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Jesus, Grace, and Truth in Action
Holiness in
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Spirit of Promise
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Introduction
In Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:4,
Luke records Jesus speaking of the Holy Spirit as “the
promise of My Father,” the one relational reality
which reveals the heart of God to His children as Abba,
Father. Luke finishes his Gospel account in ch. 24 by
saying, then Jesus “opened their minds to understand the
Scriptures [same thing the Spirit of Christ does for you
and I], and He said to them, ‘Thus it is written …that
the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the
Third Day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins
[a ‘change of mind,’ which in this case and context is
synonymous with faith: whereas before you did not
believe in Him, now you do] would be proclaimed in His
name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending
forth the promise of My Father upon
you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed
with power from on high,” vv. 45-49 {NAU}; Acts 1:4 is a
similar account of Christ’s ascension.
If a child is to enter into
the plans and purposes of a parent, if he is to experience
something of the joy God intended in his father and his
father’s delight in him, he must be in some sense of one
mind and motivation with him. We understand that on the
temporal plane, here in the human realm. Then why do we
refuse to recognize this on the spiritual and in the
eternal? It’s impossible to imagine God bestowing any
greater gift on His child than His own Spirit of power and
purity, than His very own presence within. Beyond the very
Life of God Himself, the Spirit abiding and empowering us is
the most phenomenal gift He has to give.
In John 14:26 Jesus speaks of
the Father sending the Holy Spirit “in My name;” in
John 15:26 He say’s, I will “send the Helper to you
from the Father.” So, He is the Spirit of both the
Son and the Father, and because He is the entirety of Life,
Love and Light which reside in the Father and the Son are in
Him as well. It is the Spirit who brings us into fellowship
with the other members of the Trinity. As Andrew Murray has
said:
“As the Spirit of the Father,
He fills our hearts with the love with which the Father
loved the Son, and teaches us to live in it. As the Spirit
of the Son, He breathes into us the child-like liberty,
devotion, and obedience in which the Son lived on Earth.
The Father can bestow no higher or more wonderful gift than
this— His own Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Sonship”1
{Rom. 8:15}.
The Spirit of God is His
appointed Intermediary whose work is to convey the riches
and resources of Christ and everything there is in Him
to us. He is the Spirit of Life, as Paul said in
Romans 8:2: “For the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ
Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.”
If, or maybe better would be when, we surrender our selves
to the Spirit in abandonment of self-direction and
self-protection, and let Him have full reign in our hearts
and lives— to have His way with us— He manifests within us
the courage and conviction of the Son of God. He does this
by releasing within us divine and omnipotent power,
Resurrection Power.
Body
Here’s how the Holy Spirit
meets our incredible need. He is the Spirit of:
Grace
{Heb. 10:29}— who reveals the grace of God in Christ, and
enables us to live it, breathe it, and bestow it on others.
Faith—
who teaches us to trust in the heart of Abba, and to
move forward and mature in our complete reliance on Christ.
Adoption and Assurance
{Rom. 8:15; 1 Thes. 1:5}— He bears witness that we are the
children of a Perfect Father, and inspires our confidence in
that eternal fact and our confiding in Him like a child with
his Papa.
Truth
{Jn. 14:26; 15:26}— who leads us into all the Truth, teaches
us all that Christ has for us, and brings to our remembrance
exactly what we need exactly when we need it.
Prayer
{Rom. 8:26; Eph. 2:2 and 6:18}— it is through Him and by
means of Him that we speak boldly, fearlessly, and
faithfully with the Father. “In the same way the Spirit
also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as
we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for {us}
with groanings too deep for words,” Romans 8:26 {NAU}.
Ephesians 6:18, “With all prayer and petition pray at
all times in the Spirit, and with this in view,
be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all
the saints,” {NAU}.
Holiness
{Romans 1:4, which speaks of Him “who was declared the
Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead,
according to the Spirit of Holiness, Jesus
Christ our Lord.”}— He manifests in us a holiness of
life which leads us to further wholeness of heart; exposes
pockets of pain, areas of hurt unhealed and broken, so that
they can be disarmed, disinfected and defeated; brings
righteousness to reality in our walk with God.
