We see the wonderful, and to us most blessed, union of God and man in the person of our adorable Lord, the object of faith and rest of the soul. In virtue of this union, those who believe and abide in Him have the constant indwelling of the Holy Ghost with them, according to that word, “He that believeth in Me, as the scripture hath said, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” This is, in fact, the real constitution of the church. To assert the interruption of the Spirit's presence, save as to our unbelief, or to assert His influence and not His person, is to make a gap in that which the Lord declares to be continuous: “He shall abide with you forever;” yea, is it not to take up the language of infidelity of old, “The Lord hath forsaken the earth” (Ezek. 8:12, 9: 9)? Unless therefore it be asserted that believers are not one with Christ, the presence of the Spirit cannot be denied to be their portion, because it is in virtue of that union that the Spirit dwells among them, “that He may be with you forever.” The presence of Christ could only have been the portion of the few immediately favored with our Lord's presence on the earth, had He remained. The Spirit would fulfill in all ages, to those who would confide in Him, the gracious part of teacher, reprover, adviser, and tender soother of all their fears; which Jesus had done while personally conversant with them on earth. The expression, “the Holy Ghost was not yet, because that Jesus was not yet glorified,” compared with the declaration of the Lord (John 16:77Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. (John 16:7)), “it is expedient for you that I go away,” opens out to us most blessedly the peculiar character of the dispensation in which we are, and its distinguishing blessing to those who abide in Christ. Jesus is glorified, the Spirit come, and the portion of the Church is one with Him as risen: “as He is, so are we in this world.”
This is closely bound up with “the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you the hope of glory.” “Will God indeed dwell on the earth?” is not now answered by the glory of God filling the house which Solomon built, but in the perpetual testimony of the Spirit to the fact of man dwelling with God, “the Only-begotten in the bosom of the Father;” even He “that humbled Himself to death, yea, the death of the cross,” being exalted as man into that glory which He had before the world was. How “expedient therefore that He should go away,” that we might know God's condescension to man. The Spirit in the children of God is the testimony of this to the world now; and it shall be fully demonstrated at the period to which, now groaning, they look forward, “the revelation of the sons of God,” when Jesus shall be manifested as “the first-born among many brethren.”
Let us notice how necessarily the dispensation of the Spirit flows from the fact of the incarnation and ascension. The man Jesus must be glorified ere the Spirit's dispensation was. For as Jesus, the Son of God, had glorified His Father, and not sought His own glory; and as it is the Father's will “that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father,” so the Spirit seeketh not His own glory. But says Jesus, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now; howbeit 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 shall show you things to come; He shall glorify me; for He shall receive of mine and show it unto you.” The two great branches of the Spirit's testimony are to the sufferings of Christ and His glories.
And these are truths, yea, the only truths, that is, the only things that have intrinsic and therefore unfading excellence in them. Jesus is the truth. “He came by water and by blood, not by water only, but by water and by blood; and it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.” History may make us acquainted with the fact of the crucifixion; but the Spirit alone can teach its wondrous result, in leading the conscience to the blood of the Lamb, opening therein God's counsel of peace to sinners, with the preservation and illustration of every previously manifested perfection of God— “a just God and a Savior.” So again the assent of the understanding may be given to the fact of the ascension and consequent glory of Jesus; but it is the Spirit's province to direct the eye of the believer to his portion in it, resulting again from the fact of the incarnation of the Son of God. “Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him; but God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God.” Now in all this we find “God's thoughts not as ours,” in that man is entirely turned away from himself to an object without him for present comfort and future glory. “Look unto Me and be ye saved.” “He shall take of mine and show it unto you.” It is the rightful glory of Jesus to which He points; and the believers share in it from the love which brought Him down into our sad necessities. Disconnect the two, the sufferings and the glories, and there must needs be vagueness in peace and hope; the power of both, applied by the Spirit to faith, is our victory over the world.
