The Love of the Spirit

Chapter 3 THE LOVE OF THE SPIRIT ― ITS REALITY AND GLORY.
AN ARGUMENT ' The love of the Spirit' -- Romans 15:30

If we have dwelt on the love of the Father, and have illustrated that of the Son, it cannot be that we shall neglect the love of the Spirit. His attachment has not indeed had thrown around it the same visible and majestic mantle as that of Father and Son. But it is none the less real, nor is it essentially different. It exhibits the same divine features ― the same characteristic phenomena of tenderness, fulness, and self-denial. For He is one with Father and Son. His functions, it is true, in the scheme of redemption are subjective, and are wholly occupied with human experience. It is not without us, but within us that He operates; for His work is not a spectacle to be contemplated, but a process to be felt. And His love has not one spot, like Calvary, for its surpassing manifestation, but it is everywhere exhibited in the church; and its genial glow, which burst into a flame at Pentecost, has been continuously diffused. Yet who shall say that though His love have clothed itself in no glorious externality, it is the less genuine, as it thrills in the renewed heart? His love, in short, is divine, for it is that of the Third Person of the Godhead. The one emotion of attachment dwells in the one God, and that distinction which we name personality, does not violate this unity of affection. The same elements of eternity, infinitude, and unchangeableness which distinguish the love of Father and Son, distinguish also the love of the Holy Ghost. Though He is named third in the inspired formulary of baptism and benediction, His lustre is not dimmer than that of God the Father, or that of God the Son. His name is last in reference, not to His essential nature, but to His place and sphere of operation in the scheme of redemption. And that love, moreover, is saving love. That He has any part at all in the scheme of mercy, proves the depth and fervour of His love. For sin is as hateful to Him as to the Father; and must be so to Him who is specially named the Holy Ghost. Nay, human guilt must have touched Him with a peculiar sorrow. The ' Spirit brooded on the face of the deep,' and fitted up the world as the residence of the novel creature; and He took possession, too, of Adam, when the breath of the Lord God kindled life within him. What provocation must He have felt when He was forced to quit the soul which He had so recently entered, and when He beheld sin bring death and desolation over that earth, which He had so shortly before evoked from chaos! Yet He has loved man, and He has a position, and that a momentous one ― a function, and that a vital one, in the economy of mercy. Gracious, disinterested, and sovereign must be the love of this Divine Spirit. Thus, though its modes of manifestation may vary, its essence is identical with that of Father and Son. The Father loved in sending His Son, and that Son loved in coming and dying; but the Spirit equally exhibits His love in His various modes of operation and residence.

1. And first, is not the love of the Spirit seen in preparing and publishing for us the Holy Scriptures? This blessed book is His precious gift. It was by His influence that prophets and apostles wrote and circulated it. The Holy Ghost is the source of inspiration; and He was the great promise of Jesus to the apostles to qualify them for their mission. They spoke in the words of the Holy Spirit. ' God hath revealed them to us by his Spirit.' 'Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth.' What a boon was this ― the revelation of God's eternal plan ― the communication to men of that saving knowledge which they could never have discovered for themselves. Cast your eye over any part of the world where the divine word has not been distributed, and what crude and erroneous opinions of God and man, of duty and destiny, are universally and fatally prevalent. Worship is either inanity, lust, or brutal fanaticism. Life is but a distracted fever, and death its dark conclusion. What benefits, then, have you not got from scripture ― what knowledge as the basis of faith, what comfort and hope in your trials, what counsel as to the way of duty, and what bright glimpses of eternity. And if you regard the Bible in its fulness ― all necessary instruction is communicated; or in its clearness ― he may run that readeth it;' or in its majesty ― it is the voice and word of the great Jehovah; or in its impressiveness ― it solemnizes and awakens, it cheers and strengthens, it directs and purifies. In whatever aspect you take it, you cannot but feel it to be a product of love ― love to the best interests of the best part of your nature. Think of it as the Book of 'books, the roll of promise which you clasp to your bosom. Remember its Moses and Paul, its Elijah and Peter, its Isaiah and John. Think of its pure truth, its tender invitations, its thrilling promises, and awful warnings; of its tears and its thunder, of its pathos and its sternness. Survey the altar of Aaron, and the throne of David; the birth at Bethlehem, and the death on Calvary; the sepulcher of Joseph, and the descent at Pentecost. Call to mind the united testimony of all saints to the sacred volume, as first in rank, and mightiest in effect on conscience and life, and surely you will be disposed to glorify the love of that Spirit who is really its author, who knows our frame, and has accommodated His book to our weakness and wants. 'Next to His own gift of Himself, is His gift of the volume of life; and the love that brightens every page, is proof of the love of Him who gave it. If I am benighted and wandering, with death before me if I proceed, is it not love to warn me and set me right? and if I am disposed to treat this counsel lightly, is it not kindest love to terrify me into compliance? say not, therefore, that the threatenings of scripture are awful and agonizing, and might be dispensed with. No; it was the tenderness of the Spirit's love that dictated them. You must be aroused ere you can be saved. It would be mistaken affection to fear to disturb the sleeper in the hour of peril. The alarms of scripture are the loud voice of Divine love in agony over you. The hundred and nineteenth Psalm, a prolonged eulogy on the Bible, is a sustained proof and demonstration of this love of the Spirit.