Power—
He gives us supernatural strength in our wayfaring in life
and warfaring against the world, gives us the courage to
boldly proclaim the Message of Grace and our love for our
Lord, and to labor both faithfully and effectively in the
Cause of Christ and service of the King.
Glory—
He is the pledge of our inheritance. 2 Corinthians 1:22
says, God “sealed us and gave {us} the Spirit in our
hearts as a pledge.” And He prepares us for the glory
to come in the Day of God: “If you are reviled for the
name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit
of Glory and of God rests upon you,” 1 Peter 4:14.
The one and only thing we
need to live fully and freely as a child of God is to “be
filled” and to “walk in step with” the mighty
Holy Spirit— cf. commands of Ephesians 5:18-21. One of the
lessons from Ephesians 5:18-21 is the prominence of these
three hallmarks in the early Church. It was a Brotherhood:
[1] filled with singing, laughter, and love {there was a
spirit of joy permeating the souls of the saints}; [2]
grateful for the grace of God: you see this immense
gratitude rarely ever seen today because the members were
awed and amazed at the love of the Father and the sacrifice
of His Son; and [3] that honored and respected one another.
Paul says the reason for this respect is their worship of
the Lord of Glory. They saw each other through the eyes of
Christ, not in light of their social standing or monetary
status but in the Light of the Lord.
As the offspring of the
Almighty, the sons and daughters of God {“‘And I will be
a Father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me,’
says the Lord Almighty,” 2 Cor. 6:18}, we have already
received the eternal indwelling of the Spirit. “The love
of God has been poured out within our hearts through the
Holy Spirit who was given to us,” Romans 5:5. Ephesians
1:13b-14 says, “Having believed, you were marked in Him
with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit
[‘a down payment’] guaranteeing our inheritance
until the redemption of those
who are God’s
possession…,” {NIV};
and Ephesians 4:30. In 2 Timothy 1:14 Paul tells his young
lieutenant to “guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells
in us, the treasure which has been entrusted
to {you.}” Hebrews 6:4 speaks of believers as “those
who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the
heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the
Holy Spirit.”
So, here it is. What we need
to pray for now is that the Spirit of God might manifest
Himself in new and fresh ways within our hearts and lives,
that He might have that perfect possession of us we speak of
so often— body, soul, and spirit— that He would reign with
fullness and freedom over every area of our experience, and
that He might continue to wage war on our behalf, covering
our blindside and our backside against the attacks of the
evil one! As I was thinking about new channels through
which the Spirit might flow, new ways He might bring Christ
roaring to the forefront and glorify the King through us and
within us, here’s what came to me. Remember the old saying,
“We have all of Him, the problem is He doesn’t have all of
us”? Precisely. Those new avenues of divine action, divine
power, divine purity, divine holiness, righteousness, and
love are going to come open as the old avenues of pain,
heartache, hurt and despair, those old pockets of anger,
bitterness, recrimination and revenge are cleansed, purged
and purified by His presence. As the healing of our hearts
becomes deeper and deeper and the structure of our souls
becomes more and more whole, we’re going to find that
the Holy Spirit has new realms in which to operate within
us, entire regions of the sub-conscious soul to move and to
breathe in. The ‘hidden places’ of yesteryear, the areas
formerly off-limits, are now wide-open channels of
free-flowing grace.
Author and pastor Andrew
Murray said, “The believer, rejoicing in the possession of
the Spirit, still thirsts and cries for more.”2
What Christ teaches us in this is that we should expect
nothing less than God’s promise in answer to our prayer. We
must be filled abundantly; and our Lord wants us to ask in
assurance and in faith that all we could ever want or desire
of the Spirit has already been given by the love of our
Father.
Praying in Relation to the
Spirit’s Filling.
