If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments:
and I will pray the Father,
and He shall give you another Comforter,
even the Spirit of truth. (John
14 : 15, 16)
The Holy Spirit, whom God hath given to them that obey
Him. Acts
5 : 32
The truth which these words express has often suggested the question - How can this be? We need the Spirit to make us obedient; we long for the Spirit's power just because we mourn so much the disobedience there still is and desire to be otherwise. The Saviour claims obedience as the condition of the Father's giving and our receiving the Spirit. [How then may we become obedient to the LORD while still being at the same time so woefully disobedient?]
The difficulty of this question will be removed if we remember what we have more than once seen: that there is a twofold manifestation of the Spirit of God corresponding to the Old and New Testament. In the former, He works as the Spirit of God, preparing the way for the higher revelation of God as the Father of Jesus [the] Christ. In this way the Spirit had worked in Christ's disciples, as the Spirit of conversion and faith. What they were now about to receive was something higher--the Spirit of the glorified Jesus communicating the power from on high: the experience of His full salvation. And though now, to all believers under the New Testament economy, the Spirit in them is the Spirit of Christ, there is still something that corresponds to the twofold [OT and NT] dispensation. Where there is not much knowledge of the Spirit's work or where His workings in a Church or an individual are but feeble, believers will not get much beyond the experience of His preparatory workings. Though He be in them, they know Him not in His power as the Spirit of the glorified Lord. They have Him in them to make them obedient. It is only as they yield obedience to the Spirit's more elementary work, the keeping of Christ's commandments, that they will be promoted to the higher experience of the Spirit's conscious indwelling as the Representative and Revealer of Jesus in His glory. If ye love me, keep my commandments: and I will pray the Father and He will send you another Comforter.
The lesson is one we cannot study too attentively. In Paradise, in the angels of heaven, and in God's own Son -- it is by obedience and obedience alone that a relationship with the Divine is maintained and admission secured to closer experience of God's Love and God's Life. God's will revealed is the expression of His hidden perfection and being. Only in accepting and doing the will, in the entire giving up for the will to possess and use as He pleases are we fitted for entering the Divine Presence. Was it not thus even with the Son of God? It was when, after a life in holy humility and obedience for thirty years, He had spoken that word of entire consecration It becomes us to fulfill all righteousness and given Himself to a baptism for the sins of His people, that He was baptized with the Spirit. The Spirit came because of His obedience. And again, it was after He had learned obedience in suffering, and became obedient to the death of the cross that He again received the Spirit from the Father to pour out on His disciples (Acts 2 : 3 3). The fullness of the Spirit for Christ's Body the Church was the reward of obedience. [The Church: that whole body of so-called "christians" in the Earth today of every theological persuasion and denomination who (by the Christ-Spirit's leading) have seen past dogma-and-doctrines-of-men and are now enlightened with the light of Christ's eternal vision]. This law of the Spirit's coming, as revealed in Christ, holds for every member of the body: obedience is the indispensable condition of the Spirit's indwelling. If ye love me keep my commandments and the Father will send you the Spirit.
Christ Jesus had come to prepare the way for the Spirit's coming. Or rather, His outward coming in the flesh was the preparation for His inward coming in the Spirit to fullfil the promise of a Divine indwelling. The outward coming appealed to the soul, with its mind and feeling, and affected these. It was only as Christ in His outward coming was accepted, as He was loved and obeyed, that the Inward and more Intimate revelation would be given. Personal attachment to Jesus, the personal acceptance of Him as Lord and Master to love and obey, was the disciples' preparation for the baptism of the Spirit. And so it is: as in a tender listening to the voice of conscience and a faithful effort to keep the commands of Jesus that we prove our love to Him. Our hearts will be prepared for the fullness of the Spirit even while our attainments may fall short of our aims. We may have to mourn that what we would do, we do not. If the Master sees the whole-hearted surrender to His will and the faithful obedience to what we already have of the leadings of His Spirit, we may be sure that the full gift will not be withheld.
Do not these words suggest to us the two great reasons why the presence and the power of the Spirit in the Church is so feebly realized? We do not understand that as the obedience of love must precede the fullness of the Spirit, so the fullness of the Spirit must still follow on it. They who want the fullness of the Spirit before they obey are in error no less than those who think that obedience is already a sign that the fullness of the Spirit is there.
Obedience must precede the baptism of the Spirit. John had preached Jesus as the true Baptist--baptizing with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Jesus took His disciples as candidates for this Baptism into a three years' course of training. First of all, He attached them to Himself personally. He taught them to forsake all for Him. He called Himself their Master and Lord and taught them to do what He said. And then in His farewell discourse, He time after time spoke of obedience to His commands as the one condition of all further spiritual blessing. It is to be feared that the Church has not given this word, O-b-e-d-i-e-n-c-e, the prominence Christ gave it. Wrong views of the danger of Self-righteousness, of the way in which free Grace is to be exalted, of the power of sin and a needs be of sinning, with the natural reluctance of the flesh to accept a high standard of holiness; [all these and more] have been the causes for our feebleness. While the freedom of grace and the simplicity of faith have been preached, the absolute necessity of obedience and holiness has not been equally insisted on. It has been thought that only those who had the fullness of the Spirit could be obedient. It was not seen that obedience was the lower platform. It was not seen that the baptism of the Spirit, the full revelation of the glorified Lord as the Indwelling One was something higher: His power in us to work through us His mighty works. The Indwelling Spirit is the Presence of God in them that the obedient should inherit. It was not seen that simple and full allegiance to every dictate of conscience and every precept of the word, that a walk worthy of the Lord to all well-pleasing was to be the passport to that full life in the Spirit in which He would witness to the abiding Presence of the Lord in the heart.
