02.04. His Indwelling - Our Sanctification

His Indwelling - Our Sanctification

CHAPTER FOUR
“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1Co 3:16).
The Apostle Paul; amazed at the inconsistencies existing among the Corinthian Christians, accounts for them in one of two ways: either they are ignorant of the fundamental facts of Christian faith and life, or they are ignoring those facts to the point of rendering them inoperative. Bringing his opening argument to a conclusion, he appeals to them: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” These words set forth two things:

1. THE FACT THAT THE HOLY SPIRIT INDWELLS THE BELIEVER.

This we have already seen to be a revealed fact of God’s Word. If there ever could be found a believer of whom this was not true, God would be found a liar. The Spirit’s In-coming is His immediate response to saving faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. By His In-coming He baptizes us into the Body of Christ and makes secure to us a past, present and future salvation. Moreover, He has come to “abide,” to dwell, making our hearts His permanent abode.

2. THE APPEAL FOR A LIFE IN KEEPING WITH HIS INDWELLING.

These Corinthians could live unworthy lives, as they are doing, only by disregarding the provision God has made in them for a life in harmony with Himself. This provision is the giving to them of His Spirit as an indwelling and transforming presence. The purpose of that indwelling, fraught with boundless possibilities, they have set aside, only to slip back into their old ways of living.
The Greek verb “to indwell” means to use as a house, to make it one’s home. It is like an open window through which we look in upon a home scene. We see One adjusting Himself to His new surroundings, rather, adjusting them to His holy tastes, until He is at home in them and feels at home. Before the open window we are moved to make a restatement of the above:

1. THE FACT THAT THE HOLY SPIRIT IS MAKING OUR HEARTS HIS HOME.

2. THE APPEAL THAT WE MAKE HIM AT HOME BY LIVING A LIFE IN KEEPING WITH HIS INDWELLING.
That these present two phases of the same thing should be evident to all. The second grows out of the first. In the first the emphasis is upon the divine personality. In the second it is upon the human. They constitute the two phases of Sanctification. We may state them as follows:

1. HIS PRESENCE SECURES OUR POSITIONAL SANCTIFICATION, WHICH IS ALWAYS PERFECT, ALWAYS COMPLETE—WHAT WE ARE IN CHRIST.

2. OUR RESPONSE TO HIS PRESENCE SECURES OUR EXPERIMENTAL SANCTIFICATION, WHICH IS PROGRESSIVE AND INCOMPLETE—WHAT WE SHOULD BE IN CONDUCT.
A gemlike illustration of the two is Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. It divides symmetrically at the center. Chapters 1-3 are a matchless presentation of Positional Sanctification. Our Standing in Christ, not in ourselves, unalterable and equally perfect in the case of all who believe. It is the product of the combined work of Father, Son and Spirit, so set forth in each chapter:

(1) As Believers —the Father chose us for Himself; the Son purchased us unto Himself; the Spirit sealed us unto Himself.
(2) As His Body—the Father quickened us from the dead; the Son formed us into a New Man in Himself; the Spirit gives us “access” as such.
(3) As His Building—the Father constitutes us His “household”; the Son builds us into a “temple in the Lord;” the Spirit occupies it as His “habitation in the Spirit.”

In the entire picture neither our duty nor our conduct has any place. The remarkable statements made concerning us are wholly due to our position in Christ, and are equally true of all believers, at all times, without condition or qualification.

Chapters 4-6, however, open with a “beseech,” and are an appeal to appropriate all the possibilities of our position by a life, a walk, an experience, that shows us to be set apart unto Him in all actuality. We are exhorted:

- To “walk worthily of our calling,”
- To “grow up into Him in all things,”
- To “no longer walk as other Gentiles walk,”
- To “put off the old man” with his doings,
- To “put on the new man” with his ways,
- To “walk in love,”
- To “walk as children of light,” etc.

Experimental Sanctification is the realization of a life growing out of, and in keeping with, Positional Sanctification.

I. His Indwelling—Our Positional Sanctification 1. BY VIRTUE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT’S INDWELLING, WE ARE CALLED BY HIS NAME: HOLY ONES OR SAINTS.

Here it becomes necessary to note a fact that is perfectly evident in the language of Scripture, but which is wholly obscured in the process of translation, namely, that “holy,” “saint” and “sanctify” are all one and the same thing. One who is holy or set apart is a saint or holy one—not because of his character or conduct but because of his set-apart position. The state of being thus set apart is sanctification: primarily referring to the position of being set apart from the common to the sacred, and only secondarily to a character in keeping with the position.

