THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
[p. 428] THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
Galatians 5: 16 - 26; Galatians 6: 1 - 3
My object on former occasions has been to bring before you certain principles by which people are powerfully affected. Many things by which we have imagined ourselves to be affected have not affected us deeply; but three things to which I have referred, namely, the light and the revelation of God, and the love of Christ, and the power of the Spirit, do very powerfully affect us.
I judge that we have all been greatly affected by the recognition of the Spirit’s presence here, both as in the individual and in the assembly. In fact, it has changed our thought about everything, and the result of our apprehending the presence of the Spirit has been great. He dwells in a two-fold mode: with the saints, and in the believer. “He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you”.
I will shortly recall what we have had previously before us. Man by the fall lost God; though having a conscience he has not by nature any light about God; this is the condition of every unconverted person, even though he call himself a christian, Now the object of the gospel is to enlighten man as to God. There is no greater expression of the grace of God than that He should have come out of His place to make Himself known to man. The righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel; grace reaches man through righteousness. The gospel brings the strong impression of the righteousness of God, as seen in the cross, and this is the moral foundation laid in every believer’s soul. A babe is one who is “unskilful in the word of righteousness”. When I speak of righteousness I mean the righteousness of God. Sin is intolerable to God, and He has removed it; it is gone from before Him, and gone with the order of [p. 429] life to which it attached. It is gone in the righteous One. This is the first great truth in the gospel. Now another element comes in, and that is God’s power. While the gospel brings the sense of the grace of God, it reveals Him in His attributes of righteousness and power. Mercy is not righteousness. The character of God is absolute, so there can be no deviation from any of His attributes; He does not shew mercy at the expense of righteousness; and hence the need of the death of Christ.
I have referred also to the influence of the love of Christ, and to the various ways in which that love is expressed to us. His death expresses it. Then we have the activity of it in him as Priest. The moment I accept the obligation of righteousness, and have yielded my members as instruments of righteousness unto God, Christ supports and succours us. We are “married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God”. He is also the minister of the sanctuary, the firstborn among many brethren, leading us into the Father’s love. Then finally, we have the love of Christ as connected with the testimony of saints down here. “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love ... This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you”.
The apostle Paul was greatly affected by the love of Christ; it constrained him. The love of Christ is peculiar; it must be a great factor in the heart of a christian. We cannot speak of the love of God in quite the same way. We do not speak of God coming down for us into death, nor of His sympathizing with us. There is an intense personality in the love of Christ and this thought does not necessarily minister to sentimentality; we have not to imagine all sorts of things about it in a carnal way. We have to accept it in the way in which Christ has expressed it in His death and in which He now acts towards us.
[p. 430] Now I come to my present subject: the Spirit is a potent influence in the believer. There was a time with most of us when we had no sense at all of the Spirit as dwelling, and when the truth was brought to us that the Spirit was here in the absence of Christ, it affected our pathway greatly. We began to see that the sects and systems around would not do at all. The Spirit was shut out by human arrangements. Nothing has affected me more than the fact that my body is the temple of the Spirit of God. We have been accustomed to regard the Spirit rather as an influence under which a man could do remarkable acts, as we see in men in Old Testament times. The consequences of an indwelling Spirit are momentous. It involves the complete displacement of the flesh in the believer. “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts”.
The contrast between Christ and the Spirit is this, that Christ did all the work for us, the Spirit does all in us. The Spirit never takes exactly the place of a servant, as did Christ. Christ took that place on earth, and retains it in a sense for ever. He serves us now, and will serve us eternally, like the Hebrew slave whose ear was bored through with an awl and nailed to the door-post. We find in Luke 12 that Christ will occupy the place of a servant in heaven; He will minister to the joy of His people, not washing our feet as now; this is His present service.
The Spirit has come to take complete control; the believer’s body is like a house under entirely new management. There are several figures employed in Scripture in speaking of the power and influence of the Spirit; He is a well of water springing up (that is not the idea of a servant); He is also spoken of under the figure of oil, a dove, tongues of fire.
