fter having shown in the first chapter how completely our whole life is summed up in the person of Christ, the apostle proceeds to unfold the deeper things of God and to show that the wisdom of God is not only infinitely more practical and helpful than man’s, but is also much deeper and higher. This leads him to a series of remarkable passages which unfold with singular power the relation of the Holy Spirit to our deeper Christian life.
I. - THE SPIRIT AS OUR TEACHER AND REVEALER.
In the second chapter and the sixth verse the apostle declares that for those whose minds are prepared and matured there is a deeper wisdom than the mere rudiments of the Gospel and in the following verses he expounds more fully the principles of this deeper revelation.
I. Spiritual truth is not discovered by natural methods of investigation. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” Not by the outward senses, nor even by the conceptions, intuitions or reasonings of the heart, are these things to be known. “The natural” or psychical “man perceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned.”
The mere intellect is not sufficient to fully grasp or appreciate the truths of the heavenly world - just as the sense of smell is of no use to judge colors by, or the mathematical faculty to read music. Therefore, all the reasonings of the skeptic are futile to bring him into the light of God. And therefore also the dogmatism of theology and its intellectual pride so often lead it to miss the spiritual fullness of the Scriptures; while humble and unschooled hearts, digging on their knees, find mines of hidden treasure everywhere.
2. The Holy Spirit is the great revealer of spiritual truth. First, in His Word, and then in the personal teachings of the Paraclete in our hearts, “God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is the source of all we know of God; and He must also teach what He has revealed. It is not enough that He has given it to us in His Word. He must also interpret that word to our hearts. “He shall guide you into all truth and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” “He shall take of mine and shall show it unto you.” The reason there is so much error and controversy in the world is because so many are taught by mere human teachers or mere human principles of reasoning and not by the Holy Ghost. He does not teach us all at once, but as fast as we are able to learn and retain His lessons. Often he uses the fire of suffering to burn them into our souls. He lets some trial and need come into our life and then He shows us Christ as its supply, and uses it to unfold some deeper truth of His Word in a manner we never can forget. He gently “guides us into all truth.”
3. But the Holy Spirit is not only our Teacher, He is also revealed to us in these verses as bringing a new capacity for learning, and a new mind to receive and understand His teaching, even “the mind of Christ.” Not only do we need new light but new eyes; not only a Divine Teacher but a Divine mind. Your little canary could not understand you it you were to sit down and teach it philosophy, because it has a canary’s mind. No alphabet or culture could bring it up to it. Not so with a savage Zulu. He would not understand you at first, but you could bring him up to it because he has a human mind.
So the things of God no mortal mind can understand or be taught to understand. We must get the Divine mind in us to know with. We must get a new capacity that is able to measure up to the new truth. “The natural man,” that is, literally, the psychical, “cannot understand the things of God.” The most cultivated philosopher of Athens, Edinburgh or Boston, can no more take in the realities of God and the eternal world than a canary can understand the words of the same philosopher. His head is as much too small for it as a tape measure to span the ocean. Hence the failures of all human reasoning to discover Divine truth. Hence the skepticism or rationalism of many of earth’s brightest minds. Hence the slowness of many noble Christian scholars to see the deeper spiritual truths of Divine Holiness and supernatural power which the humble believer knows and lives on. Hence it has been well said that before a man can know or have much of Christ he must be beheaded, and then headed up anew in Christ, “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Hence, “if any man will be wise let him become a fool that he may be wise, for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.”