Now, when men were seeking a designation for the early disciples, noting that they were distinguished by their faith in, and allegiance to, Christ, they seized upon this relationship and designated them by it: Christians or Christ Ones. So, after the same manner, the Scriptures embody our relationship to the Holy Spirit in a name for us: Holy Ones or Saints. And while the name Christians is applied to us but three times, that of Holy Ones (Saints) is employed something over sixty times.
This raises the question: Who are called Saints? Those who are living holy lives? No, indeed. All believers are so called, all who have the Holy Spirit, and that in spite of actually and openly unholy lives. Take, for example, the Corinthians. God makes use of their unworthy lives to teach His grace in Positional Sanctification.

“Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord” (1Co 1:2).

“And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1Co 6:11).
In the phrase, “called to be saints,” the italics indicate, as always in Bible translations, that the words have been supplied by the translators. The Greek says, “called saints.” It is God’s designation of every believer, because He sees every one “sanctified in Christ Jesus.”
When He comes to speak to them, these very same people, of what they are in themselves, the picture is one of utter contrast:

“It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife. And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you” (1Co 5:1-2).

“Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? . . . I speak to your shame . . . Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong?

“Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren” (1Co 6:1-8).

Yet these Corinthians had the name, “saint,” fastened to them. No unworthy conduct could drive from them the Indwelling Spirit, nor could it divest them of a name expressive of this abiding relationship.

2. BY THE BAPTISM WITH THE SPIRIT OUR POSITIONAL SANCTIFICATION IS SECURED TO US.

“For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit” (1Co 12:13).

We are all in the position secured to us by the baptism with the Spirit. Made to drink of the one Spirit, of the one life common to all, in the one body, the Body of Christ, we are grafted into Him, joined to Him, identified with Him, so that what is true of Him is true of us. Judicially, His death and resurrection are ours. Positionally, His perfection of life is ours.

What this means for success in Christian living, a victory-wrought out in Christ’s physical body, nineteen hundred years ago, flawless and complete, and now made over to us who are in His mystical Body, no one should fail to see. It is the only place for us to start, in a victory already won. We were baptized into, and now are, “the Body of Christ” (1Co 12:13; 1Co 12:27).

But the Body of Christ has died to sin. Therefore, in the purpose of God, and in the sight of God, we have died to sin: “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death?” (Rom 6:3).
This divinely administered baptism with the Spirit, of which man’s administration of water is an outward symbol, makes us one with Him in a Body that has passed through:

(1) death,
(2) burial,
(3) resurrection, into
(4) new life (Rom 6:4).

Hence Jesus’ declaration that the believer “shall not come into judgment” (for he is baptized into His once-for-all judgment for sin), “but is passed from of death unto life.”

Then Paul proceeds to ingrain the fact of this tremendous transaction into the consciousness of our Christian living, thereby to translate its priceless worth into practical values.

Into three great words—“KNOW,” “RECKON,” “YIELD,” he compresses the threefold secret of writing these facts into Christian experience.

(1) We must KNOW that we were included in His death and resurrection; know it, not by reasoning but by revelation, just because God tells us it is so; know it, as accomplished in the basic facts of our redemption 1900 years ago, lest we attempt to bring it about by any struggle or effort of our own.

(2) We must “RECKON” ourselves to be “surely, truly, certainly” (for such is the force of “indeed”) “dead unto sin and alive unto God.” How shall we “reckon” it so? Count it true and act accordingly. Take it into account in all our actions.

(3) We must YIELD ourselves as instruments, no longer to sin, to which we died, but to God, to whom we are now alive. Alive for service! The nature of this new life and service now becomes apparent.*
* The reader is referred to the author’s His Salvation as Set Forth in the Book of Romans, page 64ff. The purport of all of this should be apparent to all.

Positional Sanctification is the only true, scriptural basis for Experimental Sanctification. The Holy Spirit brings us into our positional victory in Christ before He leads us into any personal victory in practical living. He takes us back to the one place where God has wrought a perfect work on our behalf; then He starts us out to make its blessed achievements our own in daily life.

To begin anywhere else is to imperil our whole structure of Christian experience by resting it upon the shifting sands of human effort and experiment.

II. His Indwelling—Our Experimental Sanctification The Spirit who has come to indwell us is the sustainer, transformer, renewer of the life He has imparted to us. He abides in us as the Holy Spirit of God to bring His holiness to full fruition. To that end He seeks a vital relationship with our inner processes of thought and aspiration, as intimate and interpenetrating as that which our human spirit enjoys.

