The Spirit of Comfort
‘‘Walking in the comfort of the Holy Ghost.” — Acts ix 131.
OUR English translators have given to the Greek word ‘Taraclete,” which the Lord Jesus applied to the Holy Ghost, the translation of the Comforter. And while this term is not expressive of the complete sense of the original, yet it expresses very beautifully one of the most blessed characters and offices of the Holy Spirit.
He is the Spirit of peace. It is twofold peace, peace with God and the peace of God. We find many references to this twofold rest. ‘’Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’’ This is the rest which the troubled soul receives when it comes to Christ for pardon. But then there is a deeper rest: “Take My yoke
upon you and learn of Me who am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” This is experienced after the surrender of the will to God, and the discipline of the Spirit fully received.
There is a deeper peace, so we find the risen Saviour meeting the disciples in the upper room with the salutation, ‘Teace be unto you,” as He shows them His hands and His side: but later, He breathes on them and adds a second benediction of peace as they receive the Holy Ghost. It is the special gift of the Holy Ghost; nay, it is rather His own personal abiding, as the Dove of Rest, spreading His tranquil wings over the troubled sea of human strife and passion, and bringing His own everlasting rest.
He is the Spirit of Joy.
This is a deeper and fuller spring, but the source is the same, the bosom of the Comforter. ‘‘The kingdom of God,” we are told, “is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” This is the joy of Christ Himself. It is the Spirit’s business to take the things that are Christ’s and reveal them to us. And so the Master has said, “These things have I said unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” “Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My name; ask and ye shall receive that your joy may be full.” We have some conception of His joy. This is the joy He will give to us. It is nothing less than the fulness of His own heart throbbing in our breast and sharing with us His own immutable blessedness.
This joy is wholly independent of surrounding circumstances or natural temperament. It is not a spirit of native cheerfulness, but it is a perennial fountain of divine gladness, springing up from sources that lie far below the soil of human nature.
The Spirit of Comfort and Consolation.
It is especially in the hour of distress and trial that the Comforter becomes manifest in His peculiar ministry of consolation and love. It is then that the promise is fulfilled which applies more especially to this person of the Godhead as the very Mother of the soul.
The comfort is in proportion to the trial. There is a blessed equilibrium of joy and sorrow. ‘‘As the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds in Christ.’’ As far as the pendulum swings backward, so far it swings forward. Every trial is, therefore, a prophecy of blessing to the heart that walks with Jesus.
Times of trial are, therefore, often our times of greatest joy. God’s nightingales sing at midnight, and
‘’Sorrow touched by God grows bright
With more than rapturous ray
As darkness shows us worlds of light
We never saw by day.*’
If we would know the full comfort of the Holy Spirit we must co-operate with Him, and rejoice by simple faith, often when our circumstances are all forbidding, and even our very feelings give no response of sympathy or conscious joy. It is a great thing to learn to count it all joy. Counting is not the language of poetry or sentiment, but of cold, unerring calculation. It adds up the column thus: Sorrow, temptation, difficulty, opposition, depression, desertion, danger, discouragement on every side, but at the bottom of the column God’s presence, God’s will, God’s joy, God’s promise, God’s recompense. ‘’Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding, even an eternal weight of glory.” How much does the column amount to? Lo! the sum of all the addition is”ALlL JOY,” for “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to be revealed.”
That is the way to count your joy. Singly, a given circumstance may not seem joyful, but counted in with God, and His presence and promise, it makes a glorious sum in the arithmetic of faith. We can rejoice in the Lord as an act of will, and when we do, the Comforter will soon bring all our emotions into line, yea, and all our circumstances too.