Chapter X · (continued 2)

2. The Fullness of the Spirit. Immediately upon his baptism we read: "And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness" (Luke 4: 1). The same record is made concerning the upper-room, disciples, immediately after the descent of the Spirit: "And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2: 4). What is here spoken of seems nothing different from what in other Scriptures is {83} called the reception of the Spirit. It is a transaction that may be repeated, and will be if we are living in the Spirit. But it is clearly an experience belonging to one who has already been converged. This comes out very plainly in the life of Paul. If according to the opinion quoted in the early part of this chapter, the reception of the Spirit is associated always and inseparably with conversion, one will reasonably ask, why a conversion so marked and so radical as that of the apostle to the Gentiles need be followed by such an experience as that named in Acts 9: 17: "And Ananias departed and entered into the house, and laying his hands on him, said Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus who appeared unto thee in the way which thou earnest, hath sent me that thou mightest receive thy sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost." We seem to have a clear allusion here to that which so constantly appears in Scripture, both in doctrine and in life, a divine something distinct from conversion and subsequent to it, which we have called the reception of the Spirit. "The enduement of power" we may well name it; for observe how constantly throughout the book of Acts mighty works and mighty utterances are connected with this qualification. "Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them" (Acts 4: 8), is the preface to one of the apostle's most powerful sermons. "And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the {84} word with boldness" (Acts 4: 31), is a similar record. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, the narrative runs, regarding the choice of deacons in Acts 6: 5. "And he, being full of the Holy Ghost," is the keynote to his great martyr-sermon. This infilling of the Spirit marks a decisive and most important crisis in the Christian life, judging from the story of the apostle's conversion, to which we have just referred.

But, as we have intimated, we are far from maintaining that this is an experience once for all, as the sealing seems to be. As the words "regeneration" and "renewal" used in Scripture mark respectively the impartation of the divine life as a perpetual possession and its increase by repeated communications, so in our sealing there is a reception of the Spirit once for all, which reception may be followed by repeated fillings. It is reasonable to conclude this since our capacity is ever increasing and our need constantly recurring, according to the beautiful saying of Godet: "Man is a vessel destined to receive God, a vessel which must be enlarged in proportion as it is filled and filled in proportion as it is enlarged."

And yet we confess here to a degree of uncertainty as to the use of terms, and as to whether the two now under consideration are identical. We may well pause therefore and lift a prayer, that since "we have received not the spirit of {85} the world but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God," this blessed Revelator and Interpreter may not only reveal to us our privilege and inheritance in the Holy Ghost, but teach us to name and distinguish the terms by which it is conveyed.

While the fact of which we are speaking seems undoubted, the exposition of it is far from being easy. Therefore we should attach no little value to a consensus of opinion on this subject from those who have thought most carefully and searched most prayerfully concerning it This is our apology for the multiplied quotations which we are introducing into this chapter, believing that the Holy Spirit is most likely to interpret himself through those who most honor him in seeking his guidance and illumination.

In a recent work upon this subject, in which careful scholarship and spiritual insight seem to be well united, the author thus states his conclusions: "It seems to me beyond question, as a matter of experience both of Christians in the present day and of the early church, as recorded by inspiration, that in addition to the gift of the Spirit received at conversion, there is another blessing corresponding in its signs and effects to the blessing received by the apostles at Pentecost—a blessing to be asked for and expected by Christians still, and to be described in language similar to that employed {86} in the book of the Acts. Whatever that blessing may be, it is in immediate connection with the Holy Ghost; and one of the terms by which we may designate it is 'to be filled with the Spirit.' As with the early Christians so with us now, the filling comes when there is special need for it. . . And there is an occasion when that blessing comes to a man for the first time. That first time is a spiritual crisis from which his future spiritual life must be dated. There may be a question as to what it is to be called, or at least by what name in Scripture we are authorized to call it. . . Whether consciously or not, it is to the fact of the Holy Spirit's coming in new power to the soul that all new life is due; and the more that this is consciously understood the more is the Holy Ghost in his due place in our hearts. It is only when he is consciously accepted in all his power that we can be said to be either 'baptized' or 'filled' with the Holy Ghost. I should like to add that it is possible to maintain that God from the first offered to his own people a higher position in this matter than they have generally been able to occupy, in that the fullness of the Spirit was and is offered to each soul at conversion; and that it is only from want of faith that subsequent outpourings of the Holy Ghost become needful."[8]

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That the filling of the Spirit belongs to us as a covenant privilege seems to be clear from the exhortation in the Epistle to the Ephesians, which is confessedly of universal application: "Be not drunken with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit" (Eph. 5: 18). The passive verb employed here is suggestive. The surrendered will, the yielded body, the emptied heart, are the great requisites to his incoming. And when he has come and filled the believer, the result is a kind of passive activity, as of one wrought upon and controlled rather than of one directing his own efforts. Under the influence of strong drink there is an outpouring of all that the evil spirit inspires—frivolity, profanity, and riotous conduct. "Be God-intoxicated men," the apostle would seem to say; "let the Spirit of God so control you that you shall pour yourself out in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." If such divine enthusiasm has its perils, we believe that they are less to be dreaded than that "moderatism" which makes the servants of God satisfied with the letter of Scripture if only that letter be skillfully and scientifically handled, rather than giving the supreme place to the Spirit as the inspirer and motor of all Christian service.

3. The Anointing of the Spirit. After the baptism and temptation we find our Lord appropriating to himself the words of the prophet, as he read them in the synagogue of Nazareth: {88} "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor" (Luke 4: 18). Twice in the Acts there is a reference to this important event in similar terms: "Thy holy servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint" (Acts 4: 27, R. V.). "Jesus of Nazareth, how that God anointed him with the Holy Ghost and with power" (Acts 10: 38). And as with the Lord so with his disciples: "Now he that establisheth us with you in Christ, and anointed us, is God" (2 Cor. 1: 21, R. V.).

A student of the Scriptures need not be told how closely the ceremony of anointing was related to all important offices and ministries of the servants of Jehovah under the old covenant. The priest was anointed that he might be holy unto the Lord (Lev. 8: 12). The king was anointed that the Spirit of the Lord might rest upon him in power (1 Sam. 16: 15). The prophet was anointed that he might be the oracle of God to the people (1 Kings 19: 16). No servant of Jehovah was deemed qualified for his ministry without this holy sanctifying touch laid upon him. Even in the cleansing of the leper this ceremony was not wanting. The priest was required to dip his right finger in the oil that was in his left hand and to put it upon the tip of the right ear, upon the thumb of the right hand, and upon the great toe of the right foot of him that was to be cleansed, the oil "upon {89} the blood of the trespass-offering" (Lev. 14: 17). Thus with divine accuracy did even the types foretell the two-fold provision for the Christian life, cleansing by the blood and hallowing by the oil—justification in Christ, sanctification in the Spirit.

If we ask now what this anointing is, the reply is obviously the Holy Spirit himself. As before he was the seal attesting us, so now he is the oil sanctifying us—the same gift described by different symbols. And as it was the Aaron who had been the first anointed who was qualified to anoint others, so with our great High Priest. It is he within the veil who gives the Spirit unto his own, that he may qualify them to be "an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession" (1 Peter 2: 9, R. V.). "But ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things" (1 John 2: 20). Christ in the New Testament is constantly called "the Holy One." And because the Spirit was sent to communicate him to the people, they are made partakers of his knowledge as well as of his holiness. If it should be said that this unction of which John speaks is miraculous, the divine illumination of evangelists and prophets who were commissioned to be the vehicles of inspired Scripture, we must call attention to other passages which connect the knowledge of God with the Holy Ghost. "For who among men knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a man which {90} is in him; even so the things of God none knoweth save the Spirit of God" (1 Cor. 2: 11, R. V.). The horse and his rider may see the same magnificent piece of statuary in the park; the one may be delighted with it as a work of human genius, but upon the dull eye of the other it makes no impression, and for the reason that it takes a human mind to appreciate the work of the human mind. Likewise only the Spirit of God can know and make known the thoughts and teachings and revelations of God. This seems to be the meaning of John in his discourse concerning the divine unction: "But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you; but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things" (1 John 2: 27).