As the natural consequence of the neglect of this truth, the companion truth was also forgotten: The obedient must and may look for the fullness of the Spirit. The promise of the special, conscious, active indwelling of the Spirit to the obedient is a thing to many Christians unknown. The great part of many a modern disciple's life is spent in mourning over disobedience; over the want of the Spirit's power and praying for the Spirit to help them to obey instead of rising in the strength of the Spirit already in them to obedience as indeed is possible and necessary. The thought of the Holy Spirit being specially sent to the obedient to give in them the Presence of Jesus as a continuous reality, that He might do in them the greater works, even as the Father had worked in Jesus, was hardly thought of. The meaning of the life of Jesus as our example is not understood. How distinctly there was with Him the outward lowly life of trial and obedience in preparation for the hidden spiritual one of Power and Glory! It is this inner life that we are made partakers of in the gift of the Spirit of the glorified Jesus. But in our inner personal participation of that gift, we must walk in the way He dedicated for us. As, in the crucifixion of our flesh, we yield ourselves to God's will for Him to do in us what He wills and for us also to do what He wills, we shall experience that God is to be found nowhere but in His will. His will in Christ, accepted and done by us, with the heart in which it is done, is the home of the Holy Spirit. The revelation of the Son in His perfect obedience was the condition of the giving of the Spirit. The acceptance of the Son in love and obedience is the path to the Indwelling of the Spirit in our own lives.
It is this truth which has in these latter years come home with power to the hearts of many in the use of the words "full surrender" and "entire consecration". As they understood that the Lord Jesus did indeed claim implicit obedience, that giving up all to Him and His will was absolutely necessary and, in the power of His grace, truly possible and, in the faith of His power, they did relinquish themselves, they found entrance to a life of peace and strength formerly unknown. Many are learning, or have to learn, that they do not yet fully know the lesson. They will find that there are applications of this principle beyond what we have conceived. In the all-pervading power of the Spirit as we already possess Him, every movement of our life must be brought into allegiance to Jesus. [No human effort here will serve. It is all accomplished "not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit says the LORD of hosts." As we give ourselves to the Work of The Spirit in faith, we shall also see that the Spirit of the glorified Lord can make The Lord Himself present and work His mighty works in us and through us far beyond what we can ask or think. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit was intended by God and Christ to be to the Church so much more than we have yet known. Shall we not yield ourselves in a love and obedience that will sacrifice anything for Jesus? In so doing, our hearts may be enlarged for the fullness of His blessing prepared for us.
[The words, "sacrifice anything for Jesus" strike deep fear in every human heart. The fear is understandable and must be subdued. There is nothing of any merely human will or effort that appropriates the unstinting generosity of Christ. Impetus toward Divine Generosity is a work of the Indwelling Spirit: For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing.].
Let us cry to God very earnestly that He may waken His Church and His people to take in this double lesson: A living obedience is indispensable to the full experience of the Indwelling Spirit. A full experience of the Indwelling Spirit is what a loving obedience may certainly claim. Let each of us even now say to our Lord that we do love Him, and [pray for His Spirit to help us] keep His commandments. In however much feebleness and failure it be, still let us speak it out to Him as the one purpose of our souls. This He will accept. Let us believe in the Indwelling of the Spirit as already given to us, when in the obedience of faith we gave ourselves to Him. Let us believe that the full Indwelling, with the revelation of Christ within, can be ours. And let us be content with nothing less than the loving, reverent, trembling, but blessed consciousness that we are the Temples of the Living God because the Spirit of God dwells in us.
Blessed Lord Jesus! With my whole heart do I accept the teaching of these words of Thine. And most earnestly do I beseech You to write the truth ever deeper in my heart, as one of the laws of Your Kingdom: Loving Obedience may look for Loving Acceptance sealed by ever-increasing experience of the Power of the Spirit.
I thank Thee for what Thy word teaches of what the Love and Obedience of Thy disciples were. Though still imperfect--for did they not all forsake Thee?--yet Thou didst cover it with the cloak of Thy love: 'The spirit is willing, but the flesh weak;' and accept it, feeble though it was. Saviour! with my whole heart I say I do love Thee, and would keep each one of Thy commandments.
Afresh I surrender myself to Thee for this. In the depths of my soul You see there is but one desire, that Your will should be done in me as in Heaven.
To every reproof of conscience I would bow very low. To every moving of Your Spirit I would yield in implicit obedience. Into Your Death I give my will and life, that, being raised with You, the Life of Another, even of Your Holy Spirit who dwells in me and reveals You, may be my life. Amen.