"John indeed
baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized in the Holy
Spirit not many days hence" (Acts 1:5).
"They were all
filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:4).
"There is one
body, and one Spirit... one Lord, one faith, one
baptism" (Ephesians 4:4).
The Holy Spirit is, of
course, the Spirit of God, but in this dispensation He is
particularly the Spirit of Christ. The very title
'Christ' (which is simply the Greek equivalent of the
Hebrew 'Messiah') means 'Anointed'. The Lord Jesus said
that the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him, because the
Lord had anointed Him (Luke 4:18). And thus it is that He
has become known to us as the Christ. The Holy Spirit and
Jesus have, as it were, united, combined; they are two
Persons, but you cannot separate them. They are like the
figure of the oil upon the man: they have become joined
together. The Holy Spirit, then, who, in the old
dispensation, was in the general sense the Spirit of God,
is in this dispensation particularly the Spirit of
Christ.
The
Holy Spirit Inseparable From Christ
You have only to turn
over the pages of your New Testament to see how often
that connection is brought out. "Because ye are
sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our
hearts" (Gal. 4:6). "The Spirit of Jesus"
(Acts 16:7); "the Spirit of the Christ" (Rom.
8:9b). The Holy Spirit was given to the Son for His
mission in and throughout this dispensation. Jesus was
anointed with the Holy Spirit for the particular work
that He had been chosen by the Father to do, and
especially in this dispensation. That work, that mission,
did not end when He left this earth. There is a very true
sense in which it may be said that when He left this
earth it only began - not, of course, altogether; but, in
a fuller way, a much fuller way, He began His real
mission when He ascended to the right hand of the Majesty
in the Heavens. It is an impressive thing to note how the
Holy Spirit is always related to Jesus.
The preaching, at the
beginning, was undoubtedly in the power of the Holy
Spirit. They were filled with the Spirit, and then they
were immediately constrained to proclaim the good news
(Acts 2:4,14). There is no doubt that they preached by
the Holy Spirit - that it was the Holy Spirit who was
inspiring the preaching. What did they preach? It was
just all about the Lord Jesus: they were preaching about
Him; the Holy Spirit inspired them to proclaim Jesus
Christ.
The Holy Spirit was in
those mighty acts that we find strewn throughout the
early record. The 'Acts' were truly the acts of the Holy
Spirit. Many were the forms of His activity - and not
only in the miracles that were performed. An apostle
essays to take his way in a certain direction, and the
record says: "The Spirit of Jesus suffered them
not" - "the Spirit of Jesus suffered
them not" (16:7). The same apostle, writing to a
church, said that he was counting upon their
"supplication and the supply of the Spirit of
Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:19). And that supply was
for the accomplishment of his mission.
The Holy Spirit was in
and behind all the teaching, fulfilling the promise of
the Lord Jesus: "When he, the Spirit of truth, is
come, he shall guide you into all the truth" (John
16:13). The truth that we have in the New Testament is
wholly Spirit-provided truth; and it all relates to the
Lord Jesus. The conformity of believers to the image of
the Son of God is the work of the Holy Spirit: He is the
transforming and conforming Spirit, and His model is
Christ. The Holy Spirit is wholly and utterly committed
to the Lord Jesus. We may say that the many-sided but
inclusive work of the Holy Spirit is, first and foremost,
to secure the place of the Lord Jesus wherever He can.
Securing
Christ's Place in this World
We need to remember
that. We must not put it in other ways; we must not think
of it in other terms. 'The Holy Spirit will do this and
that', we say. Yes, He will: but - 'this and
that', and perhaps a hundred or a thousand other things
and aspects, are all related to one thing; they are not
things in themselves. We must emphasize this here very
strongly. The Holy Spirit may give light; the Holy Spirit
may give leading; the Holy Spirit may do many many
'things': but we must remember that everything that the
Holy Spirit does is included in one object, it is all to
one end. That object is, primarily, to secure Christ's
place in this universe - to secure the place of the Lord
Jesus in men, in this world.
