Operations of the Spirit of God

I would desire to say a few words on the operations of the Spirit of God—the connection of his working in us with Christ; and the separateness too of the operation of the Spirit in us, from the work of Christ as wrought and perfected for us already.
I do not assume, by any means, to give a full or adequate view of the operations of the Spirit,— “Who is sufficient for these things?” I see enough, indeed, to see the paucity and dimness of what has appeared to my mind, compared with the glory of what is still shown to be Onward. Blessed that it is so—most blessed—eternal blessings! Still I would speak of that which the Scripture seems to make clear. If others have learned more, they can be led forth to communicate it; if less, they will not begrudge what I do; what I hope is, that it may lead into more searching and attainment of the power of these things. Christians, and real ones, are too apt (though this may seem a strange assertion) to separate, and too apt to confound Christ and the Spirit—that is, they separate Christ and the Spirit in operation in us too much; and they confound the work of Christ for us too much with the Spirit. The consequence of both is, uncertainty, meagerness of judgment, and doubt.
The work of the Spirit of God in me, in the power of life, produces conflict, labor, discoveries of sin, and need of mortifying my members which are on the earth; and the more what “Christ is” is revealed in my soul, in comparison with the discovery of what I am, the more do I find cause of humiliation—the more do I find, by the contrast of Christ looked at as in the flesh here sinless, God condemning this evil root of sin in the flesh in me. And much more, by the discovery of what my blessed Lord is, as glorified, do I see, through the Spirit, how short I am of “attaining,” though I may be still changed into the same likeness, from glory to glory. Hence, though at peace, hope, perhaps animating hope, and joy betimes filling the soul, yet there will be exercised self-judgment and sorrow of heart at the discovery of how every feeling we have towards God, and every object spiritually known, is short of the just effects they should produce and call out; and hence, too, in case of any allowance or indulgence of evil, deep self-abasement and utter abhorrence. Hence, when the fullness and finishedness of our acceptance in Christ is not known, anxiety and spiritual despondency arise, and doubt, sometimes issuing in a very mistaken and evil reference to the law,—a sort of consecrating the principle of unbelief, putting the soul (on the discovery, by the Spirit, of sin working in it) under the law and its condemnation; and not “in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.”
We hear of God hiding his face from us, and the like language, which faith never could use; for faith knows that God ever looks on his Anointed, never hides his face; and if we have such thoughts, they are to be treated as pure unbelief, and dealt with accordingly: every believer must acknowledge that it is not true, if he believe the full and perfect acceptance of the saints in Christ; and therefore to account it true is the lie of his own heart, and unbelief. The Spirit of God judges sin in me; but it makes me know that I am not judged for it, because Christ has borne that judgment for me. This is no cloak of licentiousness. The flesh would indeed always turn it to this—it would pervert everything. But the truth is, that same Spirit which reveals the Lord, who bore my sins, as having purged them, at the right hand of God, and which therefore gives me perfect assurance of their —being put away, and the infiniteness of my acceptance in Him,—that same Spirit, I say, judges the sin by virtue of its character as seen in the light of that very glory; and when this is not done, the Father, into whose hands the Son has committed those whom the Father has given Him to keep, as a Holy Father chastises, and corrects, and purges—as a husbandman the branches. Here, moreover, the discipline of the Church of God, as having the Spirit, comes in:—the disuse and neglect of which has much ministered to the distrust of the full and happy assurance of the believer; for the body of the Church, as such, might necessarily to assume itself (for such is the portion of the Church according to the word) as a sacred people—a manifested sacred people—and then, through the Spirit dwelling in it, to exercise all godly and gracious discipline for the maintenance of the manifested holiness of that sacred people. The Church is the dwelling-place of the Spirit. The Spirit reveals the condition of the Church in Christ, and of the individuals who compose it, (“In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you,”) and effects, maintains, and guards the character of Christ in the Church in grace and holiness: “Ye are the epistle of Christ written by the Spirit of the living God.” If my soul rests entirely on the work of Christ and his acceptance, as the One who appears in the presence of God for me,—that is a finished work, and a perfect infinite acceptance,— “as He is, so am I in this world:” so that “herein is love made perfect with me, that I should have boldness in the day of judgment” Now, what men substitute for this, is the examination of the effects of the Spirit in me;—the effects of regeneration are put as the ground of rest in lieu of ‘redemption: whence I sometimes hope when I see those effects, sometimes despond when I see the flesh working; and having put the work of the Spirit in the place of the work of Christ, the confidence I am commanded to hold fast never exists, and I doubt whether I am in the faith at all. All this results from substituting the work of the Spirit of God in me, for the work, victory, resurrection, and ascension of Christ actually accomplished: the sure (because finished) resting-place of faith, which never alters, never varies, and is always the same before God. If it be said, “Yes, but I cannot see it as plain, because of the flesh and unbelief,”—this does not alter the truth; and to whatever extent this dimness proceeds, treat it as unbelief and sin, —not as the state of a Christian, or as God hiding his face. The discovery of sin in you hateful and detestable as it is, is no ground for doubting, because it was by reason of this, to atone for this, because you were this, that Christ died, and Christ is risen; and there is an end of that question.
