18 God Giveth Not the Holy Spirit by Measure Unto His Son
XVIII GOD GIVETH NOT THE HOLY SPIRIT BY MEASURE UNTO HIS SON
It must often have struck you with wonder that not one word is said in the whole of the New Testament about our Lord’s intellect; only always about His heart. The four Gospels say not one syllable about our Lord’s bodily appearance; no nor one syllable about the talents and the endowments of His mind. Neither the strength of His understanding, nor the tenacity of His memory, nor the brilliancy of His imagination, nor the eloquence of His speech --not one of all these things is ever once referred to; only the meekness, and the lowliness, and the tenderness of His heart. I am not naming them in the same day with our Lord. But the moment I go to the Bible and name to you Moses, or Isaiah, or John, or Paul; or go outside the Bible and name to you, say Plato, or Dante, or Shakespeare, or Newton, or Edwards, you immediately think of the magnificent minds of those men. The strength, the grasp, the height, the depth, the beauty, the originality, the attainments, and the performances of those men; in one word, the amazing minds of those men at once rise up before you. But after what cast our Lord’s human mind was made; to what family of minds His human mind belonged, if it belonged to any of our families of mind; of all that we read not one word. Nor are we ourselves able, after all our study of our Lord, to say a single word about the peculiar talents or special endowments of His human mind. Not one word. Only, every page of the four Gospels is full of the meekness and the lowliness and the love of His heart. Every page, both of the four Gospels and of all the Epistles, is overflowing with His amazing humility, His obedience unto death, and His unquenchable and unconquerable love to God and man. In one word it is the holiness of our Lord’s heart that fills the New Testament full and makes it the unparalleled and unapproachable Book that it is.
It is never once said that our Lord had mind without measure, though I must suppose that was so. The one thing that it is ever said He had without measure was the Spirit of God. Whatever was the nature and the degree of His mind and His understanding; both His mind, and His understanding, and His heart, were all filled with the Holy Ghost as full as they could hold. Our Lord’s whole human spirit within Him was simply steeped in the Spirit of God. His whole inner man was so saturated, as we say, with the Spirit of His Father that it was no more the man Jesus of Nazareth, with His inherited mind and heart, that spake and acted; it was much more the Holy Ghost who spake and acted in Him. He said it long before Paul said it: "I live, yet not I, but the Spirit of My Father liveth in Me; and the life that I live in the flesh I live by the power and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost." Till the fruit of the Spirit in Jesus Christ was, as never before nor since, love without measure, joy without measure, peace without measure, long-suffering without measure; gentleness, goodness, faith, and all the other fruits of the Spirit, and each one of them without measure. Every fruit of the Spirit you ever read or heard of was found in its season in the life of our Lord, and all without measure. "There is no grace," says John Owen, "that is not to be found in Christ; and every grace is in Him in its highest degree. The grace of God was not in Christ in parcels, and in first beginnings, as it is in us. But in Him Divine grace was in all things, and at all times, without measure." We have so little experience of this in ourselves that it is beyond us. It is too high for us. It is too deep for us and we cannot wade out into it. We cannot with all Our effort, so enter the mind and .the heart of our Lord as to watch and write down all the operations of the Holy Ghost on the inner man of our Lord. We cannot place the mind and heart of our Lord under our scrutiny, so as to say just how the Holy Ghost took such full possession of our Lord as He did; our Lord all the time remaining Himself, and not suffering complete absorption and annihilation into God. The absolute and entire sanctification of our Lord, body, soul, and spirit, will all our life here be a great mystery to us. Only, this is a sure rule for us to go by, both in our Lord’s case, and in our own --out of the heart are the issues of life. Now, we know, and it is our best knowledge, what were the issues of our Lord’s sanctified heart. Go through the four Gospels and you will come on every page on His love, and on His joy in God, and on His peace, and on His meekness, and on His gentleness; in one word, on the Holy Ghost within Him without measure. You may read, and read, and read, but you will never once think of your Lord’s intellectual talents; you would feel it to be something almost akin to irreverence and sacrilege were such thoughts to enter your mind about your Lord. But it is not so when you are arrested by the graces of His heart. You cannot dwell too much on the graces of His heart. You cannot too much put adoring words on the graces of His heart. You cannot too much extol and proclaim and preach the graces of His heart. And the heavenliness and the holiness of His heart will shine out of every page of your New Testament, and will shine into your own heavenly mind and holy heart, till you are changed into the same image, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Now, it has never been said about any other human being in this world but Jesus of Nazareth, that God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him. The man Jesus Christ is alone in that and He has no fellow in that. God has given of His Spirit to many men, first and last, but never to any other man without measure. This is God’s appointed way with the children of men, and He has never, deviated from this way, and never will. He gave His Holy Spirit without measure to His incarnate Son our Lord, and then our Lord measures out the Holy Spirit to us. It is as Paul has it: "But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ." We are all alike to begin with. Unlike as we are in everything else; in body, in mind, in estate, we are all alike in our need of the Spirit of God. Our spirits are all so depraved. Our spirits are all so full of the spirit of evil. We are all such born sinners in this respect that in reality there is no difference among us. We are all alike in the darkness, in the depravity, and in the ungodliness of our minds and our hearts. But when Christ, out of His fulness, begins to give us grace, one by one, according to the measure of the gift of Christ, the greatest differences begin to show themselves among us; and differences that will never be removed and equalized in this world; nor till we all receive the Spirit without measure in the world to come. You cannot open your eyes without seeing both in yourselves and in your neighbors how the graces of the Holy Spirit are measured out to God’s people according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Take love; take pure, holy, God-like, Christ-like love. And with what different measures is that great grace of the Spirit measured out, even to true saints! How rich one saint will be in brotherly love compared with another saint. Some are all but living epistles of