The Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ part V

No sooner had the Lord received the baptism of the Holy Ghost than He was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to "be tempted of the devil." This is especially emphasized by the Evangelist. It is aot the devil that appears first, but it is the Spirit. In the Gospel of Mark the language is still stronger, and it is said that he was "driven of the Spirit."

Perhaps His human spirit recoiled from the awful ordeal of the wilderness as it afterwards shrank from the anguish of Gethsemane, and the Holy Ghost pressed Him forward by one of those resistless impulses which many of us have learned to understand; and for forty days His blessing was challenged, His faith was tested, His very soul was tried by all the assaults of the adversary.

He was brought into certain places that seemed to contradict all that He believed, and to challenge all that had been promised to Him. The devil might well say to Him, "Art Thou indeed the Son of God, in the midst of hunger, desolation, and wild beasts, and every form of suffering, cast.off and neglected even by God, and left in destitution and desolation."

And then, amid all these perils and privations, suddenly there opened before Him, the vision of power and pleasure—the kingdoms of the world and all the glory of them if He would but yield a single point and accept the leadership of the enemy, who doubtless appealed to His higher nature and represented Himself as an angel of light, or perhaps approached Him through His own form, and all the visions and possibilities of power He might use for the good of men and the benefit of the world.

These and other yet more subtle insinuations and instigations came to Him on every side; and yet amid them all He stood unmoved in His obedience to His Father's will and His reliance upon His Father's word, until Satan was driven from His presence, and He came forth more than conqueror. And so the first thing that we may look for, after the baptism of the Holy Ghost, is the wilderness with its desolations and privations. Circumstances will surely come to us which seem to contradict all that we have believed, and to render impossible the promise of God. Even God will seem to have failed us; and when all is dark as midnight, the vision of help from other sources will come to us, and a thousand voices will whisper to us their promises of sympathy and aid if we will but yield a single point of conscience and give ourselves up to the will of the deceiver. All the temptations of our Master will come to us;—The lust of the flesh, The lust of the eye, The pride of life, The temptation to take help from forbidden sources,  All these will come; but if the Spirit has led us up into the wilderness He will lead us out. If we will but lift our eyes above the tempter to the Divine Deliverer, we shall find that even Satan shall be compelled to become our ally; and, more than conquerors like our Master, We shall take our enemy prisoner, and make him fight our very battles.

Spiritual Growth and Security

"Beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." 2 Peter 3:17

It is not a matter of personal preference whether we shall grow or not. It is a matter of vital necessity, for only thus can we be kept from retrograding. This the apostle hints in our text, "Beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Growth is the remedy for declension and we must ever grow or go backward. So in 1 Peter 2 the same truth is expounded. "If ye do these things ye shall never fall. He that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins." That is the very experience of conversion—it fades away and becomes but a dim recollection unless we press on to deeper and higher things.

Indeed, it is necessary for us to grow with an accelerated motion and to make more rapid progress the longer we continue in the Christian life. And so we have a very strong figure even in this passage expressing this thought. The word translated "abound" in our version, in the Greek is "multiply." "If these things be in you and multiply, they shall make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus." Let us not fail to notice the striking antithesis of the "add" in verse 3, and the "multiply" of verse 8. We all know in arithmetic the difference between addition and multiplication. The addition of nine to nine makes eighteen, but the multiplication of nine into nine reverses the figures and makes eighty-one, or nearly five times as much. Everything depends upon the size of the multiplier.  In the spiritual arithmetic the multiplier is God and infinitely higher than the highest digits of human calculation. God simply takes the surrendered heart and unites Himself with it, and the result is as many times greater than itself as God is greater than man.

Spiritual Growth, Responsibility, and Personal Efforts

"Giving all diligence, add to your faith,.." 2 Peter 1:5

While it is true, on the one hand, that all the resources are divinely provided, this does not justify, on our part, a spirit of passive negligence, but summons us all the more to diligence and earnestness in pressing forward in our spiritual career. And so the apostle adds, after this strongly emphasized enumeration of the resources of God's grace, "Giving all diligence, add to your faith," etc. There is to be no languid leaning upon God's grace, no dreamy fatalism, based upon His almighty purpose and power, but a strenuous and unceasing energy on our part in meeting Him with the co-operation of our faith, vigilance and obedience. In fact, the very provisions of God's grace are made, by the apostle, the ground of his exhortation to give earnest attention to this matter. For this very reason, that is, because God has so abundantly provided for us, and is so mightily working in our lives and hearts, and developing us from the power of sin, for this very reason, "Add to your faith," etc.

