A biblical doctrine of the Word of God must necessarily be integrated with the doctrine of the Spirit of God, and, conversely, a biblical understanding of the Spirit of God is inseparable from the concept of God’s Word.  The Word is the Spirit’s implement, and the Spirit is the breath by which God speaks (Woodhouse, 1995, 46).

David Wells continues the discussion of interdependence of the Word and Spirit in greater detail:

In the New Testament, then, the biblical Word and the work of the Spirit are correlated. It is not possible, in biblical terms, to believe in the Holy Spirit's work without believing in the Bible's inspiration, for the biblical revelation is the Holy Spirit's written witness. Nor is it possible to understand the full truth of Scripture and to receive what God wants us to receive unless the Holy Spirit who inspired the Word also leads us in our understanding of it. This relationship between the objective and the subjective needs to be carefully preserved.  Word and Spirit must be held together and experienced together; if they are not, our retention of biblical Christianity will be jeopardized. (Wells, 1987, 30)

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Evangelical preachers cannot divorce their understanding of the Word from their understanding of the Spirit.  In Spirit-driven expository preaching, the preacher thrives on the codependent and symbiotic relationship of the Word and Spirit as the genuine source of all powerful preaching.    The preacher following the Spirit-driven methodology does not desire to simply balance the Word with the Spirit or the Spirit with the Word, but rather to be filled with the Spirit and to be immersed in the Word simultaneously and abundantly!  The Spirit leads us down the path of His inspired Word, and the written Word leads us to the Living Word, Christ Jesus. 

The proper theological understanding of Word and Spirit outlined above must set us free from the false notion that if we allow the Holy Spirit into our preaching, then the biblical text flies out the window and everything becomes subjective!  Why do we wrongly assume that the entrance of the Spirit into the medium of preaching automatically means the “loss of control?”  Whose control are we talking about?  Ours or the Spirit’s?  What we tend to forget is that the Spirit’s witness, empowerment, and movement is tied to the Word He inspired!  That is why I argue for Spirit-empowered expository preaching – the unfolding of the Spirit’s words necessitates the Spirit’s witness (testimonium), and where the Spirit gives witness, there is power!       

WORD AND SPIRIT TESTIFY TOGETHER: CHRISTOLOGICAL PREACHING

The implication of the Spirit’s biblically defined ministry as well as the theological relationship between the Word and the Spirit demands Christ-centered preaching.  Azurdia questions, “How does the Spirit intend for this inscripturated word of Christ to be made known?  Answer:  through preachers who, with the message of Christ on their lips, will be given divine power by this same Holy Spirit.” (Azurdia, 1998, 62).  Hence, the preacher’s number one obligation is to demonstrate how his biblical text gives witness to Jesus Christ.  As the Word and the Spirit and the preacher all in sweet unison witness to Christ, powerful preaching occurs.  The Spirit-driven methodology of expository preaching posits that the Spirit, the Word, and the preacher must all testify to Jesus Christ in unison during the actual preparation and proclamation of the sermon if the preacher is ever going to preach with power.  Azurdia points out that when the preacher is linked with the Spirit’s purpose of revealing Jesus Christ, the result will be power in the pulpit: