Having disowned the great apostate and him his ranks, and enlisted under the Messiah, and taken sides with the Lord’s anointed; Christ now proposes to put his Holy Spirit within us, to furnish us for the good fight of faith, and to anoint us as the sons and heirs of God!, so we can land on Mt. Ararat, safely!!
The purpose of this gift is to make as what we have become, not just in word, but in fact, Christians. It is truthfully said, that “no man can say Jesus is the Lord except by the Holy Spirit.” The spirit of God is a perfecter and finisher of all divine works. In the book of Genesis we have this statement: “the spirit of God moved upon the waters”; “the hand of the Lord has made me, the Spirit of the Almighty has given me life”; “by His Spirit He has garnished the heavens”, “His hand has formed the crooked serpent (the Milky Way)”; and again, “the Spirit descended upon Him; God bore himself witness by divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His will; then, the statement most acceptably known and understood, “holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” “When the Spirit of truth, the advocate, is come, He will convict the world of sin, because they believe not on Me, and of justification, because I go to My Father.” “God was manifest in the flesh and justified by the spirit.”
The Spirit of God inspired all the spiritual ideas in the New Testament, and confirmed them by miracles. He is ever present with the word that He inspired!! He descended from heaven on the day of Pentecost, and has not formally asked ascended since. In the sense in which He descended He certainly has not ascended; for He is the inspiration that empowers the church. We are “temple of the Lord.” “Know ye not, you Christians, that your bodies of the temples of the living God?” “The temple of God is holy, which temple you are; if the spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, God shall quicken your mortal bodies by His spirit to dwells within you.” The Spirit will cease His operation on the human heart when Christ ceases His reign!!
We cannot separate the Spirit and the Word of God. We cannot ascribe so much power to the one and so much to the other; this was not done by the apostles, so we have not that wisdom, today, if it exist, at all. Whatever the word does, the Spirit does; whatever the Spirit does in the work of converting men, the Word does. We neither believe nor teach the Spirit exist independent of the Word, but word and Spirit, Spirit and Word.
The Spirit is not promised to any persons out of Christ! He’s promised only to them that believe in and obey Christ through the communication given the apostles. These words actually and powerfully assist us in the mighty struggle for eternal life, if in us they have a resting place. Some think Christians need no more to gain eternal life than just to repent and be baptized for the remission of sins. They think this is totally and wholly the work of conversion. Children are born, then be what they are taught. Deity works the same. The Holy Spirit in conversion and the work of the Holy Spirit in the sanctification are two subjects, but both works are from the same Deity!! Which is the easiest to plant a crop, or to glean the field? Enlist in the Army, or be a good soldier, and fight the battles of the Lord; to start in the race, or reach the finish line, to enter the ship or cross the ocean? It is far harder to live what you have become, than to be baptized to become!!
