03. Directions how to get the Spirit

Directions how to get the Spirit

(3.) In a word, if Christ be that Spirit, and have infused the Spirit into us, it will make us like him; it will transform us into his likeness, it will make us holy and humble and obedient as he was, even to the death. These things might be largely followed, but we have occasion to speak of these in other portions of Scripture. Therefore, that ye may get the Spirit of God, take these directions.

[1.] We must go to Christ, study Christ. If we will have the Spirit, study the gospel of Christ. What is the reason that before Christ there was so little Spirit in comparison? There was but a little measure of the knowledge of Christ. The more Christ is discovered, the more is the Spirit given; and according to the manifestation of Christ what he hath done for us, and what he hath, the more the riches of Christ is unfolded in the church, the more the Spirit goes along with them. The more the free grace and love of God in Christ alone is made known to the church, the more Spirit there is; and again back again, the more Spirit the more knowledge of Christ; for there is a reciprocal going of these two, the knowledge of Christ and the Spirit. What is the reason, that in popery the schoolmen that were witty to distinguish, that there was little Spirit in them? They savoured not the gospel. They were wondrous quick in distinctions, but they savoured not the matters of grace, and of Christ. It was not fully discovered to them, but they attributed it to satisfaction, and to merits, and to the pope, the head of the church, &c. They divided Christ, they knew him not; and dividing Christ, they wanted the Spirit of Christ; and wanting that Spirit, they taught not Christ as they should. They were dark times, as themselves confessed, especially about nine hundred and a thousand years after Christ, because Christ was veiled then in a world of idle ceremonies—to darken the gospel and the victory of Christ—that the pope made, who was the vicar of Satan. These were the doctors of the church then, and Christ was hid and wrapped in a company of idle traditions and ceremonies of men; and that was the reason that things were obscure.

[2.] Now when Christ, and all good things by Christ, and by Christ only, are discovered, the veil is taken off. Now of late for these hundred years, in the time of reformation, there hath been more spirit and more lightsomeness and comfort. Christians have lived and died more comfortably. Why? Because Christ hath been more known. And as it is with the church, so it is with particular Christians, the more they study Christ, and the fulness that is in Christ, and all comfort in him alone to be had—’wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,’ 1 Corinthians 1:30—the more men grow up in the knowledge of Christ, the more they grow spiritually; and the more spiritually they grow, the more they grow in the knowledge of Christ. Therefore, if we would have the Spirit, let us come near to Christ, and labour to know him more, who is the fountain of all that is spiritual.

[3.] Then again, if we would be spiritual, let us take heed we trust not too much to dead things, without Christ; to have a kind of popery in the work done; to think that reading, and hearing, and receiving the sacrament, and that the government of the church will do it, as if it were as man would have it. Put case there were all these, which are excellent good things; but what are all these without the Spirit of Christ! A man may be dead with all these. Though he hear never so much, and receive the sacrament never so often, if a man go not to Christ the quickening Spirit in this manner: Lord, these, and my soul too, are dead things without thy Spirit, therefore quicken me. Join Christ with all our performances, without which all is nothing, and then he will be spiritual to us.

[4.] And when we go to Christ for the Spirit, as we must beg it if we will have it,—God will give the Holy Ghost to them that ask him, Luke 11:13,—remember that we use the means carefully; reading, and hearing, and holy communion of saints, because though these without the Spirit can do nothing, yet the Spirit is not given but by these. These are the golden conduits of the Spirit of Christ. No man is ever spiritual but they are readers, and hearers, and conferrers of good things, and attenders upon the means of salvation, because God will work by his own tools and instruments. Therefore it is said, Revelation 1:9, that John was ’full of the Spirit upon the Lord’s day.’ Let a Christian sanctify the Sabbath as he should do, he will be in the Spirit on the Lord’s day more than on other days. Why? Because then he is reading, and hearing, and conferring, and in some spiritual course; and the more a man on the Lord’s day. is in a spiritual course, the more he is in the Spirit: ’John was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.’ So much for these words, ’The Lord is that Spirit.’

’And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’

We see here what the Spirit works where it is. ’Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’ I will name the instance that I gave before, that I may the better go on. We say the sun is heat and influence; not that it is so, for they be accidents, but the sun appears to us for our comfort in heat and influence, therefore we call it by that name. We say of a man, he is all spirit. So Christ is all Spirit. The sun is all light, and where the light and heat of the sun is there is fruitfulness. So Christ is all Spirit, and where the Spirit of Christ is there is spiritual liberty.

It were expense of time to no purpose to tell you of the divers kinds of liberty. In a word, liberty is that that all desire, but our miscarriage is in the means of it, the way to attain to it. Here we see whence to have it, from the Spirit of Christ. Liberty is a sweet thing, especially liberty from the greatest enemies of all. If outward liberty be such a sweet thing—liberty from tyranny and base servitude, it is a thing that man’s nature delights in; and the contrary, man as a man abhors; and he hath not the nature of a man that doth not abhor it,—what shall we think then of the liberty of the Spirit from the great enemies that daunt the greatest monarchs in the world? Liberty from the anger of the great God; and liberty from Satan, God’s executioner; liberty from the terror of conscience, from the fear of death, and hell, and judgment; what shall we think of liberty in these respects? Therefore we speak of great matters here below when we speak of liberty.

Now liberty is either Christian or evangelical.

You may think this a nice difference, but there is some reality in it.

(1.) Christian liberty is that that belongs to all, even to those before Christ. Though they have not the term of Christians, yet they were members of Christ. Christ was head of the church ’yesterday, and to-day, and for ever,’ Hebrews 13:8.