2. The love of the Spirit may be learned from His preparation of the human nature of Jesus, and His dwelling in it. Our argument now is. He who loves the means, loves the end. If the Spirit had such a connexion with the mediatorial nature of the Son of God, what love must He have had to those sinners whom Christ became incarnate to save! His union with Jesus was early predicted: ' Behold my Servant whom I have chosen. ... I have put my Spirit upon him.' ' The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me: for the Lord hath anointed me.' Messiah, or Christ the anointed one, enjoyed the auction of the Spirit: ' The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee,' said the angel to His mother, ' and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.' The Spirit came down upon Him at His baptism, and remained' upon Him. ' God gave not the Spirit by measure unto him.' 'By the Spirit of God' He wrought miracles. ' Through the eternal Spirit he offered himself without spot to God.' 'Put to death in the flesh, he was quickened by the Spirit.' He was 'declared to be the Son of God, according to the Spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead,' His constitution and career are also described in those two parallel clauses ― 'God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit.' Thus, by means of the Spirit, was the humanity of Jesus created, endowed, and sustained for its arduous enterprise. And does not this agency of the Spirit argue His love to the great cause of our salvation? That body which was at length to be offered, and that blood so soon to be ' poured out for remission of sins unto many;' in short, that humanity which, in its glorified state, was to plead for us with God, and govern and defend us, was brought into existence, fitted, and furnished, by the operation of the Holy Ghost. Will you not appreciate His love to the saved in this union with their Saviour? And when you feel your relation to the Brother-man, and think how He wears your flesh, and has a fellow-feeling with, you in it, and in it has been crowned with glory; when you partake of the sacramental symbols of His holy suffering humanity, and hear those awful words, ' This is my body broken for you' ― this cup is the new testament in my blood;' when you anticipate the falling of your own frame into the sepulcher, amidst the solemn cry of dust to dust, and ashes to ashes, and cherish the hope of seeing Him and being satisfied with His likeness, then, O then! will you not see in Him and His humanity a singular and touching proof of the love of the Spirit?

3. His love is evinced by the special position which He occupies in our salvation. And according to the New Testament He is Christ's representative and substitute. 'I will,' says our Lord, ' send you another Comforter' ― another, implying that Himself was the first, and that the Holy Ghost was to be the second in His room. Other passages announce the same truth. 'I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you, even the Spirit of truth.' ' The Comforter, who is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things.' ' When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.' ' It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.' Such being the case, our plain argument is, that if the Spirit occupy such a position, love must have prompted Him to it. There lay no necessity upon Him ― He was under no moral constraint. There was nothing in His essence or His character that demanded this condescension of Him. That love which brought Jesus down to earth, that and none other brought down the Spirit to fill His room. He cannot be a substitute if He has not the attachment of Him whom He represents. Nor would Jesus have entrusted the completion of His work to one of less love than His own, for such a task needed all the love which led to the cross, and sustained under its agonies. Love of a lower temperature would have sunk beneath the enterprise. That enterprise was to be as Christ was ― ' another Comforter;' to stand to the church as did the tender and sympathizing Jesus, to speak as He spoke, to cherish as He cherished, and to lead as He led to communion with Himself. The ardor of such a love is equal to that of Christ, but its radiance is of a mellower and less dazzling nature. Like the light of the sun, which is of intolerable brilliance, and cannot be hidden, ― the Son of God appeared in this commanding splendor of love. But the light which follows the setting of the luminary is softer, sweeter, and less majestic; so, though the love of the Spirit, appearing after the withdrawal of Jesus, may assume a milder form, yet it has not the less penetration or divinity. Feeling, then, the relation which the Spirit bears to the church ― how He compensates for the absence of Christ's person and visible sympathies, and how all that you would anticipate from the Incarnate Brother is realized in and from Him, will you not discern in this tender and delicate position another proof and result of the love of the Spirit? If, therefore, believer, thou hast ever pictured to thyself what noble enjoyment thou mightest have had in following? Christ incarnate were He upon earth, in ministering to Him, in listening to Him, in beholding the miracles of His grace, in telling Him thy sorrows, and soliciting His sympathy under thy bereavements; if this vision ever rise up before thee, then feel that it is all verified now in and through the love and presence of the ' good Spirit.' As Jesus was to Mary and to John, so is the Spirit now to thee. As He was to the widow of Nain ― as He was at the tomb of Lazarus ― as He was to her who bathed His feet in tears; so is the Spirit in His love to thee. Will not thy heart beat in responsive pulsation, and will not thy petition be, ' Take not thy Holy Spirit from me.'