As we pray for the fullness
of the Spirit to flow in and through us in
order to reveal the glory of God to a lost and dying world,
don’t look for the answer in your feelings. “All spiritual
blessings must be received in faith:” all the gifts of
grace, including the mighty power of the Spirit, must be
accepted by faith. The Greek word for “receiving”
and “taking” is the same {lambano}. When
Jesus said, “For everyone who asks receives”
{Matt.7:8a}, He used the same verb as at the covenant meal
in Matthew 26:26 when He broke the bread, “gave {it} to
the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My
body,’” and on the Resurrection morn when “He
breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy
Spirit,’” John 20:22. Here’s the point: Receiving not
only implies God’s giving in grace, but our
accepting in faith. Even while I pray, my soul
must embrace the reality of the Spirit and His promised
power: “I thank You, Father, that I have what I ask, that
you freely give of Yourself and pour out Your Spirit upon
those who hunger to walk deeply with You. The fullness and
freedom of the Spirit is mine.” Continue unshaken in this
faithful promise: On the strength of divine declaration, the
awesome power of the Holy Word, we know that we have what we
ask.
Murray says, “Continue
praying in belief that the blessing that has already been
given to us {the HS} will break through and fill
our entire being. It is in such believing thanksgiving and
prayer that our souls open up and the Spirit takes entire
and undisturbed possession of them. Such prayer not only
asks and hopes for, but also takes, holds, and inherits the
full blessing. In all our prayer let us remember the lesson
the Savior teaches us— the Father wants us to be filled
with His Spirit.”3
And, I would add, delights in opening new avenues within us
through which the Spirit can move.
In Conclusion
Paul wrote in Galatians 5,
“So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not
gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful
nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the
Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in
conflict with each other, so that you do not do what
you want. But if you are being led by the Spirit
[present tense: constantly and consistently],
you are not under the Law [Mosaic or any other]. …[in
v. 24 he say’s] Those who belong to Christ Jesus have
crucified the sinful nature [aorist tense: at the
Cross of Christ] with its passions and desires [evil
‘passions’ and dark ‘desires’]. Since we live by the
Spirit [and we do: the Holy Spirit who indwells us is
God’s gift to us, a down-payment and deposit on the wealth
that awaits us in Eternity; this v. embodies the contrast
between divine provision and human appropriation; we have
what and Who we need to ‘live’ abundantly, so:], let us
keep in step with the Spirit [when and
where He leads, we are to follow in faith, and that comes
down to a matter of choice, what we choose to do moment by
moment],” Galatians 5:16-18, 24-25 {NIV}.
This section of Scripture
takes us back to the ultimate reality of Life in the Spirit
of Christ: a heart circumcised unto God and free from the
domination of sin {free to follow Christ for the very
first time: Rom. 2:28-29; Col. 2:11-12}, a Conqueror and
Overcomer alive within us in the person of the Holy Spirit,
the very flesh itself— “the sinful nature”— crucified
with Christ, and the offer of a true and genuine holiness
“in step with the Spirit.” We start, as with every step
of righteousness and reality, with what it most true
about our lives in Jesus, then move out from there. This is
the unmitigated assertion of the Living Word of God. We
trust what is most true {absolutely true, in fact}, and
trust in the Holy Spirit who reveals it, then choose to
exercise it in experience; not the other way around. We
don’t wait to see it in our lives, then go back and say,
“Yeah, that seems to be true.” It doesn’t work that way.
It begins and ends— like all worthwhile relationships— with
trust.
Once we’ve come to know and
know well the Father in prayer, we learn to pray confidently
and courageously for others. And this is the Life we were
meant for: to be sacrificed for the sake of others, to give
my heart, my life, my love to a heroic endeavor, to an Epic
Adventure. I will never be fulfilled as long as I’m holding
on tight to the ‘strings of self.’ I must give all
to the God who gave all for me. The one who spends herself
in the cause of her King, who gives himself fully to a
destiny divine, will find a freedom and deliverance the
timid and fearful will never know. “For whoever wishes
to save his life [‘save his soul for himself’]
will lose it,” Jesus said in Mark 8:35, “but whoever
loses his life for My sake and the Gospel’s will save it.”
1:
Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer,
p. 47
2:
ibid., pp. 49-50
3:
ibid., pp. 49-50