Our way of speaking may
often mislead us. We would say: The work of the Holy
Spirit is to save souls. Yes, quite - but why? just to
have them saved? No; in order that the Lord Jesus may
have His place. Those souls are to be the 'residences' of
the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit may instruct believers
and build them up - for what purpose? Just that they
should be mature Christians? Not at all; but so that the
Lord Jesus shall have a larger place. No matter what the
Holy Spirit does, He has one all-inclusive object and end
- the glorifying of the Lord Jesus: that is, the giving
of the Lord Jesus His place, and then filling all things
with Christ. Do not think of the 'being filled with the
Spirit', of the 'fulness of the Spirit', in any other way
than this. The Holy Spirit's filling is intended to be a
filling of all things with Christ.
The
Real Meaning of Being 'Filled With the Spirit'
We can get these ideas
- 'Oh, to be filled with the Spirit!' Then, what will
happen? 'Well', we think, 'we shall have such a good
time; we shall have ecstasies, enjoyment; there will be
power in our life' - all these things. We think about
being 'filled with the Spirit' as a wonderful idea! But
do remember that the 'filling with the Spirit' is in line
with that eternal thought and purpose of God, that the
Son shall "fill all things" (Eph. 4:10). You
can have these experiences, and these ecstasies, and
these emotions, and all these things, and yet - and yet -
be sadly lacking in the Lord Jesus! You can have all the
teaching and the truth, and yet the measure of the Lord
Jesus Himself can be so small.
It is terribly sad to
go about the world and meet Christians who would lay down
their life for the doctrine of the Holy Spirit - 'I
believe in the Holy Ghost' - the Person of the Holy
Spirit, and so on, and yet in whom you do not meet the
Lord - you meet them: you come up against
something that is 'themselves'. You are hurt by 'them'.
It can be like that. No: Simply, but essentially, the
Holy Spirit is committed to one end, and one end only -
to fill all things with Christ. And if you want to know
what it means when it says: "they were all filled
with the Holy Spirit" - you can see by the effect.
They simply talked about the Lord Jesus: they preached
Christ. Everywhere they went, it was Christ; they were
bringing Christ with them wherever they went. As far as
they were allowed, as far as consent was given and
openness of heart was provided, they so to speak 'filled'
people with Christ, filled companies with Christ, and
filled places with Christ. That was the work of the Holy
Spirit.
And, with that end in
view, the Holy Spirit is always seeking a transformation
in believers. Naturally, we are not a bit like Christ,
and naturally we do not give very much place to Him; and
so the work of the Holy Spirit is to transform us into
His image. It is Christ, only Christ - "the
beginning and the end" (Rev. 21:6).
The
Character of Christ
Now, in that
connection, the great governing truth is that the
foundation of the work of Christ, of the work of the Holy
Spirit, is the nature of Christ. The measure of Christ
is the measure of the Spirit. You cannot have more of
the Holy Spirit than you have of Christ. And it is a
question of the character of Christ. These two
things are often so painfully overlooked. The presence
and work of the Holy Spirit is detached from Christly
character, and is thought of as something in itself. The
Holy Spirit, the work of the Holy Spirit, the power of
the Spirit, the works of the Spirit, working for the Lord
- they are often just things in themselves, in the
thoughtless mentality of so many. But the Holy Spirit is
not thoughtless about this - far from it. The Holy Spirit
only commits Himself to the Christ - let us be quite
clear about that. He will not commit Himself to you or to
me, to any institution or 'thing'; He only commits
Himself to Christ. And it is according to the degree of
Christ that the Holy Spirit commits Himself: that is,
according to the measure of the character of Christ that
He finds.
For the whole Bible
comes down powerfully and mightily upon that truth. In
all the types and figures in the Old Testament relating
to the Holy Spirit - the anointing oil, and so on - you
will find, if you look more closely, that the symbols are
always subject to certain Divine provisions and
prescriptions. Take the oil, for instance: that oil shall
not come upon man's flesh (Ex. 30:32). The anointing
requires garments that cover man's flesh; God requires
the fulfilment of certain conditions before that
anointing oil can be applied. We could extend our
consideration of the symbolism further afield. But when
you understand, you see that that prescription of God -
whether it be the garments, or whatever else may be
required by God as the condition for the coming of the
oil upon that person - is something related to the
character of Christ.
