The Spirit in the Writings of St Paul: In General

We. approach the revelation of the blessed

Comforter and His work given to us through St Paul. In the present chapter we shall attempt a sort of conspectus of the subject, and in the remaining chapters seek to take up in more detail some of the greater and more commanding truths thus given.

It is a large and wonderful field. The writings of St John, as we have seen, present us with a mass of treasure for our doctrine of the Spirit. On the great subject of His Per-v sonality in particular their witness is supreme in importance. But the Epistles of St Paul fairly overflow with the glorious theme of the Spirit and His work, and in respect of some of His great redeeming and sanctifying operations “their witness is practically unique. Is not this remarkable, let me ask by the way, this fulness vide eee tins Vine ine Mickie es eS oT a

of the doctrine of the Spirit zz S¢ Paul? We are accustomed, and rightly, to regard St Paul as the great commissioned teacher and vindicator of that other region of vital truth — our Acceptance, our Justification, for the Redeemer’s merits, by faith in His blood, by simplest acceptance of the divine imputed Righteousness.’ It is then all the more impressive to find that to this same St Paul we must go for the fullest scriptural account of “Christ in us” by the Spirit as well as of “Christ for us” in His merits. If the precious sentences, “Justified Rom. iti 24, 26. freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”’ >“Thatble might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus,” are deeply and distinctively Pauline, so too are those others, “‘ Your body

-cor.vig. is the temple of the Holy Ghost Ro we. which us“ineyou.”’; “Dheslovegay God is shed abroad in our hearts by the

1 On that side of doctrine I may refer to Hooker’s great Dzscourse of Justification, and to G. S. Faber’s Primitive Doctrine of Justification. 1 venture to add, as giving briefer or more pepular statements, my own Outlines of Christian Doctrine, pp. 183, ete.; Union with Christ, pp. 65, etc.; and The Lord our Righteousness, a tract.

Holy Ghost”; “Strengthened with might by His Spirit... that Christ may dwell Eph. iii. 16, x7. in your hearts by faith”; ‘Be ye Eph.v.:. filled with the Spirit”; ‘Walk by Gal.v.es. the Spirit”; “By the Spirit mortify the deeds of the body”; and so on, through Rom. viii. 13. a long chain of utterances living and glowing with the blessedness of our divine life, and peace, and strength, and “joy in Rom. xiv. 1. the Holy Ghost.” In this double phenomenon of the writings of St Paul — this large and jealous vindication on the one hand of. the way of our Acceptance through ‘the obedience of the One’’ and through it Rom. vi. alone, and yet this even more pervading and continuous assertion of our life and walk by the Spirit on the other hand — I read great and pregnant lessons. For one thing I learn that what God has so joined together man must not from either side put asunder, in faith, or teaching, or life. Perfectly distinct in conception, the two ranges of truth are indissolubly wedded together in purpose and in result. And for another thing I learn that in some all-important respects the one of these ranges of truth exists and is revealed for the sake of the other, and not the other for the sake of the one. Justification, Acceptance, Peace with God, Redemption from the Curse of the Law — these things are revealed (thanks be to God, they ave revealed) not for themselves, so to speak, as if they were ends and goals in the way of grace, but for the sake of our living by the Spirit, and walking by the Spirit, and being the living temples of the Spirit, and thus being conformed to the image of the Son of the Father, and entering thus ona never-ending course of ‘serving in the newness

Rom. vii.6. of the Spirit.” St Paul’s writings, alike in their argument and in their proportions, are inspired reminders to us how to keep these things related in our own thought, and faith, and life. We are redeemed from the just sentence of the broken law “zx order that we may receive the promise of the Spirit by faith;” so it stands explicitly, and most memorably, in Gal. iii. 13, 14. Not for one moment, really, are we viewed as simply saved from present and future wrath as if that were an end in itself, the change of our hearts and lives coming in merely as evidence that we are secure. That change is, we may boldly say, the absolutely necessary vazson détre of the work of ransom and acceptance. We are accepted that we may

be holy; that we may live entirely to the Lord; - “that Christ may be magnified in Phil. x20. our body”; in other words that the blessed Spirit, now as it were liberated to flow upon us and to spring up within us, may have His way and will in all we are and all we shall be for ever.

Is it not so? And shall not our faith, our witness, our teaching, take this apostolic line? Shall we not stand fast, faster than ever, in the truth of the Justifying Righteousness received by faith alone, but so as always to enjoy and to commend the always related and always crowning truth of “the promise of the Spirit,” received also by faith alone? Happy the soul which, standing on the rock of the one truth, drinks the inexhaustible fountain of the other, day by day, and hour by hour. Happy the Church where that rock and that fountain alike “do follow them,” in the work of witness ir word and in life to the reality of God in Christ.