In connection with these there is also another thing. Jesus, to establish the mind of His disciples on leaving them, comforts them with the words recorded in John 14:29; 15:15; 16:1229And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe. (John 14:29)
15Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. (John 15:15)
12I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. (John 16:12). It is by the Spirit Who searcheth all things &c., that, as friends, believers are admitted into the counsels of God (1 Cor. 2:1616For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 2:16)). It is thus that without new revelations the Spirit, by opening and applying His own writings according to the exigencies of the church, guides into all truth. “Lo! I have told you beforehand.” This is their safeguard against surprise. He is “the Spirit of counsel and wisdom,” not by setting man's will to work on his own materials, but by turning the thoughts to Jesus Who is our wisdom; and it is only as things bear on Him and are connected with Him, that they are the truth.
Thus “those who have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil” are enabled to judge righteous judgment. Everything by the Spirit is brought to Jesus as the light, and there His reality is discovered. Hence it is that when the influence of the Spirit, apart from His real presence and guidance, has been looked to, the mind of man has been accustomed to reason on the things of God; and, instead of the judgment of the Spirit, to have only that of man. Thus the way has been opened for departure from the ground-work of personal acceptance, or even to the wildest fanaticism. This has been the case whenever the peculiar characteristic of this as the spiritual dispensation (i.e. the dispensation in which the Holy Ghost is the blessed agent, glorifying not Himself but Jesus) has been lost sight of. Forgetfulness of this has tended to place even the Lord's people in a false position. Looking only to spiritual agency within them (so far undoubtedly right), they have been led into an unmeaning vagueness of hope, and have almost practically dissociated the hope of glory from the resurrection state, and connected it with that of the separate spirit. Hence has arisen the sad mistake of a believer's real position in the world, and the vain attempt to regenerate it, save by the intervention of Him Who says, “Behold, I create all things new.”
The world has been looked on as a scene of possible enjoyment, the full tide of evil and power of death in it being recognized only by those who “have passed from death to life,” who know that they “are of God, and that the whole world lieth. in wickedness.” The spiritual man, he that is quickened together with Christ, one with the risen and ascended Jesus in Spirit, ceases from the vain attempt to improve the world. The real liberty, into which he is brought by truth, is the perception of things as they actually are in the sight of God. The world and its lusts are known as not of the Father, and therefore pass away; and hence joy in victory over it, and not being of it, through Him “Who gave Himself for us that He might deliver us out of this present evil world” (age).
How momentous to know our real character as Christians, specially in the present day, so remarkable for many anxious attempts at bettering the condition of man; and yet all must fail, all fall before the power of evil, because there is no power or wisdom against it but in Him Who is “the power of God and wisdom of God.” Every advance that man has been able to make has left him short of life. This, then, is the portion of a spiritual man he stands in the power of life ever surrounded by death, and is therefore enabled to judge righteous judgment, because he can judge not according to appearances but according to realities. It is true that, being quickened by the Spirit of God, he is able “to see the kingdom of God;” and his mind being necessarily versed in realities, and these realities being God and His Christ, whilst he learns the vanity of all that is in the world, he acquires a refinement and delicacy of mind which converse with God never fails to give. But there is exceeding great danger lest we mistake intellectual refinement for spirituality. The Spirit of God being the Spirit of truth, he that is born of the Spirit is of the truth, and is versed in the realities of all things.
It is not the abstraction of the mind from the scene of evil to an imaginary scene of good, but whilst being in the evil, we recognize it in all its fearful extent, and detect it under the fairest outside, rising above it personally through Him Who was in it and felt its full pressure, in the blessed confidence that He overcame it all. In the world, not of the world, and therefore capacitated not only to see its misery, but to minister to it (and hence “the spiritual man judgeth all things"), we are enabled to bring forth the judgment of God upon circumstances apparently trivial. This is much opened to us in 1 Cor. 7. We find the apostle giving his judgment, not by immediate revelation from God, but as one who had obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful, and had the Spirit of God (δοκῶ δὲ κἀγώ πνεῦμα θεοῦ ἔχειν), he applies the judgment of the Spirit in him to circumstances of the most domestic character. It is thus he judges all things, being himself only a looker on, and therefore enabled in all calmness to see what those who are themselves engaged in it, cannot. “Man looks on the outside,” he may view a thing everywhere, but the Spirit gets at the principle, i.e. what is before God. In a very little matter a great principle may be at stake, and hence the shortcoming even of worldly wisdom in worldly things. “The Lord taketh the wise in their own craftiness” (1 Cor. 3:1919For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. (1 Corinthians 3:19)).
(To be continued.)