Meditations on the Holy Spirit 7
Meditations on the Holy Spirit 7
The glorious truths connected with the Deity, Personality, and Covenant Offices of the blessed Spirit, which have thus far engaged our thoughts and employed our pen, are in themselves so deep and yet so full, and in their application to the experience of the living family of God so varied and yet so comprehensive, that the nearer we approach the close of our Meditations upon them, the more sensibly do we feel the vastness and difficulty of the subject which we have undertaken to consider, and our own inability to unfold it in any way becoming its divine blessedness. But as we are already in sight of the goal, for with this paper we shall close our present Meditations, we feel that we must not now halt in our course, but, with such ability as the Lord may give, still speed our way onward, sustained by the hope that we are so running, not as uncertainly, but, with his gracious help whom we are seeking to honor, may win the coveted prize—the high privilege of bringing some glory to God and communicating some profit to his people.
But as we approach the terminus of our labors we are pressed also by another consideration—the difficulty of crowding into our remaining narrow compass what still remains before us of the gracious operations of the blessed Spirit upon the hearts of the saints of God.
Some of these we have already considered, and broke off rather abruptly in our last paper, while contemplating his divine operation as a Spirit of grace and supplications. And O how deeply indebted are we to this most holy and blessed Spirit for this part of his covenant work; for how true are the words of the Apostle, "We know not what we should pray for as we ought." (Rom. 8:26.) How often do we find and feel this to be our case. Darkness covers our mind; ignorance pervades our soul; unbelief vexes our spirit; guilt troubles our conscience; a crowd of evil imaginations, or foolish or worse than foolish wanderings distract our thoughts; Satan hurls in thick and fast his fiery darts; a dense cloud is spread over the mercy seat; infidelity whispers its vile suggestions, until, amid all this chaos, such confusion and bondage prevail that words seem idle breath, and prayer to the God of heaven but empty mockery.
In this scene of confusion and distraction, when all seems going to the wreck, how kind, how gracious is it in the blessed Spirit to come, as it were, to the rescue of the poor bewildered saint, and to teach him how to pray and what to pray for. He is therefore said "to help our infirmities," for these evils of which we have been speaking are not willful, deliberate sins, but wretched infirmities of the flesh. He helps, then, our infirmities by subduing the power and prevalence of unbelief; by commanding in the mind a solemn calm; by rebuking and chasing away Satan and his fiery darts; by awing the soul with a reverential sense of the power and presence of God; by presenting Jesus before our eyes as the Mediator at the right hand of the Father; by raising up and drawing forth faith upon his Person and work, blood and righteousness; and, above all, by himself interceding for us and in us "with groanings which cannot be uttered." When the soul is favored thus to pray, its petitions are a spiritual sacrifice, and its cries enter the ears of the Lord Almighty, for "He who searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God." (Rom. 8:27; James 5:4; 1 Peter 2:5.)
3. Another covenant office of the blessed Spirit is to work repentance in the heart of the child of God. Our blessed Lord, when he ascended up on high, received gifts for men. (Psalm 68:18; Eph. 4:8.) Now the main gift which he received was "the promise of the Holy Spirit," (Acts 2:33,) which he sheds abroad in the heart of his people. Being, therefore, "exalted to be a Prince and a Savior to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins," (Acts 5:31,) by shedding abroad the Spirit he gives repentance, for his gracious operations break, soften, and melt the heart. He thus fulfils the promise--"A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh." (Ezek.36:26.) This "new spirit" is a broken spirit, a soft, tender spirit, and is therefore called "a heart of flesh," as opposed "to the heart of stone," the rocky, obdurate, unfeeling, impenitent heart of one dead in sin, or dead in a profession. And how is this soft, penitent heart communicated? "I will put my Spirit within you." (Ezek. 36:27.) The same divine truth is set forth in that gracious promise to which we have already referred--"And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplications; and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn." (Zech. 12:10.) But what is the immediate effect of the pouring out of the Spirit of grace and supplications? A looking to him whom they have pierced, a mourning for him as one mourns for an only son, and a being in bitterness for him as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. This is evangelical repentance, as distinguished from legal; godly sorrow working repentance to salvation not to be repented of, as distinct from the sorrow of the world which works death.
These two kinds of repentance are to be carefully distinguished from each other, though they are often sadly confounded. Cain, Esau, Saul, Ahab, Judas, all repented; but their repentance was the remorse of natural conscience, not the godly sorrow of a broken heart and a contrite spirit. They trembled before God as an angry Judge--but were not melted into contrition before him as a forgiving Father. They neither hated their sins nor forsook them, loved holiness nor sought it. Cain went out from the presence of the Lord; Esau plotted Jacob's death; Saul consulted the witch of Endor; Ahab put honest Micaiah into prison; and Judas hanged himself. How different from this forced and false repentance of a reprobate is the repentance of a child of God—that true repentance for sin, that godly sorrow, that holy mourning which flows from the Spirit's gracious operations. This does not spring from a sense of the wrath of God in a broken law, but of his mercy in a blessed gospel; from a view by faith of the sufferings of Christ in the garden and on the cross; from a manifestation of pardoning love; and is always attended with self-loathing and self-abhorrence, with deep and unreserved confession of sin and forsaking it, with most hearty, sincere, and earnest petitions to be kept from all evil, and a holy longing to live to the praise and glory of God.
