"I will pray
the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, that
he may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth:
whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth him not,
neither knoweth him: ye know him; for he abideth with
you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you desolate:
I come unto you...
"These things
have I spoken unto you, while yet abiding with you. But
the Advocate, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will
send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring
to your remembrance all that I said unto you" (John
14:16,17; 25,26).
"...That the
God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may
give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
knowledge of him" (Ephesians 1:17).
In our consideration of
the Holy Spirit as Divine character for Divine testimony,
we now move round to another angle, to view Him as Light.
We have seen Him as Truth and Holiness; we have now to
consider Him as Light.
"God is
light" (1 John 1:5). Jesus is the Light of men and
of the world, it is stated (John 1:4, 8:12, etc.). The
Holy Spirit is called the 'Spirit of Revelation'. God
dwells in the light (1 Tim. 6:16). The City, which is the
last presentation in the Bible, has the light of God
(Rev. 21:11). The Word of God is a light, a lamp (Ps.
119:105). Christians are said to be 'children of the
light' (Eph. 5:8).
So, everything related
to God is light: 'in Him there is no darkness at all' (1
John 1:5). It is Satan who is the prince of darkness; his
works are 'the works of darkness'; his children are the
'children of darkness'. These are the two contrasted and
conflicting kingdoms: the Kingdom of Light; the kingdom
of darkness. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Light. We
recall those further words of the Lord Jesus: "When
he... is come, he shall guide you into all the truth...
He shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto
you" (John 16:13,14).
Light
Precedes Building
Let us
look, then, at the Holy Spirit, first as character and
then as function, in terms of light. God never begins to
build until there is light. In the creation, before He
proceeded to build, He divided the light from the
darkness - He said: "Let there be light". That
is an intimation of an abiding law, that God does all His
work on the basis of light. Those two great symbolic
representations of God, the Tabernacle and the Temple,
were the result of spiritual illumination, to Moses and
to David respectively. Before they could be, light had to
be given. Someone had to be the receptacle, the vessel,
of the revelation. When we come into the New Testament,
we find that the first definite intimation of the Church
- "I will build my church" (Matt. 16:18) - was
made immediately after the illumination had come to Peter
as to the Person of the Lord Jesus. "Flesh and blood
hath not revealed it to thee" - revealed it -
"but my Father..." "I will build my
church..." Note this consistency in the principle of
God.
We pass from the first
intimation of the Church in the New Testament, from that
first mention of the word, to the full disclosure of its
eternal calling, vocation, destiny, in this Letter to the
Ephesians, and we find that, as in the beginning, so in
the full-orbed presentation, it is along the line of
illumination, or revelation, by the Holy Spirit. The Lord
Jesus said: "I will pray the Father, and he will
give you another Advocate..." "He shall guide
you into all the truth". In the mind of the Lord
Jesus, there may well have been the thought of the pillar
of cloud in the wilderness, guiding to the land. But He
said: 'I will pray the Father, and he will give you One
who shall guide you into all the truth.'
Paul is in prayer: he
is praying in the same way as his Master; his prayer is
on the same line: "I bow my knees unto the
Father" (the same Father), that He "may give
unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
knowledge of him". Here it is not the beginning of
revelation: that was with Peter - that was in Matthew 16.
Here, it is another word, which it is difficult to
translate adequately; it is really 'in the full knowledge
of Him'. "A spirit of revelation in the full
knowledge of him".
The
Nature of Light
(a) As to Character
So we have to see,
first of all, what light is. If so much depends upon it,
so much rests upon it; if it is, as it were, one of the
pillars upon which the whole structure of the church
rests, then it is very important that we know what it is.
And firstly, as to character.
(1)
Transparency
Light is transparency;
light is clearness; light is absolute purity; light is
honesty; light is openness of character. Light hides
nothing; its whole action and nature is contrary to
hiding anything. It has nothing to hide; it shows
everything; it shows all: in other words, it is not
deceitful. It does not want to cover anything, or to
pretend or make believe that something is other than what
it is. Light is single; it is not double; there is no
duplicity about light. And light is just - light! There
is 'no darkness at all' where there is light.
