With certainty we know that the Christ who shed His blood for the remission of our sins, now sits enthroned above the circle of the earth; thrones, angels and powers all made subject unto His majesty. He must reign until all enemies are subdued, then He shall come to judge the living & the dead, and offer up the Kingdom to His Father, that Christ may be all in all. While the timing is uncertain, we rest assured that this is how it will all play out. 

Imagine the disciples at the Last Supper. All their lives, as good sons of Abraham, they’d heard the prophecies, partaken of the feasts, prayed the Psalms, and hoped for the Messiah to come. Here He was, at last. He’d come. He sat in their midst, telling them that His body would be broken like the bread He passed to them, His blood would be poured out like the wine in the cup.
God’s people had cried for deliverance. Deliverance from the wicked sons of Cain. Deliverance from Pharaohs, giant, Canaanite Kings, Philistine champions, demon-gods, Assyrian, Babylonian, Grecian, and Roman empires. “Avenge us, oh Lord,” they had prayed. And God had done so. Repeatedly.
But now, in the carpenter from Nazareth, this Deliverance had a face.
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God the Father has an eternal plan, God the Son accomplished the means for that plan to be fulfilled, and God the Spirit completes and perfects that plan directly in the world. Bringing harmony to creation, revealing God’s plan to his people, and special empowerment of unique leaders of God’s people at significant points in the outworking of that plan all involve how the Holy Spirit brings the plan of God into order.

One of the Holy Spirit’s primary works has been to give revelation to key leaders of God’s people in the progress of God’s redemptive history, culminating in Holy Scripture, which was written by men who were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
But the Holy Spirit also gave some of these same leaders special empowerment in addition to direct revelation. For example, the Old Testament describes the Holy Spirit being “upon” Moses and the elders of Israel, Joshua, judges such as Gideon and Samson, and prophets such as Elijah and Micah. He also uniquely came upon Israel’s kings, Saul and David.
Theocratic Anointing
This Spirit empowerment gave individuals a variety of special abilities primarily so that they could lead God’s people. This is why such special empowerment is sometimes called “theocratic anointing.” In fact, often the prophecy itself was given as a sign that these individuals were chosen and empowered by the Spirit for such leadership.
For example, as ruler of Israel (Acts 7:35), Moses had a special anointing of the Spirit (Nm 11:17). God confirmed that anointing in the sigh of the people through the miracle of changing Moses’s staff into a snake (Ex 40:30–31). Later, Moses “took some of the Spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders. And as soon as the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied. But they did not continue doing it” (Nm 11:25). The special empowerment by the Spirit was so that the elders could “bear some of the burden of the people” as rulers alongside Moses, and they prophesied as confirmation that they were to share the burden of leadership.
That leadership passed on to Joshua as Moses’s successor, who then is described as “full of the Spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him” (Dt 34:9). God specifically told Joshua, “Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you” (Jo 1:56). And God confirmed Joshua’s leadership of the people with the crossing of the Jordan river on dry ground (Jo 4), a supernatural miracle that would have immediately brought to mind Moses’s miracle of crossing the Red Sea (Ex 14:31). The result was that Joshua was confirmed as ruler of the people: “On that day the Lord exalted Joshua in the sight of all Israel, and they stood in awe of him just as they had stood in awe of Moses, all the days of his life” (Jo 4:14).
Four judges of Israel, are described as having this special Spirit anointing: Othniel (Jgs 3:10), Gideon (Jgs 6:34), Jepthah (Jgs 11:29), and Samson (Jgs 15:14). It is not a stretch to assume that this theocratic anointing came upon all of the judges whom God appointed as leaders of his people.
When leadership of Israel moved to a monarchy, so did the theocratic anointing of the Spirit. After Samuel anointed Saul as king of Israel (1 Sm 10:1), “the Spirit of God rushed upon him, and he prophesied among them” (1 Sm 10:10). The same happened later to David: “Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward” (1 Sm 16:13). Likewise, Solomon’s prayer for wisdom was, in effect, a request for the same special empowerment from the Spirit (1 Kgs 3:9). The first result of the empowerment given to him by the Spirit was his ability to wisely judge the case of the two women fighting over the death of one of their babies. This exercise of divine empowerment confirmed Solomon as leader of God’s people: “And all Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice” (1 Kgs 3:28).
Prophets, too, appear to have had a special empowerment from the Spirit, though perhaps this would not necessarily be called theocratic anointing since they were not rulers. Yet the purpose of such empowerment was similar: to confirm them as messengers of God. For example, the Spirit was known to carry Elijah to places unknown (1 Kgs 18:12), and Micah declared of himself, “I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might” (Mic 3:8). Indeed, as we have already noted, Spirit empowerment and direct divine revelation went hand in hand.
