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"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." Romans 15:13 The God of hope is supposed to fill the believer with every variety of joy and peace in the process of believing. The word for fill is plarao, the same word as used in Ephesians 5:18, where the believer is to be filled with the Spirit: "Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit." Ephesians 5:18 All of this is to be done by the inherent power (dunamis) of the Holy Spirit. The process of generating these emotions is completely dependent upon the Holy Spirit’s work. A longer section of Scripture emphasizing that the Holy Spirit is involved in a ministry to our emotional life. In Galatians 5, Paul has contrasted the dispensation of the Spirit from the corrupted version of the law embraced by the Judaizers ( Paul’s opponents in that church). In developing how the believer is to participate in the life of the Spirit, he stated Christians must walk by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16). “Walking” means to organize our existence around the qualities from the Spirit. This is opposed to making the flesh one’s life principle. Walking is a most general term for the principles that should hold sway over our lives. Scripture teaches that the believer should: Order the affairs of his
or her life around love (Ephesians 5:2); What this means is that when this verb is used, it means that the entirety of ones life should be dominated by the characteristic cited. This is equivalent to the Hebrew term halak. As the life is organized around the Spirit, one will also be positively prompted by these qualities (Galatians 5:18). These promptings should be followed. As they are followed, they will produce wonderfully positive emotions and inner abilities in life. As indicated by the accompanying vocabulary, these positive emotions are connected with the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control . . .” Galatians 5:22 Spirituality is a life normally dominated by primary emotions or essential spiritual emotions. Primary is used in the sense that these are what the Christian life is to exist within. Note how each term of the fruit of the Spirit also carries an emotional connotation. The work of the Spirit of God in the fruit that He produces is in stark contrast to the works of the flesh: “ . . . enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying . . . and things like these.” Galatians 5:19-21 These contrasts to the fruit of the Spirit may be negative and sinful but it is also deeply emotional. The result is that the fruit of the Spirit replaces an emotionally powerful set of opposites. This work of the Spirit is obviously in the arena of the emotions. This evidence of the emotional impact of the Spirit of God is also found in Ephesians 5:18, where Paul tells the believers in Ephesus to stop getting drunk with wine, resulting in dissipation, and instead allow the deficits to be filled up by spiritual qualities. These qualities are described as singing and gratitude. Both of those qualities are profoundly emotional. Filling emphasizes applying the resources of the Spirit of God to our individual weakness. In Ephesians 5:18, the condition of drunkenness has to be changed to joy and a disciplined life through the filling of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is in the midst of our personal lives, and He is interested in changing how we feel. That means that our emotions are as much of a spiritual issue as any other part of our life.
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ince the work of the Spirit is internal, the work of
the Spirit of God is emotional. One example will illustrate
the point. As the believer is involved in the exercise of
faith, the Spirit of God will supply joy and peace. In the
details of the particular text, Romans
15:13, the Spirit is not the only member of the Trinity
relating to the Christian, but He relates the believer’s emotional
life to the two other members of the Trinity, the Father and the
Son:
