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The Place and the Work of the Holy Spirit

by T. Austin-Sparks

Conference messages given in October 1934.

Edited and supplied by the Golden Candlestick Trust.

Contents

Chapter 1 - The Holy Spirit's Place and Work

Chapter 2 - The Holy Spirit and the Name of Jesus

Chapter 3 - The Holy Spirit and Illumination

Chapter 4 - The Holy Spirit of Truth

Chapter 5 - The Holy Spirit in Relation to the Believer and the Church

Chapter 1 - The Holy Spirit's Place and Work

"Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, out of his inner man shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believed on Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet (given); because Jesus was not yet glorified" (John 7:37-39).

We take it that a message is something which has been at work strongly and deeply in the heart of a messenger; something about which the messenger himself has been quite definitely exercised, and something which, more than being an activity of the mind in connection with truth, is a conviction of the heart, the result of a real movement of the heart resulting in the coming of such a messenger, either for the first time or again, to some very definite position before the Lord. If it is that which constitutes a message and a messenger, then we have no doubt that we are in the way of a message. We simply mean this: that we bring to you something which has been very strongly and in a renewed way (for it is not the first time) going on in our heart and concerning which there has been, as it were, a bringing back on the part of the Lord to an emphasis, a strength of position, and, we believe, with definiteness of meaning on His part. It is concerning the place and work of the Holy Spirit.

We trust that what is said, though in substance it may not be fresh, may have a newness about it in its application by the Lord Himself to our hearts. There will not be many of the Lord's people who will not be concerned with such a passage as the above; that is, concerned with the flowing out from their innermost being of rivers of living water. That is only one aspect of the many-sided meaning, value and activity of the Holy Spirit in our lives, but we have come especially to that because of the immediate association with it in the chapter: "This spake He of the Spirit... the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified." You will immediately recognise that the advent of the Holy Spirit is essentially related to the glorifying of the Lord Jesus. It is related to the fact that the Lord Jesus is glorified, that is, that He is now at the right hand of the Majesty on High, crowned with glory and honour. All the work of the Holy Spirit is bound up with that fact. The work of the Holy Spirit is the bringing forth of the meaning and content of that fact, to reveal, show and work out in part all the values and the virtues of the Lord Jesus being glorified. It is very important, when we are contemplating the work of the Holy Spirit, that we should know exactly where to begin, and that is our main note in this meditation.

The Starting Place of the Holy Spirit's Activity or Ministry

What is true of the Holy Spirit Himself in that matter has to become true, very really and definitely, in our consciousness. Sooner or later we shall be brought to the place where we are fully alive to the basis upon which the Holy Spirit takes up His work, so that it should be to our help if that is brought before us definitely and clearly. The starting place of the Holy Spirit's work and ministry in the life of anyone, or any company, is the place of recognition of the fact of the utter impossibility of anything without Him.

It sometimes requires time, and often very drastic activities, history or experience, but we may take it as a settled thing that the Holy Spirit begins at zero, demands zero, and stands back until zero is struck. But zero is to be struck in our consciousness; we have to be made aware of its fact.

We are called with a great calling. We are called into the fellowship of God's Son; called to a great life, into living relationship to God Himself. We are called to a high life, a life which is God's own Life in its nature, in its virtues: a holy life, a glorious life, a mighty life, a rich life.

We are called also into a great service, the fellowship of the gospel. It is the greatest work into which man has ever been called - workers together with God; God's fellow-workers. All of us are called into an eternal, heavenly and universal vocation. And yet the fact remains that neither you, nor I, nor any man, can breathe the first breath of that Life, or take the first step in that vocation without the Holy Spirit; and every subsequent breath and every subsequent step is in utter and entire dependence upon the Holy Spirit and impossible apart from Him. He is the vitality of that life and that service, and He is the quality of it. He is the very energy of it, and He is the nature of it.

There is a great utterance of the Lord Jesus which is very far-reaching, and has a very profound meaning: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Now, there you have two creations, and one of those creations is said to be the direct and immediate result of the Holy Spirit. But, mark you, the distinctive feature of that creation is not that it is just produced by the objective fiat or order of the Holy Spirit, as though the Spirit said: "Let it be!" It is not as though the Spirit commanded a creation to come into being, and it came in; as though there went forth a word and a power, and as the result some order of things was constituted. That is only half. The essential thing is this, that the Holy Spirit gives the character to the thing which He brings forth. He gives it its nature and its quality. It is Spirit! It is not merely something produced by Divine power, but something with a certain quality, a certain nature. It is Spirit; that is, right at its innermost reality it is spiritual. That makes possible its relationship to God, who is a Spirit; and because of that, everything else follows.

Take the matter of goodness, holiness. There is no goodness outside of God. That sweeps the board of all the counterfeits, all the false philosophies, the humanitarianisms, and the substitutes of the devil. Even the Lord Jesus Himself will interrogate a man who says to Him: "Good Master". He will say: "Why do you call Me good? There is none good but one, that is, God." There is, of course, a deeper meaning of that interrogation. It carries with it this further interrogation: 'Do you recognise who I am?' But still the principle holds good: "There is none good but one, that is, God." Goodness is inseparably bound up with God.

Nothing that does not come from God can get back to God; therefore, the Holy Spirit must be the quality of that which is going to get back to God. That is the profoundest element in the new birth, being born of the Spirit, that the Holy Spirit gives a Divine quality to that which comes to Him, making it possible for that to come to God; and apart from that kind of birth nothing will ever get to God. From the very first act of the Holy Spirit in new birth, in introducing that Divine quality, that Divine element, right on, all goodness is mediated by the Holy Spirit and is never found anywhere else. You and I cannot produce it, constitute it, provide it or contribute one fragment of it. Every bit of it comes by the Holy Spirit. The increase of holiness, of goodness, of Divine nature, is by way of the Holy Spirit all the time.

When that is taken in its inclusive meaning, it is seen that the life of a child of God is an impossible thing without the Holy Spirit. We cannot live the Christian life apart from Him. But that also means this: that to live the life of the child of God fully, we must be filled with the Spirit. We shall live as children of God in the measure in which the Holy Spirit has possession of our lives, and no more. If the Spirit fills, we shall be living the life of a child of God on a very full scale. If the Spirit is not filling, then our lives as children of God will be at low ebb, or proportionately without the Holy Spirit.

What is true in the matter of the life is true in the matter of the service. No matter how much knowledge there may be, enthusiasm, vigour, interest, activity, the measure of the abiding, eternal, universal fruitfulness is essentially the measure of the Holy Spirit doing the work. It is not for us to judge, but it is for us to recognise facts. It is for us to recognise the laws that God has already laid down. Nothing which is not done by the Holy Spirit is done of God.

That is a challenging statement, and it may raise many problems, and provoke many questions. Nevertheless that fact is sure, and even to disciples who had seen all that the Lord Jesus had to show them in the days of His flesh, and heard all that He had to say to them in those days, and had recognised His cross, and had seen Him after His resurrection, the Word is still: "Tarry ye... until ...". And then from zero: the first breath, the first activity by the Holy Spirit, right on through everything afterwards there must be the activity of the Holy Spirit. When that ceases to be the order of the day, and men assume responsibility for the work of God, you find a different state of things coming in. That is responsible for a very painful history, of which we are all too well aware as having gone on through the centuries.

It is fruitless to contemplate such questions as what would have happened if things had continued as they were at the beginning, and if only we could have had another generation on the basis of the ministry of the apostle Paul. It was said some years ago that if things had continued on the basis of the worldwide activity of the Moravian brethren in their first years, the whole world would have been evangelised in less than a generation. Here today, two thousand years afterwards, the whole world is nothing like evangelised. Why? Well, things did not continue as they were at the beginning, and that is the answer. But it is a very forceful answer. It is a mighty way of enforcing this fact, that, pile up your activities, pour in your energies, and let them be other than the activities of the Holy Spirit, and you spread things over an indefinite time, and never reach your end.

That is taking a wide view, but what belongs to the wide view comes down to the individual. None of us can live or serve to any Divine purpose except by the Holy Spirit.

That means, then, that we shall have to come to that consciousness - in a very real way - of the Holy Spirit's basis of beginning and going on. We shall be compelled sooner or later to take that position, either by force of outward circumstances (and who shall say that that is not moving again today in a very real way, in the realisation of ineffectiveness and inability to cope with the situation), or by reason of our own inward state, our utter weakness, the breakdown in the realm of our own efforts, where we come in every part of our being to recognise that that is something beyond us, we cannot touch it.

Oh! The utter folly of trying to inflate human energy and activity in the enterprise of the gospel, and thrusting out into this universal conflict human stuff upon the basis of: Go and do the best you can for Christ! That spells ruin sooner or later. Oh, that every one who went out into the work of the gospel had first of all been brought to this place of tarrying until they were endued with power from on high, and that under the deep consciousness that the whole thing was beyond them otherwise.

The Lord Jesus kept men near to Him for three years and more, and during that time we have a very clear manifestation of the fact that they were unfit for this work. How they did break down on the right hand and on the left! And how their deepest and strongest confidence in themselves was proved to be the leaning upon a broken reed! One who would with loudest voice, and with truest motive and meaning as far as he knew himself, declare that he would go even to death with his Lord, would be found within a very few hours denying his Lord in order to save his own skin. How little we know ourselves until we are put to the test! The Lord knew quite well that there were big tests ahead for these men. He knew what was in man, and He sought to let them know it, so that they came to the place where they knew so deeply that there was no shadow of a doubt about it, that it was impossible to them. God only must do it, and if God did not do it, then it could never be done.

That is not some advanced point in spiritual life and service. That is the commencing point of the work of the Holy Spirit. It may be that we go a long way before we come to that place, but, mark you, the Holy Spirit has not advanced that way, but has been waiting for the hour when He can say: "Now we will commence! You commenced perhaps years ago, but we will commence now!" That is the effect of it. If you have had an experience at all of an enlargement of the Holy Spirit in your life, you know that when that comes you say: "Why, nothing has happened until now! We may have been very busy, active, energetic, but really we are only just beginning." That enlargement of the Holy Spirit in our lives is now beginning, and when that comes, it comes to us as though nothing ever was before that time.

Oh, that this should really come to us by the illumination of the Holy Spirit Himself! Oh, that you and I should really see that everything, everything - the great comprehensive everything - to the most minute detail in relation to God, depends upon the Holy Spirit.

"Apart from Me ye can do nothing." That is only another way of saying that "Everything, from the first gesture in this realm of Divine things, depends entirely upon Me"; so much so that the very first thing you find about the Holy Spirit in the unveiling of His work is the absolute sovereignty of God in relation to our knowing anything about the Spirit and the Spirit's work.

That needs explaining. What is the first simile used in relation to the Holy Spirit and the child of God? It is 'wind'. "The wind blows..." - at your beck and call, by your command or forbidding? No! It does not say anything like that. "The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit." There is a sovereignty about the wind. It takes things right out of your hands.

Nothing can stand up against the wind. Nothing can control the wind. So is every one born of the Spirit. What was the sound of the rushing, mighty wind on the day of Pentecost? No one has said: "Wind, blow today!" It is not in the power of any mortal to control the movement or the time of the movement of the wind by the Spirit of God; it is absolutely sovereign. There is a sovereignty about this matter of new birth that man cannot bring about. No one can be born again by their own decision, by their own choice. No one can appoint the time when they shall be born again; in spite of all the procrastinators who say: "Not today! Tomorrow! Later on!" When the Spirit moves it is for us to put up our sails, or we may be eternally becalmed if we do not take advantage of that Divine movement. This matter, right at its inception, is altogether outside of man's control, man's power. The sovereignty of the Holy Spirit is its own basic proof that everything is with Him and nothing is with us. What is with us is subsequent. The Spirit moves, the Spirit presents Christ, the Spirit convicts, the Spirit gives the message. What is subsequent to that is our attitude towards it.