Now, instead of our poor narrow, erring minds, the Holy Spirit is willing to bring to the humble and earnest heart THE MIND OF CHRIST,” and so unite His glorious Person to our inner life that we shall see with His eyes, understand with His thoughts and know as He knows. There are three departments of our being, the spirit, soul or mind and body, and for each of these the Lord Jesus gives us Himself. When we thus receive His mind we see His word intuitively, spiritual truth falls into our apprehension as light falls upon a healthy eye or water into thirsty lips. We know the truth, and we know it is the truth. We know Him and we know it is He. Our whole body is full of light and our whole being is filled with Him. Our convictions are not mere conclusions, but they are the assurances of our deepest spiritual consciousness. And we can say in this blessed fellowship with God and truth: “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.” Now, we have received the Spirit that is of God that we may know the things that are freely given us of God.” Now, what are these deeper things which God thus reveals to His spiritual children? Not, as many would falsely claim, the strange and strained revelations of curious and speculative things which merely gratify an idle curiosity and fleshly mind; not the secrets which belong to God and could do us no good if we knew them; not the hearts of our Christian brethren that we may sit in censorious judgment upon them in a spirit of judicial pride; not the wild and unhallowed mysteries of spiritualism and the unseen world; not the visions and prophesyings which some seem to value as the seals of a special sanctity and Spirituality; not these mere externals or counterfeits of spiritual things, but a deeper knowledge of the Person, work, life and heart of Jesus, of His fullness and grace, of His mystical union with us, and His glorious purposes, promises and provisions for His people. This is why the eyes of your understanding are to be enlightened, “that you may know what is the hope of His calling and the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us ward who believe according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand in heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come, and gave Him to be Head over all things to His church, which is His body, the fulness of Him, that filleth all in all.”
And, again, in the same epistle, he prays that they may be “strengthened with might by the spirit in the inner man that Christ may dwell in your heart by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ that passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God.”
And yet, again, in the Epistle to the Colossians (ii, 1-3) he breathes a similar prayer for their coming into the deeper things of Christ. “I would that ye know what conflict I have for you and for them at Laodicea, and for so many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love and unto all the riches of the full assurance of understanding to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” “Let no man beguile you of your reward, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the Head, (ii, 18-19). These are the deep things of God into which we may plunge without fear until we are lost even in an ocean of love.
II. - THE SPIRIT AS AN INDWELLING PRESENCE.
In the third chapter and seventeenth verse he says: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” And, again, in the sixth chapter and the nineteenth verse we read: “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price; therefore, glorify God in your body, which is God’s.” (Revised version). Here we have a twofold indwelling of God, viz., in the spirit and in the body. The indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the human spirit is quite distinct from the work of regeneration. In Ezekiel xxxvi, 26., they are most clearly distinguished. The one is described as the taking away of “the hard and stony heart and giving the heart of flesh,” of the other it is said: “I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them.” The one is like the building of the house, the other the owner moving in and making it his own personal residence. There is a great difference. A man may build a hundred houses, but only live in one or two. The residence depends on many considerations. God only makes that heart his continual home which is wholly yielded to His direction and control. Many would not be able to bear the residence of the Holy God in their hearts, for it is added: “If any man defile the temple of God him will God destroy, for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.”
This indwelling of the Holy Spirit is God’s seal upon the consecration of the soul. It is very blessed and glorious. It makes the heart a throne and the life a heaven. God is no longer far off, or prayer a reaching up to distant heights, but His presence fills the heart and whispers the response to the waiting soul. He brings the Father and the Son to abide within and fills the heart with the peace and holiness, the power and glory of God. This wondrous indwelling of God within us is the greatest dignity and mystery of the new Dispensation. Not in the Old Testament did God come so near. He came upon His ancient saints and servants but not in them. But over and over again swelled the notes of prophecy and promise. “Lo, I come and dwell in the midst of thee.” “In that day it shall be said thy God in the midst of thee is mighty. He will joy over thee with singing.” “I will dwell in them and walk in them and will be their God and they shall be my people.”
And in the New Testament Christ announces the mystery of God as at length to be realized. “The Comforter,” He says, “dwelleth with you (in me) AND SHALL BE IN YOU.” And when the day of Pentecost was fully come it was at last fulfilled. The Spirit of God came in this Living Person to make His dwelling within the human heart, just as He had dwelt in Christ, and henceforth God was united to man even as He was to the Son of Man. “At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father and ye in Me and I in you.”
O, what a dignity and sacredness this gives to the consecrated life. “Know you not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.” This is the secret of holiness, to be filled with the Holy Spirit: This is the secret of victory over self and sin: “The spirit lusteth against the flesh; walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.” This is the secret of power: “Ye shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you. This is the secret of peace and joy: “The Kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” This is the bond of union and the channel of communion with Jesus: “He shall take of mine and show it unto you.” Everything that comes to us from Jesus is dispensed to us by the Holy Ghost. Every true prayer is His inner breath, and every note of praise is His upspringing. O, how we should receive and cherish this Heavenly Guest and give Him the very innermost shrine of the heart’s temple.