In nothing does the enduement of the Spirit more distinctly manifest itself than in the fine discernment of revealed truth which it imparts. As in service, the contrast between working in the power of the Spirit and in the energy of the flesh is easily discernible, even more clearly in knowledge and teaching is the contrast between the tuition of learning and the intuition of the Spirit. While we should not undervalue the former, it is striking to note how the Bible puts the weightier emphasis on the latter; so that really the unspiritual hearer is to be accounted less blameworthy for not discerning the truth than the intellectual preacher is for {91} expecting him to do so. When, for example, one attempts with the utmost learning to convince an unbeliever of the deity of Christ and fails, the word of Scripture to him is: "No man is able to say 'Lord Jesus' save in the Holy Ghost" (1 Cor. 12: 3).

The Spirit of Jesus can alone reveal to men the lordship of Jesus, and this key of knowledge the Holy Ghost will never put into the hand of any man however learned. As it is written that Christ is the "raying forth" of the Father's glory, and "the express image of his person" (Heb. 1: 3), thus by a beautiful figure reminding us that as we can only see the sun in the rays of the sun, so we can only know God in Jesus Christ, who is the manifestation of God. It is so likewise between the second and third Persons of the Trinity. Christ is the image of the invisible God; the Holy Ghost is the invisible image of Christ. As Jesus manifested the Father outwardly, the Spirit manifests Jesus inwardly, forming him within us as the hidden man of the heart, imaging him to the spirit by an interior impression which no intellectual instruction, however diligent, can effect.

In his profound discourse concerning the "unction" and accompanying illumination, John was only expounding by the Spirit what Jesus had said before his departure: "Howbeit, when he the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all {92} truth; he shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you" (John 16: 13). "The Spirit of truth"—How much instruction and suggestion is conveyed by this term! As he is called "the Spirit of Christ," as revealing Christ in his suffering and glory, so he is called "the Spirit of truth," as manifesting the truth in all its depths and heights. As impossible as it is that we should know the person of Christ without the Spirit of Christ who reveals him, so impossible it is that we should know the truth as it is in Jesus without the Spirit of truth who is appointed to convey it. "The Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive" (John 14: 17)—We must come to Christ before the Spirit can come to us. "The Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father" (John 15: 26)—He can only teach us in intelligent sonship to cry "Abba, Father." "The Spirit of truth . . . shall guide you into all truth" (John 16: 13). Divine knowledge is all and altogether in his power to communicate, and without his illumination it must be hidden from our understanding.

Thus we have had the enduement of the Spirit presented to us under three aspects—sealing, filling, and anointing—all of which terms, so far as we can understand, signify the same thing—the gift of the Holy Ghost appropriated through faith. Each of these terms is connected with some special {93} Divine endowment—the seal with assurance and consecration; the filling with power; and the anointing with knowledge. All these gifts are wrapt up in the one gift in which they are included, and without whom we are excluded from their possession.

While thus we conclude that it is a Christian's privilege and duty to claim a distinct anointing of the Spirit to qualify him for his work, we would be careful not to prescribe any stereotyped exercises through which one must necessarily pass in order to possess it. It is easy to cite cases of decisive, vivid, and clearly marked experience of the Spirit's enduement, as in the lives of Dr. Finney, James Brainard Taylor, and many others. And instead of discrediting these experiences—so definite as to time and so distinct as to accompanying credentials—we would ask the reader to study them, and observe the remarkable effects which followed in the ministry of those who enjoyed them. The lives of many of the co-laborers with Wesley and Whitefield give a striking confirmation of the doctrine which we are defending. Years of barren ministry, in which the gospel was preached with orthodox correctness and literary finish, followed, after the Holy Spirit had been recognized and appropriated, by evangelistic pastorates of the most fervent type, such is the history of not a few of these mighty men of God.

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Let not this great subject be embarrassed by too minute theological definitions on the one hand, nor by the too exacting demand for striking spiritual exercises on the other, lest we put upon simple souls a burden greater than they can bear. Nevertheless we cannot emphasize too strongly the divine crisis in the soul which a full reception of the Holy Ghost may bring. "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you" (Gal. 4: 19), writes the apostle to those who had already believed on the Son of God. Whatever he may have meant in this fervent saying, we doubt not that the deepest yearning of the Spirit is for the informing of Christ in the heart, in order to that outward conformity to Christ which is the supreme end of Christian nurture. If we conceive of the Christian life as only a gradual growth in grace, is there not danger that we come to regard this growth as both invisible and inevitable, and so take little responsibility for its accomplishment? Let the believer receive the Holy Ghost by a definite act of faith for his consecration, as he received Christ by faith for his justification, and may he not be sure that he is in a safe and scriptural way of acting? We know of no plainer form of stating the matter than to speak of it as a simple acceptance by faith, the faith which is

An affirmation and an act, Which bids eternal truth be present fact.

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It is a fact that Christ has made atonement for sin; in conversion faith appropriates this fact in order to our justification. It is a fact that the Holy Ghost has been given; in consecration faith appropriates this fact for our sanctification. One who writes upon this subject with a scholarship evidently illuminated by a deep spiritual tuition, says: "If a reference to personal experience may be permitted, I may indeed here 'set my seal.' Never shall I forget the gain to conscious faith and peace which came to my own soul, not long after a first decisive and appropriating view of the crucified Lord as the sinner's sacrifice of peace, from a more intelligent and conscious hold upon the living and most gracious personality of the Spirit through whose mercy the soul had got that blessed view. It was a new development of insight into the love of God. It was a new contact as it were with the inner and eternal movements of redeeming goodness and power, a new discovery in divine resources."[9]

Well is our doctrine described in these italicised words: "A contact with the inner movements of Divine power." The energy of the Spirit appropriated, even as with uplifted finger the electric car touches the current which is moving just above it in the wire and is borne irresistibly on by it.—Thus does the power which is eternally for us become a power within us; the law of Sinai, with {96} its tables of stone, is replaced by "the law of the Spirit of life" in the fleshly tables of the heart; the outward commandment is exchanged for an inward decalogue; hard duty by holy delight, that henceforth the Christian life may be "all in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, for the glory of God."

[1] Rev. E. Boys, "Filled with the Spirit," p. 87.

[2] It is assumed by some that because those that walked with Christ of old received the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire at Pentecost, more than eighteen hundred years ago, therefore all believers now have received the same. As well might the apostles, when first called, have concluded that because at his baptism the Spirit like a dove rested upon Christ, therefore they had equally received the same blessing. Surely the Spirit has been given and the work in Christ wrought for all; but to enter into possession, to be enlightened and made partakers of the Holy Ghost, there must be a personal application to the Lord, etc.—Andrew Jukes, "The New Man."

[3] William Kelly, "Lectures on the New Testament Doctrine of the Holy Spirit," p. 161.

[4] It is a great mistake into which some have fallen, to suppose that the results of Pentecost were chiefly miraculous and temporary. The effect of such a view is to keep spiritual influences out of sight; and it will be well ever to hold fast the assurance that a wide, deep, and perpetual spiritual blessing in the church is that which above all things else was secured by the descent of the Spirit after Christ was glorified.—Dr. J. Elder Cumming, "Through the Eternal Spirit."

[5] It will be observed that the inscription on the seal is substantially the same as that upon the forehead of the High Priest, [Hebrew characters]—HOLINESS TO THE LORD (Exod. 39: 30).

[Transcriber's note: I have not attempted to insert the transliterated Hebrew characters in the above footnote. As best my research can tell me, they are, from left to right, H (het, hei), V/O/U (vav), H (het, hei), Y (yod, yud), L (lamed), a blank space, S/Sh (shin), D (dalet) or R (resh, reish), and Q (qof/kuf).]

[6] The allusion to the seal as a pledge of purchase would be peculiarly intelligible to the Ephesians, for Ephesus was a maritime city, and an extensive trade in timber was carried on there by the shipmasters of the neighboring ports. The method of purchase was this: The merchant, after selecting his timber, stamped it with his own signet, which was an acknowledged sign of ownership. He often did not carry off his possession at the time; it was left in the harbor with other floats of timber; but it was chosen, bought, and stamped; and in due time the merchant sent a trusty agent with the signet, who finding that timber which bore a corresponding impress, claimed and brought it away for the master's use. Thus the Holy Spirit impresses on the soul now the image of Jesus Christ; and this is the sure pledge of the everlasting inheritance.—E. H. Bickersteth, "The Spirit of Life," p. 176.

