If the 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; He _is_ God. 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 to receive 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 Christian might
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- 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 upon Satan, 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 at
_you_. 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 Jesus Christ, they themselves
must become living messages, living witnesses, by having Jesus Christ
revealed _in 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 our inheritance――the
hope 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 He
will, 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, is _sin_. 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” (Gal 5:6). 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 see
Christ only, always, living in me.