“God’s purpose was that we Jews who were the first to trust in Christ would bring praise and glory to God. And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.”
In some Christian circles, the Holy Spirit is a touchy subject. There is a lot of uncertainty about how he works today versus how he worked in the early church. Regardless of your theology, it is unarguable that the Holy Spirit marks us as belonging to God. The Jewish people previously had a symbol of circumcision that marked them as God’s chosen ones, but the Holy Spirit is given to both Jews and Gentiles when we believe in Jesus.
What does it mean that the Holy Spirit is God’s guarantee of our inheritance? It means that we fundamentally change when we receive the forgiveness that Jesus offers us and invite him to lead our lives. The Holy Spirit is the first way that God responds to that prayer — we open our hearts and the Holy Spirit moves right in. He is our direct line to God, causing us to praise and glorify him.
Here’s your freedom for today: the Holy Spirit sets you free. You have probably figured out by now that “freedom” is kind of my thing. I want to experience emotional and spiritual freedom throughout my life and keep growing in deeper ways. I want to help other people experience freedom too. The Holy Spirit makes freedom possible in an entirely supernatural way. There is nothing quite like a relationship like that. Once the Holy Spirit moves in, you are eternally untouchable. Satan can mess with your earthly life, but he can’t rob your eternal inheritance. That reality is what true freedom is all about.