“...In whom ye also, having
heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your
salvation, — in whom, having also believed, YE WERE
SEALED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT OF PROMISE, WHICH IS AN
EARNEST OF OUR INHERITANCE, unto the redemption of God’s
own possession, unto the praise of his glory” (Eph.
1:13,14).
Sealed with
the Holy Spirit
I want you to note at the outset a
very important little word: “Ye were sealed WITH
the Holy Spirit”, not by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit
is not the sealer, but the seal. God the Father seals,
and the seal is the Holy Spirit. The value of that is
that the sealing is not a matter of some feeling, some
experience in the realm of our senses. The sealing is
definitely the receiving of a Person for indwelling.
The apostles were very careful and
very particular as to this divine consummation of saving
faith. They never left anything to chance. If there was a
profession of faith in the Lord Jesus, if there was a
declaration of the acceptance of Him, the acknowledgment
of Him as Saviour and Lord, they never allowed it to stop
there. If a report came that some had turned to the Lord
through the preaching, they went to verify and to see
that the thing was sealed, and for them the consummation
of that saving faith, that faith unto salvation, was that
they received the seal of the Holy Spirit. You notice
here that, although it is in Ephesians, which goes so
much beyond beginnings, it is connected with “having
heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your
salvation, — in whom, having also believed”
(heard the Word and believed), “ye were sealed”.
Now the enemy will allow anything
short of that. He will allow you to have a lot of
sensations, to make a lot of declarations, sign a lot of
papers and cards, and go out to a lot of penitent forms.
He will allow anything short of this particular thing,
and it was there that the apostles were making so sure,
not accepting anything less than this, that these people
definitely and positively did receive the Holy Spirit as
a Person to indwell them. “Ye were sealed by God
with the Holy Spirit of promise as an earnest of our
inheritance”. Well, that is all bound up with this
little word “with” — with the Spirit.
Then come these two words which are
word-pictures — “sealed” and “earnest”.
“Sealed with the Spirit as an earnest.”
The Effect of
a Seal
(a) The mark of reality
What is the nature and effect of a
seal when it is put upon anything? I think it has several
meanings and several effects. First of all it is the mark
of reality; that is, of security. It introduces this
element: “Now, that is that! That is a real
transaction, that is a definite act. Something has
happened that is very real — you cannot get away
from that.” In the New Testament, when this sealing
took place, when they received the Spirit as a seal, it
was precise, it was real, it was definite; it was lifted
entirely out of the realm of vagueness, indefiniteness.
It was a mark about those first Christians which was
unmistakable. The seal gives that character to the life:
that is, the receiving of the Holy Spirit as a Person
makes everything very real — it makes for an
unmistakable addition to the life that has to be noted,
taken account of. From that time, if it is a genuine
thing, there is nothing vague about that one’s
Christian life, nothing indefinite.
(b) The mark of
certainty
And then the seal is the mark of
certainty. When we receive the Spirit, when this seal is
set to believing faith, there enters in something that is
very positive in the life. We have certainty; that is, we
know. That positive note is struck so much by John.
“The anointing which ye received of him abideth in
you, and ye need not that any one teach you” (1 John
2:27). That does not mean that we are exempt from
instruction in the things of God, but it does mean that
we do not need that anyone should tell us we are saved
— we know. “We know that we have passed out of
death into life” (1 John 3:14). It is the seal of
security and certainty.
(c) A mark of
distinction
And another thing about a seal is
that it brings a resemblance. When we put a seal upon a
thing, that seal bears a mark. It may be the Great Seal
of the realm, it may be a family seal, a business seal, a
personal seal — an initial or monogram. It bears a
mark, has a character; it distinguishes that which is
sealed. And in the same way the Holy Spirit gives a
certain mark, a certain character, a certain resemblance,
a certain design to the life. He brings in this mark of
the Lord.
These are very simple things, but
this is the outworking, the immediate result, of
receiving the Spirit. You have only to look into the book
of the Acts to see this borne out. “They took
knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus”
(Acts 4:13). They knew the seal, the likeness; they saw
the mark, the design.
“An
Earnest of Our Inheritance”
“An earnest of our inheritance.”
Of course, in ancient times this was a very well-known
thing, as it is today. It is the legal pledge of a
commercial transaction. In old days, if a man was buying
a piece of land, he was given by the seller a handful of
the earth of that land as an earnest that he was to have
the whole, the whole was his by right, it was his
inheritance. The word “earnest” is the Greek
word arrhabon (Hebrew erabon), which means
a surety, a pledge, such as an engagement ring; that is,
I make you a promise, I commit myself; this is a token.