So this empowerment was primarily given by the Spirit to equip leaders of God’s people, often resulting in unique wisdom, physical strength, and revelation from God, to bring God’s people into order with God’s plan and purposes. And the miraculous works performed by these individuals as a result of the Sprit’s anointing were for the purpose of confirming them as rulers and messengers of God in the sight of the people.
This act of the Holy Spirit was never permanent. The Spirit left Samson after Delilah cut his hair, for example, causing him to lose his special strength (Jgs 16:20). The most notable illustration of this is when “the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul” after his sin (1 Sm 16:14). Just prior to that, Samuel had anointed David as the new king of Israel, “and the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward” (1 Sm 16:13). This also explains why David prayed that God would not take his Holy Spirit from him after his sin with Bathsheba (Ps 51:11). David wasn’t afraid that he would lose the indwelling presence of God’s Spirit that brings salvation—once we are saved, we never lose the Spirit in that sense (Eph 1:13–14). Rather, what David feared was that the Spirit would remove his special anointing empowerment given to him as king of Israel.
This special Spirit empowerment was even applied to non-believers on occasion. King Saul is, of course, an example of this. Though God anointed him as king of Israel and gifted him with special empowerment from the Spirit, his actions revealed that he was not a true follower of Yahweh. Likewise “the Spirit of God came upon” Balaam and caused him to bless Israel, though Balaam’s desire was to curse Israel (Nm 24:2).
What is clear, then, is that this empowerment by the Spirit is not related to other works by the Spirit that are given to all believers. This empowerment is unique gifting by the Spirit to leaders of God’s people and prophets in order that he might work his plan among them.
This fact alone reveals the unique nature of Spirit empowerment—it is not intended for every believer, or even just those who are especially holy. Rather, the Spirit empowered very specific individuals who were especially chosen by God to deliver his revelation or otherwise order the people and plan of God at significant stages in redemptive history. Between those significant transitional stages, such empowerment is not ordinary or necessary.
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Written by W. Robert Godfrey |
Tuesday, August 31, 2021
Our responsibility is not to produce great success in our strength. Our responsibility is to be faithful and thereby to be instruments that God may use just as He will. Our great concern should not be our success or our will, but it should be God’s will and God’s success. And as Calvinists, our confidence will be that God will accomplish His purpose. 

The calling of Ligonier Ministries is to renew the churches through a growing knowledge of biblical Christianity, which is to say a knowledge of historic Calvinism. Ligonier is continuing the teaching ministry of R.C. Sproul, one of the best minds and one of the most balanced, faithful, and effective Reformed teachers of the last half-century. He inherited and continued a marvelous tradition: the militant stance for the fundamentals of the faith of J. Gresham Machen; the scholarship and Reformed orthodoxy of old Princeton Seminary; the evangelizing, Reformed revivalism of the First Great Awakening; the confessional and experiential Calvinism of the Westminster Confession of Faith; the teaching of John Calvin and the Reformation; and the legacy of Augustine and true catholicity. What a heritage is ours. How much we have inherited from those who have gone before. What a responsibility for us to preserve and advance what we have received.
We recognize that the great accomplishments of Christians in the past are now challenged in unique ways. After more than 1,500 years of Christianity’s providing the dominant worldview in the West, we now find ourselves living in a post-Christian world. Certainly in terms of Calvinism, our numbers, our influence, and our fervor seem much diminished. I was reminded of this in an essay by John Updike. Thinking about those beautiful Congregational churches on village greens in New England, he wrote: “Joy and aspiration have shaped these churches, but a certain melancholy may fill them. Puritanism faded into Unitarianism and thence to stoic agnosticism; these gallant old shells hold more memories than promises.”1 Has our movement come to hold more memories than promises? That is the great issue, it seems to me, before us today. My passion and my concern are that we be committed to the notion that Calvinism holds more promises than memories, as rich and glorious as those memories are.
The title of this essay, “The Whole Counsel of God,” comes from Acts 20:27, from the words of the Apostle Paul as he encouraged the Ephesian elders in their future service of the Lord. He said to them in part:
You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews; how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again. Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears. And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. (Acts 20:18–32)
Paul called on the Ephesian elders to preserve and build on the Christian truth that he had brought to them. He had given them “the whole counsel of God” and called on them to live courageously on the basis of that truth. Today we need a courageous Calvinism for the unique time in which we live. What is the character of that courageous Calvinism that we need? What is the truth of God that we must embrace, live, and teach?
