maybe also Rom 8:2-4.

It would be horrid to reduce the total work of the Spirit solely to opening our eyes more and more to the gospel. Even within the specific realm of sanctification, another major strand of NT teaching is the new impulses toward godliness that the indwelling Spirit gives believers. But as the Spirit relates to the role of the gospel in progressive sanctification, I believe the criticism that gospel-centeredness neglects the Spirit is wrongheaded and unbiblical.