The Scandal of Pentecost: Divine power enacted and embodied by the ordinary

The story of Jesus culminates in the public scandal of His criminal trial and execution.

The advent of the Church at Pentecost presents an immediate case of public offence following the scandal of Jesus.

Today, however, Christianity has largely lost touch with the public scandal that characterised Jesus and His disciples.

Among the Christian values of love and tolerance, the prominence of seeker-friendly churches and entertaining worship and the popularity of personal faith and private spirituality, the public scandal – the scandal of Jesus Christ – has lost its place.

To be a follower of Christ is not an escape to a private and spiritualised life of a gospel of bliss, but a public witness to a Gospel that upsets and corrects for the sake of the salvation of the world.

The scandal of Jesus Christ

In the unfolding story of His ministry, it is the fate of Jesus culminating in His suffering and crucifixion that marks the direct cause of offence, and Jesus Himself exclaims to His disciples that “all you shall be scandalised in Me” (Matthew 26:31, Douay-Rheims Bible).

The act of offence includes both the one who scandalises and the one who is scandalised.

El Greco’s painting of the Day of Pentecost, when the 120 in the Upper Room were baptised in the Holy Spirit. Photo from Wikipedia.

Jesus’ own perception of being scandalous becomes apparent in His rejection by others (Mark 2:16; Matthew 13:57, 15:12, 17:27; Luke 5:30, John 6:61).

The most immediate offence of Jesus is His outward observable behaviour. Often seemingly in direct conflict with religious customs, social expectation, cultural norms and political regulations, the history of Jesus tells the story of a scandalous outsider.

By healing on the Sabbath, He enflamed Jewish debates about Jewish laws and customs (Matthew 12:10; Mark 1:25, Luke 4:39; John 7:23). Caring for the sick, the poor, the outcasts of society was a hallmark of His life, and the Pharisees were regularly offended that Jesus “welcomes sinner and eats with them” (Luke 15:1).

Jesus did not fit the public image of a religious leader let alone the normative Jewish expectations of the “Christ”.

The full force of the scandal is found in Jesus’ teaching regarding His own fate, His contradiction of the dominant messianic expectations – or more precisely, by His followers’ rejection of Jesus’ prediction of His own suffering, death and resurrection.

The offence of this scandal divides the entire world. As Paul pointed out in 1 Corinthians 1:18, the “stumbling block” is the proclamation of the crucified Christ, which divides the whole world into “those who are perishing” and those who are being saved”.

The mechanism of scandal is not triggered by Jesus’ own action but by anyone who attempts to oppose and remove the scandal.

We see this in John 6:25-71, where, offended by Jesus’ claim to the the “bread that came down from heaven”, the audience distances itself from Him and “the Jews began to complain” (John 6:41).

Yet the offence increases to breaking point with Jesus’ explanation that the bread He will give them is His own “flesh” (John 6:52).

In a provocative shift of subject from God to Himself, the bread of life is instead given by Jesus and, even more controversially, it is actually identical with Him.

His encouragement to eat His flesh and drink His blood while He is alive is even more scandalous. The disciples respond with bewilderment and rejection and many find “this teaching” too difficult to accept (John 6:60). Jesus’ followers are at a turning point in their relationship with Christ and “because of this many of His disciples turned back and no longer went about with Him” (John 6:66).

The scandal of the crucified Messiah demands an understanding of God and the Church that does not resist the scandal but refuses its suppression. The Gospel of God crucified in Christ is also the scandal of the Church because it demands a fundamental decision: To accept the offence or to be scandalised.

Yet to accept the offence is not the route for escaping the scandal but for participation: When the Church arose in the public world at Pentecost, it emerged as a partner in the scandal.

The scandal of Pentecost

At Pentecost, the scandal of Christ manifested in His flesh continues in the outpouring of the Spirit of Christ “on all flesh” (Acts 2:17).

Where the scandal of Jesus directs attention to the scandal of the Word of God that had become flesh, Pentecost directs the attention to the scandal of the Church  “in the flesh” that is baptised with the Holy Spirit.

