Jamin Bradley

I opened up my socials for questions on the Holy Spirit in honor of Pentecost this weekend. Here’s the Q&A.

Why do you think so many churches do not celebrate Pentecost with the same excitement/reverence as Christmas and Easter?

The Holy Spirit is easily the most overlooked person of the Trinity. Many Christians have been taught that the Spirit does little to nothing at all in their lives, nor have they been trained to hear or experience the Spirit’s work. It is hard to get amped up for a person you do not know and a theology you have not awoken to.

What do you believe is the significance of the Holy Spirit coming on Pentecost, as in, why that particular feast day?

I often think of Paul’s comments on resurrection in Romans 8, where he calls the Holy Spirit the “firstfruits of the Spirit” in verse 23. If Pentecost in the Old Testament was about bringing the firstfruits of the season to God, then Pentecost in the New Testament may be about God giving us a taste of the firstfruits of the world that is to come as the Spirit begins to create again. It starts with the people in the upper room being made new as the same Spirit that blew over the face of the waters to hatch creation blows like a mighty rushing wind on them at Pentecost, infusing them with the Spirit in a way that foreshadows what the whole world will experience under the Spirit’s creative power in due time.

Or said in one sentence: The Holy Spirit turning Christians into a new kind of human at Pentecost is the firstfruits of this new season that leads to the resurrection where the Holy Spirit has made all things new.

When did the Holy Spirit first immigrate into your heart?

In Scripture there are two baptisms. One by water for repentance, put in place by John, and one by Spirit, put in place by Jesus. In the time of Acts, the apostles bumped into people who had only undergone John’s baptism, but not Jesus’s. They opened themselves up to Jesus and then moved forward in both.

In this day and age of the church, we aim to do both baptisms at once, because we are aware of both. But even then, the Holy Spirit can baptize people before they’ve been in water baptism, as evidenced with Cornelius’s family in Acts.

Needless to say, some have a moment that can pinpoint as the moment they received the Holy Spirit and some don’t. My story is one of getting saved and getting baptized in elementary school. I assume the Holy Spirit has been with me since a young age, but it wasn’t until college that someone taught me how to hear, sense and discern him. Over the next 17 years I learned how to walk in step with the Spirit and as I tried to be faithful with little, he gave a bit more and more.

So when did it happen to me? Couldn’t pinpoint the moment. Though I could pinpoint some of the moments where he did deeper works.

How would you define Blaspheming the Spirit?

In the Old Testament there were many laws that were unforgivable. Those were the laws that required death. I think their general assumption was that if you broke those laws, it was generally expected that you didn’t want anything to do with the God that is Yahweh.

Jesus, on the other hand, requires no death for any laws, but actually protects people from the death laws.

So when Jesus says that the only sin that won’t be forgiven is the blasphemy of the Spirit, I think he’s essentially saying, “If you can’t tell the difference between the Holy Spirit and a demon, then your discernment of who God is is so bad that you’ve basically put yourself on the wrong side of judgment on the Day of the Lord.”

Now Jesus often embellishes in his teaching. I think this is one of those spaces. Some of the Pharisees were the ones he accused of this blasphemy, and some Pharisees got saved in Acts. Of course, it may not be the same Pharisees. But I would assume anyone who repents of this sin and renews their mind to truth, would no longer be in the same side of judgment.

Why do some traditions prefer “Holy Ghost” to “Holy Spirit”?

I’m not really sure where that one developed from. Probably just trying to find another word to capture an invisible force, but maybe make it feel more like a person than a thing?