The Promise of the Spirit
In John 14: 15-17 we have the following condition and promises concerning the Spirit of God: “If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world can not receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him; but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.” The condition of the promises is, “keep My commandments.” In the commandments of God—for Jesus represents the Father (verses 9-11)—is contained the whole duty of man (Eccl. 12: 13). As elsewhere expressed, this rule of action is God’s law or will. (Ps. 40: 7, 8.) Of himself man can not keep God’s law, but he can submit to do what God commands, and in the command is the power to perform it. Such submission is faith, and it is by faith that we receive the promise of the Spirit. (Gal. 3: 14.) This is evident from another consideration. The Spirit promised is the Spirit of God; the commandments are the law or will of God, and the Spirit works according to God’s will (Rom. 8: 27); when, therefore, man willingly submits to do the will of God, he places himself in the channel of God’s working, and God “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” (Eph. 1: 11). He therefore who receives the promise must submit by simple faith to do the Lord’s will. The promise is the promise of the Comforter, the Holy Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, the Holy Ghost. It is God dwelling with man and in man. (John 14: 23.) It is so contrary to the spirit of the world that the world does not see that Spirit, nor can it know it. Nay, more, the world, as the world, can not receive it. It is promised in its intimate relations only to those who are Christ’s. It will be with them and in them “forever,” or to the end of the age, the period in which the Gospel is preached. (Matt. 28: 18-20.) And yet it has a work for the world. It comes to bless, not to curse; to save, not to destroy. Its office work to the world is, therefore, to reveal the fruitlessness and vanity of the world’s way and the fullness and blessing of God’s way, even though that way is the way of the cross. Jesus says again in speaking of the Spirit: “And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.” John 16: 8-11. It convinces of sin through God’s holy law (Rom. 3: 20; 7: 7), that man may see his own undesirable condition. (Rom. 7: 24.) It convinces of righteousness by revealing Him in whom is found perfect righteousness and deliverance. (Verse 25; Gal. 3: 22-24.) It convinces of the judgment to come by the same Gospel (Acts 24: 25), that man may see the fate of the sinner and the righteous, and therefore choose righteousness. This is the work of the Spirit to the world, to sinners. Through God’s word taught and preached, by the ministry of holy angels, in various ways, God’s Spirit pleads with unrepentant man to turn, and look, and live, that he may not die, pleads that he may open his heart and let in the heavenly Guest, the Comforter, that God’s presence may abide with him forever. “Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die?” When that Spirit is admitted into the life by submission to the will of God, then and then only will the child of the world know the blessedness of it; but then he will no longer be a child of the world, but a child of God, “born of the Spirit,” “born from above.” (John 3: 3-5.) All blessings of God come with the incoming of the Spirit of God in our lives. It is all power. By it the heaven and earth were created (Gen. 1: 2; Ps. 33: 6); by it the earth is renewed and the desert becomes a fruitful field (Ps. 103: 30; Isa. 32: 15); by the same power the children of disobedience (Eph. 2: 2) become the sons of God (John 3: 3-5; Gal. 4: 6); by that same Spirit the barren, blasted life of the sinner is made to bloom with righteousness and to bring forth fruits of heavenly origin (Gal. 5: 22, 23), against which there is no condemnation, because in it is all the righteousness or doing of God’s law (Rom. 8: 1-4); by the same Spirit at last is the mortal made immortal, and death gives place to life eternal and immortal (Eze. 37: 14; Rom. 8: 11). Truly the reception of the Spirit of God brings all blessings with it. All this is evident from what has gone before. The Spirit, to the believer, to him who receives it, is the life of God. “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” Rom. 8: 9, 10. From this life, “the life of God,” the wicked are “alienated,” that is, they are strangers to it (Eph. 4: 18), they see God not, neither know him (John 14: 17). In a certain sense the wicked all have the life of God, for he is “the Fountain of life;” but the life of those who are sinning against God is a perverted life, even as the law of sin is God’s perverted law. It is not working out God’s life of righteousness in the character, but the death of sin; for perverted righteousness is sin, and perverted life is death. It is by the Spirit that we are united with God through faith. Everywhere present is God’s Spirit (Ps. 139: 7-12); through all parts of the universe of being pulses the streams from the Fountain of life. But to him who throws against the life-giving current his own unsanctified heart, who opposes the righteous will of Heaven by his own evil will, the power of God works out death; while to him whose heart is wholly submitted to the divine influence, to the all-wise, all-powerful, all-loving will, God’s life works out life. It comes into man as a life-giving, creative force, bringing forth the fruits of righteousness. In a threefold way, which after all is but the one way: (1) By prayer, “ask,” “seek,” “knock,” and “it shall be given,” “ye shall find,” “it shall be opened.” (Luke 11: 9-13.) God is willing, nay, anxious, to give it, even as is the loving father to give good food to the children. He pleads: “Turn ye, turn ye; for why will ye die.” “Choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.” (2) By the word of God. “The words that I speak unto you,” says Jesus, “they are spirit, and they are life.” John 6: 63. He who receives God’s word, feeds upon God’s2word, becomes saturated as it were by the word, builded up by the word, will be filled with the life-giving power of the Spirit of God. (3) By faith we receive the promise of the Spirit. (Gal. 3: 14.) Of course it is by faith that we must ask, seek, and knock. It is by faith that we receive the word. It is all of faith. But faith is not the power; it is the channel through which the power flows. The life—the Spirit—may be likened to the strong electric current flowing in the trolley wire overhead; the person, to the helpless and dead car on the track underneath. A little rod is lifted to the wire, and the car becomes a thing of life and action. The rod is not the power, but it forms a connecting link with the power, and so brings action to what were otherwise dead.