It is to be recognised as a point of fundamental importance that what is true for God in the death of Christ has to be made good in the believer. There [p. 431] are three types presented to us in Scripture of the death of Christ, namely, the blood of the passover lamb, the Red sea, and the brazen serpent; God’s righteousness vindicated, the enemy destroyed, his power broken, and sin in the flesh condemned. Now all this, having been effected for God, has to be made good in the believer, and it is not always quickly effected in us. How is the righteousness of God made effective in us? In your becoming servant to righteousness you are no longer the slave of sin. We have become servants to that which was vindicated in the cross. The death of Christ has thus become effective in us.
The Red sea is also a type of the death of Christ; it shews the destruction of the enemy in death. Death stood as God’s judgment between man and God, but the death of Christ, where the judgment was borne, has become the testimony to us of the love of God. The only way by which man could ever come to God was through bringing a witness of death. Abel came in that way; he brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. The reason of this is simple — death lay on man, hence man could not approach God except by the recognition of what was upon him. When God came out to man, He came out through death, the death of Christ, and therefore it is now not the expression of His judgment, but of His love. The rod of God divided the waters of the Red sea and the power of the enemy is gone. The death of Christ is thus the way to God. If I am in the enjoyment of the love of God, death is no terror to me. The power of the enemy was really broken when Christ died, but it is broken for the believer when the love of God is shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Spirit given to him. The Holy Spirit brings the sense of God’s love.
Light is in itself comparatively a cold thing, but the sense of what the light brings is warmth. Sense [p. 432] is the consciousness of it. When we get the warmth of the love, then it is that the power of the enemy is broken in our souls. That which delivers from the fear of death is the sense of the love of God, for the love of God gives the sense of distance having gone.
But further, there was in the death of Christ the condemnation of man’s state; flesh was set aside in the sight of God, and with the intent that God might impart the Spirit to the believer. The Spirit of God as an indwelling Spirit will not tolerate the flesh: “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh”. The flesh retains reminiscences of what we have been accustomed to in the world, but the Spirit is against the flesh, so that we should not do the things to which we are prone. The Spirit is not an influence nor merely a power; in the believer He is a “well of water springing up into everlasting life”. He begins at the bottom and His purpose is to displace completely the flesh. The apostle shews in Galatians 5 very nakedly what the works of the flesh are, and what is the fruit of the Spirit. Then follows, “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts”. I call that normal to the christian. The Spirit works in this way; He brings in the sense of the holiness of God. The cross displayed His righteousness, and the resurrection His power, but the Spirit gives the sense of what God’s nature is — His holiness and love.
A person is very largely coloured by the associations in which he lives. The Holy Spirit works in us in this way. He brings in the sense of the love of God; this means an entirely new association, If suddenly placed at court with the queen, we should not many of us feel at ease; but we are brought into association with what is of God, and the work of the Holy Spirit is to form us according to the associations in which we are set. He does not simply set Himself against the flesh to free you from the [p. 433] dominion of sin, but He forms you completely anew by the new associations which are around.
The Spirit is an energy in the believer — a well of water springing up — a fountain to take complete possession of the believer. His proper work is to form us in the divine nature. The fact that we have actually a divine Person dwelling in us to bring to us the sense of God’s holiness and love, and to form us according to that, is all very profound.
Think of the grace of God in which He has come out, revealing Himself to man as light that man may know Him, and then the love of Christ adapting itself to us in the circumstances in which we find ourselves down here and leading us into His own blessed circle above, and then the presence and power of the Spirit emancipating us from the dominion of sin, and forming us by the new and blessed association in which the grace of God has set us. Monks shut up in religious houses had an idea of mortification of the flesh, but they had no idea whatever of the Holy Spirit as forming the believer by divine light in the divine nature. It is the seeing this that delivers the soul completely from asceticism. The believer is not only dead with Christ, but is quickened together with Him; that is, he is made alive in Christ in the divine nature. It is in the reality of this that we enter into the truth of God’s calling.