[7] John Owen, D. D., "Discourse Concerning the Spirit," pp. 406, 407.

[8] "Through the Eternal Spirit," by James Elder Cumming, D.D., pp. 146, 147.

[9] "Veni Creator Spiritus," by Principal H. C. G. Moule, p. 13.

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VI

THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIRIT

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"In his intimate union with his Son, the Holy Spirit is the unique organ by which God wills to communicate to man his own life, the supernatural life, the divine life—that is to say, his holiness, his power, his love, his felicity. To this end the Son works outwardly, the Holy Spirit inwardly."—Pastor G. F. Tophel.

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VI

THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIRIT

The familiar benediction which invokes upon us the "communion of the Holy Ghost" has probably a deeper meaning in it than has generally been recognized. The word "communion"—choinonia—signifies the having in common. It is used of the fellowship of believers one with another, and also of their mutual fellowship with God. The Holy Spirit dwelling in us is the agent through whom this community of life and love is effected and maintained. "And truly our fellowship," says John, "is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ" (1 John 1: 3). But this having in common with the first two persons of the Godhead were only possible through the communion of the Holy Ghost, the third person. In his promise of the Comforter, Jesus said: "He shall take of mine and show it unto you." As the Son while on earth communicated to men the spiritual riches of the invisible Father, so the Spirit now communicates to us the hidden things of the invisible Son; and if we were required to describe in a word the present office-work of the Holy Ghost, we should say that it is to make true in us that which is already true for us in {100} our glorified Lord. All light and life and warmth are stored up for us in the sun; but these can only reach us through the atmosphere which stands between us and that sun as the medium of communication; even so in Christ are "hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," and by the Holy Spirit these are made over to us. It will be our endeavor in this chapter to count up our hid treasures in Christ, and to consider the Spirit in his various offices of communication.

1. The Spirit of Life: Our Regeneration. Not until our Lord took his place at God's right hand did he assume his full prerogative as life-giver to us. He was here in the flesh for our death; he took on him our nature that he might in himself crucify our Adam-life and put it away. But when he rose from the dead and sat down on his Father's throne, he became the life-giver to all his mystical body, which is the church. To talk of being saved by the earthly life of Jesus is to know Christ only "after the flesh." True, the apostle says that "being reconciled" by Christ's death, "much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his life." But he here refers plainly to his glorified life. And Jesus, looking forward to the time when he should have risen from the dead, says: "Because I live, ye shall live also." Christ on the throne is really the heart of the church, and every regeneration is a pulse-beat of that heart in souls begotten from above {101} through the Holy Spirit. The new birth therefore is not a change of nature as it is sometimes defined; it is rather the communication of the Divine nature, and the Holy Spirit is now the Mediator through whom this life is transmitted. If we take our Lord's words to Nicodemus: "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God," and press the "again" anothen back to its deepest significance, it becomes very instructive. "Born from above," say some. And very true to fact is this saying. Regeneration is not our natural life carried up to its highest point of attainment, but the Divine life brought down to its lowest point of condescension, even to the heart of fallen man. John, in speaking of Jesus as the life-giver, calls him "he that cometh from above" (3: 31); and Jesus, in speaking to the degenerate sons of Abraham, says: "Ye are from beneath, I am from above" (John 8: 23). It has been the constant dream and delusion of men that they could rise to heaven by the development and improvement of their natural life. Jesus by one stroke of revelation destroys this hope, telling his hearer that unless he has been begotten of God who is above as truly as he has been begotten of his father on earth, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Others make these words of our Lord signify "born from the beginning." There must be a resumption of life de novo, a return to the original {102} source and fountain of being. To find this it is not enough that we go back to the creation-beginning revealed in Genesis; we must return to the precreation-beginning revealed in John, the book of re-genesis. In the opening of Genesis we find Adam, created holy, now fallen through temptation, his face averted from God and leading the whole human race after him into sin and death. In the opening of the Gospel of John we find the Son of God in holy fellowship with the Father. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward God", pros ton theon—not merely proceeding from God, but tending toward God by eternal communion. Conversion restores man to this lost attitude: "Ye turned to God, pros ton theon, from idols to serve the living and true God" (1 Thess. 1: 9). Regeneration restores man to his forfeited life, the unfallen life of the Son of God, the life which has never wavered from steadfast fellowship with the Father. "I give unto them eternal life," says Jesus. Is eternal life without end? Yes; and just as truly without beginning. It is uncreated being in distinction from all-created being; it is the I-am life of God in contrast to the I-become life of all human souls. By spiritual birth we acquire a divine heredity as truly as by natural birth we acquire a human heredity.

In the condensed antithesis with which our Lord concludes his demand for the new birth, we have both the philosophy and the justification of his {103} doctrine: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I say unto you, Ye must be born anew" (John 3: 7, R. V.). By no process of evolution, however prolonged, can the natural man be developed into the spiritual man; by no process of degeneration can the spiritual man deteriorate into the natural man. These two are from a totally different stock and origin; the one is from beneath, the other is from above. There is but one way through which the relation of sonship can be established, and that is by begetting. That God has created all men does not constitute them his sons in the evangelical sense of that word. The sonship on which the New Testament dwells so constantly is based absolutely and solely on the experience of the new birth, while the doctrine of universal sonship rests either upon a daring denial or a daring assumption—the denial of the universal fall of man through sin, or the assumption of the universal regeneration of man through the Spirit. In either case the teaching belongs to "another gospel," the recompense of whose preaching is not a beatitude but an anathema.[1]

The contrast between the two lives and the way {104} in which the partnership—the choinonia—with the new is effected, is told in that deep saying of Peter: "Whereby he hath granted us his precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become partakers—choinonia—of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption which is in the world by lust" (2 Pet. 1: 4, R. V.). Here are the two streams of life contrasted:

1. The corruption in the world through lust.

2. The Divine nature which is in the world through the incarnation.

Here is the Adam-life into which we are brought by natural birth; and over against it the Christ-life into which we are brought by spiritual birth. From the one we escape, of the other we partake. The source and issue of the one are briefly summarized: "Lust when it hath conceived bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death." The Jordan is a fitting symbol of our natural life, rising in a lofty elevation and from pure springs, but plunging steadily down till it pours itself into that Dead Sea from which there is no outlet: To be taken out of this stream and to be brought into the life which flows from the heart of God is man's only hope of salvation. And the method of effecting this transition is plainly stated, "through these," or by means of the precious and exceeding great promises. As in grafting, the old and degenerate stock must first be cut off and then the new inserted, so {105} in regeneration we are separated from the flesh and incorporated by the Spirit. And what the scion is in grafting, the word or promise of God is in regeneration. It is the medium through which the Holy Spirit is conveyed, the germ cell in which the Divine life is enfolded. Hence the emphasis which is put in Scripture upon the appropriation of divine truth. We are told that "of his own will begat he us with the word of truth" (James 1: 18). "Having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth" (1 Peter 1: 23, R. V.).

Very deep and significant, therefore, is the saying of Jesus in respect to the regenerating power of his words, in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John; He emphasizes the contrariety between the two natures, the human and the divine, saying: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing." And then he adds: "The words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and life." As God in creation breathed into man the breath of life and he became a living soul, so the Lord Jesus by the word of his mouth, which is the breath of life, recreates man and makes him alive unto God. And not life only, but likeness as well, is thus imparted. "So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him," is the simple story of the origin of an innocent race. Then follows the temptation and the fall, and then the story of the {106} descent of a ruined humanity: "And Adam begot a son in his own likeness, after his image."

And yet how wide the gulf between these two origins. The notion is persistent and incurable in the human heart, that whatever variation there may have been from the original type, education and training can reshape the likeness of Adam to the likeness of God. "As the twig is bent the tree is inclined," says the popular proverb. True; but though a crooked sapling may be developed into the upright oak, no bending or manipulation can ever so change the species of the tree as to enable men to gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. Here again the dualism of Jesus Christ's teaching is distinctly recognized. "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." And what is the remedy for a corrupt tree? The cutting off of the old and the bringing in of a new scion and stock. The life of God can alone beget the likeness of God; the divine type is wrapped up in the same germ which holds the Divine nature. Therefore in regeneration we are said to have "put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him" (Col. 3: 10), and "which after God hath been created in . . . true holiness" (Eph. 4: 24).

