THE HOLY SPIRITIfthe Victorious Life is “the life that is Christ,” lived in the power of the risen Christ dwelling in the heart, what is the work of the Holy Spirit in such a life? Are Christians who pray for, or seek, the “fullness of the Spirit,” or the “baptism of the Spirit” or the “receiving of the Spirit,” asking for something different from the life of victory in Christ?The answer to such questions reveals the beautiful unity of God’s plan of salvation, in which each Person of the Godhead has His perfect work but in which our Lord Jesus Christ has ever the pre-eminence till the work of salvation is completed. We may approach the truth from teaching concerning the Holy Spirit, but it is Christ who will be exalted. Or we may experience resurrection life through learning of the truth concerning the indwelling Christ, but it is the Holy Spirit who makes possible that experience in the life.The Holy Spirit is God. If we start with this fact, and stay with it, we shall be saved from much confusion as to the Holy Spirit’s office. If he is God, we cannot limit Him, and we cannot confine Him to this or that manifestation of His power.The Holy Spirit is not merely a manifestation of God; HeisGod. And one Person of the trinity is never present without the others. While the Holy Spirit has a distinct work in the believer, this work is never disassociated from the other Persons in the Godhead. The Father and the Son and the Spirit all dwell with us (John 14:17, 23;1 Cor.6:19;2 Cor.13:5).The Holy Spirit is a Person. We are not to seek a quantitative appropriation of a certain amount of the Spirit of God, perhaps comparing the amount we have with that which we think others have, but rather toreceive God the Holy Spirit, who is a Person. But this truth of His personality is to be kept in balance by the companion truth that He is God, and in conceiving Him as a person we must not put the limitations of human personality upon God, as though He could only indwell one person at a time, or as though one person or any number of persons could exhaustively contain Him.What is the work of God the Holy Spirit in this age? We know that we are born again by the power of the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is in every child of God (John 1:12, 13; John 3:5, 6;Rom.8:9, last clause; 1 Cor. 6-19).If the Holy Spirit is in every child of God, what result does this have in the life? What is His work in the believer? Is it the same for each believer? In what sense did the Holy Spirit come at Pentecost, and in what sense is he here in a different way from His manifestation before Pentecost?It is in answering such questions that we are in danger of building up a doctrine from experience rather than from the Word.A Bible teacher who has been mightily used in soul-winning and in stimulating other Christians to this work, dates his great success from the time when he learned that the Holy Spirit was the secret of power in service; he lacked the power, saw the need, asked for the fulness of the Holy Spirit, by faith believed that God had granted his desire, went out boldly with no reference to feeling and counted upon the fact of the Holy Spirit’s work as he gave the message to men. The results were marvelous, and continued to be as day by day he counted upon this enduement of the Spirit. Along with this experience came the inevitable longing to share it with others, for he knew that any Christianmight do as he had done; the blessed result was that many Christians through him were led into this new life of service. It was natural that this mighty man of God should take his true and Scriptural experience and build around it his doctrine of the Holy Spirit and His work for believers, interpreting the Scriptures by the experience. So he developed an inclusive doctrinal teaching that the baptism of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and to-day in the life of the individual believer, is for power in service, the evidence of the work being the results in witnessing.Another Christian worker had a longing for heart purity and a life free from any feeling of condemnation because everything was not pleasing to God. He heard a testimony from a brother who had been in a like state and had learned that it was not by effort or struggle or trying that he was to get peace and purity, but by the work of God through the Holy Spirit coming into or upon the believer and purifying the heart. As the first mentioned brother did, he asked God for this gift and then by faith believed that his prayer was answered. The result was an amazing transformation, a life of joy and liberty which was such a miracle revelation and so different from the average Christian experience that many came to him asking for the secret. He told them what had happened, and he too proceeded to put together his doctrine of the Holy Spirit and taught that every Christian who was born of the Spirit needed to seek as a second work the baptism of the Holy Spirit to bring purity of heart.There is no question that these brethren experienced the gracious power of the Holy Spirit. But they did not accurately relate those experiences to the teachings of the Word.In John 7:39 is suggested what the fundamental,primary work of the Holy Spirit was to be, and why He was able to come into the world in a new way at Pentecost. After our Lord, in the last great day of the feast, cried, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water,” the apostle explains, “But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believed on him were to receive for the Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified.”The Spirit was to be given at Pentecost in a way in which He was not given before. And it is expressly stated that the one thing needed before His being thus given was the glorifying of the Son of man.Link this with our Lord’s word in John 16:13, 14 and we have clearly revealed the connection between the glorifying of the Son of man and the work of the Spirit: “He (the Holy Spirit) shall not speak for himself.... He shall glorify me.”This is His specific work, to glorify Jesus. But how?