The Filling of the Holy Spirit

VC OMING suddenly down to Ephesus, the Apostle Paul, as was his wont, sought for any Christians that might be gathered within that vast center of heathenism. His search was finally rewarded by the discovery of twelve men, meeting probably in some obscure room, and exercising no influence on the vast idolatrous city out of which the grace of God had drawn them. His first question was a very searching one. Without preliminaries he went to the point. Convinced that there must be some reason why they did not exercise a greater power on the populations around them, he set himself to probe the cause; and shrewdly guessed it in the searching inquiry: “Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed? 1 9 (Acts xix. 2, R. V.).

The Apostle surely did not mean to ask whether they had received the special gifts of the Spirit. Their reply at least does not indicate that they so understood him. He wanted only to learn whether they had re- ’ 105 ceived that filling of the Holy Spirit which was the main feature of Pentecost (Acts ii. 4, vi. 3, xiii. 52).

“Received we the Holy Spirit when we believed 1 How could we have faith, except it were given us by the Holy Spirit?” might have been the reply of the startled men. “Granted,” would the Apostle answer. “No man can call Jesus Lord except by the Holy Spirit; certainly the Holy Spirit has been at work within you, else ye were none of Christ’s; but there is an experience altogether beyond and above that initial step by which the Holy Spirit first reveals sin and Christ, and it is for lack of this that your testimony is so inoperative, and your lives so destitute of fire.” t

And as we look back upon this episode across the centuries, we are convinced that it suggests the reason why so many Christians around us acknowledge their religion a failure, whilst the world mocks at their inability to exercise the devils which possess it.

It is of course true that the Holy Ghost is the sole agent in conversion, becoming the occupant of the temple, which is presented to Him by the nature of man (1 Cor. vi. 19). And it is equally clear, that the Holy Spirit as a person enters the newly regenerated heart. But there is a vast difference between having the Holy Ghost and being filled by Him. In the one case, He may be compared to a mighty man that cannot save, relegated to an obscure corner of the heart, whilst the larger part of the nature is excluded from His gracious influences. In the other, He is a welcome guest, to whom every part of the being is thrown open, and who pervades it with the freedom of the balmy air of summer, sweeping through open windows, breathing through long corridors, and carrying into further recesses the fragrance of a thousand flowers.

There are a great many Christians who undoubtedly received the Holy Spirit at the earliest moment of faith; indeed, their faith is the result of His work; but they have never gone further; they have never yielded their whole nature to His indwelling; they have had no further experience of His Pentecostal Filling.

It is not difficult to point this contrast by analogies drawn from the Word of God. May we not reverently say that the ministry of our blessed Lord Himself owed much of its marvelous power to that moment when, although filled with the Holy Spirit from His birth, He was afresh anointed at the waters of baptism? With marked emphasis it is said He was filled with the

Spirit (Luke iv. 1), and returned in the power of the Spirit unto Galilee (ver. 14), and stood up in the synagogue of His native town, claiming the ancient prophecy, and declaring that the Spirit of God was upon Him (ver. 18). His wondrous words and works are directly traced to the marvelous operation of the Holy Ghost upon His human life (Acts x. 38).

Remember also the vast alteration that came over the Apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ on the Day of Pentecost and after! Before that day, they cowered like sheep; when it came, they stood like lions at bay. Before it, their bosoms heaved with tumultuous passions of rivalry and suspicion and desire for earthly power; afterwards, each thought the other better than himself, and sought to excel in humble ministry to the saints. Peter charged home upon the crowd the murder of the Son of God, until the rabble became a congregation, and thousands cried for mercy. Can you recognize in him the timid son of Jonas who dared not face the question of a servant-girl? And what made the difference? From the first they had enjoyed the teaching and grace of the Holy Spirit. Though not given in fullness (John vii. 39), yet He was working on human hearts (Luke ii. 25-27). Indeed, our Lord had breathed on them and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost ’ 1 (John xx. 22), before He went on to say, “Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” What does this mean, except that those who have already received the Spirit, in a lower measure, may look for and receive His gracious filling — grace on grace, wave on wave, flood on flood?

The same truth is taught by contrast between Homans vii., an arid wilderness, marked by one or two green spots, and Homans viii., a very garden of the Lord, full of murmuring streams from Lebanon, bringing fertility and beauty into all hearts, lives, homes, and churches where they come. The one chapter describes a life which lacks the fullness of the Spirit, the other rings from end to end with mention of His person, offices, and work.

