No. 30 Hello, Dr. Sanchez. The DELTO courses we�ve taken so far have been just terrific, and all of us are looking forward to your course on the Holy Spirit, especially given the interest of our Neo-Evangelical neighbors in this topic. My name is Joshua and I serve a small congregation of Lutheran people in Eastern Wyoming. This first question, however, doesn�t come from one of my members; rather it comes from me as a result of the reading I have done to prepare for Bible classes. If the Holy Spirit�s greatest work is to lead us to confess Jesus as Lord, why should we speak about the Holy Spirit at all? Why not just talk about Jesus? Is it possible to give full weight to the person and work of the Holy Spirit and still remain �Christ-centered�? >>DR. LEOPALDO SANCHEZ M.: Thank you for your question, Joshua. That's a very good one. Perhaps a way to get at that question is by using helpful distinction between proclamation and explanation. Proclamation are words from God. And explanations are words about God. So for example, if I say to someone "Your sins are forgiven," that's an example of proclamation. I am speaking first to second person. Direct address in the present tense. But if I say, "The forgiveness of sins is about this or that" and begin to explain this statement, then that's an explanation. Another way of getting at this is through an illustration that I found in a book by Gerhardt ***Ferdy, a Lutheran theologian, called "Theologies For Proclamation." He has an analogy of love. If your wife comes to you and asks the question "Do you love me?" do you say, "Yes, I love you?" If you do, that's proclamation. First to second person. Direct address. Or you could say something like "Well, what is love? Well, love is this and love is that." And I don't know that your spouse or wife might be very happy about that. So there is a distinction between proclaiming and simply explaining something. If the question is "How does one come to faith?" that is "How does one come to trust in Christ as Lord and Savior?" then that happens through the proclamation. Through the living Word of the Gospel Christ gives us his Holy Spirit who brings us to faith in him. So in that sense, the proclamation of the Gospel is something that one does in the Spirit. And that is to bring Christ to that word of the Gospel to people. Faith comes from what is heard says Paul. And what is heard comes through the word of Christ. So that's a proclamation. And the Lutheran Confessions also tells us that to obtain faith, God instituted the office of preaching, giving the Gospel and the sacraments. Through these as through means he gives the Holy Spirit who produces faith where and when he wills in those who hear the Gospel. So the main work of the Spirit -- and I think you're right about this, Joshua -- is in a sense to bring the proclaimed Christ to others. I had a gentleman who once asked me how do I explain the Holy Spirit to unbelievers, to my unbelieving friends. And I told him: You don't. You are just telling them the good news of Christ. In other words, you do the Holy Spirit to them might be a way of saying that. And that is through the proclamation of the Gospel that brings you Christ. So if the question is: How does one come through faith in Christ? That's through the proclamation of the Gospel. The Spirit breathed word of the Gospel that brings people to Jesus. But if you were to ask: How does one come to know the Christian faith? Then that's more faith as a body of doctrine. How does one come to understand who Jesus is? Jesus himself asked us: Who do you say that I am? And so there is a place for explanation. There is a place for talking about Jesus. There is a place for reflecting on that question: Who do you say that I am? And here the Holy Spirit has an important place. If Lutheran theology is Christ's center, then our theology of the Holy Spirit must also begin with Christ. So you can be Christ centered and talk about the Holy Spirit. But for that to happen, you have to closely link the Holy Spirit, who he is, what he does to the person and work of Jesus Christ. We may say just to -- as a bit of a teaser we could say here that if we were to summarize the place of the Spirit in Christ, we could simply say this: Christ is the bearer and the giver of the Holy Spirit. Christ bears the Holy Spirit. The Spirit rests on him. The Spirit remains on him. At the same time Christ gives the Holy Spirit. He sends the Holy Spirit. He breathes the Holy Spirit on his disciples. Christ the bearer. Christ the giver of the Spirit. I think John summarizes this very well when he says: On whomever you see the Spirit descend and remain, he is the one who'll baptize with the Holy Spirit.