“Nevertheless I tell you the truth: It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto you. And he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more; of judgment, because the Prince of this world hath been judged” (John 16:7-11).How is the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, of righteousness, of judgment? Notice it is conviction of one sin, not many, the one sin of rejecting the Saviour. It is one righteousness, the righteousness that Christ is. It is one judgment, the past judgment uponSatan, the completed victory over our great Adversary won by Christ.In the words “ye behold me no more,” we have the key to the marvelous truth of this revelation concerning the Holy Spirit. The only example the world had of God’s righteousness (which is the only kind of righteousness there is,) was the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of Man. When He goes to the Father how is the world to know what righteousness is? for it can behold the righteous one no more. They cannot know it by reading about it. There is one way, and one way only to reveal righteousness, that is in a human being living a righteous life. To secure this Jesus Christ the righteous One must be manifest in the life. “They see me no more. They must know righteousness by looking atyou. I have been the light of the world while in it. Now you, having become sons of light, are to be the light of the world” (John 12:23, 31, 35, 36; John 17:1, 22).This is how the Holy Spirit glorifies Christ, by crowning Him Lord in the life, and manifesting the Son of man in each of His brethren. The world is convicted of sin by seeing the meaning of rejecting the Saviour as revealed in the man who accepts Him. The world is convicted of righteousness, and the difference between God’s righteousness and man’s morality, by seeing a righteous man. The world is convicted of the judgment of the prince of this world by seeing a life set free from the power of Satan.This is why the disciples had to wait at Pentecost, not wait to get themselves into a certain receptive spiritual state, but wait till the Son of man was glorified and the Holy Spirit was sent forth. They did not need further knowledge of the facts about Christ the Saviour. But before they became witnesses to JesusChrist, they themselves must become living messages, living witnesses, by having Jesus Christ revealedin them. This is what the Holy Spirit did, and this is what would be impossible without the Holy Spirit given in this new way.Some one has well said that the Holy Spirit is for the servant, rather than for the service. The service and the life is the normal outflow when the servant, the man himself, has been filled with the Holy Spirit.The fulness of the Spirit, this new work of the Spirit for the believer, is just the Christ life manifested in the believer. This is the fruit of the Spirit, “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control” (Gal.5:22, 23). This is the love of God shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit given unto us (Rom.5:5). This is the earnest of ourinheritance—thehope of glory that puts not to shame (Eph.1:13, 14;Rom.5:1, 5). This is the transforming power for growth in grace (2 Cor.3:18). This is the thirteenth of First Corinthians made real in our experience, the love which is the fulfilling of the law.The Holy Spirit convicts and comforts. He convicts the world, and also the believer when he walks after the world. He comforts the saints, and we have noted something of what this means. The Holy Spirit makes possible the life of victory in Christ. The fulness of the Spirit, walking in the Spirit, the Spirit indwelling the life (that is, controlling it), are all other ways of saying, the life that is Christ, the Victorious Life, the life kept from sinning, the Christ-controlled life.The Holy Spirit gives distinct gifts for worship and service, he works miracles, he does many things for the believer. But these things which he does for different believers, dividing to each severally even as Hewill, must be kept distinct from the one central purpose which is the same for every believer, namely the manifesting of Christ in the life (Gal.3:5; 1 Cor. 12 to 14;Eph.4:14-16).And the one proof that Christ is not manifested, issin. Thus victory over sin is central in the work of the Spirit in our salvation.We have asked and briefly answered two questions concerning the Holy Spirit: “Who is He, and what does He do?” “Who has Him, and what do they do?” There remains a third question, the answer to which determines whether His miracle working power shall be available in present experience: “Has He me?”The Holy Spirit may be in a believer, and yet not controlling the life. This is the meaning of the exhortation to