TITUS 3 (NOTES OF A READING)
[p. 83] TITUS 3 (NOTES OF A READING)
CAC Questions often arise in the minds of young believers, and old ones too sometimes, as to the Spirit, and it is well for us to see how the Spirit is given and for what purpose. We find in this scripture that it is one great expression of the kindness and love of the Saviour God to man. There is not a feature on man’s side which is commendable; Paul says, “We were once ourselves also without intelligence, disobedient”, etc. (verse 3). That is the condition on our side, and the kindness and love of our Saviour God appeared in those conditions; and His mercy appeared, not on the principle of works which we had done, but it is all God’s doing from first to last. God’s doing and what we have done are plainly contrasted. God’s object in appearing in kindness and love to man was to introduce an entirely new condition, which is spoken of here as the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. All is from God’s side, and it is pure mercy; it is important to see that.
Ques How far does the renewal of the Holy Spirit go?
CAC I think it involves everything; it is the basis of everything right through to eternal life. What strikes one in the scripture is the extraordinary readiness of God to give the Spirit. My impression is that God gives the Spirit as soon as ever He can; that is, no one ever had any desire for the Spirit that was ever anything but a very feeble desire, but it was the purpose of God to give us the Holy Spirit, and He was set upon giving the Spirit.
Rem That is very important; it is God’s gift.
CAC Yes, because many people do not recognise there is nothing scanty about the Spirit. Many people are like a man who has an estate: he has some property, but he does not know there is a gold mine on the estate. Some day he wakes up to the fact, and that changes his whole attitude of mind. He has [p. 84] not worked it out yet, but he has that which can be worked to produce wealth to an unlimited and incalculable extent.
Ques What would make us desire these things?
CAC Nothing but mercy; the point is, am I content to go on in verse 3? I do not suppose there is one person here who would say, I am content. It shows that the mercy of God has reached us. It is extraordinary in Scripture how many different ways the Spirit is presented and received. It seems as if it were to prevent any cut-and-dried dogma (Proverbs 1:20-23). It is put that way, as it were: If you will only turn from the foolish (those in Titus 3: 3) I will pour out My Spirit. That is the greatest pleasure of God. We get it in type in the prodigal son; he has turned in his mind. What happened? The father sees him and runs to the far country; that is the type of the gift of the Spirit.
Rem It is striking the way it is put in Proverbs 1.
CAC Yes; because it shows a turning round; God is so delighted to give the Spirit; washing of regeneration and renewal of the mind, that is the way. A time comes when the soul realises it is a privilege to be separated from the world by the death of Christ. I do not think repentance has its right place till, like Isaiah, we judge the world. He says, “I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6: 5). So Peter says, “Be saved from this perverse generation”. “Repent and be baptised ... . For to you is the promise and to your children” (Acts 2:40; Acts 2:38,39). God says, I want to give every one the Spirit if they will have It.
Rem And so the Spirit fell on Cornelius’s company.
CAC Yes, Peter says, “As I began to speak” (Acts 11: 15). The moment Christ was presented, the Spirit fell upon them — he had not said many words. It shows how God delights to give the Spirit. It is the way of God’s salvation. He is saving people out of the world.
Rem Peter’s remark was striking for an evangelist when he says, “Who indeed was I to be able to forbid God?”
CAC That is very fine. The whole system is wrong and he recognises that; many a believer feels that, and feels he should be glad to know of anything to come between his heart and this naughty world; the death of Christ comes in. Peter says, “Which figure also now saves you, even baptism” (1 Peter 3: 21), referring to the flood. Every one here can say, ‘Thank God, I can accept His salvation’. If we have never accepted before, we can now. It really severs the link with the world.
Rem That is a very important point.
CAC Yes; it is the question of the kindness and love of a Saviour God. I can look up and see nothing but kindness and love, and they have appeared to make it possible for me to have the death of Christ between me and the world; so that I do not want to have part in the world; and it links us with all that is of God, with everything in God’s world; God has a world of His own.
Ques Is that a progressive movement?
CAC I think you will find you have a gold mine and you have to work it out. If people would only get on to the right side; they get thinking about whether they have the Spirit; but the thing to be occupied with is the One who gives the Spirit. It is poured out richly. At the beginning of every gospel, the Lord Jesus is introduced into the world as the One who came to baptise with the Holy Spirit — to immerse His own entirely in the Holy Spirit.
Ques Do you think there are many believers who have the Spirit without knowing it?
CAC Yes, I do; a man told me he had been praying for four years for the Spirit, and thought it was very hard that God would not give him the Spirit; then he suddenly found he had had the Spirit all the time.
Ques How do you account for that?
CAC The kindness and love of a Saviour God has not been taken in by the soul. If a soul loves the Lord Jesus Christ, He says, “I will beg the Father, and he will give you another Comforter” (John 14: 16). Another scripture says, He gives the Spirit “to those that obey Him” (Acts 5: 32); then another, to those “that believed on him” (John 7: 39). The moment Christ gets a place before the heart — not because there is anything good in the soul — the moment Christ is appreciated, the soul sets to its seal that God is true. God says, I will give you the Spirit; that is what I have been waiting to do all the time.
The Samaritans got the Spirit by the laying on of the apostles’ hands (Acts 8: 14 - 17); but there was a special reason for that: Samaria had been a rival city to Jerusalem. If God had poured out the Spirit on Samaria apart from Jerusalem there might have been a division, but it was all linked together, so that God was pleased that they should wait till the apostles came over.