*©So Christ shall be our daily food,
Our daily drink His precious blood;
And thus the Spirit’s calm excess
Shall fill our souls with holiness.” y

But it is time to come to some more detailed view of what St Paul was guided to say of the glory and work of the Holy Ghost, and of the believer’s dependence on Him and power in Him. Our view will not profess, however, to be at all exhaustive; the reader will find abundant gleanings left in the blessed field.

(i.) The witness of St Paul to the Personality of the Spirit, though less full than that of the Lord Jesus in St John, is unmistakable to the submissive reader. Nowhere indeed in St Paul (in the Greek, though here and there in eg. Rom. vii. Our Authorized Version) do we find

27; 1 Cor. xii. II. masculine pronouns, He, Him, His, used of the Spirit. But we find in St Paul

1 Chandler, from St Ambrose: Hymus of the Primitive Church, 1837, p. 32. The original Latin runs : —

“Christusque nobis sit cibus,
Potusque noster sit fides;
Lzti bibamus sobriam
Ebrietatem Spirit as.” — /d7@., p. 163.

ST. PAUL ON@THE: PERSONALITY, EHIC. 169

that the Spirit can be not only ‘ quenched” but) oneved that “the vopirit uP... “intercedeth for the saints with “”™® unutterable groanings,’ and that Rom. viii.26, 27 “He who searcheth the hearts” the Greek regards the Spirit, in that intercession, as the Bearer, the Subject, of a ‘“‘ mind,” an intention, a characterizing thought. All this speaks of Personality. And we find the Spirit revealed, through St Paul, as the Lord of the “temple” of the Christian’s body, and that :Cor. vir. in a context which is as remote as possible from associations of mere poetry or figure. A Person, and a divine Person, is presented to us here as dwelling in us.

(ii.) The unspeakably deep Unzon of Being and Work between the Spirit and the Son comes out clearly in St’ Paul. The ‘Spirit is “the Spirit of Christ”; and in the im- Rom. viii ». mediate context there we see the Two Blessed Persons so united that what in one breath is called the indwelling of the Spirit Rom. viii. x. is called in the next the indwelling Rom. viii. :. of Christ, and this again the indwelling of the Spirit.

(iii.) When we come to the Pauline revelation of the Process of the Work of Grace we find that from first to last, from the new birth to the coming glory, the Holy Spirit is the immediate Agent, Life-giving, Life-sustaining. The true Gal. iv. 29. child of God is “born after the Spirit.” He “lives-dy the Spirit. It is the Spirit who unites him to his Lord, his vital Head; for “he that is joined” in the mystic bridal “to the Lord rCor.vixz if one Spirit.” It is. the Spirit

Gal. v. 253 So
render.

who in His own infinitely wise and effectual way makes known to him the reality and the sweetness of the eternal things so as he could not possibly know them by the powers rCor-iio-ry. Of nature; for ‘“‘it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him; but God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.... We have received... the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things which are freely given to us (ra xapro0&Ta) of God. ... But the natural man receiveth not

the things of the Spirit of God; for they are “EVE HATH NOT SEEN.” 171

foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” And this unveiling has to do, let us observe, not only with an eternal future but still more with a supernatural present. The main reference is to the present gifts of grace, the present and actual ‘‘riches of Christ,” which are ours, now and here, in Him. ‘The things which eye hath not seen” are not only, as we read it in one of the loveliest and most pathetic of all English poems,’ the things “beyond the clouds and beyond the tomb.” They are the things which “ave, have been, freely given to us of God.” They are, in St Peter’s magnificent words, ‘all things which 2Petis.

pertain to life and godliness,” and which now, as a fact, “His divine power hath given us.” They are a present fulness of divine acceptance, and a present fulness of divine spiritual riches;

Our never-failing treasury, fill’d
With boundless stores of grace.”

And so the Holy Spirit’s work is to show us

1 The Better Land.

what we ad ¢hts monient possess, for our present wonder, and joy, and use, and our present glorification of the Giver.

