When the early Christians speak of the Spirit’s work they anchor this in the scriptural narrative of creation and temple. The original creation is the heaven-plus-earth ‘temple’ where God desires to make his home, with humans as his ‘image’ within this ‘temple’, animated by his ‘breath’. A er the Fall, the promise of renewed creation through Abraham’s family eventually focuses on the wilderness tabernacle where the powerful living presence of God comes to dwell in the midst of his people. The early Christians look back to this story to understand what had happened in Jesus himself, and then to understand the ongoing work of the indwelling and animating Spirit leading God’s people towards the ultimate ‘inheritance’ of new creation itself. The Spirit therefore energizes God’s people to be agents of new creation in the present, as signposts to the promised future.
