His coming was the testimony that man was at the right hand of God, redemption being accomplished, the world judged, and lying in sin, and Satan its prince, as having rejected the Son; but God's righteousness revealed, as the portion of believers, manifested in the Father setting the Christ in the divine glory at His right hand. (John 16:1010Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; (John 16:10).) Of this the Holy Spirit's presence was the witness. This was not for the world. Christ had come as its Savior, and they would not have Him; the Holy Ghost was for believers only, not as one working in them to make them believe, though that were true in its time, but because they did. “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts.” He guided them into all the truth; He made them know they were in Christ, and Christ in them; He shed the love of God abroad in their hearts for a witness with their spirit that they were sons. They were in the Spirit, as there stated, if so be the Spirit of God dwelt in them. If any man had not the Spirit of Christ, he was none of His. (Rom. 8) Christianity was the ministration of the Spirit as of righteousness. (2 Cor. 3) Paul (Acts 19), seeing something defective in some disciples, asks, “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?” For, after believing, men were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. It was a true real presence of the Holy Ghost dwelling in the saints. “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?” says the apostle. “How,” he says to the Galatians, “did ye receive the Spirit?” Of that there was no question or doubt, bad as was their state. Fruits in grace were fruits of the Spirit; sanctification was sanctification by the Spirit. If convicted of sin, men asked what they were to do. “Repent; and be baptized...” is the answer, “for forgiveness of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost,” anointed, sealed with the Holy Ghost by God, as Christ Himself had been. The Spirit was the earnest of their inheritance, revealed Christ to them, and helped their infirmities.
(Note: In John 14 the Father sends it in His name. In chapter 15 He sends it from the Father.)
That which had been prophesied of in the Old Testament as to the outpouring of the Spirit, was accomplished in the New. The Christians as such were after the Spirit and minded the things of the Spirit. They lived after it, were led by it, were sent out and guided by it in their service. The flesh lusted against it. He made intercession for them in their hearts, with groanings which could not be uttered. The whole Christian life and state is characterized by His presence and activity in them. They were not to grieve Him in their walk, nor quench Him in His gifts. The Spirit searches all things; the spiritual man discerns all things. It is “an unction from the Holy One,” by which we know all things. Christ is graven in the heart by the Spirit of the living God; they were changed into the same image by it. Love is “love in the Spirit;” fellowship was. “fellowship in the Spirit.” Their walk was to be a walk in the Spirit; by one Spirit Jew and Gentile had access to the Father through Christ. The presence of the Holy Ghost, clearly and dogmatically taught as coming consequent on Christ's exaltation as man, and not possible till then, characterizes in every detail the Christian life. His presence constitutes Christianity individually for a mean; he is born of the Spirit; it is a well of water in him, and flows as a river from him; it gives him the consciousness of his divine relationship and unites him to Christ: for “he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” Collectively, also, they are builded together as a habitation of God through the Spirit, being thereby the temple of God collectively (1 Cor. 3) as individually (chap. 6)
I have not spoken of gifts, because there it is not denied that they were manifestations of the Spirit. Christianity is constituted and characterized by the presence of the Holy Ghost come down from heaven, consequent on the exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ there. The consequence for the Christian was that he knew his relationship to the Father, and knew Him—knew he was in Christ, and Christ in him; was united to Him, the exalted Head in heaven; yea—knew he was in God, and God in him. If he sinned even in thought, he grieved the Holy Ghost; if he committed the fornication, he defiled the temple of the Holy Ghost, and made the members of Christ the members of a harlot. (Compare 1 Thess. 4:88He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his holy Spirit. (1 Thessalonians 4:8)., as to sinning against a brother in this respect.) On the other hand, it was by the Spirit he mortified the deeds of the body and lived. Life, knowledge, spirituality, and power, all depended on the presence of the Spirit who dwelt in him; with Him they were to be filled. I do not speak of gifts: these were confessedly the operation of the Holy Ghost.
Such was then the present life and power of the Christian while Christ was sitting on the Father's throne. The Jew must wait till Christ comes out to see and own and know Him. The Christian not, because the Holy Ghost is come out, and associated him with Christ while He is within. When He comes out and appears, we shall appear with Him. What then is his hope if this be the Christian's present life and power? What is that in which he abounds in hope by the power of the Holy Ghost? The coming of the Bridegroom, when he will be conformed to the image of God's Son—be with Him forever, and like Him. When and how shall this effect which is before his heart be realized? When Christ comes. The coming of the Lord. This is the object, and with it, the state to which the Holy Ghost directs his mind in hope—to see Christ as He is, to be with Him, to be like Him; and this is at His coming. He is always confident meanwhile (2 Cor. 5:66Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (2 Corinthians 5:6)), he knows that Christ being his life, if he dies before He comes, he will, absent from the body, be present with the Lord; but his desire is not to be unclothed, though in itself it be far better, but to be clothed upon, like Christ in glory—to see Christ who has so loved him, as He is, to be perfectly like Him, so that Christ shall see of the fruit of the travail of His soul and be satisfied. This fills his soul with hope, and he knows that all the raised saints (or changed, for we shall not all die) will be glorified with Him, yea, He glorified in them, and His heart, and surely ours, satisfied.