Christians in Ephesians 5:18: “Be filled with the Spirit.” These believers were born of the Spirit and sealed with the Spirit (Eph.1:13), yet there was the possibility of their not being filled with the Spirit. This is the meaning of the charge, “Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh” (Gal5:6). There was a possibility of walking after the flesh. So in Romans 8:4 Paul declares that the righteous requirement of the law is “fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” This is the life of victory, lived in the power of the Spirit. And this is the life which a believer may effectually hinder by his own will in keeping from yielding to the control of the Spirit, whose control means the manifesting of Christ.The Christian who is ready to yield completely to Christ may in the very moment of yielding trust Christ for the fulness of the Spirit, knowing that His fruit in life and service is now being produced. The simple condition of surrender and faith for victory is what gives the Holy Spirit sway in the life.What relation has such a crisis of the fulness of the Spirit of regeneration? Is it a crisis that necessarily must follow the crisis of the new birth? The answer is clearly given in Galatians 5:25. “If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk.” If we have eternal life by the miracle work of the Holy Spirit, by that same miracle power let us live our daily lives moment by moment. There would not need to be a crisis after conversion if we stayed in the place of abiding where we started, in full surrender and trust.The message of Galatians 5:25, in terms of the Holy Spirit’s work, is precisely the message of Colossians 2:6 in terms of Christ: “As ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.” In normal regeneration the child of God is not only born of the Spirit, but filled with the Spirit. Thousands testify that in that moment their heart was filled with love, the fruit of the Spirit was produced all at once in the life. God’s plan is that such a life should abide in Christ, walking in the Spirit. Only one thing can interrupt such abiding and that is assertion of self, which is sin, or walking after the flesh. It is because sin has entered that Christians need the crisis to get back to where they were, or where they might have been, in the moment of regeneration.It is Jesus the Baptist who baptizes with the Holy Spirit those who believe in Him, the Saviour. And it is Jesus, the Son of man, who is glorified by the Holy Spirit as He manifests Him in the life yielded to His control.Have thine own way, Lord. Have thine own way.Hold o’er my being absolute sway.Fill with thy Spirit, till all shall seeChrist only, always, living in me.
Ifthe Victorious Life is “the life that is Christ,” lived in the power of the risen Christ dwelling in the heart, what is the work of the Holy Spirit in such a life? Are Christians who pray for, or seek, the “fullness of the Spirit,” or the “baptism of the Spirit” or the “receiving of the Spirit,” asking for something different from the life of victory in Christ?
The answer to such questions reveals the beautiful unity of God’s plan of salvation, in which each Person of the Godhead has His perfect work but in which our Lord Jesus Christ has ever the pre-eminence till the work of salvation is completed. We may approach the truth from teaching concerning the Holy Spirit, but it is Christ who will be exalted. Or we may experience resurrection life through learning of the truth concerning the indwelling Christ, but it is the Holy Spirit who makes possible that experience in the life.
The Holy Spirit is God. If we start with this fact, and stay with it, we shall be saved from much confusion as to the Holy Spirit’s office. If he is God, we cannot limit Him, and we cannot confine Him to this or that manifestation of His power.
The Holy Spirit is not merely a manifestation of God; HeisGod. And one Person of the trinity is never present without the others. While the Holy Spirit has a distinct work in the believer, this work is never disassociated from the other Persons in the Godhead. The Father and the Son and the Spirit all dwell with us (John 14:17, 23;1 Cor.6:19;2 Cor.13:5).
The Holy Spirit is a Person. We are not to seek a quantitative appropriation of a certain amount of the Spirit of God, perhaps comparing the amount we have with that which we think others have, but rather toreceive God the Holy Spirit, who is a Person. But this truth of His personality is to be kept in balance by the companion truth that He is God, and in conceiving Him as a person we must not put the limitations of human personality upon God, as though He could only indwell one person at a time, or as though one person or any number of persons could exhaustively contain Him.
What is the work of God the Holy Spirit in this age? We know that we are born again by the power of the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is in every child of God (John 1:12, 13; John 3:5, 6;Rom.8:9, last clause; 1 Cor. 6-19).
If the Holy Spirit is in every child of God, what result does this have in the life? What is His work in the believer? Is it the same for each believer? In what sense did the Holy Spirit come at Pentecost, and in what sense is he here in a different way from His manifestation before Pentecost?
It is in answering such questions that we are in danger of building up a doctrine from experience rather than from the Word.