We mention all this just to emphasise the fact that the beginnings are with the Spirit, as are the continuations and the consummations. It is all with Him in life and in service.

It relieves us of a great deal of responsibility when we are rightly adjusted. When the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost acted according to His sovereignty, He took the commission right out of the hands of the disciples, and put the disciples into the hands of the commission. Do you see the force of that? "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel". That is the commission. When the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost sovereignly acted they did not have to call a committee and say: "Now we must consider the commission and arrange how it shall be done; and we will send so-and-so in this direction, and those in that direction, and others still in a third direction". It happened! They went! They did not wait for conditions, counsels or commissioning. The Holy Spirit took the thing into His hands. He possessed Himself of the commission, and He possessed Himself of the men. The men and the commission became one, altogether apart from any human arrangement. That is very effective, and very blessed! Oh, to come back to recognise that no matter whether we sit down for days and weeks on end to purpose, intend, and arrange the work of the Lord, we shall never get anywhere unless the Holy Spirit comes and takes charge. And when the Holy Spirit takes charge, things happen. The glorious sovereignty of the Spirit! Everything is with Him.

The Main Objective of the Holy Spirit

There is a remarkable sequence of things in the Gospel by John in this connection. In chapter 1 the object of the Holy Spirit is brought into view. John the Baptist said concerning the Lord Jesus: "I knew Him not...". That is a remarkable statement. There were many men walking about, and John was not able to discern who of all the men about was the Lord Jesus. "But He that sent me... said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending... the same is He...". How utterly that Deity was veiled, that John the Baptist knew Him not. He is the Son of God.

Now note: the Holy Spirit is there related definitely and distinctly with sonship. And while it is true that the Sonship of the Lord Jesus is a unique Sonship, the truth holds good for all others in Christ who are sons of God, that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of sonship, and the object of the Holy Spirit's advent is sonship. Chapter 1 of John's Gospel is always the foundation chapter of the whole Gospel.

Chapter 3 is the commencement of the practical process. Born of the Spirit; there the feature is sovereignty. The wind! The Spirit!

Vessels for the Spirit's Residence

You pass to chapter 4, and you have the Holy Spirit again, but a new development. The woman of Samaria, her vessel let down into the well, becoming full of water. This is used as an illustration, an illustration which falls far short of that which it illustrates. "The water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life." What is the new development? The sovereignty of the Spirit? Yes, but now the vessels of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit becoming definitely resident within distinct vessels. For what purpose? To fulfil exactly the same purpose as that woman's water. Why did she come all this way to draw water? Because she could not live without it! That was all! Cut off the water supply, and you cut off the life. It will not be long before the people are all dead.

Now, you see, to become the very essential, indispensible Life of the believer, the Holy Spirit becomes resident within the vessel. There is no Life without. Everything depends upon Him. From the first breath to the last, all is bound up with the Holy Spirit.

We are seeking to give the Lord something to work upon, as we say all these things, that the Lord will bring it all home to us and show the place which the Holy Spirit occupies.

We will stay here for a parenthesis; somewhat technical, and perhaps theological, but important. It is a false move, and a very dangerous one, to separate between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If we begin to make the Holy Spirit something, or Someone, holding an importance which is apart from the Father and the Son, to say nothing of superior thereto, we are in the way of the greatest peril. To make the Holy Spirit the figurehead, and not to keep in view the equal importance of Father and Son, is to become unbalanced in a way that will open the door to the most terrible deceptions and consequences. The Holy Spirit is working in relation to the Father, through the Son, and the Holy Spirit will never work on His own in relation to Himself. So that the Lord Jesus has to be kept in an equal place with the Holy Spirit, and the Father in an equal place with the Son. It is important to say that. You may not see the force of it just now, but it may break upon you at some other time. But let us be careful that when we are saying so much about the Holy Spirit we do not begin mentally to draw a circle round the Holy Spirit and concentrate on the Spirit. That is the thing which has led to some of the great modern deceptions and ruin in the faith of many.

Making that as a parenthesis, let us notice this further thing.

The Fulness of the Spirit Constituting a Witness

When you pass from chapter 4 of John's Gospel into chapter 7, you pass into a still more... shall we say, advanced, or more fully developed activity of the Holy Spirit. This is what is found in chapter 7: "Out of his inner being shall flow rivers of living water". You are now born again, a child of God, you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and He has become your Life utterly. What must be the result of that? That you have a testimony. Thereby you become constituted a witness.

Chapter 7 takes you to what is transpiring in the temple, the pouring out of the great vessels of water from the pool, celebrating the great last day of the feast. The Lord Jesus takes it all up and brings it over to Himself. What is the temple for? It is the place of the testimony of the Lord, the ministry of God from which there should go forth to the ends of the earth that testimony, which is the testimony of Life. Ezekiel's vision showed the waters issuing from under the altar, from the sanctuary; coming down out from the court, away to empty themselves into the distant ocean, a river deepening and widening all the way. And on this side and on that side were very many trees, and all those trees were bearing their fruit continually and their leaves never faded. All this was the expression of this Life; for we are the testimony to this Life, which comes out of the sanctuary. The Lord Jesus says: "That is you, in My thought! Out from you (your bodies a temple of the Holy Spirit) shall flow rivers of living water; a testimony of Life shall come through." That which issues from you, being the Spirit of the Lord, shall have all the way along that which speaks of the power of that Life, the freshness of that Life, the glory of that Life. That is, wherever the river comes there shall be an expression of Life. That is to be the effect of our being here as indwelt, permeated, and filled with the Spirit.

Not only may we be conscious of it (and this is where we have to walk carefully and watchfully), but so many people want that baptism of the Holy Spirit which will deliver them altogether from a life of faith - for that is the effect of it in their lives. If only they can get that, it will all be senses, and no longer faith; they will know, they will feel! But there is no word in the Scriptures which indicates that being filled with the Holy Spirit will deliver us from a life of faith. Very often it has proved that the most effective work done by the Holy Spirit through a life has been altogether hidden from the one who was used. They never had any consciousness of it being done, but it was done. Years afterwards they have received a letter, or they have met somebody who said: "Do you know, on such-and-such an occasion the Lord spoke to me through you, and from that day to this I have been changed!" And you remember: "Oh, that was the time I had that bad patch, when I thought nothing at all was accomplished." Yes, He often hides His work. And the activity of the Holy Spirit does not mean that we shall not have to go on in faith. It is not always when we feel we are having a great time that the Holy Spirit is having a great time. The flowing out of the rivers is not always a thing that means that we can just splash about in it and have a good time. Sometimes it may be through agony and travail that Life comes to others, death working in us.

Blessed be God, what does it matter (if the thing is done) if we struggle, and other souls are being born, quickened, renewed through our travail. The Lord says: "Out of his inner being shall flow..." That is our privilege, our blessed calling. That is a part of sonship. Birth, indwelling, ministry are all of the one Spirit, and all depend upon Him.

May the result of our meditation be that we come to a place where we do recognise that as for ourselves, everything is impossible and hopeless. That brings us to the last word for the moment.

The Cross Closely Related to the Holy Spirit

That is why we commenced this meditation with the passage in John 7:39: "...this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believed on Him were to receive: for the Spirit was not yet (given); because Jesus was not yet glorified." How would He be glorified? Through the Cross, that is all. Come back to chapter 1, the basic chapter for the whole Gospel, and see the two things related. John looked upon Jesus and said: "Behold, the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world, the same is He that baptizes with the Holy Spirit!" A Lamb, the Holy Spirit. What do you have there? The Cross and the Spirit. You will always find those two things go together. Christ has redeemed us from the curse, having been made a curse for us, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit. The Cross and the Spirit! First of all it is zero; and then the Holy Spirit begins. It is the end; and then He takes up things anew. It must be that way. Every new depth of death is a new fulness of the Spirit. These are old truths; there is nothing new in what we are saying. But, oh, how important!

Doubtless we have assented to all this; but do we agree not to the doctrine, but to the position? It is that or nothing. That is the Lord's Word. Life or testimony, Life or ministry, only by the Spirit. All is possible by the Spirit. Everything is possible in life, in ministry: "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts". The Lord speak His Word into our hearts!

Chapter 2 - The Holy Spirit and the Name of Jesus

Reading: John 7:37-39; Eph. 1:19-23; Phil. 2:9-11.

If you read through the book of the Acts, you will find that there are two main features running right through that book, two things which are uppermost. They are the Holy Spirit, and the Name of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is mentioned some seventy times in the book. The Name of Jesus is mentioned more than thirty times. You will see that they are joined together, they are in operation together. The Holy Spirit has assumed charge of everything, and as He goes forward with His mighty work, He does it always in, through and by the Name of Jesus.

We would suggest once more a perusal of the book, with a view to a fresh impression being made upon you in connection with the place of the Name of Jesus. And you will not get very far into the book before that impression becomes a very strong one, and one which provokes in you wonder and praise.

The fact that these two things are the main features and characteristics of the book is very significant, and bears out so clearly this passage in John 7, as well as the words uttered by Peter on the day of Pentecost about the exaltation and glorifying of the Lord Jesus. In John 7 the distinct and clear statement is by way of comment on the part of the apostle upon what the Lord Himself had said: "...the Spirit was not yet; because Jesus was not yet glorified." The logic is that when Jesus was glorified the Holy Spirit would be; that is, His day would come. And so it proved, that on the glorifying of the Lord Jesus in heaven the Holy Spirit immediately came forth and the first utterances of men under the government of the newly outpoured Spirit were all about the exaltation of the Lord Jesus. Not only were their utterances around the Name, the glory, the exaltation, the Lordship, but their deeds were all in the Name, upon the basis of the Name.

Much later on the apostle Paul is found giving a fairly full explanation of all that happened when the Lord Jesus returned to glory. He says that God "highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the Name which is above every name, that in the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven, in earth, under the earth". Or, again: "raised Him from the dead... Far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." That is the explanation of what took place when Christ returned to heaven. That is the ground upon which the Holy Spirit came.

In the contemplation of the Name of Jesus we have to find the starting-point, and to find the starting-point we have to go a long way back. And we shall be conducted to our starting-point by one very clear intimation in the words we have mentioned. A conjunction will be brought into view: "Wherefore, God highly exalted Him", showing to us that the exaltation of the Lord Jesus, and His being given the title to sovereignty which is above every title, is a thing merited. It is not just something by way of mechanical appointment. It is not something which just represents an office (the office is carried with it); it speaks of a work done by which the title was merited and inherited.

We are linked in the context with a former position occupied by Him, a position of equality with God, which was undisputed on the Divine side: settled, not argued, but simply affirmed. Away back in that dateless time there was, as we know, an aspiration, an ambition in another direction to be possessed of a title, the putting forth of the hand to grasp that title as something to be grasped at. The result of that through long, long, terrible centuries we know only too well. The position of dominion in the universe was sought after, to be personally held out of relationship to God, on a basis of independent action and personal interest. There is the root and spring of all independent action and personal interest, and the fruit is easy to be seen. Its direction was possession apart from God.

We will not dwell upon the dark side of the consequent history, but we do know that a rift or a discord came into the whole universal order through that act. Universal dominion has been shattered, the oneness, the concreteness, shall we say the cohesion, of the universe has been upset; a disintegrating force has been projected against the absolute unity of the universe in its government. If we did but know it, everything with which we are familiar of a spiritual character in the small fragment of our earthly life is just the coming out of that vast cesspool which was created at that time. Every bit of broken fellowship, discord, absence of unity, all these things of which we become aware in the spiritual realm when we become spiritual, as things which are always seeking to break in again to get the mastery once more, to assert themselves. These are not things which just come into the realm of our life as something new, they are like the miasmas from that pit just coming up again, like the rolling clouds coming on across the ages.