But it will be said, “I fully believe that Christ is the very true Son of God, one with the Father, and all his work and grace, but I do not know that I have an interest in Him: —this is the question, and this is quite a different question.” Not so: but the subtlety of Satan, and bad teaching, which would still throw you back off Christ. God; for our comfort, has identified the two things, by stating “that by Him all that believe are justified from all things” in a word, to say, “ I believe, but I do not know whether I have an interest,” is a delusion of the devil; for God says, it is those who believe who have the interest:—that is his way of dealing. I have no more right to believe that 1 am a sinner, as —God views it, in myself, than that I am righteous in Christ. The same testimony declares that none is righteous, and that believers are justified.
I may have a natural consciousness of sin, and a Spirit-taught consciousness of sin and what it is. If I rest in tins, I cannot have peace: in Christ’s work about it I have perfect peace. But am I not desired to examine myself, whether I am in the faith? No. What, then says 2 Corinthians 13:5: “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith,” &c. Why, that if they sought a proof of Christ speaking in Paul, they were to examine themselves, and by the certainty of their own Christianity, which they did not doubt, be assured of his apostleship? The apostle’s argument was of no value whatever, but on the ground of the sanctioned certainty that they were Christians. But I have dwelt longer on this than I had any purpose; but the comfort of souls may justify it. It is connected with man’s seeking, from the work of the Spirit of God in him, that which is to be looked for only from the work of Christ.
If my assurance, and comfort, or hope, be drawn from the experience of what passes within me, though it may be verified against cavils thereby, as in the first Epistle of John, then it is not the righteousness of God by faith; for the experience of what passes in my soul is not faith. I repeat—that by looking to the work of Christ the standard of holiness is exalted; because, instead of looking into the muddied image of Christ in my soul, I view Him in the Spirit, in the perfectness of that glory into the fellowship of which I am called; and therefore, to walk worthy of God, who hath called me to his own kingdom and glory.
I forget the things behind, and press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus; and my self-examination becomes, not an unhappy inquiry whether or not I am in the faith, never honoring God in confidence after all that He has done, but whether my walk is worthy of one who is called into his kingdom and glory.
But the disconnection of Christ from the operations of the Spirit is an evil, and tends to the same point, though the application be not so immediate.
In the teaching of ordinary evangelicalism, a man is said to be “born of the Spirit,”—its need perhaps shown from what we are, and its fruits shown, and the inquiry stated—Are you this? —for then you will go to heaven. These things have a measure of truth in them. But are they thus presented in Scripture? There I find these thing’s continually and fully connected with Christ, and involving our being in that blessed One, and He in us; and consequently not merely an evidence, by fruits, that I am born of the Spirit of God, but a participation in all of which He is the Heir, as the risen Man (in the sure title of his own Sonship), as quickened together with Him—a union of life and inheritance, of which the Holy Ghost is the power and witness.
It is thus expressed in the Epistle to the Ephesians,— “And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at his own right hand in the heavenly places. And you hath He quickened, even when we were dead in sins, bath quickened us together with Christ, and bath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ.” So in Colossians 2:13: “And you hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses.” “If ye then be risen with Christ.”
The operation of the Spirit of God, while acting in divine power, it to bring us into living association with Christ. His operation in us is to make good in us, to connect us with, to reveal to us, and to bring us into the power of, all that is verified in Christ, as the second Adam, the risen Man in life, office and glory, — “he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” We are “heirs together,” “suffering together that we may be glorified together,” and this finally “ conformed to the image” of God’s Son, in that God “hath quickened us together,” and “ hath raised us up together, and made us sit together,” &c (Ephesians 2:5,6); and the Spirit of God works in us thus in life, and in service, and suffering; and lastly in glory, in the resurrection of our bodies also.
