p. 6 | THE SPIRIT OF GOD

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 29, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 22.

THE SPIRIT OF GOD.

WHAT is the Spirit of God? Let it suffice for this study to say that whatever it may mean more than this, it is the life of God.

By that Spirit primeval chaos became cosmos, order, arrangement, beauty. And when sin has desolated, seemingly forever, God’s wondrous creation, God sends forth His Spirit of life; “they are created; and Thou renewest the face of the earth.”

“By His Spirit He garnished the heavens,” and created the earth. By it man is born again, is sanctified and kept and made immortal. By that Spirit he is reproved, taught, comforted, strengthened, as attested in numerous scriptures. It is the great outflowing life of God pulsing forth from the great Central Fountain to all parts of the mighty universe, giving life to every living thing. Now, here are three obvious facts, which ought to come home as lessons of infinite importance to every soul:—

1. That Spirit flows out from God in harmony with the character of God. The character of God is the law of His life, or Spirit. The written law is but the expression of that Spirit’s working. In its positive side it is all expressed in one word—LOVE. In its both positive and negative aspect, it is expressed in the Ten Words of the Decalog.

2. The creature that receives God’s life out of harmony with God’s law receives a perverted life. The perversion or transgression of God’s law is sin. The perversion of His life is death. And the selfish, the sinful, the wicked, are continually perverting that life; continually crossing its current with carnal desires, purposes, ambitions, lusts; continually changing it to death. It is only because God in His mercy pours out so abundantly of His life that the existence of sinful creatures is extended.

And yet it can not be said that those who possess this perverted life have the Spirit of God. That Spirit comes to them, impresses them, reproves them, draws them; but they do not have that Spirit as the indwelling presence of God, the uplifting power of an endless life. He nowhere speaks of that life as His Spirit or His life. God’s life is received thru the sinful flesh, and the flesh perverts it to another life, even as His holy law to a law of sin.

3. But it is also true that the soul who will submit to God’s law; who yields himself to be all that God desires him to be, will receive the Spirit of God—not as a perverted life, but as the “endless life,” the “eternal life,” given to all who believe. That Spirit comes to the sinner as endless life; but right there, at its entrance, the flesh perverts it. But that Spirit comes into the true child of faith as the “power of an endless life.” It comes thru the Spirit into the flesh, and becomes a vitalizing power to the mortal body. Rom. 8:9-11; 2 Cor. 4:10-12. Sinners are “alienated from the life of God” (Eph. 4:18), but believers are in harmony with the law of its operation.

Reader, this is no fancy theory. God’s life, God’s blessed Spirit of truth and love and power, desires to enter your being to cleanse, to uplift, to give you everlasting victory. It is a practical thing. It is a matter of choice with you. Shall your life still continue a perverted life, issuing ever in death? or shall it be the life of God, issuing in incorruptibility of character and immortality of being?