That is the word that is used here of the Holy Spirit. He
is the pledge, He is the promise, He is the token of all
the inheritance which God has for us in His Son. “An
earnest of our inheritance”; the “Spirit of
promise”.
“An earnest of our inheritance.”
A little earlier the apostle has said, “in whom also
we were made a heritage”. A little later he will
speak of God’s inheritance in the saints, but here
he is speaking of our inheritance; not God’s
inheritance in us, but our inheritance in God. This
letter to the Ephesians has a very vast sweep. It looks
right back to past eternity, and tells us of the great
purpose of God from before times eternal, before the
world was, “the eternal purpose”; it tells us
of our election, “chosen in Christ before the
foundation of the world”, and it tells us unto what;
and then it sweeps on through time, through the ages, on
to the eternity future, and shows us the realisation of
that purpose and that election — and what a glorious
picture is brought into view of being “unto the
praise of his glory”, “the glory of his grace”!
The word “glory” here is
the key to it all. I am quite sure that you have been
impressed with the fact that the New Testament is so
futuristic — not just in the prophetical
interpretation of the Bible, but in the sense that the
writers are always looking on. Whatever they are doing,
they are looking beyond this life. They have their eyes
filled with a wonderful future. The apostles are full of
that, straining after that; their teaching is concerning
that all the time. They are seeking to bring the
believers, the saints, the church, into the mighty
inspiration of a glorious hope, a marvellous future, and
this letter to the Ephesians, perhaps more than any
other, brings into view that great future realisation of
eternal purpose and calls it our inheritance — that
to which we are heirs, through the grace of God, in
fellowship with our Lord Jesus Christ.
But my point in saying this is that
this is not just some glorious presentation of ideas, or
even of truths in words. How shall we know that it is not
a beautiful story? How shall we know that it is not just
the production of men’s imagination? How shall we
know that it is not just wishful thinking? How shall we
know it is not just a dream, a beautiful dream? How shall
we know that, having given up everything in this world
and abandoned all interests here for this, we shall not
at last find that we have made a mistake and have lost
both worlds? How shall we know that this is true? And the
apostle answers all such questions and says, “You
can know in a very real and practical way right here and
now — in as practical a way as it is possible to
know anything. You can know it right inside yourself!”
And I venture to suggest that that is a more real way of
knowing things than any other way. I am not always
certain of you, you are not always certain of me —
but I am perfectly certain of what goes on inside of me!
That is the real thing. And so the apostle says,
answering all questions as to whether this inheritance is
a solid thing, whether this eternal purpose is a real
matter: “He has given us the Holy Spirit as an
earnest”.
A Positive
Sense of Purpose and Destiny
This is borne out very clearly and
precisely, inasmuch as when we receive the Holy Spirit,
when we have the indwelling Holy Spirit, the first thing
that results is that He gives us a positive sense of
purpose and destiny. He lifts life out of unreality and
vagueness, and we become conscious that there is, after
all, some real purpose in our being on this earth.
Whatever we may have felt before, as to its having been a
matter of chance, or as to there having been anything
accidental in our coming into this world, a mere fragment
among the teeming multitudes: now it is as though we
— individually insignificant as we are in ourselves
naturally — are, in a right sense, somehow
characterized by a tremendous importance. I mean that
rightly. A meaning, a significance, is given to us; we
feel that we are bound up with some tremendous thing.
When the Holy Spirit comes in as the seal and the earnest
of our inheritance, a sense of positive destiny takes
hold of us. We know we are linked on with something. You
can test yourself by this, as well as testify to the
truth of it.
And then the Holy Spirit gives us a
positive urge and incentive towards something. We become
aware that we are apprehended — there is an urge in
us, there is an incentive, there is a pull; we are
gripped, we are being drawn on, led on; and that is the
explanation of all our reactions. If we lapse, if we get
slack, if we cease to press on, presently we shall have a
bad reaction, we shall realise that something is lost, we
are losing out; life has lost something: we must see to
this matter. The Holy Spirit has linked us with that
purpose, and He is the incentive within us, the urge, the
dynamic.
A Progressive
Understanding of God’s Purpose
And then again the Holy Spirit gives
us a progressive understanding and knowledge of the
purpose. It should be characteristic of every Holy
Spirit-indwelt life that there is a progressive,
increasing understanding and knowledge of God’s
purpose, the purpose unto which we are called. It was
this that governed the apostles in the writing of their
letters. They were “moved by the Holy Ghost”.