Have you seen a great volume of smoke arising from some huge fire, and the breeze carrying it in rolling waves across the fields on, on, and on to the distant horizon? Everything near and far, right to the end of sight, becomes touched by that smoke. You sense it afar off. That is exactly what happened in the spiritual realm away back in that dateless time. And even today when we become spiritually sensitive we sense that thing which has come across the ages, and it has broken up the spiritual unity of the universe.

That spiritual unity of the universe has to be recovered. That one sovereign government, centred in One - not in two, not in a host, but in One - has got to be re-established. All that fruit of an independent action and a personal interest has got to be destroyed, and once more this universe has to come under one Head, one government, one Name, without rival. That is the story of Calvary.

You see that the Name which is above every name, the title to sovereignty above every title, the government unchallenged and unrivalled, is something which is given upon the basis of a work; it is merited. At the beginning the challenge, the ambition, the personal reaching out to possess, was something without merit. It was an unmerited possession. It was something sought ambitiously for self, out of relation with God. That was why it was denied, and that is why the rivalry was set up. It has to be merited.

This fact leads us to the heart of such incidents as the temptation of the Lord in the wilderness. When He was shown all the kingdoms of this world and the glory thereof, and offered them for one moment's worship, the Lord Jesus repudiated the whole. His repudiation carried with it two things. Firstly, this can never be truly and abidingly had as a personal thing out of relation with God; and, secondly, this is a thing which must be won, and can never be had as a gift at any other hand than the hand of Him who has a right to give it. And so He went the way of winning it, to receive it at the proper hands, and that way was the way of the Cross. He became "obedient unto death; yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name". The Lord Jesus possesses that Name by right, as a merit. The Lord Jesus possesses that Name at the hand of God, and into Him we see once more gathered the unity of the government of the universe. In Him again everything is made to hold together, says the apostle in the first chapter of his Colossian letter. It is that cohesion of the universe, that unity, that oneness in Him.

Unity is not something that can be brought about by any kind of human agreement. Unity is a thing which is only possible by the registration of the Name of Jesus in all that that Name contains of a mighty conquest of the forces of disunity. We can never hold together simply because we come to certain sympathetic understandings of one another. We can never hold together because we take one another's imperfections into consideration and agree that we will not take very much notice of them. We can never hold together because we have an understanding upon certain things about which we will be agreed. We shall find that in that realm, and in every such like realm, the devil still has power. The only ground upon which unity of the right kind, of the Divine kind, can be had, is that there exists in all its virtue - the virtue of its mighty, universal victory - the power of the Name of Jesus. We win only in that Name, not as a phrase, a label, but in all the spiritual virtue of that Name; for that Name represents something immense beyond our conception. It gathers up into itself all the mighty, infinite forces of a universal conquest. You can understand why things happened "in the name of Jesus" at the beginning.

It sounds so simple, so beautiful (and some have even foolishly fallen into a sentimental realm) when you read the second chapter of the book of the Acts: "...and had all things common". "And they sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all, according as any man had need." That is all very beautiful and nice, and it sounds like a very friendly little party. But there was something mightier behind it. The Holy Spirit did that, and you and I cannot imitate that. We never can say, "We will have a nice Pentecostal fellowship; we will have things as they had at the beginning, we will arrange it according to this plan!" No! It cannot be done. That was the direct outcome of the advent of the Holy Spirit, and of the Holy Spirit having full possession of those lives. That carries with it this immense truth, that the Holy Spirit had come in relation to the Name of Jesus, that is, in relation to all that that Name represented in the meeting of the full measure of the outcome of that original act in the hand against the throne.

It is a very solemn thing, and places a tremendous responsibility upon us, to contemplate this fact, that any lack of unity, broken fellowship, and discord between the saints for which we may be responsible by reason of any real fault, unwatchfulness, lack of tolerance, unkindness, or for any other reason, is in direct complicity with the devil in its nature. It is not intended by us, but it is that in its nature. Or, to put that in another way, it is a hand against the throne, it is a movement against the testimony of Jesus, and we know only too well that when the enemy has been able to bring that about - and he has brought it about again and again - it has always jeopardised the interests of the Lord Jesus. It has always prejudiced His testimony and it has always taken from that glory which is His at the Father's right hand.

If we are responsible for that, and the Holy Spirit strives with us along that line to get that put right, and warns and urges that that thing shall be put right, and we do not do it, we fall into a most tragic and terrible end; we are involved in that original work of the devil. That is a terrible thing to say, but it is true.

All this is but a way of saying one or two things, which can be said more simply and directly, but which need bearing out more fully. They are these: the Holy Spirit works in relation to the Name of Jesus, but that means that the Holy Spirit establishes all that that Name means of victory upon the ground of the Cross, and which Cross must have its inward application to our lives to destroy the thing that is against the Name. One of the outcomes of that is fellowship among the saints.

Let us put that in another way. What is the basis of true fellowship? What is the basis of real spiritual fellowship? To use the New Testament word, what is the basis of New Testament "unity"? It is threefold: it is the Cross dealing its death blow to all that which has come in, into man, into the universe, through Satan's original act; it is the Name as representing the One in whom we are united, the Lord Jesus; and it is the Holy Spirit who is working from the victory represented by that Name, on the ground of the Cross in us. The threefold basis of Divine, spiritual, indestructible unity is the Cross, the Name, and the Holy Spirit.

It is very blessed to see the spontaneous outworking of that in the New Testament. It just came about then. The Cross accomplished, Christ glorified, the Holy Spirit come; all those three made good in the lives of a company of men and women, and you have such unity as you can never find elsewhere outside of that realm.

From that point onward the enemy will be busy to bring back something of the old ground. It is not long before He finds occasion in someone who has not come on to that ground of their utter death to self, personal interest and independent action. What were the governing things in the life and action of Ananias and Sapphira? Personal interest and independent action. It is as clear as anything can be. The enemy found that ground in them, and sought to break in upon that whole regime of Holy Spirit fellowship in the Name of Jesus. It was a blow against the testimony. What was the end? The end was terrible, awful. It was also swift! And things had to be swift in those days, because the Lord was laying down laws for the whole dispensation; and so He quickly made His laws operative for our instruction. Sooner or later something like that will happen in every similar case; that is, a disastrous end will come.

We do not know why we are specially urged to stress this subject: unity and spiritual fellowship. But it comes up in a very strong way, because it is clear that the result of the enemy's work at the beginning was to divide this universe, to send schism right through it. What then, is the means by which that will be rendered inoperative, nil? It will simply be as the Cross is really wrought into our being, getting rid of every kind of personal interest and independent line of things where things are toward ourselves and for ourselves, out of the universal relationship.

There are some very clear, strong, and obvious examples today in certain realms where the subjective aspect of the work of the Cross is refused. In those realms you find the largest number of discords, rifts, breaks in fellowship, divisions and schisms. That is perfectly clear. You do not need spectacles on to help you to see that.

To put that the other way round: where the strongest fellowships are to exist, which hell cannot upset and the devil cannot destroy, will be the place where the Cross is most deeply wrought into the life to destroy anything that is of a personal and independent character when you and I are brought to the place, through that deep inworklng of the Cross, where nothing matters to us personally - and sometimes the test is closely applied. It is easy to say things like that, but it is not always easy to be made a doormat of, or even less than that, to be put up in a corner and never taken any notice of at all. You might even save yourself by a spirit of martyrdom by being a doormat, but to be excluded from all recognition at all is more than human nature takes kindly to.

When the Cross has been deeply wrought into our being, you and I are brought to the place where nothing of a personal character matters. When truly before God - not as we think or imagine, for we do not know ourselves - but before the eyes of Him who is able to look through and see every film, every mist, every little taint of self, it really and truly is the Lord's glory alone which matters, then you have a fellowship, a unity, which hell cannot touch, which the devil cannot break into. That represents a deep work and application of the Cross of the Lord Jesus, and the work of the Holy Spirit is to that end. The Spirit of holiness is always seeking to get rid of every taint of self which forms a suitable ground for satanic activity; He is always seeking sanctification, and when He works that kind of sanctification, He is working in relation to the glory of that Name.

The Name of the Lord Jesus is wonderfully glorified in the second chapter of the book of the Acts because self has gone out, and the Cross is deeply represented in their spiritual state. There is no other way! What a mighty thing real spiritual unity is, and what a great work lies behind it. And what a great means of bringing the glory of that Name into view. We cannot stand in the Name of the Lord Jesus and have any personal interest. Those two things are mutually exclusive; they cannot go together. If there is a personal interest, the power of that Name is set aside. That Name is the Name of Him who had no personal interest, who above all others in this universe had personal rights, reputation, position, and emptied Himself of every bit of it all, and so emptied Himself as to be obedient unto the death of the cross. Was there ever a more emptying means than the death of the cross? Now the Name shines with its pristine glory and splendour, because in His case there was not found a trace of self. "Wherefore also God highly exalted Him...". The whole sovereignty and government of this universe is potentially, and will be presently, consummately, and actually concentrated in the Name of Jesus, and gathered up into His sovereign Headship. Every element that disputes that will be before long ruled out from this universe, and He will reign without rival, without the slightest suggestion of disputing His rights.

He will reign whose right it is to reign. But let no one think that is just because God appointed Him to that. That is because He has attained that position through a course which was just the opposite to that adopted by the one who sought to obtain that same end by personal motives. We shall only know the operation of the power of the Holy Spirit in the measure in which the Cross has dealt with all that ground in us.

There is a price associated with power. Human nature has in it a deeply rooted craving for power. It takes different forms, it may be of different kinds, but it is there. In the simplest form of expression it is that in us which dislikes being thought nothing of. The modern phrase, 'inferiority complex', is an expression which goes right to the heart of human nature. It is the consciousness that you are no good, worthless, and that is how everyone else regards you. It is only perhaps the lowest level of this thing, which expresses itself in many other forms and along more intense lines: a desire for power, place, recognition, reputation. From its lowest level it rises to the great world despotisms, the grasping at power that is in the whole human race. We have to have our ideas of power entirely revolutionised, turned inside out and upside down when we come to the Lord Jesus, and we have to recognise the infinite significance of a Lamb in the midst of the throne.

Why have a lamb and a sheep been chosen pre-eminently throughout the Bible as the type and symbol of One whose destiny it is to reign universally and have dominion from sea to sea? Well, try on any other creature what you can try on a lamb and see the result! Take a goat and see what you can do with a goat! We speak reverently, only by way of illustration. Take a pig and see what you can do with a pig. Take any other beast, and see what you can do! Take the lamb and the sheep: they are unresisting, without a sound, yielding, uncomplaining. Therein is the sublime symbol: He was "led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is dumb so He opened not His mouth". That is yieldedness; that is self-losing; that is the absence of the uprising of personal strength to stand up for its own rights. That is the thing that is going to be represented in the mightiest power that this universe has ever known; but it revolutionises our ideas of power. We come to dominion by letting go, and not by standing up for our rights. We shall learn to reign by learning how to be emptied of all desire to reign as a personal desire. That is what is in the Name.

We may come into a mighty battle over a situation, and we never get through that spiritual battle, though we may be appealing to the Name, applying the Name, until we have been searched through and through as to whether we have a personal desire bound up with this thing; a personal interest in it. The whole issue is suspended until the fire has discovered anything of self, and when that has gone, the way is clear. Very often it is not in the intense fire and conflict that we get through. The heats are too great. It is when we come to the place of helpless prostration and say we can do no more, and we surrender to the Lord, that the thing just goes through.

