The Ministry of the Spirit - A. J. Gordon (fantasy novels to read TXT) 📗

But sinning is one thing and a sinful nature is another; and we see no evidence in Scripture that the latter is ever eradicated completely while we are in the body. If we could see ourselves with God's eye, we should doubtless discover sinfulness lying beneath our most joyful moments of unsinning conduct, and the stain of our old and fallen nature so discoloring our whitest actions as to convince us that we are not yet faultless in his presence. Only let us gladly emphasize this fact, that as we inherit from Adam a nature incapable of sinlessness, we inherit from Christ a nature incapable of sinfulness. Therefore, it is written: "Whosoever is born of God cannot sin, for his seed remaineth in him." It is not the nature of the new nature to sin; it is not the law of "the law of the Spirit of life" to transgress. For the new-born man to do evil is to transgress the law of his nature as before it was to obey it. In a word, before our regeneration we lived in sin and loved it; since our regeneration we may lapse into sin but we loathe it.

3. The Spirit of Glory: Our Transfiguration. "The Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you," writes Peter (1 Peter 4: 14). Let us recall this apostle's habit of dividing the stages of redemption into these two, "the sufferings of Christ and the {119} glory that should follow," in which he seems to conceive of our Lord's mystical body, the church, as passing through and reproducing the twofold experience of its Head, in humiliation and in subsequent exaltation. Even in the time of her humiliation she has the Spirit of glory abiding on her, as the cloud of glory rested down upon the tabernacle in the wilderness during all the pilgrimage of the children of Israel. And is not Peter's saying the same as Paul's, in his picture of the suffering creation: "But ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body" (Rom. 8: 23). Not yet have we reached the consummation of our hope, at the "appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus 2: 13, R. V.); but the Spirit, through whose inworking power this great change is to be wrought, already dwells in us, giving us by his present quickening the pledge and earnest of our final glory. And so we read in another Scripture: "But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you" (Rom. 8: 11). It is not our dead bodies which are here spoken of as the objects of the Spirit's quickening, but our mortal bodies—bodies liable to death and doomed to death if the Lord {120} tarry, but not yet having experienced death. Hence the quickening referred to has to do rather with the vivifying of the living saints than the resurrection of the dead saints.

Of course the consummation of this vivifying is at the Lord's coming, when those who have died shall be raised, and those who are alive shall be transfigured; but because of the Spirit of life dwelling in us, who shall say that the process has not even now begun? To explain: "Behold I shew you a mystery," says Paul; "we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump" (1 Cor. 15: 51, 52). That is, as at Christ's coming the dead saints will be raised, so the living saints will be translated without seeing death. A change will come to them, so far as we can understand, like that which came to Jesus at his resurrection—the body glorified, all of mortal and earthly belonging to it by nature eliminated in an instant, and the Holy Ghost so completely transforming and immortalizing it that it shall become perfectly fashioned to the likeness of Christ's glorified body. But having the Spirit dwelling in us we have, even now, the first-fruits of this transformation in the daily renewing of our inward man, in the helping and healing and strengthening which sometimes comes to our bodies through the hidden life of the Holy Ghost. Sanctification is progressive, waiting to be {121} consummated in the future; so is glorification in some sense progressive, since by the presence of the Spirit we already have the earnest of the glory that is to be. As Edward Irving beautifully states it, condensing his language: "As sickness is sin apparent in the body, the presentiment of death, the forerunner of corruption, and as disease of every kind is mortality begun, so the quickening of our mortal bodies by the inward inspiration of the Spirit is the resurrection forestalled, redemption anticipated, glory begun in our humiliation."

When is sanctification completed? At death, is the answer which we find given in some creeds and manuals of theology. This may be true; but we say it not, because the Scripture saith it not. So far as we can infer from the word of God the date of our sanctification or perfection in holiness is definitely fixed at the appearing of the Lord "a second time without sin unto salvation." Our sanctification, now going on, is glory begun in us; our glorification then ushered in will be glory completed in us. The Spirit of glory now working in us brings forward and already works within us the beginning of the perfect life. Because we have been made "partakers of the Holy Ghost" we have thereby "tasted the powers of the age to come" (Heb. 6: 4, 5, R. V.), that age of complete deliverance from sin and sickness and death. But at most we have only tasted as yet; we have not {122} drunk fully into the fountain of immortal life. It is at Christ's advent that this blessed consummation is fixed: "To the end he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints" (1 Thess. 3: 13, R. V.). Not simply blameless but faultless, seems to be the condition here foretold, since it is unblamable in the sphere and element of holiness.