love, such a measure have they received of this gift of Christ. Take joy again; and some men seem continually to overflow with that grace of the Spirit; while other men have not an atom of it. There is, and there would need to be, a special benediction reserved for those who mourn. For there are some men that we cannot deny to be true disciples, if not eminent saints, who have not one drop to be called joy in all their cup. Let them go on to pray and obey till they attain to some rich measure of this sweet gift of Christ. Take peace, again; and you will come on some men who have this heavenly grace almost without measure. Peace comes and dwells where they dwell. Peace so reigns in their hearts that they make peace wherever they go. Blessed are such peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God; even as the great Peace-maker Himself is called the Son of God. And then to another the measure of the gift of Christ is in the gentleness of Christ. His is the wisdom that is from above, which is first pure, then peaceable, then gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits. Till that pure and gentle spirit does more to commend Christ and His Holy Spirit than all the pulpits in the city. And so also of faith. There are some saints who are strong in faith, giving glory to God. Nothing that God says or does ever staggers them. They never doubt, and they never question; they pray and they are answered, till their faith is better than sight. At the same time it remains undeniably true that all God’s people have and hold each his own special gift and grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. And John Owner’s comment on that text will always hold true: "Grace at its best is in us but in parcels, and in first beginnings. While all grace was in Christ without measure." The prince of my pulpit exegetes says, and himself acts on the saying, that "the right context of a scripture is half the interpretation." And again, "The Word of God hath a harmony of reason in it, and if a man would open a place of Scripture, he should do it rationally; he should go and consider the words before and the words after." Now when I go and consider the context of tonight I see that it is not said in a large and general and universal way that God giveth the Spirit without measure to His Son. That is absolutely true in the largest the most general and the most all-embracing sense; but that is not the immediate and particular truth of this immediate and particular Scripture. The immediate and particular truth of this present text and context is this, that what our Lord says in His sermons, and in His exhortations, is to be absolutely depended on, because God giveth not His Spirit of truth by measure unto His Preacher-Son. Our Lord’s personal holiness is not the matter here in hand; it is rather His official fitness. The matter here in hand is His pulpit rather than His person. He has received the Spirit of truth in such an unmeasured way that what He says may be relied on to everlasting life. Now, when we both rationally and spiritually apply all that to ourselves, we get this excellent lesson, and we take home this much-needed comfort. When God puts us into some office of His appointment, and lays some duty of His ordination upon us, we are entitled to look to Him for the Spirit of that office, and for the special gift and the special grace that duty demands of us. And for the very Holy Spirit Himself, if not absolutely without measure, yet to such a measure as shall correspond to the importance of our office and the arduousness of our duty. Matthew Henry, another prince of pulpit exegetes, speaking on God giving king Saul another heart, says: "Saul has no longer the heart of a husbandman, concerned only with corn and cattle; he has now the heart of a statesman, a general, a prince. When God calls to service He will make fit for it. If He advances to another station, He will give another heart; and will preserve that heart to those who sincerely desire to serve Him." Now if that is a rule in the kingdom of heaven; if that is a principle that God goes upon in putting men into offices and undertakings, what an encouragement, what a comfort that is to all those men whom He has put into high duty in the state, like Saul, or into high office in the Church, like Christ. If you are a statesman, God will give you a statesman’s heart. If you area general, a general’s heart. And if you are a prince, a prince’s heart. As, also, if He ordains and sends you to be a preacher like His Son, or whatsoever He makes you in the Church, in the state, in the family, or anywhere else, He will give you another heart, like Saul; He will give you the Spirit, according to the gift of Christ. And then this gift of Christ for your office in the Church, and the state, and the family, rightly laid out to usury by you will turn inwards into your own soul, till your outward office will be an eminent means of your inward holiness. And till the gift of Christ for your temporal work will remain in you as your eternal wages. As Matthew Henry has it: "He will give you another heart, and He will preserve that heart to you, if you sincerely desire to serve Him." And now to come back for one moment to where we began, and so close. It must often have struck you that not one word is said in the whole of the New Testament about the greatness of our Lord’s intellect, only always about the goodness of His heart. And in the same manner, there are none of our fulsome eulogies in the New Testament on any man’s mental gifts or attainments; only thankful acknowledgments of God s mercies on this man and that man’s soul. In the New Testament, not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. At that time Jesus answered, and said: I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Hearken, my beloved brethren, hath not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom, which He hath promised to them that love Him? Not that great intellect is not of God. Not that a strong and a sane understanding, and a piercing mind, and a soaring imagination, and a treasure-house of a memory, are not all of them so many sparkles in this and that man of the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Only, that the evangelical graces of the heart rank far higher in the kingdom of God than the things of the intellect that so dazzle us. At the same time, the sounder and the stronger his understanding, the more stored his memory with the best reading and learning, and the more far-seeing and high-soaring his imagination, the more meek and lowly in heart will that disciple of Christ be. Who so meek, and so lowly, and so filled with all the fulness of the Spirit of holiness, as our Lord; and after Him His most intellectual and spiritual apostle? There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But covet earnestly the best gifts. And yet I show you a more excellent way. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself; is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly; seeketh not her own; is not easily provoked; thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things; believeth all things; hopeth all things; endureth all things; charity never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity; for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto charity.