The power of the Name is the power of Divine virtues wrought into the very depths of human nature, the human nature of the Lord Jesus. That Name is the Name which rests upon a perfected human nature through all the fires of personal testings. He has triumphed as a man in every kind of testing, as to whether He would act out of relation to God, out of fellowship with His Father, or with Himself in view, for His own sake and for His own ends. But never for one moment could He be diverted one hair's breadth from that utter selfless fellowship with His Father, not on any consideration, though He might escape the cross and all that the cross held. If any offer, bribe, suggestion, trick or threat carried with it the idea of disloyalty to His Father, or acting out of fellowship with Him, or serving His own ends, then the thing could not be entertained whatever the cost: "Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name." It is the virtue of all that that is in the Name.

When we are going to live and labour in the power of the Name, it represents a spiritual position to which we have come through faith, where for us the Cross means nothing for ourselves, and all for Him; no interests whatever of ours to be taken into account, only His. Upon that the Name can come. The Holy Spirit has come to produce in us that state which is in Him at God's right hand, in order that all the power of that Name might operate in us and through us.

In the midst of this great realm we simply struggle for expression. How infinitely and universally wonderful is the Name of Jesus, when you get back to the starting-point and see what it was, and what it has been all through the ages, that was the ground upon which that Name had to be secured! What terrible work has been done because one wanted a name for himself. What mischief, the result of one wanting a name for himself, a reputation, a position, and an influence for himself. The history of these many generations of misery is the history of that one act. And whenever there is any kind of reproduction of that sort of thing, you have in measure a continuation of that state: unhappiness, discord, loss of peace and rest, and all such things. But when He comes, and in Himself and in His Cross takes up the whole thing from its root upwards and deals with it in His own Person, and carries to glory a mighty, all-inclusive triumph over those works of the devil which He was manifested to destroy, the Holy Spirit comes.

The Holy Spirit comes to make real in us that work of His Cross, and that power of His Name. When we ask for the Holy Spirit, let us recognise what we are asking for. The Holy Spirit must have empty vessels. There is a lot in that word "empty". The Name of Jesus must have the Cross as its foundation. It is the great "wherefore"; the Cross leading to the Name in its mighty, infinite potency.

The Holy Spirit is here to glorify the Name of Jesus, and that necessitates the making good of all the virtues that are represented by and bound up in that Name and reproducing in the heart of the believer the state that that Name represents of an utter selflessness and an utter abandonment to the glory of God.

We have only touched the fringe of this thing. There is so much yet for us to know. The Lord bring us into the place where we can truly glory in the Name of Jesus.

Chapter 3 - The Holy Spirit and Illumination

Reading: John 14:15-18, 25-27; 15:26-27; 16:7-14.

It is necessary to mention a few technical details before we come to the real value of these Scriptures. In John 3 the symbol of the Holy Spirit is "wind"; in John 4 it is "water"; in John 7 it is the water again, a river, or rivers. When you come to this second triad of references, you find it is not symbols, but direct teaching. Quite a clearly marked change is found here, and this change has its reason.

In the first three passages you are dealing with the unsaved. When you come to these chapters you are dealing with disciples, those in close and believing relationship to the Lord. So that you pass from the elementary forms of teaching by symbols, into the realm where things can be stated quite plainly and clearly without any illustration. Here you are dealing with people who are in faith relationship to Christ. Then we are able to understand and appreciate the value of these particular statements. These things cannot be said to unbelieving people. The things which are here uttered, can never be given to those who are not in a faith relationship to the Lord Jesus. These things demand that basis. And yet they are prospective utterances. So far as this Gospel is concerned, they are looking on to a time which has not yet arrived: "When the Comforter is come, whom I will send...".

For us that day has arrived, and that means that we are in the time now, not necessarily of waiting for these things, but the time when these things are immediately available to us and ought to be our blessed possession. A faith relationship to the Lord Jesus is necessary. Given that, there need be no waiting.

What are the things that are said? What is it here that is to be ours by the Holy Spirit? We will look at those things.

For the moment it is not necessary, and perhaps it would be without significance, to indicate that we are dealing in the second half of this Gospel with the collective side of things. In the first half we are dealing with the individuals: Nicodemus, the woman at the well, and all those chapters, right up to chapter 10, are related to individuals, and unsaved individuals. Now from chapter 10 onwards the collective comes in.

A further stage is reached in chapter 20, in relation to the Holy Spirit. From chapter 10 to chapter 17 there is the collective, and in chapter 20 the corporate comes in. There is a distinction between the collective and the corporate. The Lord is dealing with a company in these chapters, especially from 10 to 17. When you get to chapter 20 you are on resurrection ground. The Lord Jesus, coming into their midst in resurrection, says: "Peace unto you; as the Father has sent Me, even so send I you." Then He breathed on them and said: "Receive ye the Holy Spirit." That is making a company, a collection, One Body.

The Inward Illumination of the Spirit

We return to chapter 14, verses 15-17: "If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive; for it beholds him not, neither knows Him: ye know Him; for He abides with you, and shall be in you." Verse 20: "In that day ye shall know...". It is a very simple truth, but one of great value; so great is its value that to be without the realisation and enjoyment of it means to be in a very unsatisfactory spiritual state, in a state of great weakness, the weakness of the kind that ought not to be. It is that great value of inward illumination: He shall be in you! The world cannot receive Him because it knows Him not, it sees Him not. "In that day ye shall know."

The two things are set one against the other. On the one hand there is ignorance, darkness, blindness, and a state of incapacitation. The world cannot, because it sees not. It cannot because it is blind. But He shall be in you; at that day ye shall know. What a great blessing is ours now by the appropriation of faith, of inward illumination by the Holy Spirit. The value and importance of that being ours in an active way cannot be estimated. To be without that means to be in a state of helpless weakness in our relationship to the Lord. Many times we have said, and it must be repeated with renewed emphasis not only now but perhaps continually, that one of the greatest needs of the Lord's people today lies in this very direction.

If we were to range the whole state of things which go by the Lord's Name today, and to understand why it is that they are so unsatisfactory as an expression of His mind, we should probably discover that this thing goes to the root of the whole situation: it is that the Lord's people, or those who bear the Name of the Lord, have become parts of a great external Christian order and system, as differing from the Holy Spirit's illumination of the things of the Lord within their own hearts. That does go to the root of matters. On the one hand it means ignorance, it means incompetence, inefficiency, inability to take spiritual responsibility. It means exposure to almost anything which comes along which has a semblance of truth. It means openness to all manner of error and falsehood and deception. It means being carried about by every wind of doctrine at the devices and cunning craftiness of men, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. All that is because of the absence of inward illumination by the Holy Spirit, and much more than that.

Turning from the disastrous and unhappy effects of such a state, let us view the thing positively, that it is true that for you and me the Lord has met this present provision by giving the Holy Spirit of inward illumination on all matters concerning Himself, which also concern us. Spiritual strength, real sonship, is marked by that, that there is a real present, definite, personal, living inward knowledge of the Lord by the Holy Spirit, and nothing can substitute that. The stress laid upon this is born of the sense of the tremendous need of these days that the Lord should have strong, virile, spiritually competent children, that His family should not be composed of those who have very little, if any, immediate inward knowledge of Himself. This is the only thing to save from all the wreckage of the satanic campaign of deception. To send men and women out into the world who are not going to be easily caught by things which look like the truth, but are not; to have men and women who are able to take responsibility in relation to other lives also, for their preservation, their protection, their safeguarding, their holding in the way of Life, it is necessary that the Lord has those who know the Holy Spirit in the direction of inward illumination.

It is a blessed thing to notice that the first thing that the Lord Jesus says to those who are in a living faith relationship to Himself is this thing. This is not necessarily something at an advanced point in the spiritual life and you and I must grow and grow until we reach a certain point, and then we become possessed of spiritual inward illumination. We have seen those leap into this thing in the very early days of their spiritual life; that is, that almost from the beginning we have been able to discern their own personal walk with the Lord in which they were able to say: "The Lord is speaking to me; the Lord is showing this and that to me; the Lord has been saying so-and-so to me!"

For many this thing is not strange, but it is something they are already enjoying, something which is very real to them. If it is, then we are not speaking to you, but we are today tremendously exercised concerning a far-reaching state of things which is very much other than this, and which explains an appealing spiritual condition among multitudes who bear the Name of the Lord. The whole of their Christian life and order of things is external to themselves, is bound up with a regulated, systematised order of Christianity in which they operate, but for them to know the voice of the Spirit, to be led by the Spirit, to be illumined by the Spirit concerning the Lord is another world.

It is not necessary to go further than simply to think of such a system as the system of Rome. It is an atrocity from this standpoint. Look at its results. Look at what can be done. I have been into the most solemn feasts of the Roman Church, where men and women in crowds at the moment of the elevation of the 'host' have prostrated themselves, and literally perspired, writhing in agony. Ten minutes later, in a brawl they drew knives to stab one another. That is taking an extreme example. You may modify the thing, and to some extent get much higher levels of Christianity than that, but still it may be all external and outward. The only thing that will ever bring us to the place of spiritual maturity, to the satisfaction of God's heart and express true sonship, is that which was true of the Lord Jesus when as man on this earth He walked under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, knowing in His own heart what the Father was saying, and what the Father was doing. That is the present value of the Holy Spirit for us.

We may as well take these things as they come, and note that these things are provided already by the Lord, and given that we stand on the right ground of faith in all the work of our Lord Jesus in His Cross, we can have these things by the appropriation of faith now. We do not come into things willy-nilly, and we do not come into these things automatically. God has made His promises and His provisions, but He desires something on our part before they can be made good to us. We have to recognise these facts, and look them straight in the face. First of all, God has definitely provided,= on the ground of the Cross of the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit; and one of the values of the Holy Spirit being given is inward illumination. Now, how is that going to be made good in my case? By the appropriation of faith! "Lord, that is Your provision; I stand on the ground of the Cross of Jesus Christ by faith, put in my claim for that, and appropriate it!" We shall find that it works, and we begin to know the Lord in a new way. But there must be a definite transaction with God on everything that He has offered, before it becomes an actual possession. You say, "As a child of God, born again, surely I have the Holy Spirit?" There is all the difference between having and enjoying; and very often there is all the difference between having and living abidingly in the knowledge of what we have. But it is not a matter of having the Holy Spirit for everything. It is a matter of the Holy Spirit being able to make real all those things specifically in our experience. That comes by recognising the things, and exercising faith in relation to them.

The Spirit's Witness to Christ

"But when the Comforter is come... even the Spirit of truth... He shall bear witness of Me: and ye also bear witness" (John 15:26-27). The question is: how shall the testimony of Jesus be maintained? That is a very big and important question. There is only one way, and this is it: "He shall bear witness of Me". But, mark you, this again is the Holy Spirit's witness in the believer. Then the outward thing follows: "and ye also bear witness". The Holy Spirit is not going to bear witness to Jesus apart from instruments, but the witness of the instrument is subsequent to the witness of the Spirit; that is, the witnesses bear witness, because already witness has been borne in them.

That is how it was on the day of Pentecost. That is how it has ever been. What is the ministry of the church - that is, not of a special class in the church set aside to be ministers, but the ministry of all believers? It is the maintaining through the dispensation of the testimony of Jesus. How shall that be done? In no other way and on no other ground than that the Holy Spirit has borne witness in the church, that is, in all believers to Him.