As much as it is impossible to separate the coming of the Messiah from the flesh of Jesus, so it is impossible to separate the outpouring of the Spirit from the flesh of His followers. The physical, biological, physiological and psychological dimensions of human nature are the cooperative conditions for the Word and the Spirit in the world.

Like Jesus, the Church offends when it becomes an obstacle to the norms of authority, and in response the intoxicating effects of receiving the Spirit in the flesh are trivialised, rationalised and suppressed by the public accusation of the disciples’ drunkenness (Acts 2:13).

That the Church speaks not in its own language but in all the languages of the world widens the Christian scandal to global proportions. Yet, the ecstatic character of the Christian community and its universal prophetic claims are the fertile ground for the astonishment and wonder that lead the audience of the Gospel to the crucified Christ – and to its scandal.

That the Spirit if poured out not on specific flesh but on all flesh has far-reaching consequences. The promise of the Spirit to men and women, young and old, slaves and free (Acts 2:17) signals that the Church must resist any public pressures, social customs, cultural norms, religious regulations and demonic powers that seek to suppress the redemption of all flesh.

Because the outpouring of God’s Spirit on all flesh aims at the salvation of “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord” (Acts 2:21), the public witness of the Church must embody and empower the whole scope of humanity.

The baptism in the Spirit is a scandal of the flesh because it subjects the body to the power of the Spirit so that the Christian witness to the world is both ordinary and extraordinary. The effect of this baptism is “charismatic” in the sense it is a gift of the Holy Spirit into the brokenness of human flesh and therefore transformative of human nature.

Because the source of power is not the Church but God, the public Christian witness functions as the scandal of the realisation of divine power enacted and embodied by the ordinary, the sick, the disabled, the poor, and the persecuted. This is the true scandalous image of the Church!

The scandal of the flesh

Prof Wolfgang Vondey presented his paper on “The Church as Scandal of Salvation” at the Europe Asia Pentecostal Summit in Singapore in May 2025.

The path towards rediscovering the scandal of the Church must begin with a rediscovery of the flesh, Christ’s flesh and our own, which together form the body of Christ in the world.

The scandal of the flesh constitutes a great challenge to the institutionalised church with a history that has forgotten the redemption of the flesh. Scandalised by the flesh, we spiritualise salvation and exclude the flesh as sinful and unnecessary from God’s Kingdom. And scandalising the flesh, we elevate it above the Word and the Spirit as the expression of human independence and power.

Humanity receives the gifts of the Spirit, not for the sake of possessing the power of God, but for the sake of giving it away to the world. The scandal of the flesh is that the power of the Church is not tied to the control of wealth, possession, status, education, age, gender or the exercise of institutional, political, religious and spiritual authority.

The Christian world cannot afford to censor anyone who does not measure up to normative expectations of intellectual ability, physical strength, linguistic or culture conformity.

The opposition of the flesh and the Spirit is an opposition of the Incarnation and Pentecost – of God and humanity, Christ and the church. The Christian response must be the awe and wonder that the Christian life cannot be produced without the carnality of the human constitution made evident through the whole range of human beings and of the gifts of the Spirit poured out on all flesh.

The question for Christian congregations today remains whether we are offended by the scandal of the flesh or ready to be a partner in the scandal.

This article is extracted and summarised from a presentation titled “The Church as Scandal of Salvation” by systematic theologian Wolfgang Vondey on May 16, 2025 at the Europe Asia Pentecostal Summit.

He is a professor of Christian Theology and Pentecostal Studies at the University of Birmingham, where he also directs the Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies. Dr Wolfgang’s research focuses on systematic and constructive theological themes, with a particular emphasis on pneumatology, ecclesiology and ecumenical studies.

Having taught for 20 years in the United States, Dr Wolfgang founded and directed Regent University’s Center for Renewal Studies. He has published numerous influential works, including Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel (2017), The Routledge Handbook of Pentecostal Theology (2020), and The Scandal of Pentecost: A Theology of the Public Church (2024). He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity and is the co-editor of the book series Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology.