The doctrine of the Holy Spirit's presence in the individual believer, sealing him for redemption-day, has been already seen, and seems to be bound up in the closest way with practical holiness, as a motive and a guard, no less than as the power. For what more solemnly affecting than the remembrance of such an inhabitant ever dwelling in the believer's body? And what more certain than that He is the Spirit not of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind? We may be utter weakness, and the natural heart deceitful and treacherous beyond human conception. But this is not the only truth. The Christian is characterized by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Is He weak? Or if all might is His, is He in the believer the passive, inactive witness of every fault and infirmity? Is He not, on the contrary, within him to associate his affections with Christ, to glorify Christ, taking of the things of Christ and showing them to him? Doubtless, He may be and is grieved by allowed folly, and carelessness, and evil, and as to this we have just been seriously cautioned; but it would be well for such as speak incessantly of the good-for-nothingness of the flesh (which is most clear and certain) to bear in mind that the believer, the Christian, is no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit, seeing that the Spirit of God dwells in him. Meet it is, therefore, that sin, all and every sin, should be confessed and judged; but it is neither genuine humility nor the faith of God's elect to ignore the blessed and encouraging as well as serious fact, that the Spirit of God is in us to give all strength in revealing Christ to our souls. It may be wholesome, unquestionably, to learn the painful lesson of Romans 7:77What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. (Romans 7:7) and following verses; but to rest there is to prove that it has been ill learned. For the proper place of the Christian is, as to this, the end of the chapter, ushering him into the stilt deeper exercises and the more unselfish sufferings of chapter 8, with the liberty, and power, and hope, and security which it so abundantly shows to be our portion through grace. The redemption of our body and of creation outside is not yet come; but, He who is its earnest is within us.
This being so, “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil-speaking he put away from you with all malice” (vs. 31). The very nearness into which the family of God is brought may become a snare unless there be watchfulness and a simple looking to Christ. But the Holy Spirit gives quarter to no evil feeling whatever. These are the breaches of our nearness; in the next chapter (vs. 3 and following verses) we shall find the abuses of it.
If we come to particulars, “all bitterness;” I think, denotes every form of the sharp, unsparing mood which repels instead of winning souls, and makes the most of the real or imagined faults of others. The “wrath and anger,” next following, refer to the outburst of passion and the more settled, vindictive resentment, to which the indulgence of acrimony gives rise, as “clamor and evil speaking” are their respective counterparts in words: all flowing from the deep-seated fountain of “all malice,” which is finally condemned in our verse. Thus, as we were warned against dishonesty in word and deed, before the allusion to the Holy Spirit's seal, so now, after it, hatred in its various parts and expressions is denounced. It is alas! natural to the first man Adam—the same corruption and violence which brought the flood on the world of old but renewed itself, spite of God's judgment, and will, till Christ deal with man and Satan in person.
But, as was observed in the previous verses, barb abstinence from the mind and workings of the flesh suffices not. There is the activity of good in Christ, the Second Man, and this the Spirit produces, as well as demands in the Christian. Hence He adds, “Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ hath forgiven you.” Clearly, therefore, it is a question of showing grace; and the pattern of it all is God in Christ, not in the law, holy, just and good as the commandment is. But good as the law was and is, Christ is the best of all, the genuine and only full and perfect expression of what God is. And leaving the law to deal with the wicked, (1 Tim. 1,) as the Apostle expressly declares is its lawful use, we who are dead with Christ are not under law but grace, which, by the power of the Spirit, Strengthens us according to its own character and gives communion with Him who is its source.
The reader will notice that there is a departure from the Authorized Version of verse 32. It is done advisedly. Why King James' translators deserted the Greek, followed by Wycliffe, Coverdale, and even the Blemish, it is hard to say, especially as Beza, who influenced them, is here accurate. The erroneous rendering obscures the very grace of God which is set before us as our spring and pattern, and tends to countenance the error that Christ was the procuring cause of His love, instead of being the blessed and infinite channel of its communication to us, the only possible means in which even His love could holily and justly avail for us. It is a part of the same error to think of God as “our reconciled Father,” or to say that Christ “died to reconcile Him to us.” Atonement was necessary beyond a doubt, the expiation of our sins by the blood of Christ. “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities.” But God was in Christ reconciling; it is we (not He) “who have now received the reconciliation.” “And you, that were sometimes alienated, and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled.” Such is the uniform doctrine of Scripture. How blessedly all is put and kept in its place! The atonement is that aspect of Christ's work, which is toward God, to put away sin by suffering the divine judgment of it in His own person; reconciliation, contrariwise, is toward us, to bring us back in Christ unto God. Both are most true: to confound them is to weaken and lose much; and what is more serious, it is more or less to misrepresent the character of God, as if he were turned by Christ from an angry judge into a loving Father.