Now, we have pointed
out that the City - which, as we so well know, is one of
the titles of Christ corporate, Christ and His members,
the Church - is characterized by everything that speaks
of the nature of light. It is characterized, as a whole,
by crystal clearness; it is like "a jasper stone,
clear as crystal" (Rev. 21:11). Its street is of
pure, transparent gold (5:21b). The water of its river is
bright as crystal (22:1). Everything about it is of the
nature of light. It has so much light in its character,
that it has no need of the sun. The light is in its own
constitution. It takes its character from the Lamb, who
is "the lamp thereof" (21:23b). You can see
through this City, and everything in it. Perhaps we
should not like to live in transparent houses on this
earth! But when you live in this City, to adopt the
figure, you will not be ashamed for anybody to see what
is going on: you will not need to hide anything. You can
just 'see through it'. All the sin which produces
cloudiness and murkiness, indefiniteness, mists and fogs,
and all that sort of thing, will have been finally
abolished - "there will be no night there" (v.
25).
These things, as you
will recognise, are symbolic terms. They show
symbolically what the Holy Spirit has come to do, in men
and women, and in the creation. He has come to bring
about in human nature a condition like that. He has
undertaken a tremendous task! He is the Spirit of Light -
that is His character - and the purpose of His presence
is to bring to an end everything that is of the nature of
darkness. How many shades and aspects of darkness there
are! - a whole vocabulary of words. The Spirit has come
to bring all that to an end by applying the Cross, in
which it was all brought to an end in the Person of the
Lord Jesus; to work out the meaning of the Cross in our
lives, so that everything that belongs to that kingdom of
darkness is removed: so that in the end, with us too,
there is no darkness at all.
Is that really what we
think of, when we think of having, receiving, being
filled with the Holy Spirit? Here again, perhaps, a
little re-shaping of our ideas is called for. It is true
that He is many other things, as well as light: He is the
Spirit of Power, He is the Spirit of Wisdom; yes, He is
many other things; but, with them all, He is this. And we
must not make more of those 'demonstration' aspects of
the Spirit, in power, in gifts and capacities, in works,
than we do of His character side. If He really does His
work in you and in me, He will make us to be people who
can bear to be 'looked into' without any fear, without
any drawing of the blinds. Our lives and our motives will
bear looking into.
The Holy Spirit knows
us, He knows us. We cannot deceive Him; we cannot, as we
say, 'hoodwink' Him; He knows us through and through. We
must therefore give the Holy Spirit credit for dealing
with us according to a knowledge of us beyond our own.
Looking inside us, He has seen something that is contrary
to His own nature; He has found something that does not
answer to His character of absolute transparency, and He
is dealing with that.
We often think that
sincerity on our part is all that is called for: we have
only got to be 'sincere' in order to satisfy God. (I
would remind you that there is, in any case, a difference
between sincerity and reality.) But Saul of Tarsus was
the most 'sincere' man alive in his day, and yet he was
the most mistaken. Sincerity may be required, may be very
important, and it is; but do not let us deceive ourselves
with our sincerity, and say that because we are downright
sincere, then we must be right; that is not the case. The
Spirit may require sincerity to open the door, for
anything that is insincere means a closed door to the
Holy Spirit. But, after all, it is only an
opening of the door, so that He may come in and then
begin to show us that, 'sincere' as we were, we were
wrong after all.
It is exactly what
happened with Paul, is it not? "I verily thought...
that I ought to do many things contrary to the
name of Jesus of Nazareth" (Acts 26:9). 'I verily
thought that I ought to do...': absolutely
sincere, absolutely conscientious, and yet so
ignominiously mistaken and wrong - until the Light came.
Then he saw it. You see the point. The Holy Spirit does
not just accept our sincerity as the everything. He comes
perhaps through that door; then He begins His work of
showing that even our purest motives were probably mixed;
our most sincere intentions were tainted. He works
according to His knowledge, and we must give Him credit
always for doing that.
If you and I are really
meaning business with God, and the Holy Spirit has taken
us through an experience, through a depth, which has been
very self-revealing, a real shock to us: we have
discovered that there was that there that we would never
have believed, had we been told: the end is that we are
on our faces, worshipping Him as the Faithful and the
True. No rebellion, no bitterness, but thanking God that
He has been so faithful with us, and so true. We do not
want to be let off anything that is of the darkness, do
we?
This, then, is the
first thing about the Holy Spirit as light. He is, and He
works for, complete transparency and honesty and purity,
without a shadow. He seeks to bring us to that end of
glory - "having the glory of God" (Rev. 21:11)
- because there can be no glory in anything that is of
the kingdom of darkness.