In a word, the lost image of God is not restamped upon us, but renewed within us. Christ our life was "begotten of the Holy Ghost," and he became {107} the fount and origin of life henceforth for all his church. This communication of the divine life from Christ to the soul through the Holy Spirit is a hidden transaction, but so great in its significance and issues that one has well called it "the greatest of all miracles." As in the origin of our natural life we are made in secret and curiously wrought, much more in our spiritual. But the issue has to do with the farthest eternity. "As when the Lord was born the world still went on its old way, little conscious that one had come who should one day change and rule all things, so when the new man is framed within, the old life for a while goes on much as before; the daily calling, and the earthly cares, and too often old lusts and habits also, still engross us; a worldly eye sees little new, while yet the life which shall live forever has been quickened within and a new man been formed who shall inherit all."[2]

2. The Spirit of Holiness: Our Sanctification. "According to the Spirit of holiness" Christ "was declared to be the Son of God in power by the resurrection from the dead" (Rom. 1: 4). How striking the antithesis between our Lord's two natures, as revealed in this passage, Son of David as to the flesh, Son of God as to the Spirit. And "as he is so are we in this world." We who are regenerate have two natures, the one derived from Adam, the other {108} derived from Christ, and our sanctification consists in the double process of mortification and vivification, the deadening and subduing of the old and the quickening and developing of the new. In other words, what was wrought in Christ who was "put to death in the flesh but quickened in the spirit" is rewrought in us through the constant operation of the Holy Ghost, and thus the cross and the resurrection extend their sway over the entire life of the Christian. Consider these two experiences.

Mortification is not asceticism. It is not a self-inflicted compunction, but a Christ-inflicted crucifixion. Our Lord was done with the cross when on Calvary he cried: "It is finished." But where he ended each disciple must begin: "If any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it" (Matt. 16: 24, 25). These words, so constantly repeated in one form or another by our Lord, make it clear that the death-principle must be realized within us in order that the life-principle may have final and triumphant sway. It is to this truth which every disciple is solemnly committed in his baptism: "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by {109} the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Rom. 6: 3, 4). Baptism is the monogram of the Christian; by it every believer is sealed and certified as a participant in the death and life of Christ; and the Holy Spirit has been given to be the Executor of the contract thus made at the symbolic grave of Christ.

In considering the great fact of the believer's death in Christ to sin and the law, we must not confound what the Scriptures clearly distinguish. There are three deaths in which we have part:

1. Death in sin, our natural condition.

2. Death for sin, our judicial condition.

3. Death to sin, our sanctified condition.

1. Death in sin. "And you . . . who were dead in trespasses and sins," "And you being dead in your sins" (Eph. 2: 1; Col. 2: 13). This is the condition in which we are by nature, as participants in the fall and ruin into which the transgression of our first parents has plunged the race. It is a condition in which we are under moral insensibility to the claims of God's holiness and love; and under the sentence of eternal punishment from the law which we have broken. In this state of death in sin Christ found the whole world when he came to be our Saviour.

2. Death for sin. "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ" (Rom. 7: 4). This is the condition into {110} which Christ brought us by his sacrifice upon the cross. He endured the sentence of a violated law on our behalf, and therefore we are counted as having endured it in him. What he did for us is reckoned as having been done by us: "Because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died" (2 Cor. 5: 14, R. V.). Being one with Christ through faith, we are identified with him on the cross: "I have been crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2: 20, R. V.). This condition of death for sin having been effected for us by our Saviour, we are held legally or judicially free from the penalty of a violated law, if by our personal faith we will consent to the transaction.

3. Death to sin. "Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 6: 11, R. V.). This is the condition of making true in ourselves what is already true for us in Christ, of rendering practical what is now judicial; in other words, of being dead to the power of sin in ourselves, as we are already dead to the penalty of sin through Jesus Christ. As it is written in the Epistle to the Colossians: "For ye died," judicially in Christ, "mortify"—make dead practically—"therefore your members which are upon the earth" (Col. 3: 2, 5, R. V.). It is this condition which the Holy Spirit is constantly effecting in us if we will have it so. "If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body {111} ye shall live" (Rom. 8: 13). This is not self-deadening, as the Revised Version seems to suggest by its decapitalizing of the word "Spirit." Self is not powerful enough to conquer self, the human spirit to get the victory over the human flesh. That were like a drowning man with his right hand laying hold on his left hand, only that both may sink beneath the waves. "Old Adam is too strong for young Melancthon," said the Reformer. It is the Spirit of God overcoming our fleshly nature by his indwelling life, on whom is our sole dependence. Our principal care therefore must be to "walk in the Spirit" and "be filled with the Spirit," and all the rest will come spontaneously and inevitably. As the ascending sap in the tree crowds off the dead leaves which in spite of storm and frost cling to the branches all winter long, so does the Holy Ghost within us, when allowed full sway, subdue and expel the remnants of our sinful nature.

One cannot fail to see that asceticism is an absolute inversion of the Divine order, since it seeks life through death instead of finding death through life. No degree of mortification can ever bring us to sanctification. We are to "put off the old man with his deeds." But how? By "putting on the new man who is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8: 2), {112} writes Paul. It is a pointed statement of the case which one makes in describing the transition from the old to the new in his own experience, from the former life of perpetual defeat to the present life of victory through Christ. "Once it was a constant breaking off, now it is a daily bringing in," he says. That is, the former striving was directed to being rid of the inveterate habits and evil tendencies of the old nature—its selfishness, its pride, its lust, and its vanity. Now the effort is to bring in the Spirit, to drink in his divine presence, to breathe, as a holy atmosphere, his supernatural life. The indwelling of the Spirit can alone effect the exclusion of sin. This will appear if we consider what has been called "the expulsive power of a new affection." "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world," says the Scripture. But all experience proves that loving not is only possible through loving, the worldly affection being overcome by the heavenly.

And we find this method clearly exhibited in the word. "The love of the Spirit" (Rom. 15: 30) is given us for overcoming the world. The divine life is the source of the divine love. Therefore "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." Because we are by nature so wholly without heavenly affection, God, through the indwelling Spirit, gives us his own love with which to love himself. Herein {113} is the highest credential of discipleship: "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13: 35). As Christ manifested to the world the love of the Father, so are we to manifest the love of Christ—a manifestation, however, which is only possible because of our possessorship of a common life. As one has truly said concerning our Saviour's command to his disciples to love one another: "It is a command which would be utterly idle and futile were it not that he, the ever-loving One, is willing to put his own love within me. The command is really no more than to be a branch of the true vine. I am to cease from my own living and loving, and yield myself to the expression of Christ's love."

And what is true of the love of Christ is true of the likeness of Christ. How is the likeness acquired? Through contemplation and imitation? So some have taught. And it is true, if only the indwelling Spirit is behind all, beneath all, and effectually operative in all. As it is written: "But we all with unveiled face, reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3: 18, R. V.). It is only the Spirit of the Lord dwelling within us that can fashion us to the image of the Lord set before us. Who is sufficient by external imitation of Christ to become {114} conformed to the likeness of Christ? Imagine one without genius and devoid of the artist's training sitting down before Raphael's famous picture of the Transfiguration and attempting to reproduce it. How crude and mechanical and lifeless his work would be! But if such a thing were possible that the spirit of Raphael should enter into the man and obtain the mastery of his mind and eye and hand, it would be entirely possible that he should paint this masterpiece; for it would simply be Raphael reproducing Raphael. And this in a mystery is what is true of the disciple filled with the Holy Ghost. Christ, who is "the image of the invisible God," is set before him as his divine pattern, and Christ by the Spirit dwells within him as a divine life, and Christ is able to image forth Christ from the interior life to the outward example.