And with this agrees another text in the same epistle: "And the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. 5: 23, R. V.). The time appointed for the consummation of this blameless wholeness is at the Saviour's advent in glory. And how suggestive the order maintained in naming the threefold man: "Your spirit, soul, and body." Our sanctification moves from within outward. It begins with the spirit, which is the holy of holies; the Spirit of God acting first on the spirit of man in renewing grace, then upon the soul, till at last it reaches the outer court of the body, at the resurrection and translation. When the body is glorified, then only will sanctification be consummated, for then only will the whole man, spirit, soul, and body, have come under the Spirit's perfecting power.

We may see the difference between progressive {123} sanctification and perfected sanctification, or glorification, by comparing familiar texts. One already has been quoted in this chapter: "We all, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. 3: 18). Here are degrees of progress "from glory to glory," and it is a progress in the glorified life—gradual conformity to the Lord of glory, through successive stages of glory, effected by the Spirit of glory. The word-painting of the passage inevitably associates it in our thought with the great transfiguration experience of our Lord, when by a kind of rapture he was for a little while taken out of "this present evil age" (Gal. 1: 4), and translated into "the age to come," and made to taste of its powers as "he appeared in glory" (Heb. 6: 5, R. V.). So says the apostle: "Be not fashioned according to this age, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds" (Rom. 12: 2, R. V.). That is, by his inward transformation the Holy Spirit is to be daily repeating in us the Lord's glorification, separating us from the present age of sin and death and assimilating us to the age to come, with its resurrection triumph and its perfected restoration to God, when we shall be presented "faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy" (Jude 24). This is our step-by-step advancement into a predestined inheritance; and it must for the present be {124} step by step. "Of his fullness have all we received," but we can appropriate that fullness only "grace by grace" (John 1: 16). Of his righteousness we have all been made partakers, but we only advance in its possession "from faith to faith" (Rom. 1: 17). Even in passing through the valley of Baca we can make it a place of springs, going "from strength to strength" as we appear "before God in Zion" (Ps. 84: 6). Thus our growth in grace is our glory begun; but the progress is like the artist's slow and patient perfecting of his picture. Turn now to another statement: "We know that if he shall be manifested we shall be like him, for we shall see him even as he is" (1 John 3: 2, R. V.). Whatever difficulty may arise from another translation of this passage, one thought seems to be taught in the entire connection, viz., that the unveiled manifestation of God will bring the full perfection of his saints. Thus Alford sums up the meaning of the passage. As the believer, having by a knowledge of God been regenerated, "becomes more and more like God, having his seed in him, so the full and perfect accomplishment of this knowledge in the actual fruition of God himself must of necessity bring with it entire likeness to God." In a word, it seems to us that the sanctification taking place at the manifestation of our incarnate Lord will be as the instantaneous photograph compared with the Spirit's slow and patient limning of the {125} image of Christ in our present state. "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," "we shall be changed" (1 Cor. 15: 52). Then the glorified body and the glorified spirit, long divorced by sin, will be remarried. So long as this twain are separated by death, or are at war in our present earthy life, our perfection in holiness were impossible.

It is because the resurrection and translation of the saints are instantaneous that we affirm sanctification to be instantaneous at the coming of the Lord. The Scripture is always harmonious with itself, however widely separated the writers of its books by time or distance. David struck the same joyful note with John, though the learned may insist that he did not know of the resurrection. "As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness"—the seeing him as he is and being made fit to see him. "I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness"—the conformity to the Divine image at the instant sound of the resurrection trump. (Ps. 17: 15.) Perhaps we may conjecture wherein will consist the perfection of the resurrection state. We may find it in that one saying: "It is raised a spiritual body" (1 Cor. 15: 44). Now, how often the body dominates the spirit, making it do what it would not; but then, the spirit will dominate the body, making it do as it will. In a house divided against itself there can be neither perfection nor peace. Such is the condition in our present state {126} of humiliation. And not the body alone, but the immaterial within us may be at war with the divine. What does the Apostle Jude mean in his description of certain who separated themselves, saying that they are "sensual, having not the Spirit" (Jude 19). The soul, the middle factor in the man, if we may say so, instead of being in alliance with our higher nature, the spirit, takes sides with the lower, the flesh, so