Wonderful to all, startling to some. If you can speak of grief, you must
be speaking of a person. An influence cannot be sorry, whatever may
happen to it. And that word of my text is no more violent metaphor or
exaggeratedly strong way of suggesting a motive, but it keeps rigidly
within the New Testament limits, in reference to that Divine Spirit,
when to Him it attributes this personal emotion of sorrow with its
correlation of possible joy.
Now, I do not need to dwell upon the thought here, but I do desire to
emphasise it, especially in view of the strangely hazy and defective
conceptions which so many Christian people have upon this matter. And I
desire to remind you that the implied assumption of a personal Spirit,
capable of being 'grieved,' which is in this text, is in accordance with
all the rest of the New Testament teaching.
What did Jesus Christ mean when He spoke of one who 'will guide you into
all truth'; of one who 'whatsoever He shall hear, those things shall He
speak'? What does the book of the Acts mean when it says that the Spirit
said to the believers in Antioch, 'Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the
work whereunto I have called them'? What did Paul mean when he said, 'In
every city the Holy Ghost testifieth that bonds and afflictions await
me'? What does the minister officiating in baptism mean when he says, 'I
baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost'? That form presents, according to many interpretations, a Divine
Person, a Man, and an Influence. Why are these bracketed together? And
what do we mean when, at the end of every Christian service, we invoke
'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and
the fellowship of the Holy Spirit'? A Man, and God, and an Influence--is
that the interpretation? You cannot get rid from the New Testament
teaching, whether you accept it or not--you cannot eliminate from it
this, that the divine causality of our salvation is threefold and one,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Now, brethren, I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that
practically the average orthodox believer believes in a duality, and not
a Trinity, in the divine nature. I do not care about the scholastic
words, but what I would insist upon is that the course of Christian
thinking has been roughly this. First of all, in the early Church, the
question of the Divine nature came into play, mainly in reference to the
relation of the Eternal Word to the Eternal Father, and of the
Incarnation to both. And then, when that was roughly settled, there came
down through many ages, and there still subsists, the endeavour to cast
into complete and intelligible forms the doctrine, if I must use the
word, of Christ's nature and work. And now, as I believe, to a very
large extent, the foremost and best thinking of the Christian Church is
being occupied with that last problem, the nature and work of that
Divine Spirit. I believe that we stand on the verge of a far clearer
perception of, and of a far more fervent and realising faith in, the
Spirit of God, than ever the Churches have seen before. And I pray you
to remember that however much your Christian thought and Christian
faith may be centred upon, and may be drawing its nourishment and its
joy from, the work of Jesus Christ who died on the Cross for our
salvation, and lives to be our King and Defender, there is a gap--not
only in your Christian Creed, but also in your Christian experiences and
joys and power, unless you have risen to this thought, that the Divine
Spirit is not only an influence, a wind, a fire, an oil, a dove, a dew,
but a Divine Person. We have to go back to the old creed--'I believe in
God the Father Almighty ... and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord
... I believe in the Holy Ghost.'
But further, this same revelation carries with it another, and to some
of us a startling thought. 'Grieve not the Holy Spirit': that Divine
Person is capable of grief. I do not believe that is rhetorical
exaggeration. Of course I know that we should think of God as the
ever-blessed God, but we also in these last days begin to think more
boldly, and I believe more truly, that if man is in the image of God,
and there is a divine element in humanity, there must be a human element
in divinity. And though I know that it is perilous to make affirmations
about a matter so far beyond our possibility of verification by
experience, I venture to think that perhaps the doctrine that God is
lifted up high above all human weaknesses and emotions does not mean
that there can be no shadow cast on the divine blessedness by the dark
substance of human sin. I do not venture to assert: I only suggest; and
this I know, that He who said to us, 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father,' had His eyes filled with tears, even in His hour of triumph, as
He looked across the valley and saw the city sparkling in the rays of
the morning sun. May we venture to see there an unveiling of the divine
heart? Love has an infinite capacity of sorrow as of joy. But I leave
these perhaps too presumptuous and lofty thoughts, to turn to the other
points involved in the words before us.