They spoke and they wrote “as they were moved”,
that is, “as they were borne along by the Holy Ghost”
(2 Pet. 1:21). The word-picture here in the Greek is of a
crowd, a surging crowd, moving in a certain direction,
and here is one life standing by, that suddenly finds
itself caught up in the crowd — and what is the good
of trying to resist that? It has simply got to let itself
go, be borne on with the multitude. That is the word that
is used here. They were borne along by the Holy Spirit as
they wrote and as they spoke. And what was it they spoke
and wrote about? It was about this purpose —
explaining, informing, giving growing knowledge, as they
received it from the Holy Spirit.
The same Holy Spirit will do that in
us. There is something very wrong with a life — a
Christian life — which, after a given time, is no
better instructed on God’s purposes in salvation
than at the beginning; something very wrong. The Holy
Spirit is there for that very purpose. Growing
intelligence is a mark of the Spirit within, as the
earnest of our inheritance.
Our
Responsibility to Honour the Holy Spirit
Then we are brought by the Holy
Spirit, as the earnest of our inheritance, to face the
responsibility of His indwelling. Here we have such words
as: “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye
were sealed unto the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30).
Our responsibility is to cherish the Holy Spirit, to
honour the Holy Spirit. We read so much about “walking
in the Spirit”, “walking by the Spirit”.
What does walking in the Spirit mean? Well, it means, in
the simplest of language, first of all that we recognise
and acknowledge the Holy Spirit. That is the first simple
thing — to walk in the Spirit is to recognise the
Spirit and to acknowledge the Spirit; not to ignore, not
to affront Him; to give Him His place of honour and right
and then to obey — to yield to the Spirit and to
obey.
And the Spirit within us is mainly
very quiet. When the Lord speaks by His Spirit within, He
speaks very gently. I have for many years tried to train
myself to recognise His voice. We expect tremendous
impressions, a loud voice, something that we cannot
mistake, and my experience is that the Lord very rarely
speaks like that until He has to, that His Spirit is
gentle, and if we really were being led by the Spirit, we
should be attuned to a very, very quiet voice, just
intimating something. How easy it is for us to go on and
pass it over, to ignore it, because it is so gentle
— and yet when we look back we have to say, “Oh,
what a pity I did not take note of that very simple,
gentle little touch of the Lord — I would have been
saved such a lot!”
We should never need to have our
ears trained if there were shouting going on all the
time. But the ear is trained by having to listen, and
this inner ear of “hearing what the Spirit saith”
must be an ear that is attentive, an ear that is
inclined, an ear that indicates the attitude of our
hearts. If someone is speaking, I can be perfectly
careless and preoccupied and looking round, but if I
realise that what the speaker has to say is of very great
importance, I am all attention, showing the state of my
heart. “He that hath an ear, let him hear.”
This is what walking in the Spirit means —
inclining, being set upon knowing all that the Lord has
to say and give.
The
Need to Press On
I close just by
reminding you that the meaning and value of an earnest,
of a token, of a promise can all be lost if you do not
follow it out to its fulfilment.
The man who received his handful of
soil had the guarantee that the whole field was his by
right of transaction; but supposing he just carefully
preserves the handful, without following up and pursuing
the transaction, and taking possession and turning to
account his inheritance? The handful is no good to him at
all! What it signifies is all lost, nullified. I knew a
couple who became engaged, with an engagement ring given,
and they went on — one year, two years, three, five,
ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years. They were never
married! They were engaged all those years, but the
transaction was never completed. We are not, of course,
appealing for hurried engagements and hurried marriages!
But the point is: do let us follow up — do not let
us make a fiasco of this thing. We have the earnest, we
have the Spirit as a seal and earnest, but we have not
yet got all that is meant, all that is included; and we
can miss it all — even while we have the earnest we
can miss it all — if we do not follow up, if we do
not pursue, if we do not go on.
You know the place of the many
“ifs” in the New Testament. “If we hold
fast... unto the end” (Heb. 3:6). You know the great
urge of the Word that we should go on. “Let us press
on...” (Heb. 6:1). Why? Oh, it is not enough to have
believed, and it is not enough even to have received the
Spirit as an earnest. We must follow on to make good all
that is represented by the earnest, to possess all that
is included in the guarantee.