This interior revealing work of the indwelling Teacher, who is Creator too, is set forth in detail in several passages of St Paul. Thus we see Him, we hear Him, imparting to usa supernatural insight into our blessed new childhood, new sonship, in the life and family of grace, and a supernatural consciousness and Rom. viii.rs. assurance of it. ‘Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we chy, Abba; Fathers. *Godi hath’ ssente cre Gal, iv. 6. Spirit of His Son into your hearts, erying? Abba, Pathern); Jo Lhe Spiiit mipscis Rom. viii.z6,17. beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children then heirs.” In some way of His own (let us leave the details of the holy secret to Him) He takes and teaches the believing sinner, and shows him the strong, sweet, heavenly certainties of the Word of God as true for him, so as not the most exact nor the most profound exegesis without Him could show them. Under His mysterious touch of truth and love it becomes

FT ie Ole GOD EEO GR EI OL W173

=

strangely and gladly clear that the promises and welcomes of grace mean what they say; that ‘he that cometh” is ‘‘in no wise cast John vi. 37. out,” and that this ‘‘not cast out’? means a most glorious and wonderful ‘‘welcomed in;” a union, a filiation, an incorporation into the blessed family of God, in the divine Firstborn Brother, which implies beyond a doubt for the believing sinner all the adoptive privileges of sonship, and the full admission of the heavenborn child to the responsive intimacies of divine love.

The same view of the Spirit’s work, though under less definite imagery, comes out in Rom. v. 5: “The love of God hath been poured out” (so literally) ‘‘in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” This has been ex-, plained by some to mean that He has now imparted to us, in rich effusion, a divine ower or faculty of loving; has caused us to love with a love which is the love of God. I cannot but differ from such an exposition. With what it probably means at its heart, so to speak, I am entirely at accord. Fully assured I am that, while we can only love God with the same con- ‘stitutional human faculty or moral organ, with which we love man, still our union by the Spirit with the blessed Head of regenerate manhood has put such a new condition into that organ, and connected it so with His love who is our Life, that we may speak of our regenerate souls as loving with His love; ‘“‘zx the heart of Jesus

Puil.d, 8.) (ChYiSiie aseroty haul sexpressesmar With inmost assent of mind and faith would I echo those words of Miss Frances Havergal’s:

‘*Thy love, Thy joy, Thy peace,
Continuously impart
Unto my heart,
Fresh springs that never cease
But still increase.” y

Only I would use them as remembering always that this most blessed connexion and infusion never invades our personality, nor annuls our responsibility.2 But the context of

—

1 Hymns of Consecration and Faith, No. 264. (2277). Cater te ~) 2 On this subject, our derivation of the whole secret of the new life from our Head by the Spirit, see Marshall, Gosfel Mystery of Sanctification. See particularly Direction iii., near the beginning: ‘One great mystery is that the holy frame and disposition whereby our souls are furnished and enabled for immediate practice of the law must ‘be obtained by receiving it out of Christ’s fulness,’ as a thing already prepared and brought

7 HherLOVLuOr, GOD LOOCRE DI OUT. t35

Rom. v. goes clearly, as it seems to me, against our explaining “the love of God” here of our love to Him.. It is “‘ His love which. Rom.v.s.

He commendeth toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”; a love altogether His, not in origin only but in expression and direction, while yet the manifestation of it to and in the heart of the justified believer has everything to do with his waking up to “love the Lord His God with all” that “heart.” And it is this manifestation which the blessed Spirit effects; so we read here. Dwelling in the man He has regenerated, He so deals with the regenerate consciousness that the apprehension of mercy, the acceptance of acquittal, comes to be transfigured into an intuition into an

to an existence for us in Christ, and treasured up in Him; and that as we are justified by a righteousness wrought out in Christ and imputed to us, so we are sanctified by such a holy frame and qualifications as are first wrought out and completed in Christ for us, and then imparted to us;,.. so that we are not at all to work together with Christ in making or producing that holy frame in us, but only to take it to ourselves, and use it in our holy practice, as made ready to our hands.” The whole context, and indeed the whole book, are the best vindication of this statement, which, in Marshall’s sense of it, means to recommend anything - rather than a life of spiritual indolence.

PO ata WAN caesar ne ek EEO Ne ESTEE Yoh

“everlasting love” as tender as it is almighty. The man finds, he knows not how, outpoured in his heart (éxxéxvrau), that “‘rest of bliss,” that “sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort,” * which rises direct from the certainty not that he loves but that he is thus wonderfully loved. “‘ Loved with everlasting love, Led by grace that love to know — Spirit, breathing from above, Thou hast taught me it is so!”?

