At the end of our
introductory section, we asked the question: What is the
ground of the Holy Spirit's work? For this should give us
the answer to our previous question: Why, at a certain
point in the early history of Christianity, was His work
arrested? We must therefore now ask the further
questions: Who is the Holy Spirit? and what is the Holy
Spirit?
What
the Holy Spirit is Not
First of all, what the
Holy Spirit is not, and what the Holy Spirit did not
come to do. Here, a very serious error is to be
avoided: that error of making the Holy Spirit impersonal,
and making everything of the effects of the Holy
Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not, in the first place, an
influence. He may exercise an influence, but in the first
place He is not an influence. He is not, in the first
place, a 'sense': we may sense Him, but He is not just a
'sense'. The Holy Spirit is not, in the first place, a
'principle', though He may work by principles. Nor is the
Holy Spirit in the first place a 'power'. We are always
in danger of making the 'effects' of the Holy Spirit
everything. These things are just characteristics of the
Holy Spirit.
What
the Holy Spirit Is
The Holy Spirit Himself
is a Person, just as truly a Person as are the Father and
the Son. The Lord Jesus did not refer to the Holy Spirit
as 'it'. Although the word for 'spirit' in the Greek is
neuter, the Apostle John always reports the Lord Jesus as
speaking of the Holy Spirit as 'He', in an emphatic way:
"He, when he is come..."; "when he, the
Spirit of truth, is come..." (John 16:8,13). Now you
may feel that this matter does not require such emphasis,
that it is accepted and recognised by most evangelical
Christians. But we can get into difficulty if we are not
careful - if we put more upon the characteristics than
upon the Person Himself. In the Person of the Holy Spirit
we are reckoning with God Almighty. We may ask for
spiritual sense, consciousness, light, wisdom, power,
influence, but we must always keep in mind that what we
are really seeking is this Divine Person Himself, who
with the Father and the Son is one God. It is God
present; it is as truly God present Himself in Person, as
ever Jesus Himself was God present in Person.
If you go through the
book of the Acts, you will see that neither in the Church
nor outside of the Church were people having to do with
some abstract thing - they were having to do with a
present, living Person. To Ananias and Sapphira, Peter
said: "Why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to
the Holy Spirit?" (Acts 5:2). You do not lie to
an abstraction. It was like that in every connection:
people were dealing with a living present Person - God
Himself. When the Apostle spoke about strangers coming in
to the assembly, and giving expression to their feelings,
he did not say: 'They will say that there is some
powerful influence here! I am conscious of a strange
atmosphere here!' He said: 'They will say - God is in the
midst of you!' (1 Cor. 14:25). 'They will relate
everything to God, and will say - It is God that I meet
here!' It is a very important thing that the registration
should be of none other than of God Himself. If that is
true, there are far-reaching implications. The Holy
Spirit is not an 'it': He is a Person.
What
the Holy Spirit Did Not Come to Do
The Holy Spirit did not
come to start a new religion. Let it be very carefully
noted that Christianity was not a new religion. It was
not something set up over against, or alongside of, other
religions, so as to become a subject for the academic
discipline of 'Comparative Religions'. It was quite a
long time before some of the leading apostles themselves
realised the implications of their new position. They did
not at once come to the conclusion that their Jewish
religion, as such, was finished, and now they were in the
'Christian' religion. There was no such dividing line in
their consciousness. The implication of their new
position did not immediately dawn on them; it did not
become clear-cut in a moment, they grew into it
gradually. They found themselves moving in spirit in a
certain direction - gradually moving away from something,
feeling themselves to be more and more 'out of it' - out
of something that they had been in - and more and more
involved in something altogether other: but what this
'something' was, was not at first clear to them.
Think of Peter and the
house of Cornelius. Peter was not at all clear as to the
implications of this strange departure, this innovation
of God. If Peter had had the idea that Judaism was now
wound up and finished, and that Christianity had now come
in to take its place, there would have been none of that
battle in his heart over the Gentiles at all. In
Jerusalem there were others, leading Apostles and elders,
who took a very long time, if indeed they ever managed,
to get quite clear on this matter. The Holy Spirit did
not come to set up a new religion, called the 'Christian'
religion. It is very important for us to recognise that.
The Holy Spirit did not
come to launch a new 'movement' in this world. If that
had been His object, then we should have found in this
book records of committees, consultative and executive,
being set up, and plans being laid for the evangelization
of the world, with all its attendant machinery and
organization. But the impressive thing about this whole
book is that you never find anything like that as the
basis upon which the work was initiated. No thought-out
campaigns existed. The Apostles and their brethren were
so often taken by surprise; they were compelled to do
things that they had never thought of doing, nor ever
intended to do; they found themselves altogether beyond
their depth. Many things that they had planned never took
place, or were set aside. No, it was not a new 'movement' - not a 'Movement' at all (spelt with a capital 'M') -
that the Holy Spirit came to inaugurate.
