What the Church Ought to Be

we ought always go back to Pentecost, to discover there the great truths upon which God deals with us as ministers and with His beloved people in the Church of Christ. God gave Pentecost as a pledge, an earnest, a promise of what He was going to do through the ages. God gave Pentecost as a token of what He is willing to do every day. God does not give things as man can give them. I can give a man this pencil, or a piece of money out of my pocket, or any other gift, and when he goes away from me he has taken part of my property, and I have nothing more to do with it. But God does not give the Holy Spirit in that way, as a thing that I get and the Church gets, and that we possess separate from Him. God gives, every moment throughout eternity, the Holy Spirit as the very power of God ever moving out from Him. Just as surely as God gave the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, God is giving the Holy Spirit in the continuous energy of the eternal life every day and every hour to His people. And if we do not receive it in the power and joy of Pentecost it is only because our hearts are not open to receive it; it is because we have been accustomed to rest content with a few little drops of the Holy Spirit, instead of claiming Christ’s promises as unceasing rivers flowing out from Him. The Apostle John saw flowing out from under the throne of God and the Lamb a river, clear as crystal, of the water of life. Every minute through the ages, at this moment, that stream of the Holy Spirit is flowing out from the throne. Whither does it flow? Does it flow like rivers I have seen in South Africa, which at one moment are strong and clear and large; and lower down, some twenty, thirty, or fifty miles, they sink away into the desert and you cannot see a trace of them? Does that stream of the Holy Spirit, that river of living water, flow out from the throne and then disappear? No, thank God, that river of the water of life is flowing through the Church in its mighty power. But why is its power so little manifested in the refreshment and the strengthening and the quickening of God’s children? Because of their unbelief; because we know so little, and believe so little, and claim so little, and live so little every day in the consciousness and the faith that the Holy Spirit comes without ceasing.

If we want to understand Paul’s words about preaching in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, let us go back to Pentecost, for that is to be the pledge of our ministry and life. What did Pentecost mean for the first disciples? You know they lived with Christ for three years, and Christ taught them and instructed them wonderfully, and loved them and led them, and yet He did not during those three years get full access to their heart and their life. He was still a Christ outside of them; He could not put within them what He had to give. He had taught them time after time the lesson of humility, and yet at the last supper there they were quarrelling in pride as to who should be the greatest. He had taught them to confess Him, and yet they all forsook Him and fled, and Peter denied Him. What a want of humility and boldness and love! How much selfishness and unlovingness there was in their intercourse with each other! Christ had taught them to love one another as He loved them, but there was

NOT A SHADOW OF OBEDIENCE

to that teaching in their conduct. They were impotent. But what He promised was: When I ascend to heaven I will send the Holy Spirit, the very life of God, the very life of Myself up in the glory, I will send the very Spirit of My life in its heavenly power, and that shall come into your hearts, and when that Spirit comes I will come. He said that distinctly and repeatedly. “At that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you. The Persons of the Trinity — we separate Them theologically and doctrinally; we are compelled to do that in teaching about Them: but spiritually and divinely They are inseparable; the Father is ever in the Son, and the Son ever in the Spirit.

And Christ said to the disciples in other words — ‘‘ I have been alongside of you and outside of you, and I have done for you what I could, but I have never yet been able to inspire you with My disposition and to get access to your heart and live there; but I will come again/* And He did come; and when Christ in the Holy Spirit came, He came to take possession of them, and He Himself was from that day by the Spirit to become their life.

And what took place? Two things. In those apostles there was a most wonderful change. Their pride was changed into humility, their weakness into boldness, their selfishness into a wonderful love. And why? Because the living Christ from heaven, with His humility, and with His boldness for God, and with His willingness to suffer, and with His love, had now entered their hearts. Oh! let us ever look back and see what a wonderful change in those disciples was wrought by Pentecost, and let us believe that that change can be effected in us.

And then with regard to their message, they received power because they had Christ within their personal life, power for their work and duty and service. Let us connect the two things. Christ did not give them the power of the Holy Ghost apart and separate from His indwelling. No; they were filled with the love and purity and loy of heaven. The upper-worldly life took possession of them and conquered the flesh and the world with all its selfishness. And then they had power in their work, and all the hundred and twenty could give testimony with power of what God had done, and they could bear witness to the glorious fact — Christ is exalted and has sent us something straight from heaven; we have got heaven and the joy of God into our hearts. And it was in that power that