It is the same thought which Paul has expressed in Philippians, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God that worketh in you to will and to do of His good pleasure." This does not mean that we are to work for our salvation, for we are represented as already saved, otherwise it could not be '' our own salvation." But it is yet in embryo and infancy, an inward principle of life which must be worked out into its full development and maturity in every part of our life, and to this we are "to give all diligence," a diligence, indeed, which often reaches the extent of "fear and trembling," a holy and solemn sense of responsibility to make the most of our spiritual resources and opportunities, because "it is God that worketh in us." It is as if, with the finger of solemn warning raised, He were standing and looking into our eyes and saying, '' God has come. The Almighty has taken this matter in hand. The Eternal Jehovah has undertaken the work, therefore, mind what you do! Let there be no laxness, no negligence, and no failure on your part to meet Him and afford Him the utmost opportunity to fulfill in you all the good pleasure of His will, and the accomplishment of His high and mighty purpose for your soul."

Growth, Grace and Provisions part II

"According as His divine power hath given unto as all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to His glory and virtue. Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises." 2 Peter: 1-3

This is the conception of Christian life given in the first chapter of the gospel of John, in that wonderful little expression "grace for grace." That is to say, every grace that we need to exercise already exists in Christ, and may be transferred into our life from Him, as we "receive of His fullness, even grace for grace." On the mount, Moses was called to see and study a model of the Tabernacle. A few weeks later the same Tabernacle might be seen going up piecemeal in the valley below, and, when completed, was an exact replica of the shown to Moses in the mount; for God's explicit command was, "See that thou make all things according to the pattern which was shewed thee in the mount." Corresponding to this is the tabernacle which God is building in each of our lives. It is just as heavenly a structure as the other and far more important, and is meant to be, as it is, the dwelling-place of God. 

It, too, has its model in the mount, and we may see, by the eye of faith, the model of our life, the pattern, the plan of all the graces which we exemplify and the life which is to be built up, worked out, and established. All the materials for our spiritual building are there now, already provided, and the whole design fully wrought out in the purpose of God and the provisions of His grace. But we have to take these resources and materials moment by moment, step by step, and transfer them into our lives. We have not to make the graces ourselves, but take them, wear them, live them, and exhibit them. '' Of His fullness we receive grace for grace," His graces for our graces, His love for our love, His trust for our trust, His power for our strength.

Spiritual Growth

"But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." 2 Peter 3:18.

The apostle who has given us our text had already laid down the principles of spiritual growth in the opening chapter of his epistle with great fullness and marvelous clearness and power. There is no single paragraph in the Scriptures which more profoundly unfolds the depths and heights of Christian life than the first eleven verses of the first chapter of 2nd Peter. And the very point we are now referring to is made perfectly plain in these verses. The fifth verse is an injunction to grow in grace, but the preceding verses give us the standpoint from which this growth is to start. It is nothing less than the experience of sanctification. The persons to whom this is addressed are recognized as having already "escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust," and having already "become partakers of the divine nature."

These two facts constitute the whole of sanctification. It is that experience by which we become united to Christ in so divine and personal a sense that we become partakers of His nature, and the very person of Christ, through the Holy Ghost, comes to dwell in our hearts, and by His indwelling becomes to us the substance and support of our spiritual life. The converted soul is a human spirit born from above by the power of the Holy Spirit. The sanctified soul is that human spirit wholly yielded to and wholly possessed and occupied by God's indwelling presence, so as to be able to say, "Not I, but Christ liveth in me." 

The effect of this is to deliver from " the corruption that is in the world through lust." God's indwelling excludes the power of sin and evil desire, which is just what the word lust means. The Greek tenses here leave no room to doubt the question of time and the order of events. This deliverance from corruption precedes the command to grow.

It is very evident, therefore, that we do not grow into sanctification, but grow from sanctification into maturity. This corresponds exactly with the description of the growth of Christ Himself in the opening of the gospel of Luke. "The child grew and waxed strong in spirit filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him." Surely no one will dare to say that He grew into sanctification. He was sanctified from the very first. But He was a sanctified child and grew into manhood. And so still later, in Luke 2:5, it is added that, at the age of twelve years, "Jesus grew in wisdom, and stature, and in favor with God and man."

According to the Power that Worketh in Us

"Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, According To the power that worketh in us" (Eph. 3: 20).

