Difference between revisions of "Meditations on the Holy Spirit 4"

Latest revision as of 01:41, 11 January 2019

Meditations on the Holy Spirit

In our last paper we attempted to unfold, from the word of God, the glorious truth of the Personality of the Holy Spirit, and intimated, at the conclusion of that paper, our hope and intention to pursue the same subject in a subsequent Article. This promise we shall now, therefore, with God's help and blessing, attempt to redeem.

Ever since we have been led into the truth as it is in Jesus, and more especially since we have been called to speak and write somewhat largely in his blessed name, we have seen and felt the necessity of three things to make us able ministers of the New Testament.

1. A spiritual understanding of the things of the Spirit of God; (1 Cor, 2:10-16; Eph. 1:17, 18;)

2. A gracious experience of their power; (1 Cor. 2:4, 5; 4:20;)

3. A door of utterance to open our mouths boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel. (Col. 4:3; Eph. 6:19.)

Without divine teaching and the wisdom which comes from above, no man can clearly "show himself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth;" (2 Tim. 2:15;) nor can he "take forth the precious from the vile," and so be as God's mouth. (Jer. 15:19.) But in no instance and for no work is this spiritual knowledge, this gracious experience, and this heavenly gift of utterance more needed than when the servants of God have to handle and unfold such deep and mysterious truths as the blessed Trinity, the Sonship of Christ, the Person and work of the Holy Spirit—subjects so important, and yet so profound, that one wrong word or one confused expression may open a door for error, wound or perplex the children of God, strengthen the hands of the enemies of truth, and lay a train for the temptations of Satan. We need, therefore, the prayers of the children of God before whom our papers on these deep and mysterious subjects come, that we may be led into all truth, and kept from all error, and be specially favored with that "anointing which teaches of all things, and is truth, and is no lie." (1 John 2:27.)

Thus to be blessed and favored has been and is our earnest desire; and not only so, but in laying what we hope the Lord has taught us of his precious truth before the Church of God, we have sought, with the Preacher, "to find out acceptable words, that what is written might be upright, even words of truth." (Eccles. 12:10.) And as many are watching for our halting, who would gladly seize upon some expression from our pen to make us an offender for a word, we have endeavored at the same time to use "sound speech that cannot be condemned, that he who is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil to say of us." (Titus 2:8.) However, then, we may have failed, our aim and study have been, on the one hand, to write acceptably to the saints of God, and on the other, to leave no room for any, whether friend or foe, to take any just exception to our language, either on the ground of obscurity of thought or error of expression.

* Exception, we understand, has been taken to our using the word "Agent" in reference to the Holy Spirit, as if the expression necessarily implied subordination or inferiority. We expressly guarded against any such ungrounded exception by explaining, in a note, p. 358, the meaning of the word "Agent" as "one who acts." We repeat it, therefore, again, that the word "Agent" literally and truly means "one who acts," and therefore necessarily implies a person, for a thing cannot act. It is a slight variation of the participle of the Latin word "ago," "I act;" "agens," "acting;" like our "do," "doing;" "I do," or "I am doing;" "I act," or "I am acting." "Why do you act so?" "Why are you acting so?" Where is the difference? If there be any, it requires a microscope to find it out. Even the word agent, as applied to an Irish agent, has the meaning of acting, and personal acting too. He is the man who acts. It is not his writs, nor his levies, nor his law papers, nor his leases and contracts which act. He acts, and is therefore an agent. His noble employer does not act. He lives probably at Paris, or in London, and knows nothing of his Irish estates, except to get all the rent he can from them. His agent does the work, and it is because he so acts that he is called an agent. That he acts for a landlord, a superior in rank, and therefore occupies a subordinate position, is a mere accidental circumstance, and has nothing whatever to do with the true and real meaning of the word. Let us have, then, no more of this caviling about the word "Agent." An Agent is a person, not a breath or an emanation; and in the case of the Holy Spirit a divine Person in the Trinity, and therefore co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Son, for in Godhead there can be neither superiority nor inferiority, supremacy or subordination.

We intimated in our last paper that we had not exhausted our scriptural arguments in proof of the PERSONALITY of the Holy Spirit . And among other convincing scriptural testimonies to prove that the blessed Spirit is not an emanation, a breath, an influence, or an operation, but a divine Person in the Godhead, we adduced a variety of personal actions, such as sealing, witnessing, &c., which none but a Person, a real living Person, could perform.

