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When Paul speaks of the Spirit of God, he is thinking primarily of the presence and power of God active in the life of the believing community and in the lives of those who are part of it.

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This is the meaning of two special metaphors, both temporal in character, by which Paul describes the Spirit. One metaphor derives from Israel's practice of offering God, at the annual feast of the harvest (the Festival of Weeks), the first, and presumably choicest, portions of the yield. The first fruits were not the whole, but they represented it and, in an important sense, embodied it. Thus, when Paul refers to believers in Romans 8:23 as those "who have the first fruits of the Spirit," he is thinking of the Spirit as the power of salvation present already with believers, empowering and renewing them and, even in the midst of the old age, establishing them in the hope for the full harvest that is yet to come (vss. 24 f.). Paul's other temporal metaphor derives from the world of business and commerce, and it appears twice in 2 Corinthians. This is the idea of down payment, first installment, earnest money, or guarantee. In 5:5, he says, "God has given us the Spirit as a guarantee," thereby thinking of the Spirit as the effective presence of God's power in the present--not the fullness of it, but no less the reality of it in the believer's life. "[God] has put his seal upon us and given his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee" (1:22).

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Thus, for Paul, faith is faith only as it is enacted in love, which is the power of the new age present and active already in the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is by the enlivening power of the Spirit that the believer is sustained and guided in her or his new life. "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit" (Gal 5:25) -- the principal and inclusive fruit of the Spirit being love (5:22). If love never ends (1 Cor 13:8), this is because it is God's own power, the power of the new age, reaching back into our present, claiming us for God and endowing our existence with meaning and direction.

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