Now follow this closely, for it is important. We shall see by this how it is possible for every believer to be in the ministry of the age, of the dispensation. That is our calling. What is it that constitutes us ministers of Jesus Christ? In other words: who are those that maintain the testimony of Jesus through the age? It is simply this, that the Holy Spirit bears witness to Him in us. What is the witness of the Holy Spirit to Him? That comprises everything. Have you tried to range the content of the Lord Jesus? Have you ever sat down to try and draw up a list of all the values and virtues that are in the Lord Jesus? I have tried once or twice, and given it up. I thought one day that I would make a magnificent diagram, and catalogue all the things that are in Christ for us. I did not get very far, and will never try again. The content of the Lord Jesus can never be ranged, but there is in Him that which meets our need to a detail from A to Z. Whatever the need could possibly be in our life in relation to God, that is already in Christ for us. You will never, by any possibility, emergency or chance, come into a situation or a position in your life in relation to God, and in your service in relation to God, without provision already being made in Christ for that specific thing.

Now, what is the witness of the Holy Spirit to Him? It is the revelation for you, at all points, and times, and crises, and emergencies in your life, of that particular value in Christ to meet that particular need. So that as you go on in the Spirit He is just showing to you Christ in His manifold, many-sided, inexhaustible sufficiency for your life.

You may come to a position which you do not know how to meet; you see no resource for it. A new crisis has arisen, and the Holy Spirit must show you just how Christ meets that particular situation for you. That is the Spirit's witness to Christ, and that is the testimony of Jesus, the Holy Spirit maintaining it in us as a living, progressive thing. It is not that the Holy Spirit showed us ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago that Jesus is the Saviour and there it stopped, but that every week, month, perhaps day since, the Holy Spirit has been witnessing to something more of Christ in us. That is the testimony of Jesus. And right to this very day there is something that the Holy Spirit can show to us of the Lord Jesus which we never saw before, and bring the testimony right up to date. That is the church's ministry, that today - not ten years ago - I have a Christ who is right up to date in meeting my need. If the church had maintained that position, what a different story there would have been! The testimony today has resolved itself into a set of doctrines and creeds, and theological interpretations, the philosophy of Christianity and all that sort of thing, instead of this experimental reality by the Holy Spirit.

How shall the testimony be maintained? Not by our preaching certain facts as contained in a book, but by our testifying to those facts having been made living realities by the Holy Spirit in our hearts. "He shall bear witness of Me... ye also bear witness...". That is what ministry is.

The World Ministry of the Glorified Christ Carried out by the Holy Spirit

"Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send Him unto you. And He, when He is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement. He shall glorify Me: for He shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you" (John 16:7-14).

A wide range is now brought in. It is the Holy Spirit moving out in the wide range of the world in relation to the glorified Christ. Every bit of this statement relates to Christ personally. "Of sin, because they believe not on Me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father... of judgement, because the prince of this world hath been judged" (v. 9-11). Who did it? Christ! It is the threefold work of the Lord Jesus: "They believe not on Me". Therefore they are convicted of sin. How does that apply? Well, He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, and if they do not believe that, then they are convicted under sin, they still remain under sin. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1). But if you have not believed that He has borne your sin, you are under sin, and the Holy Spirit's work is to bring that home.

"Of righteousness, because I go to the Father." Convicted in respect of righteousness "because I go to the Father". That is another aspect and a very blessed aspect. The question of righteousness is all settled if Christ gets through to the Father. Surely the object of His coming was to deal with the whole question of righteousness. God requires righteousness, and will not set aside one iota of His requirement. In His own Person the Lord Jesus provided God with what He wanted, and because He did that He was able to go to the Father. Seeing that He is altogether righteous, He goes to the Father. Now the Holy Spirit comes to convict in relation to the fact that in Christ God has found what He wants - righteousness. And the whole righteousness question has been settled, and is represented by the Man in the glory.

"Of judgement, because the prince of this world has been judged". Again you come to the darker side of things. This is a terrible contemplation for a sinner convicted of judgement. Upon what does judgement rest? This: that you are in the same company as the devil, the prince of this world who has been judged. If you have not accepted the Lord Jesus, you come under that judgement, and you company with the devil. There is no judgement in Christ. We are delivered from judgement in Christ, altogether delivered. The fear of death and the fear of judgement has gone for ever for those who are in Christ, but the Holy Spirit convicts of judgement where we are not in Christ, and says that we lie under that judgement that the devil lies under. God never intended that; God never intended hell for any man or woman. Hell was never brought into being for you or for me, or for any man or any woman. Hell was made and is reserved for the devil and his angels, but there is the awful possibility of our being in league with the devil, in complicity with the devil, and we are there by nature if we have refused the Lord Jesus. We are said to be by nature children of wrath. Why is that? Simply because there is a spiritual, hidden alliance between all in Adam and the devil. Adam brought about that alliance with the devil, and broke his alliance with God; and all the children of Adam are in the alliance which Adam brought about by disobedience to God and obedience to the devil.

Christ has come and borne the wrath in our place, to deliver us from the wrath. Faith in the Lord Jesus means that we are saved from judgement, but the Holy Spirit is here to tell us that if we are not in Christ, there is inescapable judgement. The world ministry of the Holy Spirit is in relation to Christ. He bore our sin; therefore we need not bear it. He provided righteousness for us that we may come to God. He delivered us from judgement by bearing the judgement Himself. The world ministry of the Holy Spirit is related to Christ in glory, because of what Christ has done by His Cross.

Men under the government of the Holy Spirit have ever been used to raise those major issues. Through their preaching, conviction of sin, of righteousness and of judgement has resulted. That is the work of the Holy Spirit.

If we are out of Christ the sin question lies at our door; we are responsible. We have to answer to God in the matter of all righteousness. Can we do it? We have to face sure and certain judgement! Are we ready for it? The Holy Spirit would convict concerning these things, but He is pointing to One who has borne the sin, so that we need not bear it; One who has provided us with a righteousness which we could never provide for ourselves; One who has swallowed up our judgement in His Cross. The Holy Spirit bears witness to Him, the Christ who has gloriously accomplished all that work for our salvation. That is world ministry concerning the glorified Christ.

So we reach the final word. What is provided for us in the Holy Spirit? God has given His Spirit, and the Word says that He gives His Spirit to those who ask. You can have a no more beautiful, effective presentation of the whole case than that which is found in Luke 11. See how the Lord Jesus deals with this matter. He says: "Of which of you that is a father shall his son ask a loaf, and he give him a stone? Or a fish, and he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he give him a scorpion?" (v.11,12). Which of you would do that? You say: No man in his right mind, unless he was a perfect fiend would do a thing like that! It only wants an ordinary ground of loving parenthood to at least not do that, but if bread is asked, to give bread, if possible. Well, then, if you parents and you, even at best, being evil "know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" (v.13). "Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you" (v.9). All that is related to the Holy Spirit.

We have to recognise the necessity of the Holy Spirit, the values of the Holy Spirit, and the meaning of the Holy Spirit and then, convinced to the very depths of our being that we cannot go on without the Holy Spirit, we come and seek, knock, and ask, and He will not withhold.

Chapter 4 - The Holy Spirit of Truth

Reading: John 14:16-17,26; 15:26-27; 16:12-15.

It is good for us to dwell upon some of the values of the Holy Spirit. The very things said about the Holy Spirit, the things which are commanded with reference to the Holy Spirit, are themselves indications of our need, that just show exactly what the Lord knows to be our need. He indicates both need and supply by the very phrases and terms in which He speaks of the coming and activity of the Holy Spirit. It is upon some of these that we shall dwell.

Notice how in these passages there is one designation given to the Holy Spirit three times repeated. It is: "the Spirit of truth".

Surely there is a significance of no small value in that the Lord Himself so repeated that title of the Holy Spirit, that in speaking of the other Comforter or Advocate He should repeatedly call Him "the Spirit of truth". It must carry with it something to be taken account of. On the surface, of course, it would seem to mean that the Holy Spirit would impart and bring forth truth. That is true, but that is not the whole meaning of the phrase. The Holy Spirit has always brought truth to light, but there is a deeper meaning in the Lord's title, and if we could really get that deeper value it would be some enrichment to us. It is something which we individually need, and which the Lord's people as His church very much need.

It would sound quite commonplace if we were to say that if only the whole church all the way through from the beginning had remained under the absolute government, control and direction of the Holy Spirit, a much greater testimony to the glory of Christ would have been found in this world than there is. That is a very ordinary kind of statement, but when you begin to look into the meaning of the Holy Spirit's government, control, direction and ministry in general, and break it up and analyse it, you become more and more deeply impressed with the tremendous and indispensible values of that ministry. And in this one connection alone, as the Spirit of Truth, there are two values which cannot be overestimated, and which, if only they were found in their place among the people of God, would count for very much to His glory.

As the Spirit of Truth He Represents Something Extra to the Scriptures

He represents for the church, and for the Lord's people, an extra something to the Scriptures. The Scriptures are the Scriptures of truth, but no one can really get the good of the Scriptures and in a living way enter into the living values of the Scriptures, except by the Holy Spirit. That, again, sounds a commonplace statement, but how searching it is!

Think of all the handling of the Scriptures that has gone on for twenty centuries! It can, in the main, be divided into two: the morally intellectual and rationalistic handling of the Scriptures, and what it has led to - a desert, a wilderness, a desolation. The result is that all the authority of the Scriptures has been set aside, and man's intellectual equipment has become the authority in the place of the Word of God. On the other hand, the merely mental taking hold of the Scriptures, not in a rationalistic way, a critical way, nor in the realm of antagonism, or opposition, or question, but in quite earnest, sincere, honest and devoted attention to the Scriptures; a mastery of the Scriptures, a great comprehension of the content of the books of the Bible and of the Bible as a whole - honest, earnest, devoted, sincere as it may be - can know very little more Life than the other. There may be a great knowledge of the Scriptures, and yet a dead knowledge for all really spiritual purposes.

There is a classic illustration in the New Testament of what we are speaking about, in the case of Apollos. It was said of Apollos at one time of his life, that he was in a place of responsibility in the church, that he was a man mighty in the Scriptures. And yet it is disclosed almost immediately afterwards that the people under his ministry had never heard of the Holy Spirit's advent and presence.

When the Lord Jesus thus speaks again and again of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth, He touches a very real need, and shows that the Holy Spirit provides for that need, that there is an extra something to the Scriptures without which even the Scriptures cannot get us into the realm of real spiritual fruitfulness. There is only one realm in which you may have anything extra to the Scriptures, and that is the Holy Spirit's interpretation of them, the Holy Spirit's illumination of them, the Holy Spirit's quickening of them in our hearts. The Spirit of Truth is just that extra and indispensable factor.

There is the truth concealed, but the Spirit of the Truth is necessary to make that concealed truth a revealed truth. There is a great deal of difference between knowing truth through the Word of God by the Holy Spirit's revelation, and knowing truth as a statement in the Word of God. It is that which discriminates between what is, after all, without vital energy and that which is throbbing with Life.

We are saying nothing for the moment, of necessity about ministering the Word. It is possible for a very dead and unenlightened person to preach the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit to quicken the Word and make it live in some heart. But what we are saying emphatically is this, that unless the Holy Spirit does that, even the Word, though it be the Scripture, will fall short and fail. There is no special charm attached to the Book as a book. The value of the Book is that the Holy Spirit, who gave it, uses it; otherwise it can be used to death and not to Life. And so you can find that even the Scriptures in the hands of one thousand different men can be given at any given point one thousand different interpretations. And the Holy Spirit does not give one thousand different and contradictory interpretations of the Word of God.