"Whereunto I also labor, striving according To the power that worketh in me mightily" (Col.1:29).

"According To the working whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself" (Phil. 3:21).

In these passages we have God's present working referred to in two directions, namely, in the believer's heart and in the sphere of providence and government. The one must ever keep pace with the other. God does work mightily in the forces around us, but we must allow Him to work within us or all the might of His providence shall be ineffectual for us. "He is able to do exceeding abundantly," but it must be wrought in us. It is"according To the power that worketh in us." All the forces of that mighty engine in the factory yonder are limited and measured by the attachment of the little pulley of each particular machine. It can drive a hundred printing presses if they are in contact, but its power is According To the measure in which each one will receive it and co-operate. God is waiting to work in each of us, indeed He is already working up to the full measure of our yieldedness, and we may have all which we are willing to have inwrought in our own being. The Holy Spirit is always in advance of us, pressing us on to more than we have yet wholly received and we may be very sure that according to the measure of His inward pressure will always be the external workings of God's Almighty hand. Whenever we find the wheels within in motion we may be very sure that the wheels of providence are moving in accord, even to the utmost bounds of the universe and to the utmost limits of God's Almighty power and supreme authority.

Christ Himself

"According to Christ Jesus..." Romans 15

We read in Romans 15 "According to Christ Jesus." This is the highest of all standards, higher even than His resurrection, ascension and glory. As He is, so shall we be when He appears, but " As He is so are we," even here. "Ye are not of the world even as I am not of the world." "Love one another as I have loved you;" "As I live by the Father so he that eateth me even he shall live by me." "As Thou hast sent me into the world even so send I them into the world." "When He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." Such are some of the touches of heavenly light which reveal our identity with Jesus and unfold the mystery of His life in us. Not only is He our example, but He is our life. Miniatures of Christ, God expects us to be, receiving and reflecting Him in all His fullness, our life His life, our love His love, His riches ours. We represent Him, we dwell among men' not as citizens of earth, but dead to our old citizenship and walking like Him as if we had been sent specially from heaven on a mission from another world.

Beloved, is Christ our Pattern, our Type, our living Head, our Divine Standard and Measure? Are we determined to have nothing less and to be nothing less than even as He? Shall we cease to copy men, and follow only Him?

And even though we often are conscious of our imperfect resemblance to the Great Original, are we still holding our standard as high as Christ? 

From Strength to Strength

"From strength to strength." Psalm 84:7

Man is naturally the weakest creature in the universe. He comes into life with the wail of a helpless infant, weaker than the tiger's cub or the birdling in its nest. But his physical frailty is but a figure of his spiritual helplessness. "When we were yet without strength in due time Christ died for the ungodly." But the grace of God in the conversion of the soul brings its first spiritual strength, enabling it to choose and trust the Lord, to turn from sin and walk in holy obedience. Then it sings the new song, '' O Lord, I will praise thee; though thou wast angry with me thine anger is turned away and thou comfortest me. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust and be not afraid, for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; He also is become my salvation."

Grace Abounding part III

"Where sin abounded grace did much more abound." Rom. 5: 20.

This text is illustrated in the sanctification of believers and especially in their sanctification from qualities and tendencies most unholy and contrary to their new and sanctified lives. Still it is literally true in the deeper life of the soul that ''where sin abounded grace much more abounds." It is not that God will make the good better, but that He will make the bad good, and the utterly and hopelessly bad divinely pure and holy. Sanctification is not the refining and elevating of the naturally pure, but the transforming of darkness into light, a selfish soul into aliving sacrifice of love, and a heart all steeped in corruption into the glorious counterpart of Christ's own holiness. In the work of grace God takes peculiar delight in contradicting natural probabilities and tendencies. He took a shrinking Jeremiah to be a bold and courageous reprover of Israel's prophets, priests and kings. He took a cowardly Peter to be the courageous and defiant apostle of Pentecost. He took a Son of Thunder to be the gentle, loving disciple of love. He took a raging persecutor to be the long-suffering apostle who could say, '' I beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ." He can make the weakest things in you the strongest, the worst things in you the occasions for the grace which will magnify in you the best and divinest qualities of the Christian life.

Peace, love, and faith

"Peace be to the brethren, and love and faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."—Eph. 4:23.

Peace, love, faith; these are the three things which the apostle desired for the brethren; remembering, no doubt, what had come to himself,—"the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant, with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 1:14) This threefold blessing comes directly from the Father and the Son, through the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.