Of course likeness to Christ is but another name for holiness, and when, at the resurrection, we awake satisfied with his likeness (Ps. 17: 15), we shall be perfected in holiness. This is simply saying that sanctification is progressive and not, like conversion, instantaneous. And yet we must admit the force of what a devout and thoughtful writer says as to the danger of regarding it as only a gradual growth. If a Christian looks upon himself as "a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season," he judges rightly. But to conclude therefore that his growth will be as {115} irresistible as that of the tree, coming as a matter of course simply because he has by regeneration been planted in Christ, is a grave mistake. The disciple is required to be consciously and intelligently active in his own growth, as a tree is not, "to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure." And when we say "active" we do not mean self-active merely, for "which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto his stature?" asks Jesus (Matt. 6: 27, R. V.). But we must surrender ourselves to the divine action by living in the Spirit and praying in the Spirit and walking in the Spirit, all of which conditions are as essential to our development in holiness, as the rain and the sunshine are to the growth of the oak. It is possible that through a neglect and grieving of the Spirit a Christian may be of smaller stature in his age than he was in his spiritual infancy, his progress being a retrogression rather than an advance. Therefore in saying that sanctification is progressive let us beware of concluding that it is inevitable.

Moreover, as candid inquirers, we must ask what of truth and of error there may be in the doctrine of "instantaneous sanctification," which many devout persons teach and profess to have proved. If the conception is that of a state of sinless perfection into which the believer has been suddenly lifted and of deliverance from a sinful nature which has been suddenly eradicated, we must {116} consider this doctrine as dangerously untrue. But we do consider it possible that one may experience a great crisis in his spiritual life, in which there is such a total self-surrender to God and such an infilling of the Holy Spirit, that he is freed from the bondage of sinful appetites and habits, and enabled to have constant victory over self, instead of suffering constant defeat. In saying this, what more do we affirm than is taught in that scripture: "Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Gal. 5: 16).

Divine truth as revealed in Scripture seems often to lie between two extremes. It is emphatically so in regard to this question. What a paradox it is that side by side in the Epistle of John we should have the strongest affirmation of the Christian's sinfulness: "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us"; and the strongest affirmation of his sinlessness: "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God" (1 John 1: 8; 3: 9). Now heresy means a dividing or choosing, and almost all of the gravest errors have arisen from adopting some extreme statement of Scripture to the rejection of the other extreme. If we regard the doctrine of sinless perfection as a heresy, we regard contentment with sinful imperfection as a greater heresy. And we gravely fear that many Christians make the {117} apostle's words, "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves," the unconscious justification for a low standard of Christian living. It were almost better for one to overstate the possibilities of sanctification in his eager grasp after holiness, than to understate them in his complacent satisfaction with a traditional unholiness. Certainly it is not an edifying spectacle to see a Christian worldling throwing stones at a Christian perfectionist.

What then would be a true statement of the doctrine which we are considering, one which would embrace both extremes of statement as they appear in the Epistle of John? Sinful in self, sinless in Christ—is our answer: "In him is no sin; whosoever abideth in him sinneth not" (1 John 3: 5, 6). If through the communication of the Holy Spirit the life of Christ is constantly imparted to us, that life will prevail within us. That life is absolutely sinless, as incapable of defilement as the sunbeam which has its fount and origin in the sun. In proportion to the closeness of our abiding in him will be the completeness of our deliverance from sinning. And we doubt not that there are Christians who have yielded themselves to God in such absolute surrender, and who through the upholding power of the Spirit have been so kept in that condition of surrender, that sin has not had dominion over them. If in them the war between the flesh and the spirit has not been forever ended, there has {118} been present victory in which troublesome sins have ceased from their assaults, and "the peace of God" has ruled in the heart.

But sinning is one thing and a sinful nature is another; and we see no evidence in Scripture that the latter is ever eradicated completely while we are in the body. If we could see ourselves with God's eye, we should doubtless discover sinfulness lying beneath our most joyful moments of unsinning conduct, and the stain of our old and fallen nature so discoloring our whitest actions as to convince us that we are not yet faultless in his presence. Only let us gladly emphasize this fact, that as we inherit from Adam a nature incapable of sinlessness, we inherit from Christ a nature incapable of sinfulness. Therefore, it is written: "Whosoever is born of God cannot sin, for his seed remaineth in him." It is not the nature of the new nature to sin; it is not the law of "the law of the Spirit of life" to transgress. For the new-born man to do evil is to transgress the law of his nature as before it was to obey it. In a word, before our regeneration we lived in sin and loved it; since our regeneration we may lapse into sin but we loathe it.

3. The Spirit of Glory: Our Transfiguration. "The Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you," writes Peter (1 Peter 4: 14). Let us recall this apostle's habit of dividing the stages of redemption into these two, "the sufferings of Christ and the {119} glory that should follow," in which he seems to conceive of our Lord's mystical body, the church, as passing through and reproducing the twofold experience of its Head, in humiliation and in subsequent exaltation. Even in the time of her humiliation she has the Spirit of glory abiding on her, as the cloud of glory rested down upon the tabernacle in the wilderness during all the pilgrimage of the children of Israel. And is not Peter's saying the same as Paul's, in his picture of the suffering creation: "But ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body" (Rom. 8: 23). Not yet have we reached the consummation of our hope, at the "appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus 2: 13, R. V.); but the Spirit, through whose inworking power this great change is to be wrought, already dwells in us, giving us by his present quickening the pledge and earnest of our final glory. And so we read in another Scripture: "But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you" (Rom. 8: 11). It is not our dead bodies which are here spoken of as the objects of the Spirit's quickening, but our mortal bodies—bodies liable to death and doomed to death if the Lord {120} tarry, but not yet having experienced death. Hence the quickening referred to has to do rather with the vivifying of the living saints than the resurrection of the dead saints.

Of course the consummation of this vivifying is at the Lord's coming, when those who have died shall be raised, and those who are alive shall be transfigured; but because of the Spirit of life dwelling in us, who shall say that the process has not even now begun? To explain: "Behold I shew you a mystery," says Paul; "we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump" (1 Cor. 15: 51, 52). That is, as at Christ's coming the dead saints will be raised, so the living saints will be translated without seeing death. A change will come to them, so far as we can understand, like that which came to Jesus at his resurrection—the body glorified, all of mortal and earthly belonging to it by nature eliminated in an instant, and the Holy Ghost so completely transforming and immortalizing it that it shall become perfectly fashioned to the likeness of Christ's glorified body. But having the Spirit dwelling in us we have, even now, the first-fruits of this transformation in the daily renewing of our inward man, in the helping and healing and strengthening which sometimes comes to our bodies through the hidden life of the Holy Ghost. Sanctification is progressive, waiting to be {121} consummated in the future; so is glorification in some sense progressive, since by the presence of the Spirit we already have the earnest of the glory that is to be. As Edward Irving beautifully states it, condensing his language: "As sickness is sin apparent in the body, the presentiment of death, the forerunner of corruption, and as disease of every kind is mortality begun, so the quickening of our mortal bodies by the inward inspiration of the Spirit is the resurrection forestalled, redemption anticipated, glory begun in our humiliation."

When is sanctification completed? At death, is the answer which we find given in some creeds and manuals of theology. This may be true; but we say it not, because the Scripture saith it not. So far as we can infer from the word of God the date of our sanctification or perfection in holiness is definitely fixed at the appearing of the Lord "a second time without sin unto salvation." Our sanctification, now going on, is glory begun in us; our glorification then ushered in will be glory completed in us. The Spirit of glory now working in us brings forward and already works within us the beginning of the perfect life. Because we have been made "partakers of the Holy Ghost" we have thereby "tasted the powers of the age to come" (Heb. 6: 4, 5, R. V.), that age of complete deliverance from sin and sickness and death. But at most we have only tasted as yet; we have not {122} drunk fully into the fountain of immortal life. It is at Christ's advent that this blessed consummation is fixed: "To the end he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints" (1 Thess. 3: 13, R. V.). Not simply blameless but faultless, seems to be the condition here foretold, since it is unblamable in the sphere and element of holiness.

And with this agrees another text in the same epistle: "And the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. 5: 23, R. V.). The time appointed for the consummation of this blameless wholeness is at the Saviour's advent in glory. And how suggestive the order maintained in naming the threefold man: "Your spirit, soul, and body." Our sanctification moves from within outward. It begins with the spirit, which is the holy of holies; the Spirit of God acting first on the spirit of man in renewing grace, then upon the soul, till at last it reaches the outer court of the body, at the resurrection and translation. When the body is glorified, then only will sanctification be consummated, for then only will the whole man, spirit, soul, and body, have come under the Spirit's perfecting power.