As the Spirit of Truth He acts as a Check Upon all Things Said and Done

What a factor that would be today in the church, if it were really operating! A check upon all things said! Do you know what it is to say something and the Holy Spirit act as a brake upon you, and tell you at once that that is not true and you had better put that right? Do you know what it is to have said something and find that when you have said it the bottom has fallen out of everything, and you cannot go on and that thing comes back to you? You feel there was something not quite right about that? Do you know what it is for the Holy Spirit to register in you, after you have said something, a sense of: 'You will have to think about that again; we have not finished with that yet'? And you know quite well that something has been buttonholed and you have to come back to that later on. And when you come back to the thing and get more light, and go over it again, you say: 'Well, my light on that was very imperfect, and I was dangerously near making a mistake, and the Holy Spirit knew it.' He is acting as a check upon things said. What a factor that is in ministry, and in life in the general intercourse of the Lord's people. If you know that, it surely indicates that you are in the hands of the Spirit.

Think of the wider ranges of the whole testimony, the whole ministry of the church as well as of the individual conversation. What a factor for preserving things in absolute purity is the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit! It is almost unthinkable, beyond our imagination, what a different state would prevail if that had always been the case in the history of the church! Think of all that has come in, that has not been checked up and ruled out as wrong, and has come to hold sway. Why? Simply because the Holy Spirit was not there in control. It never would have been, if He had been in His place.

Then as to things done as well as said: "They assayed to go into Bithynia; and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not... having been forbidden of the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia" (Acts 16:6,7). We know the fruitful result of that checking of action by the Holy Spirit, that Macedonia immediately became open. If on all things in our lives there was just that checking of action by the Holy Spirit, how much fruitless activity would be ruled out, and how everything would be conserved in a realm of fruitfulness.

These are only suggestions as to the necessity of the Holy Spirit, and it shows what the Lord has provided for His church. That is the nature of the church's government, of the life of the Lord's people who will walk in the Spirit; the Spirit of Truth giving the Lord's own thought in Life about things in His Word, checking the utterances and activities of His people. If you think about it in the realm of comparison or contrast with what there is, you will see how inestimable is the value of the Spirit of Truth. We shall never say a wrong thing without knowing that we have said it. We shall never do a wrong thing without knowing all about it. We shall be having a wonderful, living unveiling of the Lord in His Word by the Spirit of Truth.

There are certain other things which are said about the coming of the Spirit of Truth. We are shown that there would be an effect in the different parts of the life and constitution of the believer.

The Effect Upon the Mind

You will see from the Word, if you read it with this thought before you, that the coming of the Holy Spirit had a wonderful effect upon their minds.

a) Illumination

In the first place it was in illumination of the mind. The Lord Jesus said it would be so. "He shall take... and show" (John 16:15, AV). "I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot... now" (John 16:12). "Your capacity is such now that I cannot say it; when He comes that capacity will be enlarged, and you will be able! You will see what now you cannot see, even though I were to say these things! You will understand what it is now impossible for you to understand, even though I were to go on talking! But when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, there will be a wonderful change in your minds!"

Paul more fully dealt with that matter, and it is a point to note that he dealt with it at what we may call quite an advanced point in the life of the church. When you get to the letter to the Ephesians you are getting into a fairly large realm of revelation. You are certainly not at the beginning of the Christian life when you are in the realm of Ephesians. You are coming to ultimate things; unto the profoundest things; you are in the realm of the mystery which had been hid from all ages and generations. The apostle there, in relation to believers who may have a lot of revelation, a lot of truth, prays that they may be granted a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. This matter is going on and on, and ever on, and Paul, the aged, will still have the longing to know Him, even at the end. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the illumination of the mind concerning the Lord Jesus in an ever-growing way, right on, continuously.

We find that blessed movement in the case of the disciples themselves. How their minds were arrested! How difficult it was - no, impossible - for them to understand what He was saying! How they betrayed their failure to grasp the inner meaning of all that He had been saying! The depravity of human nature is never more terribly exposed than when you come into the place of the upper room. When you think of all that is represented by at least arriving in the upper room, and all that being together there means at that time; the atmosphere saturated with pathos and the tragedy of the cross; the gathering shadows which all must have felt; and yet in that upper room, when they had been sitting together with Him at the table, and the bread had been broken, and these unspeakably solemn things had been uttered; even there the depth of the hopeless depravity of human nature is possible, and they had to quarrel as to who would be greatest, and stand upon their dignity and allow Him to act the servant in their presence. Yes! This thing is so deep, so strong, that it comes out in the most sacred moments, the most solemn hour. It betrays itself when you would think the very last thing in all the world that could ever insinuate or show itself would be personal interest. It comes out even there. How it shows the denseness, the leadenness of the human spirit to understand.

Over against that dark picture of impenetrable leadenness of spiritual apprehension, what a glorious change in so short a time, when you find now they have apprehended; but not only have they apprehended, a proof that it is spiritual apprehension is shown in the fact that it is all now unto Him. You can tell how much spiritual apprehension people have, not by their talk, not by their phraseology, not by their grasp of Scripture, but by their selfless conduct, by their selfless, disinterested devotion to the Lord. That is how it was with them. You find a wonderful insight into the things that the Lord had said. Through the letters and writings afterwards you are able to see that what they did not then grasp, now they have grasped. They have seen right through now. The Holy Spirit has come as the Spirit of illumination to their minds.

It is a great day when what we have been hearing, what we have been listening to, what has been coming to us as words, is suddenly lit up in our minds and we see it aglow with Divine light and glory. We find that we have been in possession of treasures of the value of which we knew nothing. What a value that puts upon the Holy Spirit!

I sometimes wonder what would happen if all that we knew about the Lord in a mental way suddenly did become quickened into Life by the Holy Spirit. We speak about the wonderful work of the apostolic days, but what was at the heart of it all? What was it that was represented by that ministry which really did turn the world upside down, and which registered such tremendous Divine force upon this earth? You say: 'It was the Holy Spirit!' Yes, but how? They had seen the Lord as they had never seen Him before! They had entered into the spiritual and living meaning of all that He had been saying and doing. They had never seen it, but now it was all alive in its true, Divine value, and they entered into it, and their hearts were just full of wonder.

Let us take an illustration from the Old Testament. You know the Old Testament type of Pentecost. You know that the first feast of the Jews was the Passover, and at the Passover time, the harvest time (for harvest time commenced with the Jews from the very first day that the sickle was put in) the first ripe grain was gathered - a very precious sidelight on the Lord Jesus, the Firstfruits of the harvest - and the Passover marked Israel's redemption. Israel, as it were, was the firstfruit brought out of the world in redemption. The harvest commenced. It was a process. Fifty days after the Passover and redemption from Egypt, they found themselves at Sinai. What happened at Sinai? The law was given! And more: the tabernacle was given! The tabernacle was brought into being bit by bit, fragment by fragment, every detail according to a Divine, heavenly pattern. And when the tabernacle was in order, every part in its place, the whole structure perfectly arranged, the Shekinah Glory descended and filled the tabernacle. That was the first Pentecost, fifty days after Passover.

You have the Lord Jesus as the Passover, and fifty days after there is Pentecost. What was Pentecost? The glory of the Lord coming in to make living all that which (perfectly true, absolutely accurate, quite right) was as yet dead. In the case of the tabernacle every law has been obeyed, every commandment observed, every detail attended to according to specification, the whole thing is finished, perfect, and yet dead, not operating, not functioning, until the Shekinah Glory descends, and then it all becomes alive. It is all throbbing with Divine possibility. And so at Pentecost the doctrine is all represented, the teaching may be all there, there will never be any teaching extra to what is existing on the day of Pentecost (you will have a fuller illumination of what does exist, but you will not have anything extra), it is all there. The disciples could have gone out and preached it all as a comprehensive system of truth, but it was dead until the fifty days expired, and then the Shekinah Glory - the Holy Spirit - descended and filled it all, and it became living.

That is exactly what it was that lay behind the effectiveness of their ministry. It was not that they were preaching certain truths. It was that the glory from above had entered into those truths in a living way. The Holy Spirit had made every bit alive in them. What a difference it makes.

Shall we not agree from our hearts as never before that the Holy Spirit is essential? And does not this explain weakness, failure, and ineffectiveness? We preach the truth; it is not that we are not orthodox, it is not that we are preaching something contrary to the truth, but so often it falls short. It is all so absolutely and perfectly right, and yet it lacks something. Have you not met that again and again? You have to say: 'Well, I can find no fault with what is said, but there is something that is not there which ought to be there. It is immaculately correct, but...!' What a lot there is hanging upon that "but".

b) Conviction and certainty

We have only spoken about the illumination of the mind. There were other effects upon their minds. There came to their minds a mighty, new conviction and certainty. We cannot get away from that. These men are sure, they are certain; they are not speaking surmises, they are not guessing, they are not saying: 'Well, I suppose...!' or: 'So to speak!' No! It is their declaration, with absolute certainty. It is a work of the Holy Spirit. They knew!

The Effect Upon the Heart

There were also different effects upon the heart.

a) Sanctification

We have suggested as much in what we have said as to their personal interests, relationships with one another, their quarrelsomeness - like little children quarrelling for first place, and so on. Now their hearts by the Holy Spirit are sanctified, and the root sin of all sins is dealt with, and that is self. If you can get to that, you have touched, I should say, everything that you can touch, for all other forms of sin are traceable in some way or another to self. Sometimes it showed itself in what looked like quite reputable forms: "I will follow Thee even unto death" (Matt. 26:35); "I will lay down my life for Thee" (John 13:37). That is magnificent self! It is self-confidence. Self-confidence is self after all, and it is proved incapable of getting through in Divine things. But now the root sin is dealt with, the backbone of self is broken, has snapped. The Holy Spirit did that. The heart is sanctified right at that point, where all things are touched; self is smitten with a fatal blow.

Self may at some subsequent time lift its head, but in the spirit it will be known immediately what it is. That is, there will be the recognition of the fact that it is forbidden, it must not be, it cannot be. There has been something done which, while it has not eradicated that thing from the whole nature, represents that that thing has been smitten with a mortal wound, and the one who has come that way knows quite well that, even though self should at some time seek to express itself, it is a deadly realm, something out of bounds, you dare not go over there, and you are glad to get back again. Death lies registered upon self when the Holy Spirit gets in charge. It is always like that. That is the secret of sanctification. It is the smiting of that root thing, so that all other out-growths of the life are selfless, and there is a great abandonment to the Lord, shown in a great devotion to His children; a heart devotion to the Lord's interests, as represented in men and women all around.

b) Assurance

Not only was there a mighty conviction and certainty in the mind, there was heart assurance. One of the blessed things that you are able to trace through apostolic ministry is heart assurance. If you would only pause to think about that, you would find that the apostles were marked with wonderful, grand assurance of heart. It is one of those things which we cannot appreciate as spectators. Standing back without the same experience, the same knowledge of the Holy Spirit, we simply say: "If I were put into circumstances like that, my faith would give out, I could not believe any more! Do you mean to tell me that that great catalogue of sufferings, afflictions, distresses, all that that meant, did not disturb their assurance of heart? I do not understand that! If I went through all that I could not believe God's love, God's wisdom! I could not see how that could all be to the glory of God!" But the assurance of heart through it all is a marvellous thing. They come out of these things, they come through these things, and their hearts are undisturbed, they are as sure of the Lord as ever they were.

They do not hesitate to tell you that they were perplexed and bewildered. We can believe that they were perplexed sometimes, "Pressed out of measure"! (2 Cor. 1:8). Anybody who knows something about pressure can sympathise with that. And yet all the time there is that counter thing, represented by a glorious series of "but's": "Persecuted, but..., cast down, but ..." (2 Cor. 4:9, AV). This is not mere human optimism. There is something more than that here. This is the strength of a victorious Christ brought into the heart by the Holy Spirit. This is the Holy Spirit in the heart; and who shall say that we do not need the Holy Spirit in this respect?

c) Rest

Heart rest by the Holy Spirit. This is an extra element.