I would trace, briefly, the testimony of this through Scripture. It may be seen there both individually, and, besides that, also corporately, as in the Church. The Spirit is spoken of first as quickening, and secondly as indwelling. We are born of the Spirit. As regards individuals So quickened, as indwelling, it associates them with the glory of Christ, as it sheds abroad also God’s love in the heart, and with the power of Christ’s life as having eternal life—life in Himself as Son of God; and it also reveals and makes them, according to his good pleasure, instruments of the revelation of his glory as Son of Man; —this consequent upon ascension, as the former is declared and witnessed in resurrection.
The special subject of which He is witness in the Church corporately, constituting the Church the present faithful witness, is, that Jesus Christ is Lord, which is immediately connected with the glory, “to the glory of God the Father.”
The 3rd chapter of John first brings the subject of the operations of the Spirit before us at large. “A man must be born again,” born of water and of the Spirit. But while this is generally taken simply that he must be regenerate to be saved, the passage states much more. He cannot see nor enter into the kingdom of God, a kingdom composed of earthly things and heavenly things, of which a Jew must be born again, to be partaker, (however much he fancied himself a child of the kingdom,) even in its earthly things, which Nicodemus, as a teacher of Israel, ought to have known,’ as from Ezekiel 36:21-38; and to the heavenly things of which the Lord could not direct them then, save as shelving the door, even the cross, a door which opened into better and higher things: wherein (as, in the Spirit’s work, being prerogative power, “so was every one that was born of the Spirit,” and Gentiles therefore might be partakers of it; for it made, not found, men what it would have them) the Lord declared that God loved not the Jew only, but the world. In this passage itself, then, we have not merely the individual renewed, and fit for heaven, but the estimate of the Jew, a kingdom revealed, embracing earthly and heavenly things, which the regenerate alone saw, and into which they entered —to the heavenly things, of which the cross, as yet as unintelligible as the heavenly things themselves, formed the only door, wherein was exhibited the Son of man lifted up, and the Son of God given in God’s love to the world. “In the regeneration,” of which the Spirit’s quickening operation in the heart was the first-fruits, as his presence was the earnest of the heavenly part, “this Son of man would sit on the throne of his glory.”
The principle, then, on which men dwell, is true; but the revelation of this chapter is much wider and more definite than they suppose. It is not merely that the man is changed or saved; but he sees and enters a kingdom the world knows nothing of, till it comes in power; and moreover, that such a one receives a life as true and real, and much more important and blessed than any natural life in the flesh. It is not merely changing a man by acting on his faculties, but the giving a life which may act indeed now, through these faculties, on objects far beyond them, as the old and depraved life on objects within its or their reach; but in which he is made partaker of the divine nature, in which not merely the faculties of his soul have new objects, but as in this he was partner with the first Adam, the living soul, so in that with the second Adam, the quickening Spirit. And we must add, that the Church, in order to its assimilation with Him in it, is made partaker of this, consequent upon his resurrection, and therefore is made partaker of the, life according to the power of it thus exhibited; and has its existence consequent upon, yea as the witness of, the passing away (blessed be God!) of all the judgment of its sins; for it has its life from, and consequent upon, the resurrection of Christ out of that grave in which, so to speak, He buried them all. It exists, and has not its existence but consequent upon the absolute accomplishment and passing away of its judgment.
This, then, is the real character of our regeneration into the kingdom, where the charge of sin is not, nor cafe be, upon us, being introduced there by the power of that in which all is put away. The life of the Church is identified with the resurrection of Christ, and therefore the unqualified forgiveness of all its flesh could do, for it was borne, and borne away. The justification of the Church is identified with living grace; for it has it, because quickened together with Him, as out of the grave, where He buried all its sins. Thus are necessarily connected regeneration and justification; and the operation of the Spirit is not a mere acting on the faculties, a work quite separate from Christ and to be known by its fruits, while the death of Christ is something left to reason about; but it is a quickening together with Christ out of my trespasses and sins, in which I find myself indeed morally dead, but Him judicially dead for me, and therefore forgiven, and justified necessarily, as so quickened. The resurrection of Christ proves that there will be a judgment, says the apostle. (Acts 17.) It proves that there will be none for me, says the Spirit by the same blessed apostle; for He was raised for my justification. He was dead under my sins; God has raised Him, and where are they? The Church is quickened out of Jesus grave, where the sins were left.