We may see the difference between progressive {123} sanctification and perfected sanctification, or glorification, by comparing familiar texts. One already has been quoted in this chapter: "We all, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. 3: 18). Here are degrees of progress "from glory to glory," and it is a progress in the glorified life—gradual conformity to the Lord of glory, through successive stages of glory, effected by the Spirit of glory. The word-painting of the passage inevitably associates it in our thought with the great transfiguration experience of our Lord, when by a kind of rapture he was for a little while taken out of "this present evil age" (Gal. 1: 4), and translated into "the age to come," and made to taste of its powers as "he appeared in glory" (Heb. 6: 5, R. V.). So says the apostle: "Be not fashioned according to this age, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds" (Rom. 12: 2, R. V.). That is, by his inward transformation the Holy Spirit is to be daily repeating in us the Lord's glorification, separating us from the present age of sin and death and assimilating us to the age to come, with its resurrection triumph and its perfected restoration to God, when we shall be presented "faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy" (Jude 24). This is our step-by-step advancement into a predestined inheritance; and it must for the present be {124} step by step. "Of his fullness have all we received," but we can appropriate that fullness only "grace by grace" (John 1: 16). Of his righteousness we have all been made partakers, but we only advance in its possession "from faith to faith" (Rom. 1: 17). Even in passing through the valley of Baca we can make it a place of springs, going "from strength to strength" as we appear "before God in Zion" (Ps. 84: 6). Thus our growth in grace is our glory begun; but the progress is like the artist's slow and patient perfecting of his picture. Turn now to another statement: "We know that if he shall be manifested we shall be like him, for we shall see him even as he is" (1 John 3: 2, R. V.). Whatever difficulty may arise from another translation of this passage, one thought seems to be taught in the entire connection, viz., that the unveiled manifestation of God will bring the full perfection of his saints. Thus Alford sums up the meaning of the passage. As the believer, having by a knowledge of God been regenerated, "becomes more and more like God, having his seed in him, so the full and perfect accomplishment of this knowledge in the actual fruition of God himself must of necessity bring with it entire likeness to God." In a word, it seems to us that the sanctification taking place at the manifestation of our incarnate Lord will be as the instantaneous photograph compared with the Spirit's slow and patient limning of the {125} image of Christ in our present state. "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," "we shall be changed" (1 Cor. 15: 52). Then the glorified body and the glorified spirit, long divorced by sin, will be remarried. So long as this twain are separated by death, or are at war in our present earthy life, our perfection in holiness were impossible.

It is because the resurrection and translation of the saints are instantaneous that we affirm sanctification to be instantaneous at the coming of the Lord. The Scripture is always harmonious with itself, however widely separated the writers of its books by time or distance. David struck the same joyful note with John, though the learned may insist that he did not know of the resurrection. "As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness"—the seeing him as he is and being made fit to see him. "I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness"—the conformity to the Divine image at the instant sound of the resurrection trump. (Ps. 17: 15.) Perhaps we may conjecture wherein will consist the perfection of the resurrection state. We may find it in that one saying: "It is raised a spiritual body" (1 Cor. 15: 44). Now, how often the body dominates the spirit, making it do what it would not; but then, the spirit will dominate the body, making it do as it will. In a house divided against itself there can be neither perfection nor peace. Such is the condition in our present state {126} of humiliation. And not the body alone, but the immaterial within us may be at war with the divine. What does the Apostle Jude mean in his description of certain who separated themselves, saying that they are "sensual, having not the Spirit" (Jude 19). The soul, the middle factor in the man, if we may say so, instead of being in alliance with our higher nature, the spirit, takes sides with the lower, the flesh, so that instead of being spiritual we become "earthly, sensual, devilish" (James 3: 15). The whole man must be presented blameless at the coming of the Lord before we can enter upon a state of blessed perfection. Our spirit must not only rule our soul and our body, but both these must be subject to the Holy Spirit of God. Dimly and imperfectly do we thus image to ourselves the perfection of our "spiritual body." Now the body bears the spirit, a slow chariot, whose wheels are often disabled, and whose swiftest motion is but labored and tardy. Then the spirit will bear the body, carrying it as on wings of thought whithersoever it will. The Holy Ghost, by his divine inworking will, has completed in us the Divine likeness, and perfected over us the Divine dominion. The human body will now be in sovereign subjection to the human spirit, and the human spirit to the divine Spirit, and God will be all and in all.

[1] Milton probably gives the true genesis of this doctrine in these words, which he puts into the mouth of Satan:

"The son of God I also am or was; And if I was, I am; relation stands; All men are sons of God."

[2] Andrew Jukes, "The New Man," p. 53.

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VII

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SPIRIT

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"The Holy Ghost from the day of Pentecost has occupied an entirely new position. The whole administration of the affairs of the Church of Christ has since that day devolved upon him. . . That day was the installation of the Holy Spirit as the Administrator of the Church in all things, which office he is to exercise according to circumstances at his discretion. It is as vested with such authority that he gives his name to this dispensation. . . There is but one other great event to which the Scripture directs us to look, and that is the second coming of the Lord. Till then we live in the Pentecostal age and under the rule of the Holy Ghost."—James Elder Cumming, D. D.

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VII

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SPIRIT

The Holy Spirit, as coming down to fill the place of the ascended Redeemer, has rightly been called "The Vicar of Jesus Christ." To him the entire administration of the church has been committed until the Lord shall return in glory. His oversight extends to the slightest detail in the ordering of God's house, holding all in subjection to the will of the Head, and directing all in harmony with the divine plan. How clearly this comes out in that passage in the twelfth chapter of First Corinthians. As in striking a series of concentric circles there is always one fixed center holding each circumference in defined relation to itself, so here we see all the "diversities of administrations" determined by the one Administrator, the Holy Ghost. "Varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit"; "diversities of working, but the same God"; different words "according to the same Spirit"; "gifts of faith in the same Spirit"; "gifts of healing in the one Spirit"; miracles, prophecies, tongues, interpretations, "but all these worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally as he will." Whether the authority of this one ruling {130} sovereign Holy Ghost be recognized or ignored determines whether the church shall be an anarchy or a unity, a synagogue of lawless ones or the temple of the living God.

Would one desire to find the clue to the great apostasy whose dark eclipse now covers two-thirds of nominal Christendom, here it is—the rule and authority of the Holy Spirit ignored in the church; the servants of the house assuming mastery and encroaching more and more on the prerogatives of the Head, till at last one man sets himself up as the administrator of the church, and daringly usurps the name of "The Vicar of Christ." When the Spirit of the Lord, speaking by Paul, would picture the mystery of lawlessness and the culmination of apostasy, he gives us a description which none should misunderstand: "So that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God" (2 Thess. 2: 4). What is the temple of God? The church without a question: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (1 Cor. 3: 16). Whose prerogative is it to sit there? The Holy Ghost's, its ruler and administrator, and his alone.

When Christ, our Paraclete with the Father, entered upon his ministry on high, we are told more than a score of times that he "sat down at the right hand of God." Henceforth heaven is his official seat, until he returns in power and great glory. {131} When he sent down another Paraclete to abide with us for the age, he took his seat in the church, the temple of God, there to rule and to administer till the Lord returns. There is but one "Holy See" upon earth: that is, the seat of the Holy One in the church, which only the Spirit of God can occupy without the most daring blasphemy. It becomes all true believers to look well to that picture of one "sitting in the temple of God," and to read the lesson which it teaches. We may have no temptation toward the papacy, which thrusts a man into the seat of the Holy Ghost,[1] or toward clerisy which obtrudes an order of ecclesiastics—archbishops, cardinals, and archdeacons into that sacred place; but let us remember that a democracy may be guilty of the same sin as a hierarchy, in settling solemn issues by a "show of hands," instead of prayerfully waiting for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in substituting the voice of a {132} majority for the voice of the Spirit. Of course, in speaking thus we concede that the Holy Spirit makes known his will in the voice of believers, as also in the voice of Scripture. Only there must be such prayerful sanctifying of the one and such prayerful search of the other, that in reaching decisions in the church there may be the same declaration as in the first Christian council: "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us" (Acts 15: 28).