4. The same truth may be inferred from the peculiar function which the Spirit discharges. The province which the ' Free Spirit' occupies is that of application. Christ provides, He applies. This work of His is distinctly told to us by Jesus: ' He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you.' He applies the truth of Christ for our enlightenment, and not some new and unheard-of revelation. It is the blood of Christ which He sprinkles for our purification, and the image of Christ with which He seals us. What Christ has done for us was done in Judea, and what He now does for us is done in the court of heaven; but all that the Spirit does for us is within us, is in our hearts. His work is subjective, and deep laid in our vital experience. The first impulse to believe, and the last polish and preparation of the departing spirit for eternity, are alike His gracious and sovereign gift. "What special and tenacious love is there not in all these operations? , He awakens. It is His work to alarm the conscience, to throw the sinner into agony, and to leave him no rest until he lay hold on Christ. Now, it is His love which originates all this distraction. As we have already said, the truest love to the man in danger is to terrify him out of it. But it is not one simple impulse which creates this agitation, this wretchedness in the heart of a panic-stricken sinner. O what effort, continuous and prolonged, is put forth! The Spirit employs every means. He warns and He invites. He threatens and He persuades; He strikes a terror into the heart, or keeps up in the memory the echo of an arousing sermon; He sends some sharp visitation of providence, and brings the man so near the gates of death, that he sees the grim portals, and starts and shudders; or He brings some bereavement so close upon him that his heart bleeds in anguish, ― and all this discipline, or a large portion of it, maybe repeated, and varied, and multiplied year after year, till the end be achieved. For the heart appears often to close itself against the Spirit, and defy all His endeavors, and therefore He waits and wrestles, argues and implores. Did any man wish to impress some favourite idea on the mind of his familiar companion, and did he find him so reluctant to apprehend it as is the sinner to know and recognise his real position, the preceptor would soon abandon the task in despair, and declare his friend either stupid beyond hope, or perverse beyond recovery. But the Spirit of God perseveres, and stands and knocks. O nothing but divine and unfathomable love could sustain Him amidst such provocations! Ye who have felt His early workings, and are conscious that you did for a season resist them, how thankful are you now that He did not leave you. Are not your present faith and grace and hope, a living and a lasting monument to the love of the Spirit? For did you answer when first He said. Come? Did you move when He essayed to lead you? Did you embrace salvation when first He proved its necessity and freeness? Ah no! Yet He persisted, and successfully persisted, in His efforts with you, for He loves you. The Spirit also enlightens. The sinful heart is covered with gloom. Self-knowledge is absent, and there is no perception of the only path to felicity. Yea, though a revelation has been given to man, he does not practically understand it; 'for the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned.' It is necessary, therefore, that the Spirit which gave the word should apply it, and so illumine the understanding that it can experimentally comprehend it. When the famous statesman Pitt, on one occasion and in company with Wilberforce, heard Cecil, an eminent minister in London, discoursing on this subject, he confessed, at the close of the discourse, that he did not in the least understand it. The Premier of England, whose acute and mighty mind was equal to any emergency, could not comprehend what was realized by many a poor peasant and humble cottager. The Spirit begets within us a relish for spiritual truth, and He shows us very clearly its divinity and adaptation. ' Ye were sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.' They who have been so enlightened by the Spirit of wisdom wonder why truth so plain was never felt in its reality and power before. The spiritual vision was diseased, and refused to admit the light into its chambers. But the scales at length fall, and light is seen in God's light.

Now, this enlightenment by the Spirit is surely the fruit of His love. For such light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is, by means of such a medium, to behold the Sun of Righteousness. But ah! how long men refuse the light, and coil their spirits up against it; how they even love the darkness rather than the light; and how numerous are the strivings of the Divine Spirit, ere '0n the eyeballs of the blind
He pours celestial light.'