We shall go no further with the fact of the Holy Spirit in them and upon them, as it is seen in other realms of their being. But this is enough to once more bring us to the place where surely we shall continually seek to have these lives of ours under the complete government and in the complete possession of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the glorified Christ.

Chapter 5 - The Holy Spirit in Relation to the Believer and the Church

Reading: Acts 19:1-7.

In meditating in the Word we have been impressed with the striking absence of that in the New Testament which is in the nature of a declaration that the Holy Spirit is indispensible. There is very little indeed in the New Testament in the nature of a definite statement that the Holy Spirit is indispensible. That may sound strange, but it is very significant, for it is all so much in the nature of assumption. It is taken for granted. The Lord Jesus, for instance, begins to give definite teaching on the coming of the Holy Spirit. He speaks after this manner: "It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you" (John 16:7). The rejoinder might be: 'Well, we would sooner have You! We are quite satisfied with You! Why should we want another?' But in the very statement of the Lord there is clearly an indication that it was supremely important that the Holy Spirit should come, and that He was coming. He did not say definitely and positively: 'You can never do without the Holy Spirit!' He took it for granted. It was assumed.

Take these words again, from Acts 19. Paul came to Ephesus and found certain disciples, and said to them: "Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed?" (Acts 19:2). It is taken for granted that that is the natural course of things. It is assumed that the life of believers is a life in the Spirit, and the question was clearly prompted by what was to the apostle a very manifest absence of what ought to be in the normal course.

This attitude, shall we say, of the New Testament toward the matter of not declaring in a downright way the necessity, but assuming the necessity of the Holy Spirit surely implies one or two things.

In the first place it implies that the promise of the Holy Spirit must have been well known among the Jews. That means that, so far as the Jews were concerned, the Old Testament must have created in them the knowledge that the Holy Spirit would come one day as their essential, indispensable Life. That is, that everything was hanging upon that day when the promise should be fulfilled. That would lead us back to the Old Testament and a study of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament.

On the other hand, it implies that there must have been in the main, definite teaching on the matter among the Gentiles; for if the thing were taken for granted in this way, and surprise is felt when another state of things is found in one place at least, that must imply that it was the general thing, the rule, to bring before the Gentiles the fact that the Christian life is a life in the Holy Spirit, and that the Christian life falls far short of its real meaning if the Holy Spirit is not there and in evidence.

So that what we are led to from both of these implications, as to the Jews and as to the Gentiles, is that the Christian life in the New Testament is represented as a life in the Spirit, and it is clearly shown that anything else is not really the Christ life. In the case of the Corinthians and the Romans the contrast is presented between walking in the Spirit and walking in the flesh, and it is made perfectly clear in those letters that a walk in the flesh is not the Christ life. Or, on the other hand, the Christ life is the life in the Spirit, and to speak of the Christ life is only a stronger way of speaking of the Christian life, or the Christ life is the Christian life.

Having that as our foundation, we come to look at a few things of a primary character and importance pointed out in the New Testament and made very clear in connection with the Holy Spirit.

Christ Known and Glorified by the Holy Sprit

The first, perhaps the most important thing, is that Christ will be known and glorified in the measure in which the Holy Spirit is in possession and operation. That is very simple, but it forms the foundation to all else. We may put it in another way: the measure in which Christ will be made glorified is the measure in which the Holy Spirit is in possession and in operation. In our individual lives, and in the life of the church there will be no more manifestation of the great heavenly fact of Christ being glorified than there is the possession of us, and the operation in us, by the Holy Spirit. His all-inclusive and supreme object is to express in believers and in the church what actually exists in heaven, so far as the Lord Jesus is concerned. He is glorified there. The Holy Spirit cannot make Him any more glorified than He is, but the Holy Spirit has come to express the fact that Christ is glorified in believers and in the church.

The day of Pentecost saw the expression of the great heavenly fact of Christ being glorified in the church. What took place at Sinai fifty days after the redemption from Egypt, when the completed tabernacle was filled with the Shekinah Glory, took place in spiritual reality on the day of Pentecost, fifty days after the Passover in Jerusalem. The glory descended and filled the house.

We are not looking for further descents of the Holy Spirit; in that sense He is here. When the glory filled the tabernacle in the wilderness all that remained for the eye of the people was not the glory but a cloud. The glory was within, concealed, and, so far as that was concerned, they had to move in faith. That glory, as we know, sometimes manifested itself. In judgement the glory appeared at the door. The result of the appearance of the glory at the door of the tabernacle was very terrible, as a rule in awful judgement of some sin that had crept in. It was a terrible thing to see the glory in that dispensation. But for the greater part of their history they had to go on believing that the glory was inside, and not seen; that it was concealed, And very largely through this dispensation we have to move in faith as to the presence of the glory, the Spirit of glory. Faith is the means by which we know the glory.

We have said that the presence of the Holy Spirit even in power does not always mean that we are taken off the plain of a life of faith. Some people are asking the question: All this teaching has been in the church for a long time, and many have enjoyed something of the experience of it, but what about the manifest evidence and results? The answer to that question has already been given, that very often the greatest manifestation of the working of the Holy Spirit is entirely concealed from our senses, and we are not conscious of it. Things are done, and we only discover years afterwards that they were done in some lives. We did not know at the time. Mighty things, revolutionary things, were done in lives, things which demanded the infinite power of the Holy Spirit to do them, and we knew absolutely nothing about it at the time. Perhaps you say: 'Then how am I to know whether I have the Holy Spirit or not?' What we are seeking to do through this exhortation is to bring home to our hearts, as the Lord enables, or as the Lord will do through His Word, firstly, the absolute necessity of our lives being completely governed by the Holy Spirit, then what that means, and then what the basis of such a life is. The rest remains with us as an exercise before the Lord, to see to it that we stand on the Lord's ground in this matter.

The first, and the all-pervading fact brought into view by the New Testament in connection with the Holy Spirit, is that Christ in glory will only be expressed in us in the measure in which the Holy Spirit has possession of us, and is allowed free operation in our lives.

The Holy Spirit Making Essential Truth Become Clear and Living

The function of the Holy Spirit is that illumination by which all essential truth becomes clear and living. The Lord Jesus said quite distinctly that that is what would happen when the Holy Spirit came. This is of great importance, that all essential truth should be made clear in our hearts, and living. That is the function of the Holy Spirit. We shall not get far without that, and one of the great results of that will be this: the bringing about of oneness of mind upon all vital matters. In spite of the situation as it is in the world today, in spite of the diversity of mind, interpretation, and things so diverse that it seems a hopeless situation, in spite of it all, though there may be ten thousand different and contradictory opinions on, and interpretations of, vital truths, we nevertheless affirm without any hesitation, that where the Holy Spirit is absolutely dominant there will be oneness of mind upon vital truths; absolute oneness.

It is necessary that it should be so for the constituting of a distinctive and definite testimony. It is the Holy Spirit who is in charge of the testimony, and today one of the characteristic weaknesses of Christendom is its diversity of opinion upon vital matters. It has no solid face to present to the world upon vital matters. It is divided and broken up into innumerable fractions and pieces upon things which are of primary importance, and that simply means that the Holy Spirit, for some reason, has not absolute sway, or absolute government. We cannot hope to remedy it, and we are under no illusions that what we are saying may clear that world situation up. But we speak within a certain compass, within perhaps a very limited range. If you and I are completely under the government and dominion of the Holy Spirit, we will come to the same position on all things that are of vital importance, and coming there, there will be a testimony in definiteness, and distinctiveness, and in power, by reason of that oneness which cannot be by just one or two being in that position. It must be the work of the Holy Spirit. It is His work. He would do that, and if He gets hold of us, what is wrong and erroneous will go, and what is right and true will become our mutual position, and we shall have one voice and one mind on those things which really do matter to the Lord. That is no small thing.

Perhaps we do not know the tremendous value of the apostles being of one mind at the beginning; that is, the spiritual impact of it, not just that men listening to them were listening to men who were all agreed upon certain things and prepared to say exactly the same things. There was in the realm of spiritual intelligences, and in the whole spiritual realm, the registration of something done by the Holy Spirit. It was represented by a spiritual oneness of mind; and spiritual oneness of mind is something which has power in it. You can get a dozen people together to discuss certain things, and after a process of elimination to arrive at certain conclusions to which they all subscribe; and then say that you have got a state of oneness, and begin to work upon a common platform. That may lack a mighty impact as out from God. But when the Holy Spirit does a thing like that, there is something behind it which brings heaven in, brings God in. You cannot come to a position like that by saying: "I agree with certain terms of expression, certain conclusions, a certain position, certain statements, certain doctrines; I agree to such-and-such a testimony!" No! You must come into that by the Holy Spirit, and unless you are there as the result of the Holy Spirit's bringing you there, and bringing you together on that basis, that element will always be lacking. Yes, things are being said, and so far as the language and the terms are concerned, it is all the same; but there is a difference, and that difference represents a hole in the bag, through which there is a leakage of power.

If you are not able to appropriate and appreciate that, do ask the Lord at any rate that, so far as all vital truth is concerned, you may be absolutely under the government of the Holy Spirit, and wherever there is another one in that position you will find yourself in spiritual agreement, and that is going to count for the Lord. Oh, that the Lord should secure today in all parts of the world yet a company of those who have come to oneness concerning the truth by the Holy Spirit!

This is one function of the Holy Spirit among other things: the making of one mind on all vital matters.

The Holy Spirit Bringing Elevation

The result of the Holy Spirit being in possession is manifested in an elevation. That needs explaining.

We see in the book of the Acts that when the Holy Spirit possessed these men and women who comprised the church, then they were lifted above all the natural, human elements of unsaved men and women. That elevation was unaffected by all the differences of nationality, disposition, character, or any other difference. That elevation was unaffected by persecution, threats of death, or any other thing. You notice this happened: that whereas there had been national prejudices - Jews could not tolerate Gentiles, and Gentiles could not tolerate Jews  and then in a whole series of other differences of constitution, temperament, make-up, disposition, outlook, likes and dislikes - you find that that whole realm of things was transcended when the Holy Spirit ruled in the lives of these people. Jew loved Gentile, and Gentile loved Jew, and it was as though they had moved into another realm altogether where they were unaffected by these things. They are lifted above the ordinary human elements of unsaved men and women. And if they went into a place utterly hostile to them, and to which by nature they would have been hostile before, and if that hostility against them showed itself and they were persecuted, threatened, and made to suffer, they were still above it all. That is, they did not come down to meet that on its own level. They never answered back on that plane at all. They were above it.

They acted as though they had swept that whole thing on one side and were after one definite object. That object necessitated their ignoring all this. Supposing they had taken it on, as the way. As Jews they went into Gentile cities, and the Gentiles said: 'These hateful Jews have come here!' And supposing those Jews had taken that on, and said: 'They hate us Jews!' and then they had reacted from that natural point of view. What hope would there have been? The fact that they triumphed is a mark of their having come entirely out of that realm, and they were lifted above all human considerations. It was a moral ascendency, and so they were able to go right on without being affected by the activity and the operation of all these natural elements in unsaved men and women.

That operates today when a man or a woman, with the love of God shed abroad in their heart, goes to a country where the people by reason of their history, social conditions, religious state and all other conditions, would be naturally hostile, and such a one is nevertheless unaffected by it, but goes on. That does not mean that they are unconscious of it, but they are unaffected by it. Even when the thing breaks out upon them in persecutions, in open antagonism, the natural features are not allowed to rise up and influence conduct, but there is a movement as above it, and a winning through because of that.