In some very profound teaching in 2 Cor. 3 we seem to have a hint as to how we hear the voice of the Lord in guiding the affairs of the church. There, the administration (diachonia) of the Spirit is distinctly spoken of in contrast with the administration of the law. Its deliverances are written "not with ink, not in tables of stone, but in the tables that are the hearts of flesh, with the Spirit of the living God" (R. V.). There must be a sensitive heart wherein this handwriting may be inscribed; an unhindering will through which he may act. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," it is written in the same passage; liberty for God to speak and act as he will through us, which begets loyalty; not liberty for us to act as we will, which begets lawlessness.

To us there is something exceedingly suggestive in the teaching of the Lord's post-ascension gospel, the Revelation, on this point. The epistles to the {133} seven churches we hold, with many of the best commentators, to be a prophetic setting forth of the successive stages of the church's history—its declines and its recoveries, its failures and its repentances, from ascension to advent. And because the bride of Christ is perpetually betrayed into listening to false teachers and surrendering to the guidance of evil counsellors, the Lord is constantly admonishing her to heed the voice of her true Teacher and Guide, the Holy Ghost. How forcibly this admonition is introduced into the great Apocalyptic drama! As in the opening of the successive seals, representing the judgments of God upon apostate Christendom, the cry is repeated, "Come"! "Come"! "Come"! "Come"! (Rev. 6)—as though the church under chastisement would repeatedly relearn the advent prayer which her Lord put into her mouth in the beginning: "Even so, come, Lord Jesus," so at each stage of the church's backsliding a voice is heard from heaven saying: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." It is the admonition "of him that hath the seven spirits of God," seven times addressed to his church throughout her earthly history, calling her to return from her false guides and misleading teachers, and to listen to the voice of her true Counsellor.

From this general statement of the administration of the Holy Spirit let us now descend to the {134} particular acts and offices in which this authority is exercised.

1. The Holy Spirit in the ministry and government of the church. In speaking to the elders of Ephesus Paul says: "Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the flock in the which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to feed the church of God" (Acts 20: 28, R. V.). Clearly in the beginning bishops or pastors were given by the Spirit of God, not by the suffrages of the people. The office and its incumbent were alike by direct divine appointment. We find this distinctly set forth in the Epistle to the Ephesians: "When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. . . And he gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ" (Eph. 4: 8-12, R. V.). The ascent of the Lord and the descent of the Spirit are here exhibited in their necessary relation. In the one event Christ took his seat in heaven as "Head over all things to his church"; in the other the Holy Ghost came down to begin the work of "building up the body of Christ." Of course it is the Head who directs the construction of the body, as being "fitly framed together it groweth into a holy temple in the Lord"; and it is the Holy Ghost who superintends this construction since "we are {135} builded together for an habitation of God in the Spirit." Therefore all the offices through which this work is to be carried on were appointed by Christ and instituted through the Spirit whom he sent down. Suppose now that men invent offices which are not named in the inspired list, and set up in the church an order of popes and cardinals, archbishops and archdeacons? Is it not a presumption, the worst fruit of which is not alone that it introduces confusion into the body of Christ, but that it begets insubordination to the rule of the Holy Ghost? But suppose, on the other hand, that we sacredly maintain those offices of the ministry which have been established for permanent continuance in the church, and yet take it upon us to fill these according to our own preference and will; is this any less an affront to the Spirit?

Doubtless the mistakes of God's servants, as given in Scripture are as truly designed for our instruction and admonition as their obedient examples. We think we do not err in finding such a recorded warning in the opening chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. A vacancy had occurred in the apostolate. Standing up in the upper room, amidst the hundred and twenty, Peter boldly affirmed that this vacancy must be filled, and of the men who had companied with them during the Lord's earthly ministry, "one must be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection." But the {136} disciples had hitherto had no voice in choosing apostles. The Lord had done this of his own sovereign will: "Have I not chosen you twelve?" Now he had gone away into heaven, and his Administrator had not yet arrived to enter upon his office-work. Surely if the divine order was to be, that having "ascended on high" he was "to give some apostles," it were better to await the coming of the Paraclete with his gifts. Not only so, but we are persuaded that, with Christ departed and the Holy Spirit not yet come, a valid election of an apostle were impossible. But in spite of this, a nomination was made; prayer was offered in which the Lord was asked to indicate which of the candidates he had chosen; and then a vote having been taken, Matthias was declared elected. Is there any indication that this choice was ever ratified by the Lord? On the contrary, Matthias passes into obscurity from this time, his name never again being mentioned. Some two years subsequent, the Lord calls Saul of Tarsus; he is sealed with his Spirit, and certified by such evident credentials of the Divine appointment that he boldly signs himself "Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father" (Gal. 1: 1).

We believe that the apostolic office has passed away, the qualification therefor, that of having been a witness of the Lord's resurrection, being now impossible. But the office of pastor, elder, bishop, or {137} teacher of the flock still remains. And the divine plan is that this office should be filled, just as in the beginning, by the appointment of the Holy Ghost. Nor can we doubt that if there is a prayerful waiting upon him for guidance, and a sanctified submission to his will when it is made known, he will now choose pastors and set them over their appointed flocks just as manifestly as he did in the beginning. Very beautiful is the picture in Revelation of the glorified Lord, moving among the candlesticks. There are "seven golden candlesticks" now, not one only as in the Jewish temple. The Church of God is manifold, not a unit.[2] He who "walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks" "holdeth the seven stars in his right hand." These stars are "the angels of the seven churches"—their ministers or bishops as generally understood. The Lord holds them in his right hand. Does he not require us to ask of him alone for their bestowal? Yes. "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest" (Luke 10: 2). There is no intimation in Scripture that we are to apply anywhere but to him for the ministry of his church. Does he not give {138} such ministry, and he alone? Yes. "When he ascended on high . . . he gave some . . . pastors and teachers." And now, speaking to the church in Ephesus, the elders of which, chosen by the Holy Ghost, Paul had so affectionately exhorted, he is seen in the attitude of Chief-shepherd and Bishop—giving pastors with his own hand; placing them with his own right hand, and warning the church that though they have tried and rejected false apostles, they have nevertheless left their "first love." Significant word! On this love our Lord conditioned the indwelling of the Father and of the Son through the Holy Spirit (John 14: 23). Losing this the peril becomes imminent that the candlestick may be removed out of its place; and so the warning is solemnly announced: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." Without the Spirit the candlestick can shed forth no light, and loses its place of testimony.

Dead churches, whose witness has been silenced, whose place has been vacated, even though the lifeless form remains, have we not seen such? And what is the safeguard against them, if not that found in the apostle's warning: "Quench not the Spirit?" The voice of the Lord must be heard in his church, and to the Holy Ghost alone has been committed the prerogative of communicating that voice. Is there any likelihood that that voice will be heard when the king or prime minister of a civil {139} government holds the sole function of appointing the bishops, as in the case of State churches? Is there any certainty of it when an archbishop or bishop puts pastors over flocks by the action of his single will? We may congratulate ourselves that we are neither in a State church nor under an episcopal bishop; but there are methods of ignoring or repressing the voice of the Holy Ghost, which though simpler and far less apparent than those just indicated, are no less violent. The humble and godly membership of the little church may turn to some pastor, after much prayer and waiting on God for the Spirit's guidance, and the signs of the divine choice may be clearly manifest; when some pulpit committee, or some conclave of "leading brethren," vetoes their action on the ground, perchance, that the candidate is not popular and will not draw. Alas! for the little flock so lorded over that the voice of the Holy Ghost cannot be heard.