Then, as to the power of this life and the other operations of the Spirit, I find, in the Lord’s account of his own testimony, the statement of communion and displayed glory. “We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen.” He testified that which He knew in oneness with the Father, which He had seen in the glory which He had with the Father before the world was.
The operations of the Spirit, in giving us life in the Son, and revealing the glory (ours therefore withal) into which He has brought his manhood, and which consequently is revealed in it, answer just to this statement of the Lord concerning Himself. Our communion—living communion with Him and with the Father-and our apprehension and expression of the glory which is his, —of these two the 4th and 7th chapters of John speak. In these chapters and elsewhere we have to remark, that we are taught, not of the Spirit’s operating on, but dwelling in us. The Spirit of, God does operate on, (whether in mere testimony, for the reception of which we are responsible, as in the case of the rulers of the Jews and St. Stephen—if Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye;” of which I do not speak now at large or efficiently,) in convincing, renewing, and quickening us. This being done by the Word, it is by faith wherein (that is, in the reception of the Word) we are quickened; that is, the revelation of Christ. “We are all the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ.” “Of his own will begat He us by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures.” These are sufficient to show the manner of the operation; how, being a testimony, the natural man rejects it, though guilty for so doing; for it is God’s testimony: and how it is effectual, in the quickening power of the Spirit; but is by faith, in consequence of the instrument employed. The power of it I have already spoken of whence we see, while they that believe not make God a liar, they that believe have the witness in themselves; for they are made livingly partakers, in communion, of what they believe.
But the work in virtue of which they are thus made partakers of life and fellowship with God, being; a perfect work, the Spirit, who takes up his abode in the believer, is a spirit of peace and joy, a spirit of witness of all that Christ is and has done, and, we must add, of the Father’s perfect acceptance of both.
That the natural man rejects these things, arid receives them not, we shall see; but the conscience being awakened, and peace made, the Spirit is witness to the renewed soul of them.
Now, in the 5th chapter of John, we have the Spirit’s operation, wherein, as to the manner, the dead hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear live; and though, by the Spirit, it is still: the Son speaking from heaven, as before on earth, i.e., on Mount Sinai, which was by angels, as far as mediately, not by the Spirit.
As to the manner and character of the testimony, I would speak more when I come to the 7th chapter of John, where it is the witness of the glory of the Son of man, as thus given and present among believers.
(To be continued.)
On the Gospel by St. John
And the judgment then comes upon them, “ Hear ye indeed, but understand not, and see ye indeed, but perceive not.” For now, having the voice of the Spirit in their High Priest, there is no ear to hear it aright; and having the doings of the Son of God among them, there is no eye to perceive him aright.
But still he was the quickener of Israel; and in the latter day, the dry bones shall hear the word of the Lord and live; of which, as I have observed, Lazarus is the pledge. And the remnant in Israel in that day is also illustrated in the family at Bethany. Into the midst of this well-loved family the Lord comes, and finds refreshment, and fellowship, and the acknowledgment of his glory; as he will find these things in his remnant in the latter day.
There he sits as “the Lord of life,” the witness of His quickening power being seated beside him; and there too he sits as “the King of glory,” the homage of his willing people being laid at his feet. In these two holy dignities is He now received by this faithful household. “While the King sitteth at his table,” (says Mary now, as the remnant will say by and by), “my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof.” (Cant. 1: 12.)
It is thus he here sits; one family in the apostate land owning him Lord of life and King—of glory. But the city itself and the strangers there were soon to see him as well as this house at Bethany; as, by and by, the nation and the whole earth will own him after the remnant.
Accordingly, “on the next day,” as we read, much people, moved by the report of his having raised Lazarus from the dead, meet him on his coming to Jerusalem, and lead him into the royal city, as the Son of David, the king of Israel.
