THE coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost wrought a great change in the minds and characters of the apostles. The Lord Jesus intimated that this would be so. He announced that many things which His disciples could not bear to be taught while He was yet with them, should afterward be made known to them as a result of the Holy Spirit’s presence. The apostles were not by any means perfect men after Pentecost, but the Peter and John of the Epistles are very different men from the Peter and John of the Gospels.
It is evident from the Epistles of Peter that he finally came to be governed by thoughts of the cross. Thoughts of Christ suffering for us, and our suffering with Him, permeate the writings of Peter, as they do all the apostolic writings more or less. Thus among the first words of the First Epistle we read that the saints are―
“elect... unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.”
But “the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow,” do not appear to have seriously taken possession of the apostle’s mind during the earthly lifetime of our Lord. New thoughts about Christ’s death are given, and Old Testament Scriptures as to Christ bearing our sins in His own body on the tree are fully referred to in Peter’s Epistles. To him, moreover, Christ’s suffering for us meant not only atonement for our sins, but suffering by way of example to His followers also.
Yet this same Peter at one time had very different thoughts of Christ. For when our Lord began to show unto His disciples His approaching sufferings, death, and resurrection, Peter
A somewhat similar difference in their matured experience is seen in the case of the apostles James and John. They came to Jesus saying:
“Master, we would that Thou shouldst do for us whatsoever we shall desire. And He said unto them, What would ye that I should do for you? They said unto Him, Grant unto us that we may sit, one on Thy right hand, and the other on Thy left hand in Thy glory. But Jesus said unto them, Ye know not what ye ask” (Mark 10:37, 3837They said unto him, Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory. 38But Jesus said unto them, Ye know not what ye ask: can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? (Mark 10:37‑38)).
We know from Acts 12:2 That James the brother of John died early, but this is the apostle John who wrote the Epistles and Gospel which bear his name. It is inconceivable that he would have come to Christ with a petition like this in his later days. These things are not referred to in order to find fault with the apostles. Some, indeed, have used the manifest disparity between the Gospels and the Epistles to discredit divine inspiration. But it all shows that during the Lord’s life, and apart from the gift of the Holy Spirit, the apostles did not understand, nor think even, of the truths which they are employed at a later day to teach. And if this is seen to be so in the case of those who were chief among the apostles, it could not be otherwise with their companions (see John 16:1313Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come. (John 16:13)).
But the coming of the Spirit, who taught the apostles what they could not bear to be told before, and, as the Spirit of Truth, led them into all truth, fully accounts for this difference. And if we desire to understand true Christian teaching and experience we must learn to appreciate the presence of the Holy Spirit, and to give Him that place in our minds which is manifestly His in God’s Word. Now, the Holy Spirit is God, even as the Father is God, and the Son is God.
We are baptized in the name of the Holy Ghost, even as we are baptized in the name of the Father and the Son.
The Holy Spirit is presented in Scripture in the closest possible relationship with the life, the service, and the testimony of the Lord Jesus.
When Christ was about to be born, the word to Mary was,
“The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee”;
and we are told that what was conceived in Mary was of the Holy Ghost. It was by the Spirit that our Lord was led into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. It was through the Eternal Spirit that He offered Himself without spot to God, and that He gave commandments after He was risen unto the apostles whom He had chosen. Just as the meat offerings were mingled with oil, so the Holy Spirit is related to Christ in His incarnation, and as the wafers of unleavened bread were anointed with oil, so Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit at His baptism (see Num. 6:1515And a basket of unleavened bread, cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, and wafers of unleavened bread anointed with oil, and their meat offering, and their drink offerings. (Numbers 6:15)).
“The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”
The entire spirit of the Prophetic Word is aglow with the testimony of Jesus. Testimony to His divine and varied glories, testimony to His sufferings and triumphs, testimony to His kingdom and power. The Holy Spirit is the author of all this testimony. He inspired Moses to write of the types and shadows which prefigure the glory and beauty of Christ. He inspired the Psalmist so to speak of the things which he had made touching the King, as that his tongue became like the pen of a ready writer.
The Holy Spirit creates that rapture of heart which bursts forth from the inspired writers, both in the Old Testament and the New, when Christ is the theme. The glorious and heart moving names of Christ are all chosen by the Holy Spirit. He is the “Spirit of Jesus.” Truly the apostles did not understand the greatness, the excellence of the blessing promised when Jesus foretold the coming of another Comforter who should abide with them forever. It was meet that Christ should say of the Holy Spirit,
“He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine and show it unto you”
The Holy Spirit glorified Christ by Old Testament utterances in pre-Christian times, and is here to glorify Him now. The revelation of the grace and glory and love of Jesus to His own is precisely of the nature of the Holy Spirit’s work. What we know of these blessings, as it should be known, we owe to the Holy Spirit. He is the unction from the Holy One.
We may well sing concerning Christ:
“How rich the precious blood He spilled,
Our ransom from the dreadful guilt
Of sin against our God!
How perfect is His righteousness,
In which unspotted beauteous dress
His saints have ever stood!”
But the power of these words, and the melody of heart which they express, do not exist apart from the presence of the Holy Spirit:
“No man can say that Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy Spirit.”
Let us remember that rejoicing in Christ Jesus, the worship of Christ, and of God in His name, are all, and can only be, by means of the Spirit of God.
But if we are thus entirely dependent on the Holy Spirit to understand the glory of Christ, we are equally dependent upon Him for everything that pertains to the Christian life.
We “live by the Spirit.” The new nature which entitles us to be called the children of God is His creation. The beginning of our existence in the kingdom of God is coincident with our being born of the Spirit. We owe to Him the godly sorrow for sin which mingles in our repentance with the sweet sense of the mercy of God. It was through Him we cleared ourselves of that which was wrong. He produced in us the indignation and zeal against our wicked ways; for true repentance by means of the Holy Spirit is among the choicest of the gifts of God.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of faith. He leads us to trust in Christ, and gives us the power to do this. Without Him we could neither look to Jesus nor trust in His precious blood. He, too, is the Spirit of adoption. It is by Him that we cry Abba, Father. The intimacy, and tender approach to the Father which this relationship implies could not be known before the Holy Ghost was given. But we enjoy this privilege now.
Then, what about our prayers? True prayer partakes of the nature of prophecy. It is written of Abraham,
It has often been a perplexing question with philosophers, as to how a creature’s prayer could affect the laws and providence of the Supreme Being. But the Christian ought not to be perplexed about the matter, when Scripture is so simple as to the Holy Spirit’s place in our prayers:
It is important to distinguish between what we call the new nature and the Holy Spirit. The new nature is that new creation or inner man which is by virtue of the new birth and may be understood as our divinely begotten selves. But apart from the Holy Spirit’s power within us, this newborn life is weak. It needs nourishment, and Christ is the Bread of this new life. But the Holy Spirit is the Creator, He is not a creation, and He is not weak or dependent as we are at our best. He is to the Christian the Spirit of power. Thus, the apostle prays for the saints that they may be strengthened with might by God’s Spirit in the inner man.
We read too that it is “according to the power that worketh in us” that God is “able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask of think.” But the power that worketh in us is the power of the Holy Spirit.
May the Lord give us to see our entire dependence upon the Holy Spirit, and so to live that we may not grieve Him by whom we have been sealed unto the day of redemption.
T. H.