02.A01. The Office and Work of the Spirit

PART I.

OUT OF THE PRIMAL LIGHT INTO DARKNESS.

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CHAPTER I. THE OFFICE AND WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN CONVICTION OF SIN.

THERE are few subjects about which Christians need to be more fully informed, and about which, as it appears to us, they are less instructed, than about the office and work of the Holy Spirit. There are two distinct revealed relations which He sustains to our race -- one to the world, "convincing men of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment," and thereby leading them to Christ; and a promised indwelling personal presence in believers "after they have believed," and, as such, a presence "leading them into all truth," "pertaining to life and godliness." According to the express teachings of inspiration, we know, and can know, divine truth in none of its forms but through a divine insight imparted to us through the Spirit. "The things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God." "No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him;" and the revealed mission of the Spirit is to "take of the things of Christ and show them unto us," and to "show us plainly of the Father." So distinctly and fully did the apostles recognise their absolute dependence upon the Spirit for right and full apprehensions of divine truth in all its forms, that they teach us that "no man," with any proper apprehensions of the divine import of the words he employs, "can even say that Jesus is the Christ, but by the Holy Ghost."

Individuals are in danger of so preaching Christ, that the hearer, in seeking the knowledge of Him, and a union with Him, is in peril of forgetting his dependence upon the Spirit for the knowledge and union sought after, and of so preaching the Spirit as to induce a forgetfulness of the fact, that the mission of the Spirit is, not to "speak of Himself;" but to "reveal Christ in us," and to "lead us into all truth," and that we are to seek "the baptism of the Holy Ghost," and His continued presence and illumination, as a means to an end, namely, that we may "behold with open face the glory of the Lord," "comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fulness of God," "be led into all truth," and "abide in the Son and in the Father." If we seek to know Christ, without recognising our dependence upon the Spirit for that knowledge, or for the abiding presence of the Spirit in our hearts, without seeking such presence as a means of knowing Christ, we shall, in either case alike, fail of our object. If, on the other hand, we seek to "know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent," and seek this as a means of attaining to "the eternal life" which results from that knowledge, and seek "the Promise of the Spirit" as a means of obtaining this knowledge and "the life eternal" thence resulting, we shall not fail of the divine end which we seek. The Church of Christ is the school of God; the things to be learned there are "the things of God;" and the only Being or Teacher in that school who knows these things, and can impart to us a real knowledge of them, "is the Spirit of God." When we seek a knowledge of these things in filial dependence on our great Teacher, "the Spirit of God," we "shall know the things which are freely given us of God," and "which He hath purposed for them that love Him." The characteristics of the knowledge which we receive of the truth, through the teachings of the Spirit, require a passing notice in this connection. Our apprehensions of divine truth assume two forms -- that of belief, characterised by greater or lesser degrees of conscious certainty; and that of absolute knowledge, which, like our demonstrative convictions, utterly exclude all doubt. The latter is the form of knowledge always obtained through the illuminations of the Spirit. Under His illuminations we not only believe in, but "know God and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent;" we "know that we have eternal life;" we "know the things which are freely given us of God;" and "behold with open face the glory of the Lord." In His convicting illuminations, the truth of God becomes "a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart;" that is, the sinner has a direct, intuitive, and absolute knowledge of his own heart, his own moral self and moral life, as God sees it. In such convictive process two distinct revelations of truth are simultaneously made to the mind -- God in His moral purity and excellence, and in His sovereign claims upon our supreme obedience and regard, on the one hand, and the heart and moral life as related to God’s purity, excellency, and absolute authority, on the other. As God and the heart are thus set over against each other before the mind, it is made to know, and that absolutely, the utter godlessness, sinfulness, and infinite criminality of its unregenerate life. The sinner absolutely and intuitively recognises himself as having been, as an offspring of God, in God’s world, and as having been under infinite obligations to have sought the knowledge of Him, and to have rendered supreme obedience to His will, and yet to have been literally and utterly "Without God in the world," and to have entertained no respect for His will or character. It is under such convictions that men are brought to the exercise of "repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ."