The Quickening Spirit

“If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you,” Romans vii:ii.

THIS text reveals the Comforter as the Quickener or Author of life. The verse depends for its force upon the place we give it in the plan of redemption and the true exegesis of the passage. It has been usual to refer it to the future resurrection and to the work of the Holy Spirit in calling to immortal life the dead bodies of the saints of God. But there are the strongest reasons in the passage itself and the analogy of Scripture against this view.

In the first place the Holy Spirit is not represented in the Scriptures as the Agent in the final resurrection. It is the Lord Jesus who shall raise the dead by His own direct voice. ‘’The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they that hear shall live.^’

In the next place the Spirit is represented as now dwelling in the body that He quickens. This could not be true of the dead. The Holy Spirit is never represented as dwelling in a dead body. ‘’God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.’’ It must therefore be the bodies of living persons that the Holy Spirit is here said to quicken.

Further, the bodies here quickened are described as “mortal bodies.” Now a mortal body is not a dead body, but a body liable to death.

Once more, the word “quicken” does not necessarily mean the resurrection of the dead body. In this very book of Romans it is applied to the quickening of Abraham’s body (iv. 17), when he was old and his strength was renewed for the birth of Isaac. It means the invigorating, vitalizing, stimulating of a body weak and failing, and precisely applies to the healing of disease by the touch of the Holy Spirit.

And this appears to be the obvious meaning of the passage. The Apostle has just been speaking of the work of the Holy Ghost in sanctifying the soul and directing and controlling the believer’s walk and life. Naturally, therefore, he next refers to the Holy Spirit’s work for the Christian’s body and tells us that He who is a new and divine law of life for the soul is just as much the Quickener of the weak and mortal body. If He dwells in the house He will repair it and take good care of it. Later in the chapter the writer comes to the resurrection and the future life and speaks fully of it.

The writer has fully discussed the spiritual working of the Holy Ghost in the previous paragraph and in perfect logical order is now dealing with the body, which naturally follows. We are thus introduced to God’s great secret of true physical life. It is not nerve force, muscular force, the effect of food and air and constitution, although all these have their place and none of them must be neglected or despised; but it is a direct infusion into our mortal frame and our vital centres of a supernatural and divine vitality through the Holy Ghost. It is something not communicated by drugs or electrical applications, or even air and food, but it is life from the primal source of life, the Creator Himself. It is another kind of life, a higher kind of life, an added life; that very life of which the same writer says in II. Corinthians iv. ii: “The life also of Jesus is manifested in our mortal flesh.”

Now have we any precedents for this in the Scriptures? Certainly. We go back to the story of Samson, and we find that his strength was not produced by muscle and bone or weight and size, but by the Holy Spirit. When the Spirit began “to move upon him,” he suddenly developed into gigantic strength and slew his enemies and carried away the gates of their cities and laughed at their strength and numbers. And when by disobedience he lost the Holy Spirit and sank into self-indulgence and sin his body became as weak as a child’s and his enemies blinded him and made sport of him.

The writer once found himself in an abandoned office where he had some work to do at night, but where he had neither light nor heat. He lit a match and tried to light the gas, but the pipes had been taken out. He then searched for lamps and candles but there were none. Finally he went to a closet where he had been accustomed to keep old newspapers, and he felt sure if he could throw these in the grate he would have at least temporary light. But the newspapers had already been thrown into the grate and there was nothing left but a heap of black and lifeless ashes. Then he discovered a small bottle of kerosene. He poured it in on the ashes in the grate and lo, they blazed up and lighted the room and dispelled the chill, and he was able to finish his work with comfort. As often as the grate fire began to go down all he had to do was to pour a little fresh oil upon it. That is the parable of the Spirit’s quickening life in our mortal bodies. Our natural bodies may be like that heap of dead ashes. But if the Spirit is dwelling in us we shall live by His life till our work is done.