7. Under this class, then, of proof we may range another scriptural testimony—that he can be grieved . "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption." (Eph. 4:30.) Can we grieve a breath, an influence, an emanation? Have these passing things a heart to grieve? An unkind husband grieves a loving wife; an undutiful son grieves a fond parent; an untoward member of a church grieves a faithful pastor. In these too frequent cases, it is not the love that is grieved, but the loving person by whom the affection is so deeply felt, and out of whose heart the wounded love so tenderly flows. So when we are bidden not to grieve the Holy Spirit, it is He as a Person in the Godhead whom we are not to grieve. There is no personal feeling, no tender heart, no holy jealousy, no affections of compassion in a breath, an influence, a passing operation. We might as well say that we grieve the air when we shut it out of our houses, or grieve the rain when we keep it from falling on our bodies, or grieve the fire when we leave its warmth, as that we grieve the Spirit by neglecting his admonitions, if he be only a fleeting breath, a descending influence, or a warm emanation.

But when we view him as a distinct Person in the Godhead, and possessing in himself as such, independent of all covenant relationships, all the goodness, all the love, all the mercy, pity, and compassion of God, this act of faith upon him as a divine Person gives us a special feeling towards him which we could not have to a breath or an emanation, and makes us fear to grieve him. Tho love of a fond wife is dear to an affectionate husband. But the love is not the wife; and to grieve the love is a distinct thing from grieving the loving woman. The woman feels. She is "grieved in spirit;" (Isa. 54:6;) but her love cannot feel as distinct from herself. If "a wife of youth" and "forsaken," (Isa. 54:6,) according to the Lord's own figure, it is she, the feeling, living, loving woman who is grieved. Her tears, her sighs, her midnight weeping, her noonday sobbing, are but marks and signs of her inward. grief. The whole woman feels, and feels as a woman. Now apply this argument to grieving the Spirit, and see how it bears on his divine Personality. To grieve him is to grieve a Person, not an influence, or an operation, or some emanation from God.

But, perhaps, if you are a caviler, you will say, Can God be grieved. How carnal is your figure about a woman being grieved by an unkind or unfaithful husband, as if God could feel grief, as you represent this mourning wife to feel! Would not grief imply some imperfection in the Almighty, and represent him as subject to feelings and passions just as we are?" As to our figure, let it be only what we intend—a figure. We certainly do not mean to convey by it that the blessed Spirit is grieved, just as a poor, sinful, mortal woman is grieved. But as the Scripture bids us not to grieve the Holy Spirit, we believe from God's own unerring word, that he can be grieved. We cannot explain how. All we contend for is that he can be grieved, and that this feeling ascribed to him proves that he is a Person, not a thing—not an influence, or an emanation. But if you ask the question, as if the very inquiry implied the negative, "Can God grieve?" we reply, "Can God love?" This none can deny, with the Bible open on the table, But is not love a feeling? Can God be angry? Yes, for he is "angry with the wicked every day;" (Psalm 7:11;) and the Church says, "Though you were angry with me, your anger is turned away, and you comforted me." (Isa. 12:1.) And you, O caviler, who are barking at God's truth, and denying that he can be grieved because Deity, you say, cannot feel, may one day find, to your eternal dismay, that the feeling, or passion, if you like so to call it, of anger against his rebellious foes, as well as of grief towards his disobedient children, may dwell in the bosom of God. And can he not be "jealous," for is he not "a jealous God?" (Exod. 20:5;) and if a jealous God, does not the feeling of jealousy dwell in his bosom?

In the same way, then, and judging from the light of the same testimony, the Holy Spirit, as God, can be grieved. We cannot, indeed, explain how these feelings of love, anger, jealousy, grief, etc., exist in the bosom of God, or how fully to reconcile them with his immutability. But this God of feelings is the God of the Bible; not a god of the ancient Epicureans or Stoics, (Acts 17:18,) above, and therefore without all feeling; nor a Hindoo deity. The God of the Bible loves and hates; (Mal. 1:2, 3; Rom. 9:13;) pities and repents; (Psalm 102:13; Exod. 32:14; 1 Sam. 15:11;) is jealous and revenges; (Nahum 1:2;) is grieved and provoked; (Psalm 78:40;) is turned to be his people's enemy, and fights against them; and yet in all their affliction he is afflicted. (Isa. 63:9, 10.) This is Bible language; and therefore "sound speech that cannot be condemned;" yes, sound divinity, gracious theology; for in so speaking, we speak "as the oracles of God," and "in doctrine show uncorruptness." (Titus 3:7, 8; 1 Pet. 4:11.)