(2)
Fearlessness
Another thing about
light is that it is absolutely fearless. If the Holy
Spirit is really there in this character, we are never
afraid of something being discovered. A good conscience,
a clear conscience, is a wonderfully courageous thing. It
is a very strong thing; it puts you in a very strong
position. Where there is light, and no darkness, nothing
to be hidden and nothing that we do not want to be
discovered or uncovered, there is no fear. There is a
great strength of confidence and assurance.
Light is a fearless
thing. If there is anything doubtful or questionable,
anything about which we are not sure; if we have some
question, if we are not sure whether our position is
right or wrong: then we are always afraid, we are in the
weakness of fear. Darkness and fear always go together -
it is like that naturally, is it not? - fear belongs to
darkness. There can be no confidence, no strength, where
there is darkness. This City, this people, at the end, is
a strong city, "having a wall great and high"
(Rev. 21:12); it is the very embodiment of the idea of
strength: but its strength lies in its character - in its
purity, its light.
(3)
Disinfection
Another thing about
light is that it combats disease. We know that
physically, do we not? We send people with certain
diseases to the country, where all is sunny and light. We
have learned to expose our wounds to the sun for their
healing. The light is healing; light is purifying;
disease cannot abide the light. Now, come back again to
the City. It is said: "the leaves of the tree were
for the healing of the nations" (Rev. 22:2c).
Disease cannot abide this light that is in the City. The
light deals with everything that is working corruption:
it destroys it, and repairs the damage.
I am thinking
especially now of the more recent discoveries and uses of
light in healing. I remember how it began. In the first
world war, I had a great deal to do with wounded soldiers
- thousands of terribly mangled bodies, torn by shell;
and it was in that war, when it was so difficult to cope
with this terrible situation, that the method of healing,
and even of making good the loss of flesh, repairing the
destroyed tissues - the method was adopted of just
putting the wounded out in the sun, exposing them to the
sun. It was marvellous what the sun did. It built up the
bodies; it made good the destroyed tissues, it healed in
a wonderful way. That was the introduction of a new
technique which has now, of course, been resolved into
the various kinds of ray for healing. Light does it: it
heals; it repairs; it destroys disease.
(4)
Joy
Another thing about
light - and we are building up for an application - is
that it is something joyful. It is a joyful, an
uplifting, an inspiring thing. Darkness is nearly always
depressing. You can see something of this in the people
of this world. Those people who live in extreme northern
realms, where they do not see the sun for months on end,
often tend to be heavy, serious, grim, taciturn, even
joyless people, whereas, when you go to more southern
climes, what a difference you find - laughter, merriment,
lightheartedness. Light has that effect. People of the
sun are sunny people; people of the shadows are marked by
shadows.
So we can see that
light is a very important thing in character. And you
have got to have the character before ever the function
can begin - that is the point. You see, it was when the
Holy Spirit Himself had come into the Church, and given
His own character to it, that the Church broke out on its
great world mission, and challenged darkness everywhere.
You can see the contrasts in those early chapters of the
Church's history. There were tremendous contrasts in the
apostles themselves. Oh, what a change has taken place in
them - what different men they are! They were men in the
shadows, in the dark, but now they are in the light - or
rather, they are men with the Light in themselves.
Something has transformed those men; they are changed.
The Spirit has come - the Light is in them.
Take those two
representatives on the Emmaus road. What a veil was over
their eyes as to the Scriptures! When the Lord Jesus
opened up the Scriptures of the Old Testament, from
Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms, that was not their
first introduction to the Bible. They knew their Bible;
they knew the Scriptures; they were not just being
introduced to the Book - but how dark their minds were!
Now, listen to others like them on the Day of Pentecost!
What light they have! They now are seeing, and are
proclaiming wonderful illumination out of the Scriptures.
Light has come into them, changed them, made them
into a different kind of people. In many respects you can
hardly recognise them as the same persons. You cannot
recognise the old Simon Peter, can you, in this man who
is now standing up and speaking, and challenging
everybody. Only a short while before, he could not stand
up to the challenge of a serving maid, but now he can
challenge the rulers. Something has happened to this man:
the light has come in - in other words, the Spirit has
come into him - and he is now seeing in a new way.
The
Nature of Light
(b) As to Function
That is how the
testimony begins; that is how the functioning begins. You
see, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the work -
of the world testimony, of the testimony in the nations.