From within He works a transformation that is not only moral and spiritual but intellectual, affectional, volitional, yes, practical. His aim is this: having secured to us such a wonderful Position, He is setting about to produce in us a correspondent Condition.
The necessary transformation is of a twofold nature, for the meeting of our twofold problem: negative, to the overcoming of sin in the life; positive, to the developing of Christ-likeness of character.
The Shorter Catechism states it thus:

“Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.”

1. THE SPIRIT’S INDWELLING OVERCOMES SIN IN US.

He delivers us from it. He gives us victory over it.

What took place when we believed upon Christ? We were born again; born of the Spirit; we received a new nature. Did the old nature die? Did the self-life cease to exist? God’s Word is emphatic in teaching that the sin nature never dies short of glory. If it did, we could never sin again. The only source from which we could draw our thoughts or acts would be the new life in the Spirit; but that never sins (1Jn 3:9). If the case were otherwise the fact that any one sinned would prove that he was not born again. Who then could establish his spiritual birthright? The Scripture rebukes such a position in severest terms:

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. . . . If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us” (1Jn 1:8; 1Jn 1:10).

The Scripture does assert our dual nature, resulting in an inner, spiritual conflict:

“The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would” (Gal 5:17).
This teaches:

(1) that the flesh persists after the Spirit comes to indwell;
(2) that the two are separate and opposing entities, “the one” contrary to “the other”;
(3) that the one checkmates the other, resulting in a life of defeat.
The way out is in the verse preceding: “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh” (Gal 5:16). It is not in the death of the flesh but in the dominance of the Spirit over it. The life that draws its every aspiration and motive for action from the Spirit leaves the flesh to atrophy in inaction, in inability to have its way.

We must turn now to Romans. Immediately someone reminds us that Paul taught that the intent of our identification with Christ in death is “that the body of sin might be DESTROYED” (Rom 6:6). But any Greek scholar will tell us that that is just what it does not teach. The word is “work” with the alpha privative before it: un-working, inoperative, out of a job. We step up to a door bell to ring it and read: “Bell not working.” The bell is there, but something has happened to make it un-working. It does not respond. Temptation steps up to our door and knocks, as formerly. But while the “body of sin” is within, it does not respond for it is “not working.”
In Rom 7:1-25 the inner conflict between flesh and spirit is depicted in a scene of mortal agony. Not only is there hopeless deadlock—hopeless to the human “I”—but a sense of desperation in which the victim cries: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Another name for “the body of sin”). Be it noted, he does not ask for sin to be destroyed or done to death; he asks to be delivered from it. Deliverance from death! And how? By the dominance of life.
That deliverance, that new dominance, comes at once— Rom 8:1-39, when the Holy Spirit is introduced as indwelling the life, taking charge of its interests, taking over the conflict for which the “I” had proved all insufficient.

In the glad exultation of realized deliverance comes the cry: “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom 8:2). The Holy Spirit, become the “law,” (the ruling, controlling, dominating principle) by His indwelling presence, is in all reality the Spirit of life, freeing us from the control, the domination of sin and death.
And now, just as we have seen that Positional Sanctification is grounded in the finished work of Christ for us, so likewise is Experimental Sanctification. The work of the Spirit has its roots in, and grows out of, the redemptive work of our Lord Jesus Christ. He, as it were, checks upon its treasured resource and makes its values our own in victorious experience.

“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Rom 8:3-4).

Christ has made it no longer necessary, nor even logical, for us to follow the dictates of sin; and when we cease to heed the promptings of the flesh, choosing rather to heed the behests of the Spirit, He, the blessed Indwelling Spirit, leads us out into a life of assured victory. One thrills with the exultation of freedom from enslavement, of victory over defeat, as we follow, step-by- step, the unfolding story (Rom 8:5-25) only to find ourselves gripped and carried on to the glorious climax of the chapter, sharers in a sweepstake victory over every force in the field:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:35; Rom 8:37-39).

“Separate us from . . . Christ?” No, indeed, for by the Indwelling Spirit we have entered into the inseparable life. In it we have found both delightful deliverance from sin and unspeakable satisfaction for the soul—separated from it and unto Him. Thus the practical expression of Sanctification is in a life of Separation.
This phase of Sanctification is carried over into the Epistles to the Corinthians and there developed more fully. These Corinthian Christians were confronted with every form of evil in the society surrounding them, evil that made a strong bid for freedom to enmesh them in its toils. It is even so with us. Evil is not only in us but also around us. The two are kin, responsive; they tend to “get together.” But the Spirit indwells us as the Spirit of Separation. And He separates by a twofold appeal. He both restrains from evil and constrains to a life set apart to Himself.