We have here then.a work of the Spirit of Love, supremely characteristic. ‘Ne shall see the presentation of it in yet more developed, vivid, and as it were concrete forms when we come in a later chapter to study St Paul’s

Eph.iii ry, later written words about the dwelling of Christ in the heart by faith. And we find it, as we have already noticed, reappearing in this same Roman Epistle, where Rom, vii. x6. ‘the Spirit itself beareth witness with our Spirit that we are the children of God.” Observe the phraseology there. The

1 Art. XVII.. 2 See the whole noble hymn (by the late Rev. Wade Robinson), in Hymns of Consecration and Faith, No. 260. -=..

ig

eee, ee ie
“THE MIND OF THE SPIRIT.” 177

Spirit appears as witnessing not to, but with, Our spirit; a statement of the precious facts which gives us a view of them not so clearly given in ch. v. 5; for here, in viii. 16, we have “our spirit” brought in as a concurrent witness. On the Holy Spirit’s part the “witness” is, ‘‘ Doubtless thou art His child;” on our spirit’s part the “witness” is, “‘ Doubtless Thou art my Father,” seen, welcomed, chosen, loved as such by even me. And the two distinct lines of witness meet in one strong, happy, humble certainty.

The man thus dealt with by the Holy One is seen, in St Paul, as the subject of His presence and power in many a sacred detail. In his human spirit he has so received the Spirit that he is said, wonderful as the phrase is, to have “the mind (¢pdvnpa) of the Spirit,” His moral characteristics. Our version of Rom. viii. 6, “To be spzritually-minded is life and peace,” is inadequate while true. It fails to give, as the literal version does, the truth of the unspeakable connexion in the life of grace between the Spirit and the spiritual man; the glorious mystery of the Vital Union as it regards the Spirit’s indwelling presence and power. Reading literally, “Zhe mind of the Spirit is life and peace” (see ver. 27), we see the believer, mortal, sinful, the ceaselessly needy recipient of “mercy from first to last,” yet so wonderfully visited and inhabited by his Regenerator, his Sanctifier, that along the lines. of his own real will, understanding, and aftfections, there runs the power of the personal Presence, yea, of the personal Character, of ‘the Lord the Life-Giver. The more the man humbly, and in watchfulness and prayer, but with entire willingness and simplicity, “yields Rom.virz himself unto God” thus present, the more shall he, intact in personality, have carried out in’him the workings of that “mind.” And what will the result be? No sensationalism, no fanaticism. A great conquest and captivity will be one side of the aCor.x.s result; “every thought brought into captivity unto the obedience of Christ.” A holy prayerfulness, deep and yearning, will Rom. vii. 26; be another side of the result. A

see Eph. vi. 18,: k and Jude 20.’ loving, joyful, peaceful, trustworthy,

meek, self-controlled walk in human life and

RESULTS OF POSSESSION OF HIS ett L IV D2 176 intercourse, will be another. A tendency towards all such union with other chil- cau. v. 22, 23. dren of God as is obstructed by the Rc orater life and spirit of self, will be another. i ras

A joy and delight in adoration, and i= generally in being at the will and service of the adored Lord, will be another. pnit iii,

A deepening consciousness of the truth and conquering power of the Word of God, as the sword in the spiritual combat, will rps. vi. x. be another. A growing gladness in the experience of a meek and lowly but most real sacrifice and surrender in all things to God, will be another; as the believer realizes his union, by the Spirit, with Him who “by means of the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God.” A quiet Heb. ix. 14, readiness, as one aspect of the same blessed fact, to be “led by the Spirit??* Roni vii.z4. will be another; and that leading will always be oué of the way and will of self zy¢o that of God; out of the ambitions and interests of self into a daily aim and inmost choice and longing that “Christ may be Phil. i. zo. magnified in my body,” that I may ‘shew

Sa ie Manu IPL a Ale Mk Oeil Lyk nel chet ee ws SE SRT

forth the praises of Him who hath called me Petia, out of darkness into His marvellous light,” that I may be, for the help of all »Tim.ii2x. around me, “a vessel meet for the Master’s use,” an implement ready to His hand. And another side of the result of having “the mind of the Spirit” will be a larger insight into what is meant by a life of faith, a life of unreserved reliance on the promises and will of God, a reliance ever more childlike in its simplicity and ever more mature, and strong, and prevailing in its results. For the faith by which Christ dwells in the heart is but the effect in my soul and will of Eph. iii. 6,17. the blessed Spirit’s “strengthening.” »cor.iv.3. He is “the Spirit of fazth.” And on the other hand it is “by faith,” by the simplest faith, that we “receive the promise Gal iii,zs. — Of the Spirit, as )-regardamgbiie developed inworking and empowering.

