The Holy Spirit and the Foretaste of the Future

As the down payment of our final redemption, the Spirit gives us the “already” of our participation in Christ as the new creation, and it is the Spirit within us who gives us the aching hope for the “not yet” that awaits us in our union with Christ (Rom 8:18-28; 2 Cor 1:22; 5:5; Eph 1:4). …In fact, the paradox is that the more we receive from the Spirit of the realities of the age to come, the more restless we become. Yet it is a restlessness born not of fear but of having already received a foretaste of the future (Mike Horton, The Christian Faith, 559-60).