It is thus foreshown
that the Holy Spirit is only given to the Lord Jesus. And
He will only be given to the Lord Jesus. And He will only
be given to you and me in proportion to the measure in
which the Lord Jesus has His place. Do we seek more of
the Spirit - a greater fulness of the Spirit? Very well,
then: we are asking for the Holy Spirit to displace us,
and all that is of us; and we are going to have a bad
time. We think that, if only we get filled with the
Spirit, we are going to have a wonderful time of ecstasy!
Well, that may be one side of it, but - make no mistake -
it may be that we shall have to be taken through the fire
and through the mill to come there. It depends on how
much resistance there is to Christ. The clearer the way,
the more selfless the motive, the quicker it can be done.
The principle is that these two things go together: the
work of the Holy Spirit and the character of Christ. We
shall not get away from that. The character of Christ is
the foundation of the work of the Holy Spirit.
"The
World Knew Him Not"
That, of course, brings
us face to face with the fact that Christ is of an
altogether different order from what we are. When He was
here, He was a stranger. It is written: "The world
knew him not" (John 1:10); and that, while of course
it applies specifically to His Deity, applies also to His
unique humanity. The world did not know Him, in the sense
that it could not understand His mentality, His ways, His
standards - they were different. It did not understand
that by which His course and conduct were governed: the
world does not do things like that! For one thing, the
world does not act on principle - the world acts on
policy. Anyone who does not do that, in some way or
other, is a strange person, from another world! Jesus
absolutely refused, from beginning to end, to be governed
by what is politic.
No, the world knew Him
not; He is a special and different kind of person, a
different order of being from what we are.
That was the real
explanation of what a difficult time He had in this
world. He was differently constituted. He was, in fact, a
Holy Spirit-constituted Being: both in
His birth - He was begotten of the Holy Ghost - and by
anointing in His mission. And, being so different in His
constitution, upon that basis He was tested and
perfected, in a contrary world. If you grasp the
significance of that, it will explain very much. You see,
when you and I are born anew, we are born of the Holy
Spirit, begotten of God, and in the deepest reality of
our being there is a difference of constitution. If that
is not true of someone who bears the name of 'Christian',
he is not a Christian. A Christian 'born anew' has
another constitution introduced in the innermost part of
his being. It may be in an elementary form, as in
babyhood, but it is something altogether different. It is
the difference of what Christ is from all other
people.
Now then, the whole of
our life under the Holy Spirit is the testing and the
trying of that 'other constitution' in a contrary world.
As 'born anew' believers, we are now in a world that is
contrary to our nature, contrary to our constitution; and
that constitutes our difficulty, our suffering, our
trial, our testing. But it is the basis of our
perfecting. As we know, anything in creation that does
not become subjected to adverse forces never acquires
stamina or endurance. Hothouse plants cannot stand up to
anything - you have got to nurse them all the time!
Anything that you protect from adversity will suffer -
suffer terribly, it will never come to that which can
abide, that can stand up under test. The law of God is
that stamina, endurance, strength, maturity - the power
of abiding - come out of testing and trying and
adversity.
'Made
Perfect Through Sufferings'
It surely explains why
the Lord allows the winds to blow so fiercely and so cold
against His Church, against His people. What is the Lord
doing? Well, here is His own Son in this world, with
another constitution, being tested, tried, and perfected
by the very difference between His own constitution and
the world in which He was placed. He was 'made perfect
through sufferings' (Heb. 2:10), and the sufferings were
of this kind: the conflict of two constitutions - that in
the world and that in Himself. It is an awful thing to
live in this world with a heavenly constitution, such as
you and I are supposed to have; and it ought to become
more and more awful. If we can settle down, become happy
and at ease, in this world, we have abandoned the very
constitution of Heaven. If it is true that we are finding
it more and more difficult to endure this world, as being
what it is, that is a good sign.