A Bible teacher who has been mightily used in soul-winning and in stimulating other Christians to this work, dates his great success from the time when he learned that the Holy Spirit was the secret of power in service; he lacked the power, saw the need, asked for the fulness of the Holy Spirit, by faith believed that God had granted his desire, went out boldly with no reference to feeling and counted upon the fact of the Holy Spirit’s work as he gave the message to men. The results were marvelous, and continued to be as day by day he counted upon this enduement of the Spirit. Along with this experience came the inevitable longing to share it with others, for he knew that any Christianmight do as he had done; the blessed result was that many Christians through him were led into this new life of service. It was natural that this mighty man of God should take his true and Scriptural experience and build around it his doctrine of the Holy Spirit and His work for believers, interpreting the Scriptures by the experience. So he developed an inclusive doctrinal teaching that the baptism of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and to-day in the life of the individual believer, is for power in service, the evidence of the work being the results in witnessing.
Another Christian worker had a longing for heart purity and a life free from any feeling of condemnation because everything was not pleasing to God. He heard a testimony from a brother who had been in a like state and had learned that it was not by effort or struggle or trying that he was to get peace and purity, but by the work of God through the Holy Spirit coming into or upon the believer and purifying the heart. As the first mentioned brother did, he asked God for this gift and then by faith believed that his prayer was answered. The result was an amazing transformation, a life of joy and liberty which was such a miracle revelation and so different from the average Christian experience that many came to him asking for the secret. He told them what had happened, and he too proceeded to put together his doctrine of the Holy Spirit and taught that every Christian who was born of the Spirit needed to seek as a second work the baptism of the Holy Spirit to bring purity of heart.
There is no question that these brethren experienced the gracious power of the Holy Spirit. But they did not accurately relate those experiences to the teachings of the Word.
In John 7:39 is suggested what the fundamental,primary work of the Holy Spirit was to be, and why He was able to come into the world in a new way at Pentecost. After our Lord, in the last great day of the feast, cried, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water,” the apostle explains, “But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believed on him were to receive for the Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
The Spirit was to be given at Pentecost in a way in which He was not given before. And it is expressly stated that the one thing needed before His being thus given was the glorifying of the Son of man.
Link this with our Lord’s word in John 16:13, 14 and we have clearly revealed the connection between the glorifying of the Son of man and the work of the Spirit: “He (the Holy Spirit) shall not speak for himself.... He shall glorify me.”
This is His specific work, to glorify Jesus. But how?
“Nevertheless I tell you the truth: It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto you. And he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more; of judgment, because the Prince of this world hath been judged” (John 16:7-11).
How is the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, of righteousness, of judgment? Notice it is conviction of one sin, not many, the one sin of rejecting the Saviour. It is one righteousness, the righteousness that Christ is. It is one judgment, the past judgment uponSatan, the completed victory over our great Adversary won by Christ.
In the words “ye behold me no more,” we have the key to the marvelous truth of this revelation concerning the Holy Spirit. The only example the world had of God’s righteousness (which is the only kind of righteousness there is,) was the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of Man. When He goes to the Father how is the world to know what righteousness is? for it can behold the righteous one no more. They cannot know it by reading about it. There is one way, and one way only to reveal righteousness, that is in a human being living a righteous life. To secure this Jesus Christ the righteous One must be manifest in the life. “They see me no more. They must know righteousness by looking atyou. I have been the light of the world while in it. Now you, having become sons of light, are to be the light of the world” (John 12:23, 31, 35, 36; John 17:1, 22).
This is how the Holy Spirit glorifies Christ, by crowning Him Lord in the life, and manifesting the Son of man in each of His brethren. The world is convicted of sin by seeing the meaning of rejecting the Saviour as revealed in the man who accepts Him. The world is convicted of righteousness, and the difference between God’s righteousness and man’s morality, by seeing a righteous man. The world is convicted of the judgment of the prince of this world by seeing a life set free from the power of Satan.
This is why the disciples had to wait at Pentecost, not wait to get themselves into a certain receptive spiritual state, but wait till the Son of man was glorified and the Holy Spirit was sent forth. They did not need further knowledge of the facts about Christ the Saviour. But before they became witnesses to JesusChrist, they themselves must become living messages, living witnesses, by having Jesus Christ revealedin them. This is what the Holy Spirit did, and this is what would be impossible without the Holy Spirit given in this new way.