Ques Do you judge the eunuch had the Spirit?
CAC Oh yes, he went on his way rejoicing.
Rem That was the evidence of the presence of the Spirit.
CAC Yes, if you read the epistle to the Romans, you do not find how people get the Spirit. You find they get forgiveness and justification and redemption, all through our Lord Jesus Christ; then suddenly you find the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit; they have got the Spirit. So great is the value of Christ and the work of Christ that it frees the heart of God to bestow the Spirit; I can thank God that He has ever thought of such-a thing; God does it, it is His kindness, love and mercy; He could not act in any other way.
Rem He speaks of giving His Spirit to those who ask (Luke 11: 13).
CAC Yes, in John 4 He says to the woman, “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that says to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water”. He actually prompts her to ask.
Ques It does not always come that way, does it, that we pray for the Spirit? Is it not the normal way that we are engaged with the Lord Jesus and God seals that with the Spirit?
[p. 87] Does not the asking apply to those who have the Spirit?
CAC Yes, these instances are to show the willingness of God.
Ques Some people are looking for a second blessing; is that not a mischievous thought?
CAC Yes; I think people on that line are occupied with themselves and not with Christ. The Lord is the One who baptises with the Holy Spirit. My point is to get round to the divine side. Suppose that one has real pleasure in the things of Christ, that would be an evidence of the presence of the Spirit: suppose one is happy in the love of God and can say, “Abba, Father”, it shows that the Spirit of God is there.
Ques Is not salvation prominent in the previous chapter?
CAC Yes, it is that complete divine deliverance that takes us out of verse 3, and puts us into that world where eternal life is.
Ques Would it have a bearing on our life now?
CAC Yes, a great bearing. It is the renewal, so that instead of wanting to gratify the flesh, we begin to be exercised in relation to God, and our place in the body. I was thinking of Romans 12: 2 when I said that: “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. It seems to me that this exercise is connected with the renewal of the Holy Spirit; there begins to be a new character of thinking and we begin to be exercised as to the place God would have us fill in the body; that comes in in a practical way.
Rem That is helpful.
CAC That is how deliverance is found practically. First you have your gold mine, now you have to work it, so that the wealth may be utilised in a practical way. God has put you into a new position in the body of Christ, and deliverance is realised as we fill our place in the body. Renewal of the Holy Spirit leads to renewal of the mind, and we realise we are set here and have an appointed place to fill according to the mind of God.
Ques This question leads to a transformation, does [p. 88] it not?
CAC Yes; the apostle says, “I say ... to every one that is among you, not to have high thoughts above what he should think, but to think so as to be wise, as God has dealt to each a measure of faith” (Romans 12: 3). Every one of us has faith to do something.
Ques Not faith for everything?
CAC No, it is a question of intelligent service, service connected with the renewed mind. It is interesting to see the different minds spoken of in Romans. First there is the reprobate mind — one without moral discernment. If people do not like to retain God in their thoughts they get a reprobate mind judicially, they lose all power of moral discernment and do uncomely things (Romans 1: 28 - 32). Suppose the converse is true, I shall get an exercised mind, as in chapter 7. The mind there has little knowledge of God as “our Saviour God”, he has not a renewed mind, but he has an exercised mind. He has not yet the knowledge of the kindness and love of a Saviour God; he knows the law and is striving to keep it, but has no power.
Ques What is the deliverance at the end of the chapter (Romans 7)?
CAC When I was a youngster, I used to think it was a shame the apostle did not say more about it. I used to wish he would tell us more plainly, I wished he had put in a few more verses to tell us how it came about, but he seems to get all tied up in a knot and then suddenly says, “I thank God”. It is like touching a button and the whole thing is illumined and works. If God has come out in kindness and love through Jesus Christ, that very fact involves deliverance. To know God so as to thank Him is the solution to the whole question. A man then has a new way of thinking — he is now thinking down from what God is, and is on the line and current of the Spirit, and in that current there is liberty and happiness, and so he is moved on a stage further. What marks the renewed mind is faith. God has dealt to every one a measure of faith. One of the things God gives faith for is to show mercy with cheerfulness; if you have faith for that, do it. What we [p. 89] have faith for we can be with God about, and what we can be with God about, He can be with us about.
Ques Why does it go on to say, “We should become heirs”?
CAC I think the renewal of the Holy Spirit prompts us to enter into all that God has before Him, “that, having been justified by his grace, we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life”, in view of the inheritance.
Rem I should like to have a thought of what that involves, because it would tend to deliver us from things here.
CAC You get filled with new expectations; they are expanded into all the breadth and blessedness of God’s world — eternal life. The renewal of the Holy Spirit works in this way, brings us into spiritual expectations and delivers us from this world as an object in our pathway here; so that frees us to let the heart go out in spiritual expectations.
Ques What are we taught to look forward to?
CAC That coming world where Christ is the Centre and Sun; that is the world we belong to, and in heart and spirit we are to be moving that way. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal” (John 3: 16). God loved the world in view of eternal life; I would say reverently, God coveted that His creature man should have eternal life; that was ever before the heart of God.
In John 7 the Spirit is like a fountain of water springing up to eternal life, so that the desires are the same as those of God. We are so apt to waste ourselves like the woman in chapter 4 who had many objects, and her affections scattered; the water the Lord would give us would unify the affections, gather them up, and centre them in view of eternal life, and then we move in spiritual liberty.