“Look off unto Jesus, and sorrow no more.”

The comfort then of this deliverance we have in believing God’s testimony to the work of Christ as dead to sin upon the cross. The power for godliness and enjoyment is the Holy Spirit; and we are told that if we are led of the Spirit we are not under the law, and if we walk in the Spirit we shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh (Gal.5:16, 18). Before deliverance it was all “I,” “me,” and “my”; but after deliverance Christ is the object of the heart and the indwelling Spirit the power for holiness, who is the Glorifier and Testifier of the Son. In the consciousness of being God’s children, being in Christ and Christ in us, in a groaning creation yet to be delivered, with a body yet to be conformed to the image of His Son; and often called to resist Satan by being steadfast in the faith, yet, knowing that God is for us, God is our Justifier and our Glorifier, we are entitled to go on waiting for the redemption of our body, being fully persuaded that nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
THE HOLY SPIRIT
Before the subject of deliverance is brought out in this epistle to the saints at Rome, the Holy Spirit is only once mentioned in the whole of the first seven chapters; but when deliverance is known, the personal actings and operations of the Spirit dwelling in us are over and over again presented to us; and this is important to notice. As to this we may observe
1. That the Holy Spirit gives us life in Christ Jesus, and sets us free; for where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Cor. 3:18).
2. As a divine Person — the Spirit that raised up Jesus from the dead — He dwells in us, and shall “quicken your mortal bodies” (v. 11). The Holy Spirit Himself dwells in our bodies. (See 1 Cor. 6:19.)
3. He is our power against all evil and for all fruit-bearing. It is by the Spirit we have power to mortify the deeds of the body. Observe here it does not say “the body,” but “the deeds of the body,” for in this way sin in the flesh comes out (Rom. 8:13).
4. He is in us not as a spirit of bondage, but as “the Spirit of adoption,” to make us know that we are really God’s children. He communicates intelligence, and strengthens affections and motives suited to such an endearing relationship, “whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” He also leads us, “for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Rom. 8:14, 15).
5. He is given to us as the “firstfruits of the Spirit,” because by-and-by the Spirit will be poured out upon all flesh. (v. 23)
6. He is the Helper of our infirmities in prayer, and makes intercession according to God, “with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Rom. 8:26).
7. He shows us that the whole creation groaneth, and will be delivered and brought into the liberty of the glory of the children of God; and He teaches us to wait for the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:23).
Thus we have brought before us something of the power that works in a delivered soul. Ought we not then to “abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost”?