And if we take that aspect of the regenerate life which has specially to do with ‘victory and triumph against the devil, the world, and the flesh,” the threefold ever-present enemy, how great are the assurances given us in the writings of St Paul, as regards the power and working of the Holy Spirit! All Bible readers are familiar with the antitheses, so especially Pauline, between ‘“‘the flesh” and “the Spirit.” But not all are familiar. with the fact, which surely comes out under any careful enquiry, that by the Spirit, in such connexions, the Apostle habitually means not a “better self” or “nobler powers” of even: regenerate man, but the indwelling Paraclete Himself. So that the man who “sows to Gal. vis.

the Spirit” means the man who casts the seed so to speak of all life’s experiences upon that divine soil; in other words, commits it to the Holy Ghost within him to deal victoriously with temptation and to put forth as the result the fruit of holiness. And the man who in the realities of our life in the body, that body which is practically our one immediate vehicle of contact in all things with the world around, “mortifies the machinations Ron. viii. x3.

(rpages) of the body,” does it, if he does it indeed, “by the Spirit.” He brings to bear upon the whole range of motion and solicitation to evil, incident to him as a dweller in “this tabernacle,” the glorious fact that “he is 1 Cor. vi.x7,x0. Joined unto the Lord, one Spirit;” that His ‘‘body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which he hath cf God, and that he is not his own.” He recalls Gal. v. 16, 17: “Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfl the lust of the flesh; for the flesh lusteth (emifujet) against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.” Is not that passage too often read as if ver. 17 had nothing to tell us but (what it assuredly doves tell us) that the “infection of nature doth remain, yea, in them that are regenerated,”! and that to the last? True; it isa truth of constant merciful humiliation and caution. But what is the main purpose of the Apostle in this passage? Is it not emphatically to press the bright side of the antithesis, the side of peace, and victory, and liberty, and power? Its message, in the context, is altogether one of encouragement. It is

written, like the treasures of truth in 1John i, ea deh cc as Se RIN Sc

1 Article IX.: Manet etiam in renatis hec nature adepravatio, le.

GAL. v. 16, 17, 4 MESSAGE OF HOPE. 183

“in order that we may not sin.” St Paul is intent on showing the believer how, + Jobnii.. although ‘the flesh” is always present, carrying with it always the ingredients, so to speak, of the experience analysed in detail in Rom. vii. 7-24, there yet is something else always present also, and present in force. It is “the Holy Ghost given unto us.” It is the living and personal Comforter, dwelling in our body, and making present in us “the life of 2Cor. iv. 10 1. Jesus.” It is the Spirit “lusting against the flesh” — a force, a tendency, a personal Power, on the side of our deliverance and victory, gloriously competent to overcome its antagonist, and to make us, the subjects of it, as we yield to it and welcome it, mercifully “wxadce to do the things we would” in the life of the ’ flesh, in the life of self.

So “there is liberty where the Spirit of the Lord is”; a blessed liberty, 2 Cor. iii. x. meek and lowly, but strong and thankful too. We find an emancipation from ‘old sins,’ and a wonderful precaution 2Pet.ics. and prophylactic against new ones, in the secret of an indwelling strength, or rather

Strengthener, who is not ourselves yet is as near to us as ourselves. He is at the same time our always enlightening Convincer, as He unfolds to us the divine Holiness and our “exceeding need.” But also, blessed be God, we shall find in Him, as we welcome Him, our internal Liberator, present always, not sometimes only; our “victory and triumph” in a way which forebodes no exhaustion by its own efforts, for it is the Almighty One working in us. We come very quickly, in the interior conflict, to the edge of our own strength. But to rest upon the presence of ‘‘the Spirit lusting against the flesh” is to repose upon a Power which has no edge, and no bottom. And conscious weakness is that which reposes most simply and most effectually upon it.

Let me close this brief general view with the remark that no call is louder to the Church, and to the Christian, of the present day than that we hasten to discover (if we still have that to do), and then always watchfully to use, our “great strength” in the Spirit of God for deliverance from “serving sin,” that so we may be filled with His “calm excess,” and may overflow for blessing in the world around. The call, for one and for another, may not be to a life of any extraordinary apparent sacrifice, -or external exhaustion or hardship; though who may say that it shall not be so? But most assuredly, for all who would be on the Lord’s side in these days of ours, it is a call toa life of just such “coming out and being separate” from the world externally (while yet we are ready every hour lovingly to serve that world for our Lord) as arises from a true separation from the life of self and of sinning internally. How shall it be? How shall we indeed be sanctified, sinners that we are, in order to this witness and service of word and work? There is only one way. It is ‘in xCor.vi.r. the name of the Lord Jesus, and by THE Spirit of our God.”