RECEPTION OF THE SPIRIT, JANUARY 30TH, 1926
RECEPTION OF THE SPIRIT, JANUARY 30TH, 1926
[p. 132] MY DEAR BROTHER, — I will, as you have raised the question of the reception of the Spirit, make a few remarks on this important subject.
At the beginning of each Gospel attention is called to the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, as the One who would baptise with, or in, the Holy Spirit. It is particularly pointed out that this action would characterise Him. After His death, resurrection, and ascension to the right hand of God we find Peter saying, “Repent, and be baptised, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for remission of sins, and ye will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”, Acts 2: 38; and he connects this with the call of God. “For to you is the promise and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God may call”. There is sometimes a tendency to lose sight of divine calling in relation to the gift of the Holy Spirit, but it is the called ones of God who receive this gift. Certain conditions come in on man’s side, such as repentance, faith, obedience, purity of heart, love, desire for the Spirit, but the call of God lies behind all these things. God calls persons in His sovereign mercy and love that He may give them His Holy Spirit. The effect of divine calling is that repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ are produced in the soul. Obedience, purification of heart by faith, and love for the Lord Jesus Christ are brought into evidence in the called ones. It is sometimes as difficult to say which feature manifests itself first as it is to say which spoke of a wheel moves first.
It is helpful to view this subject from the divine side. “Not on the principle of works which have been done in righteousness which we had done, but according to his own mercy he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, which he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour”, Titus 3: 5, 6. The death of Christ is the ground on which the Spirit is given, as we see in type in the smiting of the rock, Exodus 17: 6. The proposal to give the Spirit was on God’s part; the promise of the Spirit is to all whom He calls; and He gives the Spirit through Jesus Christ, and in virtue of the death of Christ.
It is evidence of divine calling when the fear of God becomes a definite characteristic of a person. But in order to the reception of the Spirit there must be the belief of the glad tidings. “The preaching of Jesus Christ” is to the end [p. 133] that men may believe on Him, and know that, instead of God requiring righteousness from them which they could never render to Him, He has manifested His own righteousness “by faith of Jesus Christ towards all”. He justifies freely “by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” all those who believe. He sets forth Christ Jesus as a Mercy-seat in the infinite value of His blood, and shows that on that ground He could righteously pass by the sins of Old Testament believers. He also shows forth thereby His righteousness in the present time, “so that he should be just, and justify him that is of the faith of Jesus”, Romans 3: 21 - 26. Then we learn from Romans 4 that righteousness is reckoned to the believer without works, and this is declared to be the blessedness of those “whose lawlessnesses have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered”, and “to whom the Lord shall not at all reckon sin”. God is believed on as “him who has raised from among the dead Jesus our Lord, who has been delivered for our offences and has been raised for our justification”. “Therefore having been justified on the principle of faith, we have peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ”.
The epistle to the Romans sets forth in an orderly way the truth of the glad tidings, and its effects in the souls of men. And we find that at the point reached in the early verses of chapter 5 the believer has received the gift of the Spirit. “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us”, verse 5. There is not a word about the Spirit being given until the believer is justified by faith and has peace with God, righteousness being reckoned to him. Then immediately we find the Spirit busy in the heart, having been given to shed abroad the love of God there.
It is to be noticed that he does not formally mark some distinct point at which the Spirit is given, and one has no doubt that divine wisdom appears in this. He would engage us with God, known as operating in righteousness and power with a view to our justification, so that we may have peace towards Him. Then the Holy Spirit is there in the heart. It can then be said without question, “God, who has given also his Holy Spirit to you”, 1 Thessalonians 4: 6. The attention of the soul is not called to the particular moment when the Spirit was given so as to cause it to be engaged with the experience of that moment. That might turn to self-occupation,
[p. 134] either in the direction of resting on a certain experience, or in the way of misgivings and uncertainty as to whether one has had the experience or not. The present action of the Spirit is spoken of; “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us”. The Spirit pours out into the heart of the believer the love which has been so wondrously commended to us “in that, we being still sinners, Christ has died for us”. This is the first action of the Spirit as given to the believer. Then in chapter 8 He is spoken of as dwelling in the believer. But I do not pursue the subject, as it is the reception of the Spirit rather than His subsequent operations which is at present before me.
I believe that God gives the Spirit as soon as He can. He loves to seal “the righteousness of faith” by that wondrous Gift. I do not believe that He delays the gift of the Spirit to any who know what it is to be justified on the principle of faith, and to have peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit is received on the principle of the report of faith, Galatians 3: 1 - 14. To the Ephesians it is said, “In whom (Christ) ye also have trusted, having heard the word of the truth, the glad tidings of your salvation; in whom, also, having believed, ye have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”, Ephesians 1: 13.
In the epistles it is everywhere taken for granted that the saints have the Holy Spirit. The question whether they have the Spirit or not is never raised with those who are addressed as saints by divine calling, or as assemblies. They are instructed, exhorted, warned, and rebuked on the ground that they have the Spirit. Those whom John addresses as little children are expressly said to have the unction from the Holy One. And Paul, while having to address the Corinthians as fleshly, and as babes in Christ — using the term “babes” as a reproach — does not question the fact that the Spirit of God dwelt in them. Indeed to suppose otherwise would have been to falsify the position and state of the Christian, and the nature of his relationship with God through grace. Some of the Corinthians had been base and vile characters, but they had been washed, sanctified, justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. It is on this ground that he calls upon them to recognise that the Spirit of God dwelt in them, and that their bodies were the temples of the Holy Spirit which was in them, which they had of God.