Header, can you not see here the reason of the failure and disappointment of your life? You are living experimentally on the other side of Pentecost. The Holy Ghost is in you, but He does not fill you. You are trying to live a Christian life in the neglect of the one power by which this marvel can be achieved. What wonder that you fail, and are often inclined to give up in despair, because your ideal is so far beyond your reach; or that your

Closest friends sadly contrast the luxuriance of your promises with the meagerness of your fruit? It is hardly necessary to ask if you received the filling of the Holy Spirit when you believed. It is but too patent that you did not; and if in this hour of unusual thoughtfulness you were led to see your position, and seek that holy filling which you may have, there is not the least doubt that you would suddenly rise up into an excellency of Christian living which would be as great a contrast to your past as sunlight to moonlight, and as the profusion of an autumn orchard to the bare and storm-swept trees of winter.

This is the glorious meaning of the day of Pentecost; it has put within the reach of all, of old men and children, of young men and maidens, that blessed filling of the Spirit which in former times was reserved for only a few of the most illustrious saints (Actsii. 17-18).

Mark these several ways in which this filling of the Spirit would operate. 1. — You would 9* a new and vivid conception of the Lord Jesus. Is it not your chief complaint that His figure is so indistinct, and that you are so unable to realize His presence; the glimpses of His face few and far between, and your moments of true communion fitful? he reason is to be found in the feebleness of the Spirit’s action. It is His special function to take of the things of Christ, and to reveal them to ns, and one chief symptom of His having filled the soul is that the soul luxuriates in a vivid and abiding recognition of the Lord’s real and glorious presence. Nay, more, Christ dwells in us by the Holy Spirit, as the sun dwells in the world by the atmosphere vibrating in his beams (Eph. iii. 17).

2. — You would obtain more constant victory over sin. How many Christians complain of the uprisings of their old and depraved nature, which so rapidly responds to the suggestions of the tempter, betraying the continued presence in the heart of that self-principle which has been the cause of all the evil and misery of the world! To cope with this is the enigma of many hearts, ambitious of saintliness; and of how many is it the bitter regret that length of years and experience and incessant struggles, fail to give them victory! This also is largely because there has been no deep experience of the filling of the Holy Spirit.

It is His special work to deal with these uprisings. Without Him they laugh us to scorn, as the tumultuous waves the injunction of Canute; but let Him occupy the heart in his Divine glory, and He lusts against the flesh, so that we may nt d’’ the things we would (Gal. v. 17). The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus makes us free from the law of sin and death which is in our members (Rom. viii. 2). There is no greater safeguard against impurity and sin, than to reckon that the whole nature has now become the Temple of the Holy Spirit, and to trust Him to keep His own property absolutely for Himself (i Cor. vi. 19).

3. — You would have a more unbroken assureance of acceptance and adoption into the family of God. To ignore or lessen the work of the Spirit in the heart is to silence the one voice which witnesses with our spirits that we are born of God (Rom. viii. 15). What does the Apostle mean when he says, “After that ye believed ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance? ’ 7 Those words surely teach us that what the earnest penny is to the farm-laborer, what the first sod to the purchaser of Scotch estates, what the grapes of Eschol to the vintage of Palestine, of which they are the guarantee and the sample, — that the presence of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s heart is to the glorious inheritance reserved for us in heaven. It stands to reason, therefore, that the strength and clearness of His witness will be in proportion to the fullness of His indwelling. Let ns do everything to increase and accentuate the power of this precious testimony to our childship.

4. — You would obtain new power for service. It is said, that when the Apostles had prayed, the place where they met was shaken, “and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and spake the Word of God with boldness, and with great power gave they witness” (Acts iv. 31-33). Little enough power may have rested upon your work for God. You have waved* the censer between the living and the dead, and the plague has not stayed. Yon have spoken the old words that once acted as a charm, but no miracle of grace has followed. You have plied the weary routine of work from year to year, without wiiming a single soul for the Master. Ah! terrible waste of energy. Much as if a man were to try to turn a ponderous machine by hand instead of attaching it to the fly-wheel of a vast engine revolving rapidly but uselessly within his reach.

The Holy Spirit is a Spirit of power, the dynamics of the kingdom of heaven, the energy of the life of God, which can alone vivify dead spirits. The more we have of this, the more certain we are of great spiritual results; whilst, without this, we may sow much, but our seed will be lost, and the scanty ears of autumn fail to reward our toils. The life-giving Spirit must be with us in power, or we shall never see dead souls awake to the life of God under our word.