Comprehensive Calvinism
The first element of courageous Calvinism that we need is a comprehensive Calvinism. You notice how Paul talked about the “whole counsel of God” (v. 27), that he did not hold back from them “anything that was profitable” (v. 20). Paul spoke very much in the spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ, who sent out His disciples in the Great Commission to go and teach “all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20). Scripture and our Calvinistic heritage are clear that we are committed to all that the Lord has revealed in His Word. We seek no shrunken religion. We seek no minimalist doctrine. We seek the fullness of what the Lord has revealed to us. We stand with Jeremiah as the Lord spoke to him: “Thus says the LORD: Stand in the court of the LORD’s house, and speak to all the cities of Judah that come to worship in the house of the LORD all the words that I command you to speak to them; do not hold back a word” (Jer. 26:2). The task that is committed to us is to speak the whole counsel of God, all that God has revealed. Ligonier exists to help Christians study that Word in its totality and grow in that Word.
Our growth is founded on and rooted in our commitment to the Word and its inerrant authority. We embrace the Word in the spirit of John Calvin, who said, “A soul, therefore when deprived of the Word of God, is given up unarmed to the devil for destruction.”2 Our conviction is that the Word must be our sword and our defense. The Word in its complete truthfulness is what we need and that to which we are committed.
Calvin, commenting on Jeremiah 42:5–6, said:
If we desire to prove our fidelity to God, the only way of acting is, to regard his Word as binding, whether it be agreeable or otherwise, and never to murmur, as the ungodly do; for when God would have a yoke laid on them, they complain that his doctrine is too hard and burdensome. Away, then, with all those things which can render God’s Word unacceptable to us, if we desire to give sure proof of our fidelity.3
We accept the Word of God in its fullness. We are committed to it, both where it is pleasing to us and where it pinches us. Because of our sins and our ignorance, we must have the Word of God to correct us. And that means that we stand committed to a full biblical theology. J. Gresham Machen expressed this forcefully, reminding us that the “Christian life is the fruit of Christian doctrine, not its root, and Christian experience must be tested by the Bible, not the Bible by Christian experience.”4 We are committed to this notion that the Word judges us; we do not judge the Word. The Word directs us; we do not direct the Word.
R.C. Sproul continued and deepened this commitment with his leadership in defending the doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible during his ministry. Inerrancy became a touchstone of true biblical fidelity, helping to reveal those who tried to use traditional terms for biblical authority and reliability but used those terms in equivocal ways.
Because of our commitment to the Word, we are committed to the notion of the importance of theology. We are committed to the idea that theology is a reflection on the Word and an effort on the part of human beings to summarize that Word. We are convinced that theology is a useful, necessary discipline for appropriating the Scriptures for us. Evelyn Waugh, the British novelist, gave one of the best definitions of theology I know after his journey to Ethiopia for the coronation of the emperor Haile Selassie. After observing the extreme mystery of the rituals of the Ethiopian Coptic Church, he rejoiced in a theology that makes clear what God’s ways are. He wrote, “I saw theology as the science of the simplification by which nebulous and elusive ideas are formalized and made intelligible and exact.”5 The “science of simplification”—how seldom theology has been seen that way, but how true that is. Theology should make clear God’s will and God’s way as He has expressed them in His Word. And we here at Ligonier are committed to the full theology of the confessions to which we have subscribed, as they summarize biblical teaching for us.
Now, some have said that stressing the importance of theology makes Christianity too intellectualized. Some fear this means that only theologians have a role in the church. Perhaps in the tradition of our Reformed churches, there has been some danger of that. But it is not inherent in our tradition. We are not saying that theology is all there is to Christianity. But we are saying that theology must shape life. There must be life, but it must be shaped and directed by the Word of God.
Indeed, our Reformed heritage says that we do have more than theology. We also have piety; we have worship; we have loving service to the Lord. All these elements of Calvinism also flow out of the teachings of Scripture. We can see that clearly, for example, in the work of the Westminster Assembly. We need to remember that the Westminster Assembly not only gave us a confession of faith as a summary of doctrine, but it also gave us catechisms to teach the faith. It gave us a directory of worship to guide our meeting with God. It gave us a form of government to help in the organization of the church. And it gave us a Psalter to voice our praise to God. As we seek a comprehensive Calvinism, we must be sure that we have not shrunk it just to theology—however full our theology might be. We must be renewed in the fullness of a Reformed life flowing out of a Reformed theology. Our lives must follow a pattern of Bible study and prayer, of Word and sacrament, of self-denial and active love, and of Sabbath and of Psalm. We have seen a great decline in Reformed piety, in Reformed life, and I would suggest that decline is tied intimately to our loss of Sabbath and of Psalm. Too many of us have lost a day of rest, worship, study, and reflection and have lost the Psalms that put steel in our souls. We need to recapture that fullness of Calvinistic experience as well as Calvinistic theology.
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