But the second passage speaks of an indwelling in the body as well as the spirit. “Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?” This is quite distinct and brings a new experience of physical consecration, healing and life. In the verses just before we are told that the body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body and the members are united to Christ in the holiest bonds. And here he tells us that this is made real through the Holy Ghost, who comes into our body and takes possession of it for Christ, bringing the life of Jesus into it, and uniting it to Him in the great mystery of the Body of Christ. This is not the only place the Spirit is spoken of as the life and healer of the body. We read of Samson that all his physical strength was due to the moving of the Holy Ghost upon his frame. And in the eighth chapter of Romans the Spirit is said to “quicken our mortal body” when He dwelleth in us. So here we can understand how this physical possession of the Holy Ghost should be emphasized in distinction from His spiritual indwelling in the previous passage. The old transcribers were evidently afraid of giving undue prominence to the body in this passage, and, with a tinge of the ascetic spirit, they managed to insert the clause in the last verse, “and spirit, which are God’s.” But the revisers have seen the error and left it out, and the passage stands before us in all its naked simplicity, a glorious plea for our physical salvation through Christ and the Holy Ghost. God is not afraid to give the body its fullest place in the plan of redemption in the work of the Spirit in the body of Christ and for the glory of God. Let us not fear to, but let our body be the glad and consecrated temple of the Holy Ghost, and let Him so live within and shine forth from His own dwelling that we shall GLORIFY GOD IN OUR BODY, WHICH IS GOD’S.
III. - THE SPIRIT IS AN ENDOWMENT FOR SERVICE.
Having taught us the work of the Spirit as our teacher and keeper, the apostle now leads us to consider and understand His great ministry in preparing us for service. To this subject the whole of the twelfth chapter is devoted. Many important principles are brought out in these profound sentences.
1. The whole church is regarded as the Body of Christ.
2. The body is one, the same in every age, possessing the same Head, the same life, the same union with Christ, the same spirit, the same powers and gifts and ministries. There are not two bodies, the one apostolic and the other modern, but we are in the same body as Paul and John, and the least little finger in all the body has a right to the whole power of the Head and the whole life of the members.
3. Every member of the body is absolutely dependent upon the Holy Ghost for the least ministry; so that no man can even rightly confess Jesus Christ as Lord except by the Holy Ghost. It is not natural talent but spiritual gifts that God uses to serve Him in the church.
4. There are diversities of gifts and ministries, but the same spirit works through all, so that all are equally divine and honorable, the service of giving as sacred as that of preaching, the office of a “help” being as high as that of a “government;” indeed, placed before it in the divine category. All have not therefore the same offices and services, yet each may aim to have the best ministries, and more even than one if they can fill them all to the glory of God.
5. The various ministries and gifts bestowed upon the church for all time include wisdom, knowledge, faith, teaching, the working of miracles, the healing of the sick, the government of the church, and all other service in the work of the Gospel.
6. The power for these ministries is not vested in the person to whom they are entrusted, as a personal power and a gift under their own control, but it is simply the Holy Spirit Himself choosing to work through them and using them only as instruments, who have no glory and no power apart from Him, and can only be used as He pleases and leads. “All these worketh that one and self-same Spirit, dividing to every one severally as He will.”
7. Everyone is given some ministry, gift and enduement, which the receiver may improve and increase by humble and holy use. “The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every one to profit withal.” Like the pounds in the parable of Luke xix., we may so improve the gifts the Spirit bestows that they shall greatly multiply, and we become tenfold useful.
Now, these are some of the principles of Christian service. With such resources and such a source of power none need be useless, idle or feeble. The engine of Infinite Power is within reach. We have but to turn on the power and all God’s fulness comes into our weakness and our work. While we are crying: “Awake! awake! O, arm of the Lord,” let us rather hear Him saying: “Awake! awake! put on thy strength, O, Zion!” Blessed Holy Spirit, our Teacher, our Indwelling Guest, our wondrous Worker and self-sufficient Power, to Him be honor and glory, everlasting. Amen.