The Holy Spirit is not out just to make us 'retailers of
the Truth', in a secondhand way. That is one of the
weaknesses of the whole order, that certain things are
taught in schools, and then people are sent out with what
they have learnt - all this school-learning. And they go
out and they give it out - in a secondhand,
'phonographic' way! You are not surprised that there is
not the impact upon the darkness that there was at the
beginning; that the healing of spiritual and moral
diseases does not take place; that the whole scene is not
transformed.
Teaching
is Not Sufficient
No, it is not that way.
The disciples had had all the information that ever they
needed: they had had all the Lord's teaching; they had
seen all His work; they had seen Him die; they had seen
Him after the resurrection; and they had heard angels
declaring from Heaven that He would come again in like
manner as they had seen Him go up (Acts 1:11): and yet,
with all that, they are not allowed to go out into the
nations and preach it! This has got to become more than
something said to them - something that they have been
told - something that they have heard with their ears.
This has got to come into them by the Holy
Spirit, as a mighty power within their own being. Hence,
He gave them commandment that they should not depart from
Jerusalem, until they received the promise of the Father
(Acts 1:4).
No, it is not the truth
that we have been taught - it is the truth that has come
into our hearts, by illumination of the Holy Spirit, that
is powerful; not any other. That is most important! I
venture to say that, if only a small percentage of the
teaching that some of us have received were to come up in
the power of the Holy Spirit, some tremendous thing would
happen: there would be an impact and registration that
would be comparable to what was at the beginning - just
wonderful. Let us not be content with our 'truth' and our
'teaching'. The Lord made it perfectly clear that, much
as He had given, and much as He had shown, and much as
they had come by through their association with Him, that
was not all that they required. You must not go out into
the world with nothing more than that; that must not be
the sole basis upon which you go. That will have its
place; it is necessary, and it will come to life; but -
you cannot just go on with that only. 'Tarry ye, until ye
be endued with power': and when the enduement came, what
happened? It was what He had said to them that sprang
into life; it was what He had done that came to them with
a new revelation as to its meaning. The Holy Spirit is
absolutely indispensable, even when you have a very, very
large wealth of instruction, of teaching, of information.
The
Church Should Make an Impact
This is true as to the
individual, but remember that the Holy Spirit is the
Light of the Sanctuary. When Paul prays about this
'spirit of wisdom and revelation', he has the Church
before him. He is thinking of the Church as the
dwelling-place, the "habitation of God" (as he
calls it) "in the Spirit" (Eph. 2:22). The
Church is to be here in this world, universally and
locally, as a challenge to, and with a powerful impact
upon, the darkness in each locality, wherever it may be,
by the Holy Spirit. The darkness cannot go unchallenged
and it cannot eventually triumph. It was said of the Lord
Jesus that life was in Him, and the life was the light of
men, and the darkness overcame it not (John 1:4,5). It
looked as though it did, but it did not.
The presence of the
Church, with the Holy Spirit within, ought to be like
that, registering a tremendous challenge; and it should
be that, whatever men do, or Satan does, that light is
not quenched; the light survives. You and I,
individually, when we have passed from this earth, should
be remembered for having been vehicles or vessels of
light - this kind of light. It was a challenge; it was
healing; it was effective. It should not be merely that
we had teaching, or that we had truth, but that there was
that which had the Holy Spirit in it, which left a mark.
We all ought to be like that. Do you think it would be
possible for anybody really to have the Holy Spirit in
any measure, and for it to make no difference where they
are? Surely that could not be. It was said of the Lord
Jesus: "He could not be hid" (Mark 7:24); and
so it should be with us.
Light
Can be Shut Out by Prejudice
Now this is the 'truth'
about the Holy Spirit as light; and I am sure that you
agree with the truth, and that your heart goes out that
it might be so in your case. Perhaps there is a need for
us to give the Holy Spirit a better and a larger chance
than He has hitherto had. We can, you know, deprive
ourselves of this light of the Spirit; we can shut out
the light; we can have bandages over our eyes. What might
such bandages be? Well, take prejudice. Prejudice is a
terribly blinding thing. It means, as the word clearly
indicates, that you have pre-judged something, some
situation, before you really looked into it. You
prejudged it - perhaps on the basis of report, or on any
one of many pretexts. And, in pre-judging, without a
first-hand, honest, sincere, true investigation and
enquiry, pursuing this matter till you really knew, you
closed down - you foreclosed on it. Very well: you have
put the bandage of prejudice on your eyes, and there is
no hope - no hope - until that is removed.