We know quite well that if we are going to live upon the natural level of differences of make-up, temperament and all that sort of thing, and be constantly taking that into account, there will be no glory for the Lord Jesus, and there will be no spiritual progress. The necessity for us, even as Christians among ourselves, is that we should know something of that moral elevation, that we should be unaffected to the point of reaction on that level by those things. This is a work of the Holy Spirit. It is a marvellous thing as you look at it.

National prejudice is a very strong thing, and it can go a long way, even with Christians. But the Holy Spirit lifts right above all those things, and it is necessary. The thing may work out in other directions, where even among ourselves it is necessary constantly for fresh energisings of the Holy Spirit to get on top of what is human nature in one another. There will be no spiritual progress otherwise, and no glory to the Lord. That is exactly what is in the book of the Acts. The Holy Spirit getting possession lifted them onto a level where these natural, human elements did not touch them or in any way cause them to react wrongly. That is one of the great secrets of their victory in all these places where they were met by the flesh.

That is exactly what the apostle means when he says: "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds" (2 Cor. 10:4, AV). What is that? A mighty ascendency above what is natural. It is a mighty weapon! Think of how the enemy strives to get us down to the place where we answer back in the flesh, and take things on their own level, and be even with them. The devil is always trying to get us down there and when he does, it means defeat every time. While we remain in the Spirit, which means to be above that, what a tremendous weapon it is! It means that the enemy is robbed of his power; he is disarmed.

That is a work of the Spirit, and who shall say that that is not necessary? We are all conscious of the necessity of that everywhere, in all directions. That was a mark of the church at the beginning. The Lord bring a fresh, mighty inflow of the Spirit to that end among us all.

The Elevation by the Holy Spirit Bringing Unity

The chief glory of that elevation is seen in the spiritual unity of believers. There will never be any real spiritual unity in any expression, in any enjoyment, in any manifestation or concrete way, only on that level, in that spiritual elevation above human nature; in other words, only insofar as the Holy Spirit has full possession and government. But the chief glory of that work of the Holy Spirit of lifting us above the level of natural and unregenerate humanity, is seen in the spiritual unity of believers in which there is displayed a reconstituting of human relationships; for the Holy Spirit reconstitutes human relationships. He disposes of one constitution of human relationships, which is no relationship at all - it is all clash, strife, friction and consciousness of limitation in the realm of fellowship - and He reconstitutes human relationships upon a basis of fellowship, love and brotherhood in the purest sense, as differing from the human relationships which are selfish, individualistic in outlook, and competitive in action.

The Holy Spirit takes up the whole matter of human relationships within the company of God's people, and reconstitutes those relationships upon this basis of love and fellowship; and that is the chief glory of this new level, this elevation. Perhaps that seems a very technical or academic way of saying what could be said in simpler language. It just amounts to this, that when the Holy Spirit really has His way in us, He brings about a glorious family life, a holy family life, where what is merely personal is dismissed, what is merely individualistic goes, where what is selfish is ruled out, and the family lives for the family - for one another.

That is what is in the book of the Acts. What a company! Read the end of some of Paul's letters, and look at all the names and you will see that there are as many different temperaments as there are names. Not only are there different nationalities, but there are even more differences of temperament and constitution, outlook, make-up, and yet you have a family spirit marvellously displayed. In those first chapters of the book of the Acts, how wonderful is the display of that family spirit. It would be interesting to know exactly the former life condition of all those people of whom it is said that they sold their possessions, and had all things common, and met together in this fellowship, continuing in fellowship and breaking of bread. It would be interesting to know just what their former life was. It would be interesting to know what you could have done with them apart from the Holy Spirit having come upon them, how far you would have got in realising that position, coming to that ideal, without some mighty Divine activity outside of themselves. A lot of people have tried that sort of thing many times, but it does not last very long; it breaks down. But here you have it. It is a wonderful thing. Without any conference, discussion, arrangement, it simply happened by one Divine act. That is a work of the Holy Spirit, and that needs to be recovered. When the Lord can get that, He has a display of His glory, He has an expression of the triumph of His Cross, He has something which speaks very audibly and eloquently of that which no man can bring about.

We are saying all this in order that we shall be led definitely to the Lord about having our lives governed by the Holy Spirit. Give the Lord no rest until you are assured that your case has been placed quite definitely before Him, and that, so far as your side is concerned, the thing is understood by the Lord as to where you stand. Leave the rest to Him. We do not suggest that you reach out and strain after some great external manifestation of the Holy Spirit, but we do urge that there shall be a definite and continuous understanding with the Lord that our lives become Holy Spirit filled and dominated, to all these glorious ends which we are considering.

There are two things, one as to the individual and the other as to the church, which are marks of the Holy Spirit's real work within.

Assurance and Sealing as God's Testimony to Acceptance and Sonship

As to the individual, a basic work of the Holy Spirit is assurance and sealing as God's testimony to acceptance and sonship. That is a simple, and perhaps an elementary thing, and yet even here in so many the evidences of the Holy Spirit are lacking. Let us repeat that: a basic work of the Holy Spirit is to bring about assurance and the knowledge of sealing, as God's testimony to our acceptance and our sonship. For all uncertainty as to our acceptance, for all weakness of assurance as to our sonship, the need is the work of the Holy Spirit. That is His business; that is His work.

There are many of the Lord's children today (it must be said with regret and grief, but it is true) who lack that settled assurance of their acceptance, and that knowledge that they are sealed by the Holy Spirit, and that God has borne testimony in their heart to their acceptance and to their sonship. The Holy Spirit would do that work in us if we recognised that that is His work, and that we would definitely have a transaction with the Lord about it in faith. There is something wrong and the Holy Spirit has in some way been superseded, overruled, set aside, quenched, grieved, if any child of God comes to a place where they doubt their acceptance with God, and have no assurance of their sonship. It is made perfectly clear in the Word that we are sealed by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit becomes the seal in us of our acceptance, and the witness to our spirit that we are children of God. "Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father". It is that uprising within our hearts from the Holy Spirit of the word "Father". It is a great thing really, out of your heart, to be able to say, "Father". We can speak about the Fatherhood; we can have a mental acceptance of Fatherhood; we can recite prayers which call God our Father; we can move in that realm religiously, but there is something mighty in the coming right out from our inner being, with that strength of assurance and rest, and the real expression of our spirit: "Father!" You hear that in the cross of the Lord Jesus. Oh! what a mighty triumph that was, that, "Father..."! If ever there was a triumph in this universe, it was represented by that one word as uttered by Christ on the cross. He had just passed through the full judgement of sin; the wrath of God, all the waves and billows passed over Him. He had gone out into the wilderness. He had gone out from the presence of God, excluded, God-forsaken, to all the terrors of the lost. He had tasted that cup, drinking it to the dregs, the cup of God's wrath only just before, then there broke from the depths of His Being one word: "Father... into Thy hands I commit My spirit." There is triumph in that one word when it comes in that way. There is something matchless in it.

It is in exactly the same realm that the apostle says: "No man can call Jesus, "Lord" except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 12:3). We can call Him the Lord Jesus, speak about the Lord Jesus, believe He is the Lord Jesus, but there is something more in that being borne right out from our innermost being with Holy Spirit meaning: "Lord Jesus" just as Christ said: "Father"! There is something in the Holy Spirit utterance of this kind that is more than all our religion, doctrine and theology.

The Holy Spirit would establish in us that assurance, and give us the knowledge of our acceptance and our sonship. Lay hold of that by faith! Make it yours! Do not argue! Do not stand outside wondering if perhaps it may be. It is! It is yours! Stand into it! He has come to do that for you.

Qualification, Equipment and Power for World Ministry

As to the church, the Holy Spirit represents qualification, equipment, and power for world ministry. That is a subject in itself, but it is clearly revealed in the New Testament.

The Holy Spirit Moving in Closest Relation to the Cross

The Holy Spirit always moves in closest relation to the cross. That means, for our present purpose, that none of these things can be true, we can have the knowledge of none of them, only on the ground that what Calvary represents is the position in which we stand. The Cross does represent our end, our death in Christ, and until we have really accepted that position quite definitely and deliberately, facing all that it means, with the great comprehensive, many-sided: "no longer I", all that we have said about the Holy Spirit has no meaning for us.

We said that something has happened if our assurance has been shaken; the Holy Spirit has been set aside. How do you set the Holy Spirit aside? By setting aside the ground upon which the Holy Spirit works, that is, the Cross. That is making the Cross of none effect in some way or another in our lives. The Holy Spirit must have the Cross as His basis of activity.

I am a profound believer in baptismal regeneration, and I found my position upon John 3:5. But what do you mean by baptismal regeneration? What is the water? It is the testimony to your sharing a grave with Jesus Christ, your being baptized into His death. Then subsequently comes the question of the Spirit. First the death, then the Spirit. That is the order in the New Testament. Baptismal regeneration is not that you are regenerated by going into a bath of water, but by going spiritually into that which is represented thereby. There is no regeneration until you have shared Christ's death, been planted together with Him in the likeness of His death. The Holy Spirit works always in relation to the Cross: "Except a man be born of water..." (that is the symbol; that is the type of your birth with Christ, your sharing His death) "...and of the Spirit". (That is subsequent, because the Spirit comes after the Cross, upon resurrection ground). These two things go together: "Behold the Lamb..." - "He shall baptise you with the Spirit".

The Basic Thing is Death and Burial Union with Christ

Our last emphasis is an old one, but it is the indispensable one. You may struggle after the true expression of the Holy Spirit in any of His ways of ministry and blessing, but you will struggle in vain unless you have accepted once and for all this basic position of death and burial union with Christ as to the entirety of your Adam relationship and life. When that is accepted as much by faith as anything else is accepted, and there is the understanding with the Lord that there is the driving of a stake clean through that old life, you know quite well that he has been struck his mortal blow. Although that old life may wriggle, it knows the stake is through; although that old life may sometimes let you know that he is still there, you know quite well that something has happened to you, and you cannot do as you once did. You are not free to do as you once did; you dare not. Every time you move in that realm, or toward that realm, you find yourself smitten again. You come under something that you cry to be delivered from, and you are glad to flee from that ground. Thus you are made to know that something has happened, that the sword of God has gone clean through that Adam life, and God is against it.

That must be our position. Before the Holy Spirit can take up His work we have to come to an understanding with the Lord that He makes us know that. The Holy Spirit will act upon that, and for ever after will make us very sensitive to what is of the Lord and what is of ourselves. We shall not need to be told; we shall know. The amazing thing is that so many of the Lord's people do not recognise what is themselves and what is the Lord. A real problem is how many good Christian people there are who can accept what is obviously and manifestly untrue, and never in their own hearts hear the Holy Spirit say to them: 'That is not true! Do not believe it!' They take it, and carry it on, and use it. But the answer to that and all such problems is a life more utterly lived in the Spirit. If we were moving as governed by the Holy Spirit I do not believe that we could believe a lie about anybody without knowing somehow that it was a lie; that we could accept a report about anyone which was false, and the Holy Spirit not say in us: "Be careful; that is false, against one of My own." Would to God there were more of the regulating ministry of the Holy Spirit. He is willing and wants to do that, and it is necessary.

Herein is the force of the appeal. Do let us ask the Lord to bring these lives of ours to that place where the Holy Spirit really does dominate them, and that we shall never move in any way contrary to the Lord's mind without knowing it. That is a high level! Let us aspire to it. It is not impossible. If we know it a little (most of us can testify that we know it a little), we do know that if we have heard something which was not true, the Holy Spirit has said: 'Prove it first; make sure; do not take that as it stands, there is another side to that.' If we know it in that measure, surely we can know it more. If the Holy Spirit will go that far with us, surely He will go farther still. Let us ask the Lord that this may be.