04.48. LESSON 48

LESSON 48

Christ told Paul at his conversion that he would be "Filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 9:17). After a sketchy record of the first years of Paul’s Christian life, a much fuller record begins when the Holy Spirit starts him on his particular mission to the Gentiles (Acts 13:2). As he began this world-wide work, Paul, "filled with the Holy Spirit," draws, with military brevity and finality, the indelible line of battle between Christ and the usurping Devil for the possession of the world, a line across which no fraternizing of the contending armies can be, in his forthright assault upon Elymas the sorcerer: "0 full of all guile and all villainy, thou son of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord" (Acts 13:8-12).

Need readers of Paul be reminded that he himself repeatedly affirms that he lived, labored, suffered, rejoiced, and faced death "In the power of the Holy Spirit?" or that he repeatedly admonishes his converts: "Be filled with the Spirit," "Quench not the Spirit," "Grieve not the Holy Spirit... which dwelleth in us," and reject not God, who giveth the Holy Spirit to us" (1 Thessalonians 4:8). This earnest admonishing shows that Christians have a responsibility in the matter.

Paul’s Repentance To compare the powerful, hopeful Paul of Romans 15:1-33 with the powerless, hopeless Paul, who cried in helpless despair, "Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death" in Romans 7:1-25, before he experienced the power of "God in the Spirit" as set forth in Romans 8:1-39, throws light on the nature of repentance. The earlier heroic, but overpowered Paul is the natural man at his best before he gets power beyond his own to strengthen him in the fierce, unequal duel with "the flesh." Does not this Paul suggest a great electric locomotive, ready to go, except the power to make it go. No more is power the crux in machinery than is power the crux in Christian men.

Men who have not learned that Adam’s despoiled race has lost both the power to do right and the power to refrain from doing wrong, as Paul learned it, have made poor use of Biblical and secular history, and of their personal experience. Furthermore, men who knew that they have lost this power must also know that it cannot be recovered by human power—that it is "Not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:13). The central, living power that makes Christianity go is God Himself, who meets the universal, imperative human need of power "With power through his spirit in the inward man" (Ephesians 3:16). Apart from God in Christ, no Justification; apart from God in the Spirit, no "Sanctification, without which no man shall see the Lord." It takes Chris-Vanity in totality to re-create fallen man with his dis-organized, fatally twisted personality. The finishing touch of the awful picture that Paul paints of the church in the "grievous times" of the last days is: "Holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof" (2 Timothy 3:1-5). This Scripture is the faithful portrayal of the church, dead because it holds Christian forms, empty of the indwelling power of "God in the Spirit."

Paul’s writings show his profound insight into the spiritual meaning of the Old Testament, which is full of man’s inability to live when he is out of gear with God. Probably he poured over the book of Job with its supreme doctrine that the Creator accepts only men who know their creatural limitation and failure. Job was the best man on earth (Job 1:8), but he was proud of his goodness, and ready in touchy pride, even unto the disparagement of God, to de-fend his good name before men—in short, he was man-centered, and claimed human merit. "He was righteous In his own eyes... and justified himself rather than God" (Job 32:1-3). He had to learn that he was but a creature—even a fallen creature. After God asked him some eighty questions, none of which he could answer, or was expected -co answer, though he had been contending "That he would maintain the right of a man with God" (Job 16:21), he contritely confessed: "I have uttered that which I understood not... wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:6-9). The Old Testament is brimming with essential religious truth. In the book of Job, a man by faith climbs up to God through inexplicable suffering. In Ecclesiastes, a man by sight tumbles down into unrelieved gloom and emptiness. Neither the best man nor the wisest of men can direct his steps. Job’s sin was spiritual pride and self-righteousness; Solomon’s sin was fleshly pride and self-indulgence. Pride! the ruin of angels and men! The drama of Job, perhaps God’s first written message to man, certainly should help Paul and all other men to know their eternal condemnation in Adam, if left to themselves (Romans 5:12-21). When Job repented, he cried: "I abhor myself." At last, realizing man’s intellectual ignorance and moral corruption before God, Job lost his confidence in man, as man. After his trust in human wisdom and righteousness was punctured, "Jehovah blessed the latter end of Job more than the beginning," and restored his possessions twofold. Men’s giving God His rightful place conditions them to receive His "latter-end" blessings. Repentance requires fallen, rejected men to turn, not only from their personal sins, but also from what they are by birth. "That which is horn of flesh is flesh... Ye must be born anew" (Christ). "Repentance unto salvation" plows much deeper than mere surface reformation.

Paul, repenting as Job repented, abhorred himself. Declaring that he had "no confidence in the flesh," he repudiated all fleshly values, counting them but "refuse" that he "might gain Christ" (Php 3:2-11). Inasmuch as no man can serve two masters, Paul had to die unto self before he could "live unto God." He puts it: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me" (Galatians 2:19-20). This means that Paul had to put his fleshly self out to make room for Christ to come in, take over, and express Himself through Paul’s regenerated personality. Paul learned the secret of how to ask God for the Holy Spirit, whom Christ says God gives to them that ask Him. (Luke 11:13). As water flows naturally and freely into irrigable gardens, so the Holy Spirit flows religiously and freely into penitent, congenial human spirits.

Paul preached "Both to Jews and Gentiles repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 20:21). Until men cease refusing God His prerogatives and repent toward Him, they cannot believe in His Christ. And they cannot repent toward God until they, with Job and Paul, abhor themselves, and "repent in dust and ashes."

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