Some of us know that
quite well. Some of my brethren know that it was just on
that very point that, many years ago, everything turned
in my life from what I have called a 'closed heaven' to
an 'open heaven'. I was preaching one Sunday morning on
the subject of 'prejudice'. Some people think that I can
be emphatic, but on that day, I had - metaphorically - my
coat off, and my sleeves up! I was lunging at 'prejudice'
with all the strength that I had, calling it by all the
names that my vocabulary could provide, saying it was a
cruel thing, a thing that gave neither God nor man a
chance... and so I went on. That was the Lord's Day
morning.
Tuesday morning, I was
in my study. A letter was handed to me, in which I was
invited to attend a certain conference, with all expenses
paid, including travelling. And I looked, and I said: No,
not on your life; you will never find me there; I would
not touch that with a twenty-foot barge-pole! And I took
out my diary, quite sure that, in those very busy days,
of course I should have my answer - I should have other
engagements. When I looked in my diary, the only dates
that were free were those very dates! And I left it on my
desk, wondering - How am I going to get round this? what
am I going to do about it? Very kind of this person, to
offer me all my expenses; but what am I to say?
While I was trying to
find my way out, my backdoor of escape, my wife came in
with my morning cup of something, and she saw that I was
a bit disturbed, looked a bit worried; and she asked me
about it, and I told her what it was. She said: Well,
have you any engagements at that time? I said: No, just
at that time I have none. Well, she said, it looks to me
as though you have one of two alternatives: either tell
them that you will not go, or go! (I
suppose that is the value of having a practical wife!) I
was left with that, and she went out.
And as I began to think
about this again, it was as though somebody stood at the
side of me - I did not see anybody, and I did not hear
any voice - but it was as though someone stood at the side
of me and said: What about your sermon on prejudice?
Well, I had to face
that whole thing before God. It was just that that
brought a great turning-point in my life, opened the way
for the Lord, for something very much more. By dealing
with that whole spirit of prejudice I came into an
altogether new way with the Lord. You can perhaps
understand how afraid I am of prejudice - what it can do,
how it can close the door, how it can figuratively put a
bandage over the eyes, so that we are deprived of what
the Lord wants to give.
Light
Can be Shut Out by Pride and Policy
And then there is
pride: unwillingness to humble ourselves; unwillingness
to say that we have been wrong, to take something back.
Pride can blind. Perhaps there are few things more
blinding than pride. And policy: you can just shut the
Holy Spirit right out if you are going to be governed by
policy. Policy means taking into account how things will
affect you and your interests, your future, how it will
close doors to you; what other people will think - that
if you do this or that you will be regarded as a
'speckled bird', and so on; you see, secondary
considerations. Oh, that is a hobgoblin of the Devil to
rob you of something! Yes, it will blind; you will not go
on if there is any policy about it - make no mistake.
There is a passage in
John's Gospel, by which I have often been greatly
impressed (and which I have tried to make a guiding
principle in my own spiritual life) - those words in John
5:44: "How can ye believe, who receive glory one of
another, and the glory that cometh from the only God ye
seek not?" 'How can ye believe?' You see, that whole
nation, and those Jewish rulers and teachers and leaders,
were shut out of all that Christ came to give on this one
thing - policy: thinking more of the glory of men than of
the glory of God; walking more as before men than as
before the Lord. If Abraham has a great inheritance - and
there is no doubt that he has, for the covenant of
promise concerned his seed, 'which seed is Jesus Christ'
(Gal. 3:16) - what an inheritance! - remember that the
covenant with Abraham was made at the point where God
appeared to him and said: "I am God All-sufficient;
walk before me, and be thou perfect" (Gen. 15:1).
'Walk before Me! and
be thou perfect.' That is the way of the enlarging
inheritance. 'Before Me!' Not before men; not
before systems; not before public opinion; and not before
your own interests, with an eye to how they are going to
be served, and what is going to happen to you. 'Walk
before Me, and be thou perfect. I am the Lord
All-sufficient'. 'How can ye believe, who receive glory
one from another, and do not seek the glory which comes
from God only?' This is the way of light; this is the way
of power; this is the way of the Spirit. It is the way of
'walking in the light, as He is in the light', and
walking with the light in ourselves.
We can, of course, see
how all this relates to the Church's witness in the
world. We can understand much in the light of that. When
the Church was filled with the light of the Spirit, what
an effect it had upon the kingdom of darkness,
everywhere! But when the Church began to lose that basis
of life, it began to lose its influence in the world. The
Lord save us!