That, then, is what
happened to the Lord Jesus. He was of a different order,
and His suffering came along the line of testing and
trying by reason of the foreign and uncongenial
constitution in the midst of which He had to live. His
own heavenly constitution had to triumph over the other
that was all about Him and pressing upon Him: and thus He
was made perfect, through suffering. There is no other
way for you and for me. In the end, if we abide faithful,
if we do not let go, if we do not 'cast away our
confidence' (Heb. 10:35, A.V.), if our faith does not
give way because of the difficulty and hardness of this
spiritual conflict, we shall emerge a 'full-grown man'
spiritually; the stature will increase 'unto the stature
of Christ' (Eph. 4:13). That is the history of the
Church; that is the history of believers.
The
Conflict of Two Natures
Now, where does the
Holy Spirit come in in this? Well, the Holy Spirit came
from Heaven when that question had been fully answered in
the Lord Jesus. I will put it in this way. There was, as
it were, a question all the time through the earthly life
of the Lord Jesus. In reality, of course, there was no
doubt - but there was a question. A battle was going on;
and when there is a battle, there is always a question as
to the issue. The question was whether this that was of
Heaven was going to gain the ascendency, or whether the
ascendency was going to the earthly thing, under Satan's
power. It was a big battle on this question. A heavenly
Kingdom was opposed to an earthly kingdom, the Kingdom of
God opposed to the kingdom of Satan - this was the
conflict; and it all focused upon and centred on the soul
of this one Man. Right to the end, to the last moment on
the Cross, the battle raged, as to who was going to
prevail; which side was going to win. The whole question
was: Is the heavenly nature going to triumph over this
evil nature outside?
That question was fully
and finally answered when He reached Heaven. His being
"received up" (Acts 1:2) - for that is the
right way to speak of the ascension: being 'received',
accorded a 'reception' in Heaven - means that the
question is finally answered. The Heavenly Man has
triumphed in His constitution, in a world that, in its
constitution, is so utterly different. The question is
answered, the whole thing is settled, and, when that is
settled, the Holy Spirit comes. What does He come to do?
He comes to bring into believers the very nature, the
heavenly nature, of that Man - and then the battle starts
up again!
That is the battle that
you and I are in. After all, it is not a battle of
outward things, it is a battle of spiritual things. The
battle may take many forms, and involve many things,
people, situations and circumstances; but, after all, it
focuses upon our spirit, upon our heavenly life, upon our
heavenly constitution. That is the centre of it all; that
is the battle-ground. Are we going to yield to the Devil
- is his constitution going to get the upper hand, in
that irritability, in that bad temper, in that loss of
good faith, and so on? Or is this other - faith in God,
the love of the Spirit, the patience of Jesus Christ - is
this going to triumph? That is the form of the battle.
The Holy Spirit has come to bring into us another
constitution, and then so to work as to develop us
completely according to that new constitution, until we
too are perfected in Christ.
This comes back, all
the time, to the measure of Christ, does it not? There is
no substitute for the Holy Spirit. To put anything in His
place is to open the door at once to that whole terrible
change that came about so early in the history of the
Church. It began even before the apostles had gone - the
bringing in of substitutes for the Holy Spirit. There
they are: the crystallization of Christianity into an
earthly, man-made system; the composing of 'creeds' of
Christian doctrine, to become the legal forms of
government; clericalism, organization, forms, vestments,
orders, and so on - they all came in so early. They were
all substitutes for the Holy Spirit; they all represented
a moving away from the spiritual to the ecclesiastical,
the sacramental. The result? A vitiated, emasculated
Church, a changed Christianity, which cannot stand up to
the forces that are at work in this universe. The world
triumphed - and the Devil laughs.
The
Spirit of Truth
Now, we are talking
about what the Holy Spirit is. We have said that He is,
inclusively, the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of the
Christ; and we have said, further, that that means the
character of Christ. Let us, therefore, now look at the
character of Christ, as taken up by the Holy Spirit in
His own nature, and therefore in His own work.
The Holy Spirit was
called by the Lord Jesus: "the Spirit of truth"
(John 16:13). Now, there is a very large place given by
God in the Word to 'truth', He is very jealous over the
truth. He is Himself the God of Truth (cf. Is. 65:16). He
desires "truth in the inward parts" (Ps. 51:6).