Some one has well said that the Holy Spirit is for the servant, rather than for the service. The service and the life is the normal outflow when the servant, the man himself, has been filled with the Holy Spirit.
The fulness of the Spirit, this new work of the Spirit for the believer, is just the Christ life manifested in the believer. This is the fruit of the Spirit, “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control” (Gal.5:22, 23). This is the love of God shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit given unto us (Rom.5:5). This is the earnest of ourinheritance—thehope of glory that puts not to shame (Eph.1:13, 14;Rom.5:1, 5). This is the transforming power for growth in grace (2 Cor.3:18). This is the thirteenth of First Corinthians made real in our experience, the love which is the fulfilling of the law.
The Holy Spirit convicts and comforts. He convicts the world, and also the believer when he walks after the world. He comforts the saints, and we have noted something of what this means. The Holy Spirit makes possible the life of victory in Christ. The fulness of the Spirit, walking in the Spirit, the Spirit indwelling the life (that is, controlling it), are all other ways of saying, the life that is Christ, the Victorious Life, the life kept from sinning, the Christ-controlled life.
The Holy Spirit gives distinct gifts for worship and service, he works miracles, he does many things for the believer. But these things which he does for different believers, dividing to each severally even as Hewill, must be kept distinct from the one central purpose which is the same for every believer, namely the manifesting of Christ in the life (Gal.3:5; 1 Cor. 12 to 14;Eph.4:14-16).
And the one proof that Christ is not manifested, issin. Thus victory over sin is central in the work of the Spirit in our salvation.
We have asked and briefly answered two questions concerning the Holy Spirit: “Who is He, and what does He do?” “Who has Him, and what do they do?” There remains a third question, the answer to which determines whether His miracle working power shall be available in present experience: “Has He me?”
The Holy Spirit may be in a believer, and yet not controlling the life. This is the meaning of the exhortation to Christians in Ephesians 5:18: “Be filled with the Spirit.” These believers were born of the Spirit and sealed with the Spirit (Eph.1:13), yet there was the possibility of their not being filled with the Spirit. This is the meaning of the charge, “Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh” (Gal5:6). There was a possibility of walking after the flesh. So in Romans 8:4 Paul declares that the righteous requirement of the law is “fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” This is the life of victory, lived in the power of the Spirit. And this is the life which a believer may effectually hinder by his own will in keeping from yielding to the control of the Spirit, whose control means the manifesting of Christ.
The Christian who is ready to yield completely to Christ may in the very moment of yielding trust Christ for the fulness of the Spirit, knowing that His fruit in life and service is now being produced. The simple condition of surrender and faith for victory is what gives the Holy Spirit sway in the life.
What relation has such a crisis of the fulness of the Spirit of regeneration? Is it a crisis that necessarily must follow the crisis of the new birth? The answer is clearly given in Galatians 5:25. “If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk.” If we have eternal life by the miracle work of the Holy Spirit, by that same miracle power let us live our daily lives moment by moment. There would not need to be a crisis after conversion if we stayed in the place of abiding where we started, in full surrender and trust.
The message of Galatians 5:25, in terms of the Holy Spirit’s work, is precisely the message of Colossians 2:6 in terms of Christ: “As ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.” In normal regeneration the child of God is not only born of the Spirit, but filled with the Spirit. Thousands testify that in that moment their heart was filled with love, the fruit of the Spirit was produced all at once in the life. God’s plan is that such a life should abide in Christ, walking in the Spirit. Only one thing can interrupt such abiding and that is assertion of self, which is sin, or walking after the flesh. It is because sin has entered that Christians need the crisis to get back to where they were, or where they might have been, in the moment of regeneration.
It is Jesus the Baptist who baptizes with the Holy Spirit those who believe in Him, the Saviour. And it is Jesus, the Son of man, who is glorified by the Holy Spirit as He manifests Him in the life yielded to His control.
Have thine own way, Lord. Have thine own way.Hold o’er my being absolute sway.Fill with thy Spirit, till all shall seeChrist only, always, living in me.
Have thine own way, Lord. Have thine own way.Hold o’er my being absolute sway.Fill with thy Spirit, till all shall seeChrist only, always, living in me.
Have thine own way, Lord. Have thine own way.
Hold o’er my being absolute sway.
Fill with thy Spirit, till all shall see
Christ only, always, living in me.