Furthermore, the Holy
Spirit did not come to inculcate a new 'teaching'. We
need to be well informed and instructed on this matter.
There is no ground whatever for asserting, there is
nothing in the whole story upon which to rest an
affirmation, that the Apostles went out into the world
with 'the teaching of Jesus'. It may surprise you, even
startle you, to hear that said. But there is absolutely
nothing to warrant the notion that these men went out to
spread 'the teaching of Jesus' - as though to say,
'Whatever Confucius may teach; whatever Buddha may teach;
whatever the other great religious teachers or leaders or
founders may teach, this is the
"teaching" of Jesus.' That was not their idea
at all, and that was not the Holy Spirit's idea. They
were not in any way propagating a 'system of doctrine'.
Our New Testament
'teaching' was made necessary by what was 'happening'.
All the things 'happened' before the explanation was
given - the teaching came after the event. Things
happened, and then explanations followed. It was not:
Now, this is the 'teaching' - now go and put it into
practice, constitute everything according to it; here is
the teaching - therefore have everything conformed to
'it'. That would be the wrong way round. You do not get a
New Testament church like that; you do not get a moving
of the Holy Spirit like that. The Holy Spirit took things
into His own hands, launched the Church right out into
the deep, and landed it far beyond its own understanding
and comprehension; and it was not until afterward that He
raised up anointed or endowed men to teach the believers
the meaning of their experiences, of what had happened to
them. We have got to get things round the right way.
Would that we could get back there - where the Holy
Spirit does something, and we do not understand what He
is doing, or what He means; and then we go to the Word
and find - "This is that..."! (Acts 2:16). This
is the explanation - here in the Word of God!
Lastly, the Holy Spirit
never came to make some 'thing', called 'the Church'. It
is true that the Church was born on the Day of Pentecost.
But here we need to get our ideas a little clearer, a
little straightened out. Our mentality in relation to
that word 'church' may be a bit confused. We may have an
'object' in view in our minds - a 'thing' called the
church, or going by that name, among many others. But the
Holy Spirit did not come to make a new 'thing' by the
name of 'the church'.
What
the Holy Spirit Came to Do
Now, if the Holy Spirit
did not come for any of these things, what did He come
for?
The Holy Spirit came
to reproduce Jesus Christ in the lives of men and women. The
Church is that or it is nothing; the teaching relates to
that, or it has no meaning. Any movement of the Spirit is
in that direction, or we have entirely misunderstood. He
came to reproduce the Lord Jesus in the lives of men and
women! Everything has to be tested by that. All our
activities and efforts and energies and expenditure; all
our sacrifice and machinery, our movements and our
teaching: everything that has become a part of
'Christianity' has to be tested by one rule: Is it
resulting in the reproduction of Jesus Christ in the
lives of men and women, so that it is demonstrated from
heaven that Jesus is as truly here in this world now as
ever He was in history? He should, indeed, be present
here, not only as powerfully as then, but even more so,
because He spoke of Himself as being limited until the
Spirit came. He should be present, not only in works such
as He did then, but, according to His own words, in
"greater works than these" that believers
should do, "because I go to the Father" (John 14:12:
cf. vv. 16-18; ch. 16:7-15; Luke 12:50).
That is how it was in
those first thirty years; that was the thing that men
everywhere realised. The presence of Christ was the great
impress. "They took knowledge of them, that they had
been with Jesus" (Acts 4:13). That was why the
believers were called 'Christ-ians' - 'Christ-ones'! It
was the only way of explaining. It is Christ! The Holy
Spirit came for that. And if there is to be any
continuation or repetition of those experiences, it will
only be - it will only be - not merely through a
belief in Jesus Christ, His Deity, His sinlessness, His
atonement, as doctrines, but as by the Holy Spirit He is
livingly present in us. In those early days it was just
that: that, by the Holy Spirit, Christ was present
in these believers in a mighty way. When you think or
speak of being 'filled with the Spirit', what do you
mean? What do we really mean by that expression? Well,
what the New Testament means by being 'filled with the
Spirit' is simply being filled with the Lord Jesus.
I will stop there for
the moment. But we are now getting near to the meaning of
the Holy Spirit: this is just the point where we move
over into the real significance of Pentecost. It is, so
to speak, the bringing of Christ back again, in a new
mighty advent; not externally, this time, but inwardly.
And I repeat that everything has to be judged according
to that. Yes: when He has His place, the place that He
ought to have, the measure that He ought to have, in His
people, things will happen; they will happen as
spontaneously and mightily as they did then. It is all
resolved into the matter of Jesus being glorified!