4. But as the Lord's people are for the most part a poor and afflicted people, and the entrance into the kingdom of heaven is through much tribulation, another covenant office of the blessed Spirit is to comfort the family of God. Our gracious Lord, therefore, in that heavenly discourse in which he sought to console his sorrowing disciples on the eve of his own sufferings and death, promised to send them, after his departure, the Spirit of truth as a Comforter--"And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it sees him not, neither knows him; but you know him, for he dwells with you, and shall be in you." (John 14:16, 17.) And again--"But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceeds from the Father, he shall testify of me." (John 15:26.)
As our divine Lord so graciously unfolded to his mourning disciples who this Comforter should be, what he should be to them, and what he would do in and for them, we will devote a few moments' consideration to the words which then fell from his lips, as they have so important a bearing on the point which we are now considering. The very name, then, by which the Lord called him, "the Comforter," shows at once what he is to the Church of God, and that he is sent to comfort afflicted saints. He was to be "another Comforter," therefore distinct from, or he could not be another, and yet equal to the Comforter whose bodily presence they were about to lose, or he could not fill his place, or be to the disciples what their Lord and Master had been.* Nor would he ever leave them, or withdraw from them his spiritual, as their Lord was about to withdraw his bodily presence, but would "abide with them forever." No, more, he was "to dwell with them, and be in them." Thus though they would lose the unspeakable happiness of having their dear Lord and Master continually in their midst; though they would no more see his face in the flesh, no longer witness his marvelous works, or hear his gracious words; though they would sustain the seemingly irreparable bereavement of his daily company, of his wise and affectionate counsel, and of his ever-shielding power, without which they would be but as sheep among wolves, yet all would be made up to them by the indwelling presence and unutterable consolations of the promised Comforter.
Nor would they even lose the best part of their Master's presence, or even be deprived of their customary sight of Him whom they loved; for he adds, "I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world sees me no more; but you see me. Because I live, you shall live also." (John 14:18, 19.) He himself would come to them; not indeed in his bodily, but in his spiritual presence—in the manifestation of his love, in the personal abode which he would make in their hearts. The world would see him no more. It had seen only his bodily form, and that it hated and despised. No eyes had it to behold his glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. It only saw the poor, despised Nazarene—the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, who, in its eyes, had neither form nor loveliness. When, then, he went up on high to sit down at the right hand of the Father, the world saw him no more. Its last look of him was on the cross, when it said by the mouth of its representatives, in mocking scorn--"He saved others; himself he cannot save; if he be the King of Israel, let him come now down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him; for he said, I am the Son of God." (Matt. 27:42, 43.) The next sight the world will have of him will be in judgment, when thousands and tens of thousands will call on the rocks and mountains to fall upon them and hide them from the face of him that sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. But he promised that his disciples should see him by his personal manifestations, as from tine to time he should reveal himself to their souls.
* How clear and striking a testimony did the Lord thus give to those two points which we have considered in our previous Meditations—the Deity and Personality of the Holy Spirit. To comfort the disciples as Jesus had comforted them, he must be equal to Jesus, or he could not take his place. If the Son, therefore, be God, the Holy Spirit must be God. But he was to be another Comforter, therefore distinct from Jesus; and must comfort them as a Person, for an influence may comfort, but it must be a Person to be a Comforter.
But they and they only? Have we no interest in these gracious promises? Is there now no Comforter for us? Does Jesus never come to us? Do we never see him by the eye of faith and in the light of his own manifestations? Does he not still live? Is he not still "our life?" (Col. 3:4.) Is he not still at the right hand of the Father? And does not the promise still hold good, "Because I live, you shall live also?" The faith, the hope, and the love which deal with these promises, which are sustained by them and spring out of them, form the very life and power, cream and marrow, unction and savor of all our religion, unless we have a name to live and are dead.
5. Connected, then, with these promises of the Lord on the eve of his sufferings and death, are also other covenant offices of the blessed Spirit. Thus he is to "glorify" Jesus, according to the promise--"He shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you." (John 16:14.) He glorifies Jesus by taking of the things which are his and showing them to the soul; for as everything which belongs to Jesus is unspeakably glorious, whatever he makes known of him shines forth in all the reflection of his glory. Thus he takes of his glory as the eternal and only-begotten Son of God, reveals and manifests it to the soul as the most blessed and essential truth, shines on the various passages of holy writ which speak of it, illuminates the eyes of the understanding to see their meaning, bears them home upon the heart to believe their sure testimony, and seals them on the conscience with an invincible energy to feel their weight and power, so that we cry out in faith, "You are the Son of God, you are the king of Israel." (John 1:49.)