But if we reject the testimony which God has thus given of himself as possessing certain feelings, either because we cannot comprehend so deep a mystery or cannot reconcile it with our preconceived notions that such, as we think, human feelings must necessarily clash with the perfection and immutability of the divine nature, what must be the certain result? To set up a God of our own conception or imagination, modeled and framed according to a scheme of our own mind, as distinct from the God of the Bible. But you will perhaps still urge, "Do not the feelings which you ascribe to God of repenting, being grieved, etc., lower our ideas of his infinite perfection? Do they not represent him as a mutable, changeable being?" "Which you ascribe," do you say. We do not ascribe; it is the Bible which describes. We follow the Bible, and use Bible words. It is not our ascription, but the Bible's description. Does this offend you? But, perhaps, you are muddling your mind by confounding the pure feelings of the infinitely holy God with the impure feelings of poor, fallen man. Separate all idea of infirmity from God's love, pity, grief, etc., and you will see how you have, unconsciously perhaps, been mingling natural conceptions with spiritual apprehensions.

But to pursue the subject for a moment further. What sort of God would that be who felt neither love nor mercy; was never pleased, and never vexed; whom nothing could provoke to anger, not even the most daring blasphemies; and nothing move to pity, not even the most dreadful sufferings or the deepest afflictions of his own children? Such a God as this might be a stone god or a wooden god; but be he who or what he might, he would not be the God of the Bible, the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ; for a God without feeling would be a God without love; and this most certainly would not be the God who "so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16.) This is, indeed, rather a digression from our subject; but it may help, with God's blessing, to relieve the mind of some who have puzzled themselves over the problem, how the Holy Spirit can be grieved or vexed.

8. But the Holy Spirit is said in Scripture to be resisted ; and this implies also that he is a Person, and not a mere influence. Let us endeavor to open this point a little more fully. The martyr Stephen charged this sin of resisting the Holy Spirit upon the members of the Jewish council--"You stiff-necked, and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you do always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you." (Acts 7:51.) This then is our argument, that if they and their fathers resisted the Holy Spirit, they must have resisted him as a Person in the Godhead, and not as an influence. Let us work this question out. If we say then that the Holy Spirit is but an influence which God puts forth, and is not an actual living Person, what must be the necessary consequence, if he can be effectually resisted? for the council most certainly effectually resisted him when they gnashed upon Stephen with their teeth, and cast him out of the city, and stoned him. That divine influences may be effectually resisted. But what is this necessary conclusion? Arminianism to the very height! for it would prove that spiritual influences can be effectually resisted,* which is thorough Arminian doctrine. But now view the Holy Spirit as a Person, and then you will see in a moment that men may and do resist a Person, who could not resist an influence. A figure perhaps may make this point somewhat clearer. A mob collects together for some political object. The people become excited by some mob orator, and matters wear an aspect threatening to the public peace. The magistrate appears and begs the people to disperse. They resist. But what do they resist? The magistrate or his influence? The magistrate surely—the person of the magistrate, not his influence over their minds; for if his influence prevailed over their minds, they would obey him and disperse. We do not say that, in natural things, an influence may not be effectually resisted, as in the figure there may be an effectual resistance in the minds of the people to the natural influence of the magistrate; but not so in divine.

But now suppose the mob become riotous, and blood is shed; and suppose that the rioters are afterwards tried in a court of justice for not immediately dispersing after the Riot Act was read. Why are they punished, if found guilty? For resisting the influence of the magistrate, or for resisting the person of the magistrate? The law knows nothing of the magistrate's influence, but a great deal of the magistrate's person. The magistrate might not appear on the scene at all, and yet, from the general weight of his character, might exert an influence at a distance, or from being thought to be near at hand. But the law knows nothing of such an unseen influence. It looks to the person of the magistrate, and to the authority which he, as a state person, exerts and administers.

Now apply this figure to resisting the Holy Spirit