01.07. Spirit of Sonship (Erdman)
VII. THE SPIRIT OF SONSHIP. BY W. J. ERDMAN, ASHEVILLE, N. C. The characteristic name of the Holy Spirit in three epistles of Paul, is " the Spirit of adoption." The title of this address is, however, " the Spirit of Sonship," for the word "adoption" in common use does not express the full truth of the Sonship of believers in Christ. The word is found only in Romans 8:15, Romans 8:23; Romans 9:4; Galatians 4:5, Ephesians 1:5. It signifies the placing in the state of a Son, of one already a child in the family; it is a name contrasting the condition of a child who has attained his majority with that of one who is a minor. Christians do not enter twice into the family of God, once by being born again and a second time by adoption understood in its usual sense. " Sonship " relates not to nature, but to legal standing; it comes not through regeneration, but through redemption; for it believers in God in olden time and the disciples of Christ had to wait until the Son of God redeemed them; and then the Spirit of God was poured out at Pentecost, not to make believers Sons, but because they had become Sons through redemption; once though children they were minors, now they became Sons, and received the Spirit of Sonship. In brief, Sonship, though ever since redemption inseparable from justification, does in the order of salvation succeed justification. In Romans 5:1 justification precedes the " grace " of Sonship in Romans 5:2. The " access " or " introduction " is of the justified into the presence of God as Father; and it is through Christ and by the Spirit. Compare " access " in Romans 5:2, Ephesians 2:18, Ephesians 3:12. All this truth is obscured by the inconsistent renderings of the Authorized Version, which translates in Ephesians 1:5, " adoption of children" and in the other passages " adoption of sons." " Children " is not the equivalent of " Sons " in these scriptures. The importance too of this discrimination is to be magnified because many Christians, by calling themselves only " children of God," remain ignorant of the distinctive high dignity to which they are called and in which they now stand as Sons of God. As a proof of these statements, the following facts may be considered:
I. The gifts and acts of the Holy Spirit were alike in kind before and after the day of Pentecost. The Spirit was in the world when John the Baptist announced the future baptism. He himself was full of the Spirit. And of old the Spirit was the author of all spiritual life and power, Psalms 143:10. and gifts of wisdom and government, of teaching and preaching; the working of miracles and the conviction of sinners, Micah 3:8, all betokened the presence of the Spirit in the old dispensation.
What then was meant by the promise of John and of Jesus?
II. In the heart of the prophetic Scriptures five promises of a future gift of the Holy Spirit are found, and these are repeated in substance and in literal phrase by the Lord Jesus.
1 . The Spirit was to be " poured on all flesh," Joel 2:28-29, Acts 2:33; 2. To be "poured on all thirsty," Isaiah 44:3, John 7:37-39; 3. To be " poured from on high," Isaiah 32:15, Luke 24:49; that "from on high " contained the whole mystery of a suffering and exalted Messiah, for sin must first be put away, captivity led captive before the Gift could be bestowed; the Chrism of glory could come only from the pierced hands of the glorified Christ; the Rock must first be smitten before the Water could flow; 4. To be " within " believers in a more permanent and interior dwelling, Ezekiel 36:27, John 14:17, John 23. 5. To be "forever" with them; Is. 56:21, John 14:16. In these passages the " pouring," and " on all flesh," and the " from on high " and other phrases are all in significant contrast, and mark a difference between the Old and the New Dispensation. The unfulfilled context of these predictions also prove the promises themselves await a future and exhaustive fulfilment in the experience of Israel, whom God has not forever cast away, Romans 11:1-2, Romans 11:12, Romans 11:15, Romans 11:25-26.
III. But it is as the Spirit of Sonship that the Gift receives the characteristic name. He was to be given more abundantly, " poured; " but specifically unto believers as redeemed Sons of God, unto children who had attained their majority, and as heirs now entitled to receive the inheritance, and who do now receive the Spirit of Sonship as the first fruits and earnest of the inheritance of the Son of God.
It is this marvellous dignity of a Sonship in glory like that of our Lord Jesus, with all its attendant blessings and privileges, service and rewards, sufferings and glories, that imparts to the Pentecostal gift of the Holy Spirit its peculiar character and distinguishes it from all previous bestowments in the old dispensation. The minors, i.e., the word " children," in Galatians 4:1-7, are now of full age; the "born ones," the bairns, words significant of nature, kind, kin, in the writings of John 1:12-13, John 3:1-3, rather than of dignity and office, are now Sons of God; the new name "Father," the Son of God, came to declare, John 17:26, was now made known in inseparable association with the new name "brethren," John 20:17, and the inspired interval of silence between Psalms 22:21 and the remaining part, in which interval came the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, is now broken by the rapturous greeting of "the first-born of many brethren," Romans 8:29. " Go to my brethren and say unto them I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." John 20:17. Not before redemption had been accomplished and confirmed by resurrection could Jesus call his disciples " Brethren," and not until the Spirit of Sonship had been given could they say " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." The mighty Breath of Pentecost symbolized by the breathing of Jesus upon his disciples on the evening of his resurrection foretold their service not as servants merely, but as Sons. The pouring of the One Gift was not only for acts of service (and acts imply " power ") but also for " renewing," Titus 3:5-6; (the pouring on Paul and Titus was not at Pentecost, yet the same word poured is used, so pointing back to Pentecost as the time when the Spirit was given once for all to dwell with the Church); the Spirit was evermore to deepen and develop their spiritual life and nature as children and Sons, to manifest the life eternal as light and love, the life of the Father and the Son lived and developed in this relationship of Sons of God, and also to equip them for ministry with manifold gifts. To each He was given for life eternal; and all as one Body, as one Son (Galatians 3:28; " Ye are all one Son in Christ Jesus; " see Galatians 3:26 also where " children " should be translated Sons), were baptized by the One Spirit, and so incorporated as " The Christ," 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, " the Son of God, the perfect Man," Ephesians 4:12-13, the Heir, Galatians 3:16, Galatians 3:19, the Seed, the Isaac, Romans 4:16-25, the risen from the dead, Romans 1:4, Php 3:11, Luke 20:34-36.
IV. The Spirit as uniting believers with the risen and glorified Son of God works in these three departments of Christian life and experience; the work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 1:3.
" The work of faith " pertains to the realization and experience of salvation and its fruits in all holy virtues and excellencies, Php 2:12, Php 1:9-11, but it is wrought out only by faith and the indwelling Spirit of the Son of God, " I in you," John 17:26,*Galatians 2:20.
’ The labor of love " pertains to all service and toil of ministry to fellow believers and to the world, but it is done by the indwelling Spirit of him who is the Vine, and said " I will do it." John 15:7, John 14:13.
" The patience of hope " pertains to all the sufferings, trials and persecutions endured by believers in patient waiting for the Son of God from heaven, 1 Thessalonians 1:10, 1 Thessalonians 2:12, 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10, and the consummation of Sonship in the redemption of the body, Romans 8:23, Romans 8:19; but the patience is to become a joy, 1 Peter 5:11, because the sufferings are really those of the Head through the Body; "Why persecutest thou Me?" Acts 9:4-5.
Jesus is indeed the Word, the Verbum, the Verb of life, service and suffering; the to Be, to Do, to Suffer and infinite in all.
Too much has "the Church," "the Body of Christ," lost this consciousness of oneness with the Son of God in glory; too little have Christian life and service and suffering felt the power and comfort of the mighty, quickening Spirit of God; may this great truth of what we are as Sons of God once again become a vivid reality to us and in us, through the indwelling Spirit of Christ.