"I need peace." Yes; and it is this that the Father gives. It is this that Jesus gives. Both Father and Son desire that you should have it. Allow them to give it.

"I need love." Yes ; and it is this which the Father and the Son bestow. They hold it out to you. They will not only teach you their own vast love, but also to love in return.

"I need faith." Yes, surely you do; and the whole Godhead presents it to you. "It is the gift of God." Lord, increase our faith! Lord, help our unbelief!

Go, then, trustingly to God; to the Father and the Son; that you may get at once the peace, the love, the faith which you need so much. Confide in the free love of the Godhead. You will find in this simple confidence the cure of all spiritual diseases, the channel of all health and blessing. Distrust will do nothing for you. It will only make you worse. Unreserved confidence will do everything for you. God asks this. Give Him his request.

l am among you as he that serveth

"l am among you as he that serveth."— Luke 22:27.

In the kingdom of Christ, the lowest place is the place of honor. It was this that He himself stooped to when He took upon Him the form of a servant.

It was in lowly love that He thus came to serve us; and what is there that He is not willing to stoop to in order that He may supply our need? He has already stooped to the cradle, and the cross, and the tomb; and what is there, after these, that He will shrink from or refuse, in the way of service for us?

He has taken on Him this special office, and will He not perform it well? What want is there, be it great or small, that He will not supply? In going to Him for this supply, we are not taxing His patience, we are not making undue demands upon Him, we are not making too free with His love or condescension. We are only employing Him in the very way in which He delights to be employed. We are only making that use of His condescension which the Father designed, when He filled Him with the Spirit without measure, and sent Him to us, that He might "supply all our need, according to His riches in glory." We cannot be too needy, or too empty. He is as unwearied in His service as in His love.

For he satisfies the longing soul

"For he satisfies the longing soul"—Ps. 107: 9.

It is our poverty that fits us for the riches of God. This is our only qualification. It is with the poor that God deals. It is the empty that He fills.

When a soul comes to know that it is really poor and empty, then it stretches out its hands to Him who alone can satisfy. It is in this attitude that God meets us. "He satisfieth the longing soul." Shall we not come before Him ? He wants no merit, no claim on our part. All He desires is that we should be willing to be receivers. He asks no more. He loves to bless. "He gives to all men liberally, and upbraideth not." Let us go to Him. He sends none empty away. Each longing cry that goes up in His ears meets with a ready response. He is not slow to give. His love is not as our love; His thoughts are not as our thoughts; His ways are not as our ways. He gave His Son, and what will He not give? He has sent His Spirit, and what will not that Spirit bring to us? He has made known to us His "gospel," — His "good news;" and how much does that imply? How can we be poor, with such riches as His at our side?

Cast thy burden on the Lord, and he shall sustain thee.

"Cast thy burden on the Lord, and he shall sustain thee."—Ps. 55:22

We do not need to bear our own burdens any more than we need to bear our own sins. God has provided for the bearing of both. He takes them upon Himself. The work of burden bearing is as completely His as is the work of sin-bearing. His love has removed all necessity for our attempting to bear either the one or the other.

Even if we could, then, why should we bear them? It is not wise ; nay, it is foolish beyond measure; and it is as useless as it is foolish.

But more than this, it is sinful. To try to be our own sin-bearers, is to make void the work of Christ as such; so to try to be our own burden-bearers is to make void His work as such. We see the sin of trying to bear our own guilt, let us learn to see as clearly the sin of seeking to bear our own burdens. Let us understand the sin of not casting our burden on the Lord.

What is there about these burdens that we should be so unwilling to part with them? Or what is there about God that should make us unwilling to cast them on Him? His love, and power, and faithfulness, all invite us to do this. Not to do it is to suspect and distrust Him. He delights to bear the whole undivided weight; shall we not, then, give up every burden to Him who wants us to be "without carefulness," because He careth for us! What sweet and holy lightness of spirit would then be ours! The burden is not lessened in itself, but it is borne by the Mighty God!