Having repeatedly reminded the Corinthians that they are the indwelt temple of God (1Co 3:16-17; 1Co 6:19-20), each time using this fact as an appeal for a holy life, separate from sin, He finally comes to a supreme entreaty, based upon the same fact, for a life that can make experimental proof of this endearing relationship:

“And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (2Co 6:16-18).
This double demarcation of the Christian life, because the indwelt temple of God, is clearly and beautifully denoted by the two walls of separation in the Tabernacle. The outer, court wall separated from the world without; the inner, house wall separated unto the Presence within. And again, they depict the interrelation of the work of Christ and of the Spirit in a life of separation and sanctification. The court, particularly by its altar of sacrifice, portrays Christ’s work for us, and our POSITION in Him. The house, setting forth the abiding Presence and the abiding life, portrays our POSSESSION in the Spirit. Thus Positional and Experimental Sanctification conspire in a double urge to a life of separation.

These two elements are present at every marriage altar, sanctifying the home as a doubly set-apart life. The husband’s vow runs: “Forsaking all others, cleave lovingly and loyally to her, and to her alone.” So also the wife’s, it is a separation from and unto. And the ideal home, the truly safe and happy home, is one where the “from” has less and less need of emphasis and the “unto” becomes increasingly ascendant. This is the compelling secret of the home—the unfailing, sanctifying presence of the dear one who indwells it. What is the home without that presence? And what but an empty mockery, destined for the divorce courts, the marriage bond that ceases to respond to it! Not otherwise is it with the Spirit’s covenanted presence in our hearts.
As “separated from” is the negative side of sanctification, so “separated unto” is its positive side. The one always has the other in view, and alone makes it possible. To this latter, then, we now naturally turn.

2. THE SPIRIT’S INDWELLING DEVELOPS HIS OWN CHRISTLIKE CHARACTER IN US.
This takes us again to the fifth of Galatians, to complete our examination of its teaching. We saw the necessity of walking in the Spirit that we might not fulfill the lusts of the flesh (Gal 5:16), for the conflict is there and each is contending in the arena of our lives for the mastery (Gal 5:17). What the flesh is capable of when unleashed, unhampered by the Spirit is graphically set forth in a catalog lurid with color (Gal 5:19-21). As we read the enumeration, running the whole gamut of fleshly desire and degradation, and realize that it is but a partial listing ending with the phrase, “and such like,” we are confronted with a picture of what we might have been, but for His gracious interposition.

These are the “works of the flesh”; that is, what it normally works at and what it normally works out. We know the class of works that characterize a carpenter, or mason, an electrician or office clerk. So here are the output, the accomplishments of the flesh when free to “work”; that is, when it is not interfered with by the Spirit, when “the body of sin” is not put “out of work” (Rom 6:6).

Such is the background for the Holy Spirit’s work of reorganizing our life around His own Indwelling. This picture of possibilities in the flesh had to be drawn to show us “the hole of the pit whence we are digged.” By it the Spirit has compressed a world of contrast into the “BUT” that introduces His blessed deliverance:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law” (Gal 5:22-23).

These are not “works,” disassociated, divisive, destructive. These are the “fruit,” one harmonious whole, of His Presence at the roots of life, at the fountain of affection, at the main-spring of action; the out-breathing of the inbreathing of God by His Spirit. It is John 15:1-27, with the flavor of the fruit analyzed. It is Christ realized in human life.

One hesitates to go beyond mere meditation in silence. Yet we can readily see that God is in this fruit bringing Himself, His own revealed attributes and ways of dealing with us, to realization in our characters and lives. “God is love.” Doubtless love is the dominant flavor, permeating all. This is borne out by reference to His characterization of Love in First Corinthians, comparing the two descriptions as we read:

“Charity [love] suffereth long, and is kind; charity [love] envieth not; charity [love] vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity [love] never faileth” (1Co 13:4-8).