Many continue to ' see men as trees, walking,' and live under the dim and troubled shadow of an eclipse. To recur to an illustration analogous to our former one. Had any teacher a pupil so dull as is a sinner to learn the very alphabet of divine truth, he would, after a fair trial, dismiss him as either incorrigible or incompetent, and would not wait so many months and years as does the Spirit of God. He far outdoes, not in skill only, but in patience too, every human tutor. Nay, which of us has all the illumination he might possess? or which of us possessed it at the moment when it was offered to us? Is there no prejudice yet to be overcome, no twisted opinion yet to be undone? Is there not some lurking misconception, some obliquity of vision? And should none of these faults exist, who among us, even the most aged and intelligent, has arrived at the ' riches of the full assurance of understanding? O! is there one who enjoys, to its utmost splendor, this spiritual light, or who can set his conscious seal to the statement, in its widest warrant of signification, ' Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and know all things?' If, then, the Holy Ghost assist the memory, and bring precious truth to our remembrance, nay, leads us ' into all the truth;' and if such industrious patience with His awkward pupils be demanded, will we not rejoice in the assurance of His love? If we feel it to be ' eternal life to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent;' if we feel that the eyes of the understanding have been opened that we may know the hope of His calling;' if we have just conceptions of divine truth in its fairness and beauty; if, in short, ' the darkness is past, and the true light now shines,' ― then, surely, our instruction and attainments are an irresistible and harmonious witness to the love of the Spirit. And He also sanctifies. He changes the heart - restamps upon it the divine image ― restores it to its pristine purity and perfection, and fits it for the glory of Heaven. Oh blessed work is this! a work which none but a divine agent could accomplish. He alone who created the heart, can re-create it. Human influence may achieve a great deal, but in us the springs of action and emotion must be laid hold of and changed. In this transformation the Spirit is the agent, and His own word is the instrument which he employs. In constructing that word, He has adapted it to his gracious purpose, and He gives it the requisite efficacy by His own accompanying influence. The Bible, in its various parts and style, so fits in to our nature, that it develops a full and healthy spiritual life. If, then, His special work be to make man what he once was; to fit him not for re-entering Eden, but for ascending to a heavenly inheritance; to make him the companion of the princes of the universe, and the very counterpart of its Lord, ― does He not love the creatures whom He thus condescends to elevate and purify? If He had formed a being for this high destiny, we should have argued that love prompted His creative energy; and if He has taken a fallen creature, whose sin had so provoked Him, and led to His withdrawal ― taken him in all his guilt and defilement, and washed him in the blood of the Lamb, sanctified and brought him back to a higher than his first estate, ― is not this blessed, holy, and prolonged operation the result of love, and nothing but love?

And, then, remember how the Spirit labours in accomplishing this end ― that He leaves no means unturned, and "no motives unapplied; that He is often thwarted, rebelled against, and vexed, ― and will not you ascribe every spiritual attainment, your growth in grace, and your advancing meetness for glory, to the love of the Spirit? And surely this love, tender as that of a nurse that guides a feeble and wayward child, and inweaving itself with all your experience, will be the theme of earnest and rapturous comment and gratitude. Every breath of your spiritual life is perfumed with the love of the Spirit.

'Tis He that works to will;
'Tis He that works to do;
His is the power by which we act,
His be the glory too Can this love be less worthy of mention than that of either Father or Son? The patience of the Father is indeed marvellous. Long; has He borne with men ― with their unbelief and ingratitude. Six thousand years attest that He is ' long-suffering and abundant in goodness;' but during the same period the Spirit, too, has been striving with man, for he is even flesh. The Son of God, during His abode on earth, endured the ' contradiction of sinners against himself:' and has not the Holy Spirit, ever since the ascension, been experiencing similar treatment from rebellious and obstinate man. "With all these truths before us, let us never forget the patient and conquering love of the Spirit.

5. The Spirit's love may be learned, in fine, from the abode which He has chosen. And that abode is no pure or princely mansion; for it is the human heart. He who knows it best, says of it, ' The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.' He who ' needed not that any should testify of man; for He knew what was in man,' bears this testimony ― ' Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, theft, false witness, blasphemies.' And this heart is not fitted up or prepared for His reception; but He comes to it in its foulness and dilapidation, and cleanses and decorates it for Himself. Neither is He there as ' a wayfaring man, that turneth aside to tarry for a night;' nor yet as an accidental or transient guest ― He is a resident, who dwells in it as His chosen habitation. 'But will God in very deed dwell with men upon the earth? Behold, the heaven, and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee, how much less this house that I have built!' That was a noble national fane of which the royal dedicator spoke ― a temple built in splendor to enshrine the resident glory of its divine Architect. But, oh, the human heart, so abject and vile, how will it contain divinity? Yet the Spirit of purity sets His affections upon it. He enters there to cast out all that is inimical to our happiness, and to fill it with every holy grace.