5. — You would be kept in mind of your true attitude in Jesus. We forget so soon. In the onset of evil we do not recollect to look away to Him. Long periods of time pass during which we are but faintly conscious that we are God’s adopted children, sharing the victory of our risen Lord, and destined to stand forever in the inner circle of the Throne. And this is because the Holy Ghost has so little power in our lives; whereas if only we were filled with His indwelling, He would be in us as the Spirit of remembrance, bringing all things to our memory, and keeping us in the true posture of all holy souls (John xiv. 26).

I am not anxious here to distinguish between the filling of the Holy Ghost and the baptism of fire. So far as I can understand it, they are synonymous. In Acts i. 5 our Lord said, “Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence;” and in chap. ii. 4 we are told, “They were all filled with the Holy Ghost.” So far as I can understand, therefore, they are one and the same thing, and the writer of the

Acts throughout prefers the word “filling.” It recurs like the chime of a peal of bells, borne by the fitful breeze across the valley of the centuries. In any case let us see to it that we know what the filling is; it will be time enough then to discuss the baptism.

Say not that this filling by the Spirit was for the first Christians and not for us. Certainly His gifts were part of the special machinery needed to impress the Gentile world; but the filling of the Spirit is conterminous with no one age. Alas! that many think that the Almighty, like some bankrupt builder, constructed the portico of His Church with marble, and has finished it with common brick! What does the Apostle mean (Eph. v. 18 ) when he bids us ‘ 1 Be filled with the spirit?” We appropriate the doctrines the exhortations, the mystic teachings of that glorious epistle. Why then should we overlook this distinct command, which demands the obedience of all to whom the epistle comes? Let us never forget also that God’s biddings are His enablings, and that what He commands the universal Church He is prepared to accomplish for each individual member of it.

Nothing could be clearer than the announcement of the Apostle Peter on the day of Pentecost, that the promise was not to themselves only, but to all that are afar of t even as many as the Lord our God shall call (Acts ii. 39). Have yon been called, my reader to the grace of God? Then the promise of being filled is as much for you in the westering light of this age, as it was for those who lived in its silver dawn. Appropriate it.

We must appropriate the filling power of the Holy Spirit as we do all God’s gifts by faith. Ho not prepare yourself to receive it. Ho not attempt a renovation of the inner life as the condition for His entrance, for your utmost preparations will be made in vain. Ho not try to make room for Him. Simply be willing to yield, your whole being to His grace, and believe that just as the earthly parent gives to the child all good and needful things as soon as the request is made, so will our Father in heaven give the filling of the Spirit to each child that asks for it. Ask for it in humble consciousness of your own unworthiness, but with eager desire that you may be the better able to glorify God. Wait in the surrender and stillness of your heart, like that which hushed the Tabernacle before the ark, where Samuel slept. And believe that there and then God does keep His word with your soul, and that “the Lord suddenly comes to His temple.”

Then rise up and go forth from your chamber, not trying to feel filled, but reckoning that God has kept his word with you, and daring to believe it, though you may not be conscious of any emotional outburst. And you will find when you come to work or suffer or meet temptation, that there will be in you the consciousness of a power which you have never known before, and which will indicate the filling of the Holy Spirit.

But remember it is not enough to be filled once for all. Like the Apostles of old, we must seek perpetual refillings. They who were filled in the second chapter of Acts were filled again in the fourth. Happy is that man who never leaves his chamber in the morning without definitely seeking and receiving the plenitude of the Spirit! He shall be a proficient scholar in God’s school, for the anointing which he has received, like fresh oil, shall abide in him, and teach him all things. Above all, he will be taught the secret of abiding fellowship with Christ, for it is written, “As it hath taught you, ye shall abide in Him” (1 John ii. 27).

It is all-important also to remember that just as a fire cannot be maintained without freshly heaped-up fuel, so the energetic working of the Holy Spirit in human hearts is largely dependent on the daily devout study of the Word of Qod.

It is through the word that the Spirit effects the fullness of His work on those that receive Him.

There is nothing more to be said now. It is doubtless true that we may be filled with the Holy Spirit from our conversion; but since this is not the general experience of Christians, let us examine where we stand, and, if needs be, ask for that which might have been ours long years ago, if only we had sought it.