He says again and again, “Do ye not know” that it is so?
To the Galatians, who had so strangely and sadly departed from the truth, the ground of one of his powerful appeals was that they had received the Spirit, and this not on the principle of works of law, but of the report of faith. One serious feature of uncertainty as to whether believers on the Lord Jesus Christ have the Spirit is that it takes away what lies at the basis of Christian responsibility. How can one be called upon to maintain the holiness of God’s temple if he is not of it? If a man’s body is not the temple of the Holy Spirit he cannot be accounted responsible to hold it as such. Indeed all that is pressed in Scripture as to the holy responsibility of saints in relation to the kingdom, the temple, the house, and even the body, is undermined and weakened if it is regarded as uncertain whether believers have the Spirit or not. I do not believe that God would have this to be an uncertain or unsettled question with any of His children.
I should distinguish between the reception and the recognition of the Spirit. In the history of the children of Israel there is no definite type of the Spirit until Exodus 17, though it is evident that those who can sing what answers to the redemption: song of Exodus 15 have the Spirit. I believe there is a moment when the believer learns to recognise the Spirit as given, and a very important moment this is, but it is not always, or perhaps even often, coincident with the reception of the Spirit. I think many have the “pot of oil”, 2 Kings 4: 2, without being at all conscious of its value, or of the immeasurable possibilities that are inherent in it. Anything that calls their attention to its reality, and sets in motion the desire to have and utilise the gain of it, is of great advantage to the soul. The recognition of the presence of the Spirit might be compared to the owner of an estate discovering that the estate contained a gold mine of inexhaustible wealth, the presence of which was unknown to him before. No greater help could be given to the saints than to direct their attention to this wondrous Gift. It must not be supposed that every action of the Spirit, as given to those who believe, will be at once realised or understood by the believer. Nor is the gift of the Spirit always regarded in Scripture from the same point of view. It would be nearer to the truth to say that each time it is referred to, some particular and distinctive aspect of the gift is presented to our consideration. For example, in the types [p. 136] of the Spirit, the water from the rock in Exodus 17 suggests quite a different thought from the water of the well in Numbers 21; and again, how distinct is the thought in the anointing of the priests! The soul has to be led in spiritual intelligence to recognise each separate aspect of this wondrous Gift, and we do not get the true value of any aspect or action of the Spirit until we come to the recognition of it.
Even as to the reception of the Spirit, and the conditions to be found in those to whom He is given, how varied are the presentations in the New Testament! Repentance, faith in Jesus Christ, baptism in His Name, the reception of remission of sins through believing on Him, believing the report of faith, trusting in Christ as having heard the word of the truth and having believed the glad tidings of salvation, the being sons by faith in Christ Jesus, are seen as conditions in Acts 2: 38; 10: 44; 19: 2 - 7; Galatians 3: 2; Ephesians 1: 13; Galatians 4: 6. In Luke 11: 13 and John 4: 10 prayer is the condition, and in this connection it is of interest to note that it was on Jesus “praying” that the Holy Spirit descended (Luke 3: 21, 22), that it was after ten days of “continual prayer” that the Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, and that Cornelius had been “supplicating God continually”, Acts 10: 2. In John 7: 39 the Spirit is spoken of as given to those who believe on Jesus; in Acts 5: 32 He is given to those who obey Him; in John 14: 15, 16 to those who love Him. In Acts 15: 8, 9, the gift of the Spirit is God’s witness to hearts which He has purified by faith. These varied presentations are to be taken account of, for they show clearly that even the reception of the Spirit is not always viewed in the same aspect, and this would preserve us from thinking of any one condition in too rigid a way to the exclusion of the others.
Cornelius and his friends were the first-fruits to be received from the Gentile world, and one would conclude that their case might justly be regarded as a pattern of how the Gentiles would receive the Spirit. We see moral conditions there: Cornelius was pious; he feared God with all his house; he gave much alms to the people; and he supplicated God continually. God chose that they should by Peter’s mouth hear the word of the glad tidings and believe. The Holy Spirit fell upon them even before they were baptised, while Peter was speaking the words, “To him all the prophets bear witness that every one who believes on him will receive through his name remission of sins”. “And the heart-knowing God bore them witness, giving them the Holy Spirit as to us also, and put no difference between us and them, having purified their hearts by faith”, Acts 15: 8, 9. It was all God’s doing; God visiting the nations, as James said, to take out of them a people for His Name.
I quite believe that many persons who fear God have not received the Spirit. But such are not yet in true Christian blessing. They need the gospel. The Lord Jesus Christ is presented to men in the glad tidings in all His trustworthiness as the One in whom God delights, the One who has completely glorified God in bearing the judgment due to sinners, the One whom God has now raised from among the dead, and given to be the Mediator — the glorious Administrator — of all His grace to sinful men. Believing on God, and on the Lord Jesus Christ, as thus made known in the glad tidings, they will assuredly receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. God delights to put His divine Seal on the faith that thus honours Him and the Lord Jesus Christ.
In John’s gospel the conditions leading to the reception of the Spirit are thirst, and the coming to Jesus to get that thirst quenched. The Spirit does not come in there in relation to the forgiveness of sins, or justification and peace, but as the divine answer to the unsatisfied state of a heart that craves the knowledge of God. For this there must be a personal transaction with Jesus. He alone can give living water; the thirsting one must come to Him and drink, John 4: 10; 7: 37 - 39.
With love in the Lord Jesus,
Yours affectionately in Him,
January 30th, 1926.