Someone has interpreted the fruit of the Spirit in terms of love, as follows:

- Joy is love exulting.
- Peace is love reposing.
- Longsuffering is love untiring.
- Gentleness is love enduring.
- Goodness is love in action.
- Faith is love on the battlefield.
- Meekness is love under discipline.
- Temperance is love in training.
To see clearly how these qualities round out human character into a completed whole, we should gather the nine into three groupings of three each:

- “Love, Joy, peace”: these are the Spirit realizing Himself, His poise and calm, His essential Self in our PERSONAL CHARACTER.
- “Long-suffering, gentleness, goodness”: these are the Spirit realizing His own principles of dealing with men in our CONDUCT TOWARD OTHERS.
- “Faith, meekness, temperance”: these are the Spirit’s developing in us a right ATTITUDE TOWARD GOD.
Or may we regard them as the “fine flour” of the meal offering, typifying the evenness of character found in our Lord Jesus Christ. Noted men of history are great in some outstanding characteristic. Not so with Him. We cannot think of Him as great in any one or more particulars; His life is so even in its traits of character, so balanced, so marked by wholeness. It is this that the Spirit’s Indwelling reproduces in us. Not a working, not a striving for this or that character-development, but a coming to expression of His own rounded-out character, the out-living of the in-living Christ.
Is this an impossible ideal? beyond our hope of realization? No, for we go on to read, for our encouragement: “And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Gal 5:24).

Something, says the Spirit, has taken place in the spiritual life-history of every believer that frees him from the necessity of flesh-dominance. “They that are Christ’s”— they who, having accepted Him as Saviour, are His by the New Birth—“crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.”

When? And how? When we passed through some great crisis of struggling to be freed from sin? Never! There is just one place where God deals with sin, finally, completely, forever. It is at the Cross. It is the transaction of Calvary. Those who know their Bible know that we were crucified there “with Christ” (Rom 6:1-6; Gal 2:20).

It is there, dear reader, in the death of His Son “for sin,” that God dealt effectually with all sin, yours and mine. Simply to believe it is to enter into His rest.
This it is that is affirmed of each one of us in Gal 5:24.

We know that such a statement is not true experimentally of all who are Christ’s. Alas, how untrue! Yet the Spirit states that it is absolutely true of all. The reason, the explanation, is this: He is speaking, not of Experimental, but of Positional Sanctification. In so doing He uses the aorist tense, which, as every Greek scholar knows, expresses a past, complete, timeless transaction.

“They that are Christ’s crucified the flesh” (omit the “have”). When? Dean Alford comments: “When they became Christ’s— at their baptism, see Rom 6:2.” Jamison, Fausset and Brown expound thus: “They nailed it to the cross once for all (force of aorist) when they became Christ’s (Rom 6:3-4). They keep it now in a state of crucifixion (Rom 6:6); so that the Spirit can produce in them, comparatively uninterrupted by it, ‘the fruit of the Spirit’ (Gal 5:22).”
May God deliver us from two dangers:

- First—that of treating God’s Word as though it were untrue and struggling to crucify the flesh—which we never can—a thing which He accomplished once for all in Christ.
- Second— that of disregarding the victory of Calvary, that is, failing to reckon ourselves dead unto sin and continuing to yield obedience to its lusts.

So to live is not only unfair to Christ whose glorious victory on our behalf we thus nullify and let go for naught, it is in a more direct and intimate sense unfair to the Holy Spirit who has taken up His Indwelling in our hearts, thereby to check out to us the values of Calvary and make its victories a glorious, personal reality in the lives of all who are His. Therefore III. The Exhortation

“Grieve not the Holy Spirit” (Eph 4:30). In some inexplicable manner the word “away” has been popularly inserted in this phrase, constituting a statement that is entirely unscriptural. We can never grieve away the Spirit, since He has come in to abide, dwell, remain. He is the indissoluble bond, uniting us to Christ, making eternal life eternally ours. Reader, you can never drive Him away. And herein lies your power to grieve Him. If you are bound to frequent questionable places, you take Him along. He must go with you. He has no choice. If you persist in thinking, saying, doing, the unworthy thing, He is partner to it for He cannot disassociate Himself from His own and the things that occupy them.

Particularly is He grieved when we, in this manner, frustrate the twofold purpose of His Indwelling, namely, the two phases of our Sanctification, negative and positive. He is grieved, first, when we persist in clinging to the sin from which He seeks to set us free; second, when we refuse to let Him develop His own character of Christ-likeness in us.
That this is the point of the exhortation not to grieve Him is evident from the context:

NEGATIVE—“Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice” (Eph 4:30-31)

POSITIVE—“And be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Eph 4:32).

If we are not to grieve the Spirit, we must believe His Word, wholly and implicitly, as to His indwelling presence; as to the purposes for which He indwells us; as to the use He makes of our union with Christ in His finished work to effect His victory in us. We must trust Him wholly, unwaveringly, to carry on His gracious work in our hearts, silently, steadily, victoriously.