A Look at Peace and Pentecost
By R. Samuel Culvern
Sam is an emergency room physician at a hospital in metro Atlanta, Georgia. He and his wife Pam live in Madison, Ga.

When one reads Galatians 5:22 and 23, the fruit of the Spirit is named not as nine separate fruits, but rather, one fruit. Peace is a part of the fruit named and it is a gift, not an observance or an act. Only the Spirit bears fruit, never the flesh, or the desires of the flesh. The desire of the flesh is to be made just in God’s sight by our own works and deeds; something that I am sure will never happen my friend. If we do this or that, we think, then God will respond to our acts. Peace comes to us through the obedience of one man, the last Adam, who is Christ. John 20:21,22 is the time immediately following Christ’s resurrection. He appeared to the disciples in a closed room when the doors were locked, and said to them, “Peace be unto you; as My Father hath sent Me even so send I you.” Jesus goes on to say to them “Receive you the Holy Ghost (Spirit). Going forward to Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, and remembering that Pentecost is one of the Hebrew feast days; such a feast day 50 days after the Passover would have been appropriate to receive the Spirit. The disciples already had received the Spirit for cleansing as described in John 20, and now it is for “power’. And ‘power of the Spirit’ is what the first part of Acts is all about.

Pentecost is a type and shadow of the salvation of the ‘first fruits’ of Israel. In this we are reminded of the fruit of the Spirit, remembering that the Spirit is not separate from the Christ. It is not until after Pentecost that Paul is commissioned by the Glorified Christ to take the Gospel to the Gentile nations and it is Paul in Galatians who describes the ‘fruit’ (singular) of the Spirit. God in the Old Testament is quoted as frequently telling the Hebrews to “Remember”. We are called on to remember through Passover, Pentecost, and other Old Testament ceremonies that although once we were in bondage to sin and death, now we are free at last.

The nation of Israel was delivered from bondage (Egypt), but not believing God would deliver them into Canaan did not receive freedom. That generation chose to remain in bondage rather than to trust God and enjoy His ‘fruit’. Israel was free and God showed them how to move into freedom. Yet remaining in bondage can be such an easy choice that we refuse to accept the report of Joshua and Caleb that the land ‘certainly does flow with milk and honey and this is it’s fruit.’ (Numbers 13:27) This description is a shadow of what Paul says in Romans 8 that the disposition of the flesh is death (remember the flesh wants to please God in it’s own way), yet the disposition of the Spirit is life and peace.

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