And majorities are no more to be depended upon than minorities, if there is in both cases a neglect of patient and prolonged waiting upon the Lord to know his will. Of what value is a "show of hands" unless his are stretched out "who holdeth the seven stars in his right hand?" Of what use is a viva voce choice, except the living voice of Christ be heard speaking by his Spirit? One may object that we are holding up an ideal which is impossible to be realized. It is a difficult ideal we admit, as {140} the highest attainments are always difficult; but it is not an impossible one. It is easier to recite our prayers from a book than to read them from the tables of a prepared heart, where the finger of the Spirit has silently written them; but the more difficult way is the more acceptable way to him who seeks for worshipers who "worship in Spirit and in truth." It is easier to get "the sense of the meeting" in choosing a pastor than to learn "the mind of the Spirit" by patient tarrying and humble surrender to God; but the more laborious way will certainly prove the more profitable way. The failure to take this way is, we are persuaded, the cause of more decay and spiritual death in the churches than we have yet imagined. From the watch-tower where we write we can look out on half a score of churches on which "Ichabod" has been evidently written, and the glory of which has long since departed. They were founded in prayer and consecration, "to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven." Why has their light been extinguished, though the lampstand which once bore it still remains, adorned and beautified with all that the highest art and architecture can suggest? Their history is known to him who walks among the golden candlesticks. What violence may have been done, by headstrong self-will, to him who is called "the Spirit of counsel and might"? What rejection of the truth which he, "the Spirit {141} of truth," has appointed for the faith of God's church till at last the word has been spoken: "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do ye." Is it only Jewish worshipers to whom these words apply? Is it only a Jewish temple of which this sentence is true: "Behold your house is left unto you desolate"? The Spirit will not be entirely withdrawn from the body of Christ indeed, but there is the Church, and there are churches. A man may yet live and breathe when cell after cell has been closed by congestion till at last he only inhales and exhales with a little portion of one lung. Let him that readeth understand.

The Spirit is the breath of God in the body of his church. While that divine body survives and must, multitudes of churches have so shut out the Spirit from rule and authority and supremacy in the midst of them that the ascended Lord can only say to them: "Thou hast a name to live and art dead." In a word, so vital and indispensable is the ministry of the Spirit, that without it nothing else will avail. Some trust in creeds, and some in ordinances; some suppose that the church's security lies in a sound theology, and others locate it in a primitive simplicity of government and worship; but it lies in none of these, desirable as they are. The body may be as to its organs perfect and entire, wanting nothing; but simply because the Spirit has been {142} withdrawn from it, it has passed from a church into a corpse. As one has powerfully stated it: "When the Holy Spirit withdraws, . . . he sometimes allows the forms which he has created to remain. The oil is exhausted, but the lamp is still there; prayer is offered and the Bible read; church-going is not given up, and to a certain degree the service is enjoyed; in a word religious habits are preserved, and like the corpses found at Pompeii, which were in a perfect state of preservation and in the very position in which death had surprised them, but which were reduced to ashes by contact with the air, so the blast of trial, of temptation, or of final judgment will destroy these spiritual corpses."[3]

2. The Holy Spirit in the Worship and Service of the Church. Is there anything, from highest to lowest, which we are called to do in connection with the worship of God's house, of which the Holy Spirit is not the appointed agent? Believers are the instruments indeed through which he acts; but they have no function apart from his inspiration and guidance, any more than the organ-pipe has without the wind, which breathing through it causes it to resound. To make this clear, we may consider the several parts of the service of the church as we are accustomed to participate in it, and observe their relation to the divine Administrator.

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(1) Preaching is by general consent an important factor of the work of the ministry, both for the pastor and for the evangelist. In what consists its inspiration and authority? We "have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven" (1 Peter 1: 12), is Peter's simple story of the apostolic method. And the words direct our thought to the Spirit not as instrumental but as inspiring. "In the Holy Ghost," the words mean literally. The true preacher does not simply use the Spirit; he is used by the Spirit. He speaks as one moving in the element and atmosphere of the Holy Ghost, and mastered by his divine power.

In this fact the sermon differs immeasurably from the speech, and the preacher from the orator. How distinctly Paul emphasizes this contrast in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 2: 4). The sole substance of his preaching he declares to be "Jesus Christ and him crucified," and the sole inspiration of his preaching, the Holy Ghost: "And my speech was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power." What did good Philip Henry mean by his resolve "to preach Christ crucified in a crucified style"? More perhaps than he thought or knew. "He shall testify of me," is Jesus' saying concerning the promised Paraclete. The Comforter bears witness to the Crucified. No other theme in the pulpit can be sure of commanding his co-operation. {144} Philosophy, poetry, art, literature, sociology, ethics, and history are attractive subjects to many minds, and they who handle such themes in the pulpit may set them forth with alluring words of human genius; but there is no certainty that the Holy Ghost will accompany their presentation with his divine attestation. The preaching of the Cross, in chastened simplicity of speech, has the demonstration of the Spirit pledged to it, as no secular, or moral, or even formal religious discourse has. And when Paul writes to the Thessalonians: "Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance" (1 Thess. 1: 5), we need only to be reminded that "our gospel" meant but one thing to Paul, the setting forth of Jesus Christ crucified in the midst of the people, and we have found the secret of evangelical power. Ought it not therefore to be the supreme question with the preacher, what themes can assuredly command the witness of the Holy Spirit, rather than what topics will enlist the attention of the people? Let us set the popular preacher and the apostolic preacher side by side, and consider whose reward we would choose, universal admiration or "God also bearing witness, both with signs and wonders and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his will" (Heb. 2: 4)—the sermon greeted with applause and the clapping of hands, or "the word received with joy of {145} the Holy Ghost" (1 Thess. 1: 6)?—admiration of the preacher possessing all who listen to the discourse, or "the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word" (Acts 10: 44)? Language cannot express the vital moment of the question which we are here discussing. Our generation is rapidly losing its grip upon the supernatural; and as a consequence the pulpit is rapidly dropping to the level of the platform. And this decline is due, we believe, more than anything else, to an ignoring of the Holy Spirit as the supreme inspirer of preaching. We wish to see a great orator in the pulpit, forgetting that the least expounder of the word, when filled with the Holy Ghost, is greater than he. We want the gospel, forsooth; but in the strenuous demand that it be set forth according to the "spirit of the age" we ignore the supremacy of the "Spirit of God." And the method of discourse soon tells upon the matter. We cannot very long have the truth in the pulpit after we have lost "the Spirit of truth" therefrom. "When one possesses not the whole of life," says Vinet, "he possesses not the whole of truth."

In all that we have said we do not ignore the human element in preaching, nor undervalue good learning and sanctified mental training, as a furnishing for this high office. We only emphasize the extreme peril of making that supreme which God has made subordinate. As it is genius which raises the great {146} painter or poet far above the common man, so it is the Holy Spirit which lifts the preacher far above the man of genius. A gifted artist spoke wisely when one, thinking only of the implements of his profession, asked, "With what do you mix your paints?" "With brains, sir," he replied. The preacher who brought three thousand to believe on a crucified Christ, under a single sermon, anticipated the question of those who, with an eye upon the mere human accessories of his sermon, might ask after the secret of his power; and he unfolds that secret in a single terse sentence: "With the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven."

(2) Prayer is a most vital element in the worship of God's church. "Lord, teach us how to pray, as John also taught his disciples." Jesus complied literally with this request of his followers. As John, under the law, could only give rules and rudiments, not yet having come to the dispensation of grace and of the Spirit, so did Jesus give a form of prayer, a lesson in the "technique of worship." But only when he reaches the eve of his passion, when he announces the coming of the Comforter, does he lead his disciples into the heart and mystery of the great theme, teaching them to pray as John could not have taught his disciples. "Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name," said Jesus, in his paschal discourse. But now that he was about to enter into his mediatorial office at God's right {147} hand, and to send forth the Comforter into the midst of his disciples, this joyful privilege was to be accorded to him: "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name he will give it you"[4] (1 John 16: 23). The words are equivalent to "in me." The thought is not surely that of using the name of Jesus as a password or as a talisman, but of entering into his person and appropriating his will; so that when we pray, it shall be as though Jesus himself stood in God's presence and made intercession. Nor is it "as though"—it is the literal fact. We become identified with Christ through the Spirit, now sent down, and his will is wrought within us by the Holy Ghost, so that to ask what we desire of him is to ask what he desires for us. We are inwilled by his will, because inspired by his Spirit, who lives and breathes within us. Therefore we may know that we are always heard, since we are in him who can boldly say to the Father: "I know that thou always hearest me." It is Christ's mediatorship with the Father, and the Holy Ghost's mediatorship with us, that gives us this high privilege of praying in the name of Jesus, as it is written: "For through him we both have access in one Spirit unto the Father."

When therefore, under the fuller development of {148} doctrine as found in the epistles, we read of "praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit" (Eph. 6: 18), and of "praying in the Holy Ghost" (Jude 20), it is simply an admonition to use our privilege of asking in the name of Jesus. For to be in the Spirit is to be in Christ, united to his person, identified with his will, invested with his righteousness, so that we are as he is before the Father.