There He is as counselor, friend, and comforter. When you commune with your hearts, you commune with Him, your bosom friend. "What but love, we ask, could prompt Him to choose such a residence, and prolong His stay in it? It has no native attractions for one who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and who cannot look upon sin.' And what provocations does He not meet with in it? No guest would endure them, but would leave the place of his sojourn under such wanton and undisguised insults. The apostle warns Christians, and says, ' Grieve not the Spirit of God.' When Israel 'rebelled, and vexed his Holy Spirit,' God 'turned to be their enemy.' Ah, how often do you refuse His counsels, and throw from you His authority, though you avow that He is your Instructor and Governor. Might He not in anger or in sorrow depart? Alas! how often have you resisted, or at least shown reluctance, when He would lead into deeper and holier experience, and give you a nearer view of God and eternity; when He would enable you to penetrate into the spirituality of His law, and give His love a firmer hold on your nature; when He would bring you nearer heaven in spirit, and fill your hearts with its cheering elements? Have you not too often in such a crisis remained passive and unexcited, and contented as you were? And if He be still within you, patiently bearing all those repulses, and working out the blessed end of His mission, can you doubt His love, or reckon it less than that or Christ? 'The Word was made flesh.' God dwelt in humanity. Jesus appeared in the world as an incarnate God. But does not the Spirit in His love experience a similar incarnation? Is not He also infleshed when He fills the bosoms of believers, and dwells in the heart of His church?

'Nor will He desert His favorite abode. The body dies, but still He claims it. It is His. His love to it is not cooled by death. The fondest friend and tenderest relative is obliged to say, ' Bury my dead out of my sight;' but the beloved ashes are precious to the Holy Ghost as the dust of His own temple. And so in His love He watches over it, and at the appointed time He will re-animate and re-organize the scattered particles. If the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.' Thus a more glorious structure is reared up, in unison with the character of the pure Being who is to rest in it for ever. So that, if you know that God abideth in you by the Spirit which he has given you' ― if you feel that you carry Him in your hearts, a friend of friends, innermost and attached, and realise His presence, and know the abiding, the joy% comfort, power, and hope of the Holy Ghost, surely you will need no further proof of ' the love of the Spirit.'

And, in fine, the effect of all this varied working and prolonged abode is the impartation of comfort. He is the 'Comforter;' and believers, as they walk in the fear of the Lord, walk at the same time in ' the comfort of the Holy Ghost.' He is ever present to assist you, and the effect of His assistance is comfort. There is comfort in his light and in His strength, in the intercession which He makes, and the progressive purity which He secures. There is no part of your nature left unhelped ― intellect and will, memory and heart, share in His assistance. The result is peace, and joy, and assurance ― the serenity which victory insures, and the felt approach to perfection which experience is able to testify. The saint is as one whom his mother comforteth,' calm, happy, and confident. that this consciousness were the privilege of us all! Then should we have days of revival and apostolical triumph. Will we not be ever on our guard against grieving this Holy Spirit of God? Whatever is dark and sensual, cruel and malignant, is specially opposed to Him, and hateful to Him. Flee such sins as war against Him. Shall we now doubt His love, or undervalue His work? There may be mystery in that work, and it may be beyond the reach of our analysis; but our experience declares its reality and power. let us adore Him with fervour, and pray for His presence with unceasing importunity. Thou promised Spirit of the living God, wilt not Thou come down upon us, and fill us more entirely? We long for Thee, we look for Thee, and we are ever in need of Thee. We are ignorant, but Thou art the Spirit of truth. We are impure, but Thou art the Spirit of holiness. We are often in doubt of our spiritual state, but Thou bearest witness with our spirits. We are often straitened in prayer, but Thou makest intercession for us. We are in want of preparation for heaven, but thou makest ready the heart, and sealest it, and art Thyself the ' first-fruits' of the inheritance. Descend, we implore Thee, descend in the fulness of Thy blessing, and make us what we sigh to be, and so restrain and guide us that we may never be so far left to ourselves as at any time to grieve Thee.

Amen and Amen.