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The Third Article The second article speaks of what Jesus Christ has done for us--how He has won salvation for all people. However, Christ’s work does not benefit us if we do not receive it in faith. The sad truth is that we ignore and discard Christ’s gifts. We do not turn to our Savior and trust Him to give us His blessings on our own. It is only because Christ sends His Spirit to us that we recognize the great value of His gifts and hold onto them. The third article is, therefore, vital. In the Large Catechism, Luther wrote “Neither you nor I could ever know anything about Christ or believe in Him and receive Him as our Lord if it were not first offered to us and laid on our hearts by the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Gospel. The redemptive work has taken place and is finished, for Christ has purchased and won the treasure for us through His suffering, death, resurrection, etc. But if that saving action stays hidden and no one knows about it, then it would all be for nothing, wasted. In order that this treasure might not remain buried but be taken up and enjoyed, God has let the Word go forth and be proclaimed. In the Word He has given us His Holy Spirit to lay the treasure of redemption on our hearts and make it our very own.” The Holy Spirit is fully God just as God the Father and the Son are fully God. Some people think of the Spirit as an impersonal force (similar to gravity or magnetism). This is not how the Bible pictures the Spirit. The Spirit is described by using personal terms. For example, you can lie to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:3) and you can make the Spirit sad (Ephesians 4:30). The Spirit understands the “deep thoughts” of God (1 Corinthians 2:9-11). This means that unlike gravity the Spirit can think and act to carry out His plans. This is vital for if we are to come to faith and remain in it, the Spirit must understand the schemes of Christ’s enemies and know how to defeat them. And He must be able to enlighten us and make us spiritually alive so that we see what Christ has done and have the strength to cling to Christ’s promises. Just as we cannot disconnect who Christ is from what He does, we cannot disconnect who the Spirit is from what He does. It is only because the Spirit is God that He is able to accomplish what Christ sends Him to do. The Spirit of God is Christ’s Agent; that is, the Spirit acts on Christ’s behalf. Christ sends the Spirit to deliver to us the forgiveness of sins that He has won for us during His earthly ministry and to bring us to faith so that we would hold on to this gift. The work of the Spirit is not to give us something other than the gifts Christ won on the cross. Instead the Spirit brings us forgiveness, life and salvation. He brings us Christ and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:1-5, 12-13). The Spirit does not call attention to Himself, but points us to Christ (John 14:26, 15:26, 16:13-15). You might say the Spirit works behind the scenes, but we should not think that He works in our lives in a secret unknown way. He comes in a visible and public way, through the preached Gospel and the two Sacraments. These are the instruments that Christ has established and has chosen to use to build and maintain His Church. We can be sure that the Spirit is present wherever the Gospel is proclaimed and the Sacraments are administered. And we can be sure that He will use them as tools or instruments to bring people to faith and strengthen them in faith (John 20:21-23, Acts 2:38). Where are these instruments to be found? In the Church. Luther even calls the holy Christian Church “the mother that brings forth and bears every Christian through the Word of God.” Luther speaks this way because he is confident that the Spirit of God is at work through the Word that is proclaimed among Christ’s people. The Spirit “uses it to shed His light into human hearts and set them aglow; He empowers them to grasp the Word, accept it, cling to it, and faithfully stay with it.” It is the word of forgiveness, that makes saints of us all. Without this word we are not holy in God’s sight and cannot be counted as His children. If this word is lost, then there is no Church; there is no community of saints. Sadly, in many congregations, people are taught to look at themselves and their works, rather than at Christ’s works. They are taught to look at God’s rules for right living, rather than at God’s promise of forgiveness and salvation in Christ. Where this takes place and “Christ is not preached, there is no Holy Spirit, creating, calling, and gathering the Christian church, outside of which no one can come to the Lord Christ.”