The Joy of the Lord

"The joy of the Lord is your strength." 8:10

There is no more pointed difference between Christianity and all other religions than the element of joyfulness. "God is Light and in Him is no darkness at all." The blessed God must be the source of blessedness. His Beloved Son, our Pattern and our Saviour, is the Prince of Peace, and the Royal Bridegroom, whom God "hath anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows," and surely His salvation should be a glad salvation; His touch should bring joy and sunshine, and they who follow Him should be true to His own ideal of that happy company who "shall come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." As we look over the earth we find that God has put beauty and gladness wherever He can. He has made us to be happy, and He has sent redemption to restore and consummate our joy, and so His great salvation is inseparably linked with a rejoicing spirit. True, it can stoop to sorrow; it will enter the saddest home and the darkest midnight, but it cannot dwell with gloom. It must banish sorrow as well as sin, and live in the light of joy.

Beloved, let us take the joy of the Lord into the dark places and the hard places and the low places, and the dusty, grimy streets and lanes of life! Let us plant the flowers around the little cottage as well as the great mansion! Let us have the song of the birds along the wayside, and even in the night, as well as in the gilded cage of the drawingroom and in the broad sunshine of the day! Let us rejoice in the light evermore and go through the pathways of common life so filled with the Spirit that like men intoxicated with the wine of heaven, we shall be heard "speaking to ourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in our hearts to the Lord," and then it shall be true, "Whatsoever we do in word or deed," we shall "do all in the name of the Lord Jesus givingthanks unto God by Him."

THE HUMILITY OF JESUS part 3

We must learn of Jesus, how He is meek and lowly of heart. He teaches us where true humility takes its rise and finds its strength—in the knowledge that it is God who worketh all in all, that our place is to yield to Him in perfect resignation and dependence, in full consent to be and to do nothing of ourselves. This is the life Christ came to reveal and to impart—a life to God that came through death to sin and self. If we feel that this life is too high for us and beyond our reach, it must but the more urge us to seek it in Him; it is the indwelling Christ who will live in us this life, meek and lowly. If we long for this, let us, meantime, above everything, seek the holy secret of the knowledge of the nature of God, as He every moment works all in all; the secret, of which all nature and every creature, and above all, every child of God, is to be the witness,—that it is nothing but a vessel, a channel, through which the living God can manifest the riches of His wisdom, power, and goodness. The root of all virtue and grace, of all faith and acceptable worship, is that we know that we have nothing but what we receive, and bow in deepest humility to wait upon God for it.

It was because this humility was not only a temporary sentiment, wakened up and brought into exercise when He thought of God, but the very spirit of His whole life, that Jesus was just as humble in His intercourse with men as with God. He felt Himself the Servant of God for the men whom God made and loved; as a natural consequence, He counted Himself the Servant of men, that through Him God might do His work of love. He never for a moment thought of seeking His honor, or asserting His power to vindicate Himself. His whole spirit was that of a life yielded to God to work in. It is not until Christians study the humility of Jesus as the very essence of His redemption, as the very blessedness of the life of the Son of God, as the only true relation to the Father, and therefore as that which Jesus must give us if we are to have any part with Him, that the terrible lack of actual, heavenly, manifest humility will become a burden and a sorrow, and our ordinary religion be set aside to secure this, the first and the chief of the marks of the Christ within us.

THE HUMILITY OF JESUS

"I am in the midst of you as he that serveth." —Luke 22:26, 27

In the Gospel of John we have the inner life of our Lord laid open to us. Jesus speaks frequently of His relation to the Father, of the motives by which He is guided, of His consciousness of the power and spirit in which He acts. Though the word humble does not occur, we shall nowhere in Scripture see so clearly wherein His humility consisted.  In Jesus we shall see how both as the Son of God in heaven, and as man upon earth, He took the place of entire subordination, and gave God the honor and the glory which is due to Him. And what He taught so often was made true to Himself: "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted." As it is written, " He humbled himself, therefore God highly exalted Him."

Listen to the words in which our Lord speaks of His relation to the Father, and see how unceasingly He uses the words not, and nothing, of Himself. The not /, in which Paul expresses his relation to Christ, is the very spirit of what Christ says of His relation to the Father.

"The Son can do nothing of Himself" (John 5:19)."I can of My own self do nothing; My judgment is just, because I seek not Mine own will" (John 5: 30)."1 receive not glory from men " (John 5: 41)."I am come not to do Mine own will" (John 6:38)."My teaching is not Mine" (John 7:16)."I am not come of Myself" (John 7:28)."I do nothingof Myself" (John 8:28)."I have not come of Myself, but He sent Me " (John 8:42)."I seek not Mine own glory " (John 8:50)"The words that I say, I speak not from Myself" (John 14:10)."The word which ye hear is not Mine" (John 14:24).