This is particularly appropriate: the Holy Spirit of God in the more general sense.
You have only to turn over the pages of your New Testament and see how often that association, that connection, is noted. Because we are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son.
The Spirit of Jesus; the Spirit of the Christ.
The Holy Spirit was given to the Son for His mission in and throughout this dispensation. Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit for the particular work that He had been chosen by the Father to do, especially in this dispensation.
That work, that mission, did not end when He left this earth. There is a very true sense in which it only began when He left this earth—not altogether, but in a fuller way, a much fuller way. He began His real mission when He ascended to the right hand of the Majesty on high.
It is an impressive thing to notice how the Holy Spirit is always related to Jesus.
The preaching at the beginning was undoubtedly in the power of the Holy Spirit. They were filled with the Spirit, and then immediately they preached. There is no doubt about it: they preached by the Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit Who was inspiring them to preach, inspiring the preaching.
What did they preach? It was all about the Lord Jesus. That is all—the Lord Jesus; preaching about Him. The Holy Spirit inspired them to preach the Lord Jesus.
The whole record within the Acts, which is strewn throughout the early history, bears this out. Acts was truly the acts of the Holy Spirit in many, many forms of His activity, and not only in the miracles that were wrought.
When an apostle essayed to take his way in a certain direction, the record says, “The Spirit of Jesus suffered them not” (Acts 16:7).
The Spirit of Jesus suffered them not.
The same apostle, writing to the Philippians, said that he trusted through their prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ was for the accomplishment of his mission.
The Holy Spirit was within and behind all the teaching, fulfilling the promise of the Lord Jesus that, when the Spirit of truth came, He would guide into all the truth. The truth that we have in the New Testament is Holy Spirit-provided truth, but it all relates to the Lord Jesus.
The conformity of believers to the image of the Son of God is the work of the Holy Spirit. He is the transforming and conforming Spirit, but His model is Christ. The Holy Spirit is wholly and utterly committed to the Lord Jesus.
We may say that the inclusive—I mean, many-sided—the inclusive work of the Holy Spirit is, firstly, to secure the place of the Lord Jesus wherever He can. You must remember that.
We must not put it in other ways. We must not think of it in other terms. The Holy Spirit will do this and that—yes, He will do this and that—and perhaps a hundred, a thousand, things and aspects; but they are all related to one thing. They are not things in themselves.
We must emphasize this here very, very strongly. The Holy Spirit may give light, the Holy Spirit may give leading, the Holy Spirit may do quite a lot of things; but remember that everything the Holy Spirit does is included in one object. It is all to one end.
And that, in the first place, is to secure Christ’s place in this universe—in this world—to secure the place of the Lord Jesus.
Our way of speaking may mislead us very often. We would say that the work of the Holy Spirit is to save souls. Yes, quite right. Why? Just to have them saved? No: that the Lord Jesus shall have His place.
Those souls are to be the residence of the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit may instruct believers and build them up. Why? Because they shall be mature Christians? Not at all. No: that the Lord Jesus shall have a larger place.
No matter what the Holy Spirit does, He has but one all-inclusive object, and that is the glorifying of the Lord Jesus. That is the giving of the Lord Jesus His place.
And then, all things with Christ—filling all things with Christ. Do not think of being filled with the Spirit, or of the fullness of the Spirit, in any other way than this: that the Holy Spirit’s filling is intended to be filling all things with Christ.
We can get these ideas: “Oh, be filled with the Spirit. