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

[1] Of course Catholic writers claim that the pope is the "Vicar of Christ" only as being the mouth-piece of the Holy Ghost. But the Spirit has been given to the church as a whole, that is to the body of regenerated believers, and to every member of that body according to his measure. The sin of sacerdotalism is, that it arrogates for a usurping few that which belongs to every member of Christ's mystical body. It is a suggestive fact that the name klêros, which Peter gives to the church as the "flock of God," when warning the elders against being lords over God's heritage, now appears in ecclesiastical usage as the clergy, with its orders of pontiff and prelates and lord bishops, whose appointed function it is to exercise lordship over Christ's flock.

[2] By the candlesticks being seven instead of one, as in the tabernacle, we are taught that whereas in the Jewish dispensation, God's visible church was one, in the Gentile dispensation there are many visible churches; and that Christ himself recognizes them alike.—Canon Garratt, "Commentary on the Revelation," p. 32.

[3] "The Work of the Holy Spirit in Man," by Pastor G. F. Tophel, p. 66.

[4] It was impossible up to the time of the glorification of Jesus to pray to the Father in his name. It is a fullness of joy peculiar to the dispensation of the Spirit to be able to do so.—Alford.

[5] It were well for us to give more heed to the voice of Christian history as related to such questions as these. The rise of "sporadic sects" like the "Quietists," the "Mystics," the "Friends," and the "Brethren," with their emphasis on "the still voice" and "the inward leading," is very suggestive. If we may not go so far as some of these go in the insistence on speaking only as sensibly moved by the Spirit we may be admonished of the hard, artificial man-made worship which made their protest necessary.

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"Have you visited the Cathedral of Freyburg, and listened to that wonderful organist, who with such enchantment draws the tears from the traveler's eyes while he touches, one after another, his wonderful keys, and makes you hear by turns the march of armies upon the beach, or the chanted prayer upon the lake during the tempest, or the voices of praise after it is calm? Well, thus the Eternal God, embracing at a glance the key-board of sixty centuries, touches by turns, with the fingers of his Spirit, the keys which he had chosen for the unity of his celestial hymn. He lays his left hand upon Enoch, the seventh from Adam, and his right hand on John, the humble and sublime prisoner of Patmos. From the one the strain is heard: 'Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints'; from the other: 'Behold he cometh with clouds.' And between the notes of this hymn of three thousand years there is eternal harmony, and the angels stoop to listen, the elect of God are moved, and eternal life descends into men's souls."—Gaussen's Theopneustia.

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Inspiration signifies inbreathing. Both the scribe and the Scripture, both the man of God and the word of God were divinely inbreathed. In that memorable meeting of the risen Lord and his disciples within the closed doors, we read that "He breathed on them and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whosesoever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained" (John 20: 22, R. V.). Well may the question of the scribes concerning Jesus now arise in our hearts concerning his disciples: "Who can forgive sins but God only?" And the answer should be: "True; God alone can forgive sins. And it is only because the Spirit of God, who is God, is in the apostles, endowing them with his divine prerogatives, that they are able to exercise this high authority."

We are persuaded, however, that this commission was not given to all Christians, though all have the Spirit. In a note in Olshausen's Commentary the matter seems to be correctly stated: "To the apostles was granted the power, absolute and unconditioned, of binding and loosing, just as to them was {166} given the power of publishing truth unmixed with error. For both they possessed miraculous spiritual endowments." Only we should say "sovereign" rather than "miraculous" endowments. "The Spirit breatheth where he wills, and thou hearest his voice," said Jesus.[1] While miraculous gifts were not confined to the apostles, Christ may have committed to these, and to these alone, the sovereign prerogative of forgiving sins; gifts of healing, on the other hand, the working of miracles, prophecy, the discerning of spirits, and tongues, being distributed throughout the church; "but all these worketh one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as he will" (1 Cor. 12: 11, R. V.). In a word, the action of the Holy Ghost was supremely sovereign in the assignment of spiritual offices, and when Jesus breathed on his apostles the Holy Ghost, and gave them authority {167} to remit sins, he separated them unto a prerogative of which others, indwelt by the same Spirit, might have known nothing. It is very generally held that the order of apostles ceased with the death of those who had seen the Lord and companied with him until the day that he was received up. But the reason for this cessation has been too little considered. May we not believe that the apostles and their companions were commissioned to speak for the Lord until the New Testament Scriptures, his authoritative voice, should be completed? If so, in the apostolate we have a provisional inspiration; in the gospel a stereotyped inspiration; the first being endowed with authority ad interim to remit sins, and the second having this authority in perpetuam. The New Testament, as the very mouthpiece of the Lord, pronounces forgiveness upon all in every generation who truly repent and believe on the Son of God; and preachers in every age, with the Bible in their hand, are authorized to do the same declaratively. But when it is urged, as by Catholic writers, that this infallibility for teaching and absolution, which was committed to the apostles, has descended through a succession of ministers called the clergy, the answer seems to be, that this authority has not been perpetuated in any body of men apart from the Scriptures, but was transferred to the New Testament and lodged there for all time. Historically, at least, it seems to have been {168} the fact, that as the apostles and prophets of the new dispensation disappeared, the Gospels and Epistles took their place, and that henceforth the divine authoritative voice of the Spirit could be distinctly recognized only in the written word. As coal has been called "fossil sunlight," so the New Testament may be called fossil inspiration, the supernatural illumination which fell upon the apostles being herein stored up for the use of the church throughout the ages.[2]

