An Emotion
Contemporary Christian worship music is typically light on theological doctrine. Rather than focusing on instructing the congregation in theological truth and reinforcing that knowledge, it tends to focus on producing a certain emotional state in the congregation. Music is one of the most powerful influencers of human emotion, and Christian music composers know how to craft songs that will elicit feelings of excitement, awe, and joy in those singing it.
There is certainly nothing wrong with being influenced by beautiful worship music to experience a certain emotional state. The problem comes when many Christians identify these feelings and emotions as being the Holy Spirit inside them, when, in fact, they are just human emotions. This can lead people to the false conclusion that just because they have an emotional “worship experience” when they come to church on Sundays, the Holy Spirit is at work in them.
According to the apostle Paul, the evidence that the Holy Spirit is at work in someone is not found in emotionalism on Sunday morning, but in how they live their daily lives. Are you loving, peaceful, patient, kind, gentle, and self-controlled (Gal 5:22-23)? This is what shows that the Holy Spirit is at work in you. It is easy to use music to engineer an emotionally impactful “worship experience” for a congregation. But this does not show that the Holy Spirit is actually at work in that congregation.
The Old Testament prophets warned the Israelites that just because they worshiped God at His temple did not mean that they were secure in their covenant relationship with Him; what really mattered was obedience and righteousness (Isa 1:11-17; Jer 7:1-29). A similar warning applies to God’s people today. Just because we worship God at church and experience intense emotions while doing so does not mean that we are living in a genuine relationship with God through the Holy Spirit; what really matters is showing evidence of the fruit of the Spirit in our daily lives.
An Intuition
So, how do we know we are living by the leading of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives? Many Christians rely on how they feel that God is leading them. If a decision is difficult or unclear, they may pray about, and then act according to how they feel God is leading them.
There may be times when the Holy Spirit internally nudges Christians in this way. However, we must be very careful in assuming that our internal intuitions about what we should do are the Holy Spirit speaking to us. The human capacity for self-deception is, even for Christians, very deep. Even if we sincerely feel that the Holy Spirit is telling us to do something, it may in fact be just ourselves doing the telling.
Our intuitions about what we should do arise out of a complex network of beliefs and values embedded in our minds. When we become Christians, our network of beliefs and values does not instantly get replaced by a set of Christian beliefs and values directly planted by the Holy Spirit. Rather, it is by studying and learning God’s word that our beliefs and values shift and become more and more conformed to God’s truth. As this happens, we achieve a better understanding of how God wants us to live. The Holy Spirit then empowers us to choose to live in accordance with this understanding. The only way to be sure that we are living by the leading of the Holy Spirit is by conforming our conduct to the objective standard of the teachings of God’s word. The Holy Spirit and God’s word work in tandem to transform us into more faithful followers of Jesus Christ.
A Majority Vote
The fact that Christians often disagree with each other about many things shows that an individual Christian’s intuitions about what the Holy Spirit is telling them cannot always be correct. But, some Christians argue, we can be confident that the Holy Spirit is at work in the church community. So, if the church community as a whole feels the Holy Spirit is leading it to do something, we can be confident that the community has discerned the leading of the Spirit, even if individual Christians disagree.
While this approach to identifying the activity of the Spirit might seem superior to relying on individual intuition, it is just as problematic. For, if individual Christians can be wrong in their beliefs about what the Holy Spirit is leading them to do, then so can groups of Christians. In addition, the visible church is not entirely composed of genuine Christians; there are false Christians who are outwardly part of the church, but, spiritually speaking, have no relationship with God (Gal 2:4). If false Christians make up a large portion of a visible church community, then a majority vote of that community may tell us nothing at all about the activity of the Spirit, since many members of that community do not have the Spirit in them at all.
Christians today may look back at the decisions of certain church councils in the past, such as the early Ecumenical Councils, to guide them in their theological beliefs. But the fact is, there have been many church councils in the past which made false, heretical, blasphemous decisions, decisions which directly contradicted the decisions of other councils which we look back to for guidance today. There is no doubt that the bishops and other church leaders who met at these heretical councils were sincere in their beliefs. They, just like every church council in history, claimed that the Holy Spirit was leading them. Yet, they were wrong.
Just because a Christian congregation or denomination makes a decision and sincerely believes that the Holy Spirit is guiding it in that decision, this does not mean that it is actually being led by the Holy Spirit. Majority votes of congregations and denominations can be wrong. The only way to know if the teachings and actions of a congregation or denomination are truly Spirit-led is to measure their teachings and actions by the standard of God’s word.
Under Our Control
The Holy Spirit cannot be identified with anything human: emotions, intuitions, majority votes, institutions, church leaders, or church councils. The Holy Spirit is God Himself. He blows wherever He pleases, and cannot be contained or controlled by us.
Christians should be extremely cautious about making claims about what the Holy Spirit is doing or saying. According to the apostles, the Holy Spirit’s work is manifested in miraculous spiritual gifts, and in the righteous living of Christians. Beyond that, we cannot say. We should have an epistemic humility about making claims about what is the Holy Spirit’s work rather than merely being our own, faulty human work. Otherwise, we risk committing blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.