The time was the time of the Passover; but the people are moved as with the joy of the Feast of Tabernacles, and take branches of palm-trees to gladden their King. And the nations, as it were, come up to keep the feast also; for ‘certain Greeks come to Philip, and say, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” Glory shines for a moment in the land of the living. Here was Lazarus raised from the dead, the city receiving her King, and the nations worshipping there. The great materials of the kingdom in which, as the Son of man, he is to be glorified, had now passed before the Lord. The joy of Jerusalem and the gathering of the nations he had now witnessed; and, entering in spirit for a moment into the kingdom, he says, “the hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified.” But it was but for a moment. This was but a passing taste of his cup of salvation. This season was really to be the Passover, and not the Tabernacles to Jesus; and his soul passes, for another moment, through his paschal trouble. But the Father again acknowledges him. He had glorified him as Son of God, quickener of the dead, at the grave of Lazarus; and now he glorifies him as Son of man, Judge of the world and of the prince of the world, by the voice from heaven.
And here did his path as the Son of man end; as his path as the Son of God had before ended at the grave of Lazarus. The Son of God and Son of man had now been fully displayed before his unbelieving Israel. He was glorified among them, as the Prince of life, and the holder of all authority and power. The things now accomplished and displayed in these two chapters, were the fulfilling of his words to them at the beginning: these were “the greater works” at which they should “marvel.” They had now witnessed his quickening power as Son of God, and had his judicial glory as Son of man pledged to them by the voice from heaven. They should have honored him as they honored the Father. But instead of this, they were soon to kill him. They were soon to disown the Lord of life and the King of glory, on whom all their hopes of life and the kingdom hung. He had tested them by the promised “greater works:” but there was no response from Israel. The harvest was past, the summer ended, and they were not saved. The lamentation of the prophet was now to be uttered, “Who bath believed our report?” It was not that his works had not manifested him as the hope of Israel. Many even of the chief rulers felt and owned them in their consciences, as we here read. But they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God, as he had said unto them. (5: 44; 43.) All that remained was judgment on Israel, and the heavenly glory of this earth-rejected Jesus. (40, 41.) So, does our Evangelist himself tell us, drawing the awful moral of the whole scene: “He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart, that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them. These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of him.” All closed in judgment upon Israel, and in glory, heavenly glory, glory within the veil, for the blessed Jesus. (Isaiah 6:1,2.)
Thus, our Gospel seats the Son of God in heaven again. His way ends there, as it had begun there. The Gospel by Matthew ushers him forth as the Son of David from Bethlehem, and closes with hire (as far as his ministry was concerned) on the Mount of Olives. (Matthew 1:24) But this Gospel opened with his descent from the bosom of the Father, and here closes (as far as his ministry is concerned) by his return to heaven. There he still dwells in the high and holy place, and the humble and brokenhearted are there with him. He speaks from heaven; and his voice must be in the power of all that finished work which has taken him there. He has forced his way into the holiest, through the outer courts, throwing down all enmities, all middle walls and partitions, and has again come forth from thence in the virtue of his blood, and in the power of the Holy Ghost, to preach peace to all. (Ephesians 2:12-22.) He cannot but speak of all that is there, and not of what is here. He cannot but speak, by his Spirit, of the peace, and gladness, and glory, which are there, and not of the accusings with which our sins still committed here would till our hearts.
All through his divine ministry in this Gospel, as I have before observed, the Lord had been acting in grace, “as the Son of the Father,” and as “the light of the world.” His presence was “daytime” in the land of Israel. He had been shining there, if haply the darkness might comprehend him. And here, at the close of that ministry (12: 35, 36), we see him still as the light casting forth his last beams upon the land and people. He can but shine, whether they will comprehend him or not. While his presence is there it is still day-time. The night cannot come till he is gone. “As long as—I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” But here, “he departs and hides himself,” and then God, by his prophet, brings the night upon the land. (ver. 40.) It was not that the light had imperfectly shone. Their own consciences told them otherwise. (5: 42, 43.) The light had done its service and ruled the day, but the darkness had not comprehended it. And then this ruler of the day sets in Judea, only to rise in other spheres. For his cry in these closing verses (44-50) is not addressed to Israel merely, but to the whole earth. It is but the same “light of the world,” which had lately run his race in Judea, coming forth out of his chamber to run a longer race. And this race he is running still. “The day of Salvation” is still with us. The night of judgment on the Gentiles has not yet come. We may still walk without stumbling; we may still know whither we are going. The light still says, “Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” Such are thy ways, blessed Savior, Lamb of God, Son of the Father.
(Continued from page 116.)