He holds lies in abomination (Prov. 12:22). He has
consigned all liars to the lake of fire, says the Word
(Rev. 21:8). He excludes from the New Jerusalem
everything that makes a lie (Rev. 22:15). Jesus calls
Himself the Truth - "I am... the truth" (John
14:6); and "The faithful and true witness"
(Rev. 3:14). On the other hand, Satan is called by Him
"a liar, and the father thereof" (John 8:44c).
Man
a False, Deceived Creature
Now, note this. When
the lie entered in, the whole structure of creation
collapsed. Satan injected a lie into man; man accepted
it, received it. The result was the collapse of the
entire structure of creation, and man himself became and
remains a falsehood. He is not the man that God made him
or intended him to be: he is a deceived creature; in the
very constitution and nature of man as he is there is a
lie. He is a misrepresentation of the man that God spoke
of when He said: "Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness" (Gen. 1:26). There is a lie in
the work of man, and in all his works. He hopes and
believes and works and tries, and in the end it comes to
vanity - it is all in vain; disappointment awaits him at
the end of all his works and all his strivings. He thinks
and argues that he is free - but he is a prisoner. He
thinks and believes that he knows; he proves to be a
fool. He thinks that he can do, and he does many great
and seemingly wonderful things: but all his doings lead
to greater problems to be solved; and the greatest
problem of all is satisfaction, is rest, is joy, is
peace.
No; man is building,
not on rock, but on sand. His world is run by lies. This
may seem a terrible thing to say, but how rare in this
world is downright honesty! What a welter of
misrepresentation and deception, pretence and appearance,
mixture and exaggeration, has to be drawn into the
running of this world. Is it not true? Many a
well-meaning man, who in his own soul revolts against it,
will tell you that, if you are proposing to be honest,
absolutely honest, you will find it impossible to be
successful in a world like this. And the lie has got into
religion. Our Lord's indictment of the Pharisees and the
Scribes was: 'Hypocrites' - playactors, pretenders! And
therefore, because the race is shot through and through
with a lying deception, it cannot stand. A false world is
bound to collapse. If there is anything in 'Christianity'
that is not absolutely true, 'according to God' (Rom.
8:27b; cf. 15:5b), it will go to pieces. Anything that
has in it an element of untruth, has within itself the
seeds of its own ruin. The Holy Spirit, therefore, is
called 'the Spirit of Truth'. Jesus is 'the Truth'.
Eternal values, the values which are eternal, are those
which are absolutely true according to the standards of
God. The value of the Gospel is that it is the 'truth' of
the Gospel (Col. 1:5). The eternal certainty of Christ is
that He is 'the Truth'.
Now this is a very
challenging thing. It separates and discriminates - not
always between the black lie and the transparent truth -
but between the beautiful lie, the soulish lie, the
sentimental lie, the formal lie, the religious lie, and
that which is 'according to God'. John the Baptist said
about the Lord Jesus that He would 'lay the axe to the
root', and that His 'fan was in His hand, and He would
thoroughly cleanse His threshing-floor' (Matt. 3:10,12).
What is the axe? What is the winnowing fan? It is the
truth!
Thus it was that, as He
spoke to the woman of Samaria, He looked on the temple on
Mount Gerizim, and He looked, with His mind's eye, on the
temple in Jerusalem; and then, to the woman who thought
that one or the other - especially this one in Samaria,
to which she was attached - was the truth, the true
thing, He said: "Woman, believe me, the hour cometh,
when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye
worship the Father... The hour cometh... when the true
worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and
truth... God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must
worship in spirit and truth" (John 4:21,23,24). He
is discriminating between the formal, the traditional,
the historical - if you like, the symbolic, at best - and
the real, the true. And He is saying: 'Only that
which is spiritual, after the very essence of the Divine
nature, is true. Therefore this temple and that temple
will collapse - not one stone will be left upon another.
They are not the truth.' The Holy Spirit is the
Spirit of Truth.
Our
Need for Absolute Truth
in all Things
It is very, very
important that our position should be a true position.
You and I need continually to review our position, and
say: "Is my position a true one? Is it second-hand?