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God [theopneustos—God-breathed], and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (3 Tim. 3: 16). As the Lord breathed the Spirit into certain men, and thereby committed to them his own prerogative of forgiving sin, so he breathed his Spirit into certain books and endowed them with his infallibility in teaching truth. God did not choose to inspire all good books, though he has chosen to

{169} inbreathe one book, thereby separating it and setting it apart from all other books.[3] The phrase, "the Bible is simply literature," which some are using to-day, as a suggestion against bibliolatry, is not true. Literature is the letter; Scripture is the letter inspired by the Spirit. What Jesus said in justification of his doctrine of the new birth is equally applicable to the doctrine of inspiration: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Educate, develop, and refine the natural man to the highest possible point, and yet he is not a spiritual man till, through the new birth, the Holy Ghost renews and indwells him. So of literature; however elevated its tone, however lofty its thought, it is not Scripture. Scripture is literature indwelt by the Spirit of God. The absence of the Holy Ghost from any writing constitutes the impassable gulf between it and Scripture. Our Lord, in speaking of his own doctrine, uses the same language, to show its separateness from common teaching which he employs above to mark the distinction of the new man. He says: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto {170} you are spirit and are life" (John 6: 63, R. V.). Words they were, and in that respect, literature; but words divinely inbreathed and therefore Scripture. In fine, the one fact which makes the word of God a unique book, standing apart in solitary separateness from all other writings, is that which also parts off the man of God from common men—the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Therefore we may say truly of the Bible, not merely that it was inspired, but it is inspired; that the Holy Ghost breathes within it, making it not only authoritative in its doctrine but life-giving in its substance, so that they who receive its promises by faith "have been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God which liveth and abideth" (1 Peter 1: 23, R. V.).

Thus far in this volume we have been dwelling upon the various works and offices of the Paraclete. Now we come to consider that the Holy Spirit not only acts but speaks. Let us listen to the repeated affirmations of this fact. Seven times our glorified Lord says, speaking in the Apocalypse: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches" (Rev. 2: 7). The Paraclete on earth answers to the Paraclete above, so that to the voice from Heaven saying: "Write, blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth," the response is heard: "Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors," etc. (Rev. 14: 13). {171} This accords with the general tenor of Scripture as to its own Author. In referring to the Old Testament, Peter says: "This Scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus" (Acts 1: 16). And again: "David himself said by the Holy Ghost" (Mark 12: 36), our Lord thus plainly recognizing the voice of the Spirit in the voice of the psalmist. So again: "The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me" (2 Sam. 23: 2, 3), and "Wherefore as the Holy Ghost saith, To-day if ye will hear his voice" (Heb. 3: 7).

And what is it to speak? Is it not to express thought in language? The difference between thinking and saying is simply the difference of words. Therefore, if the Holy Ghost "saith," we are to find in the words of Scripture the exact substance of what he saith. Hence verbal inspiration seems absolutely essential for conveying to us the exact thought of God. And while many affect to ridicule the idea as mechanical and paltry, the conduct and method of scholars of every shade of belief show how generally it is accepted. For, why the minute study of the words of Scripture carried on by all expositors, their search after the precise shade of verbal significance, their attention to the {172} minutest details of language, and to all the delicate coloring of mood and tense and accent? The high scholars who speak lightly of the theory of literal inspiration of the Scriptures by their method of study and exegesis are they who put the strongest affirmation on the doctrine which they deny. Then we cannot forget what we imply when we say that language is the expression of thought. Words determine the size and shape of ideas. As exactly as the coin answers to the die in which it is struck, does the thought answer to the word by which it is uttered. Vary the language