What is it? The position in which I stand - how did I
come to it? What is it that puts me in this position? Is
it to me so true as to be to me absolutely a matter of
life or death?' It should be true like that, so that you
cannot give it up, you cannot resign from it, you cannot
withdraw from it - it is your very self. To do so would
be to commit spiritual suicide. That was how it was with
the Lord Jesus. Go through His life again, and hear Him
speaking. This Man has not just come to perform
something, or to give some teaching, objectively; this
Man is the thing! Because it is so real, so true
in Him, He is going to that Cross to shed the last drop
of His Blood. His position is that - it is Himself.
Our position must be
true, or we shall not stand we shall collapse, we shall
go to pieces. If there is a lie, we shall
disintegrate, as the creation did when the lie entered
in. Our life must be true: our conduct must be true; our
walk before others must be true; our walk before God must
be true. Our life must be true. Mark you, it is going to
be an agony for it to be so.
Our testimony and our
teaching must be true. Is it truth?
Our fellowship must be
true - no feigned love! No pretence at fellowship; no
trying to make believe, no merely outward thing. The Holy
Ghost will be satisfied with nothing less than 'the
truth' in the matter of fellowship. He will say: 'Look
here, you are trying to make believe in the matter of
fellowship with that person; you are trying to bolster up
something; you are trying not to let something collapse:
that is not true!' He will take you down deep until it is
true.
Our church must be true
- it must be the true Church. How much could be said
about that!
Our business must be
true - we must take this matter of the Holy Spirit into
our business. Is your manner of business really true?
When you are going to pay for something, are you quite
sure that you are paying all that you ought to pay for
it? that you are not getting it to your own advantage,
that someone is not going to suffer in this transaction?
Is that true? Even John the Baptist raised
questions like that at the Jordan, about exacting more
than should be (Luke 3:12-14). Yes, in business we must
be true; we cannot have one order of things in
Christianity and another one in the world.
Our spirit must be
true. We must never be less than we profess, God help us.
We must never be more than we profess - God help us! The
Holy Spirit is the 'Spirit of Truth', for that is the
character of the Lord Jesus. To be 'filled with the
Spirit' is a very, very exacting thing. Ananias and
Sapphira tried to 'steal a march' on the Holy Spirit: but
oh, no, He is not being taken advantage of like that! We
cannot 'hoodwink' the Holy Spirit. This is very solemn.
What do you have in mind when you talk about being
'filled with the Spirit'? We hear the command: "Be
filled with the Spirit", and we all want to be
filled with the Spirit. But we must understand that the
Spirit is the character of Jesus Christ. He is the Spirit
of Jesus Christ - and especially in this one respect, as
the Spirit of Truth.
To be 'filled with the
Spirit', therefore, means that everything has got to be
true, exact, right, real: no lie, no falsehood, no
make-believe, no pretence, no exaggeration, no imitation;
everything true, genuine. May God make us like His Son in
this! Then the Holy Spirit would do things: through a
church like that, through a people like that, and through
lives like that. He would do mighty things. When
conditions are such, you will not have to try to get
things done - He will do them.
That brings us back to
the point mentioned in our last study - why things
changed at the beginning, when they had been so
spontaneous, so mighty, so wonderful. The Holy Spirit was
present as the Spirit of Truth, and anything untrue that
He came up against was dealt with and not tolerated.
Peter's words seem fierce, I know, but he is jealous,
with the jealousy of the Holy Spirit, for the truth: he
sees that the Church can be wrecked and ruined if there
is a lie getting in - "Why hath Satan filled thy
heart?" (Acts 5:3).
We began by saying that
we are concerned about this matter of a life of fulness
and of powerful witness in the world, and troubled
because that impact upon the world is not as it was at
the beginning. It ought to be the same: the Holy
Spirit has not changed. God has not changed. Christ is
the same - then what is the trouble? Surely, if it is
true that the Holy Spirit commits Himself to the Lord
Jesus, then the answer is, once more, that we need more
of the Lord Jesus. Which is to say, that we need more of
Him in His character. This matter of the
Truth is only the beginning - there are many more facets
to His character than that; but truth is the foundation
of everything.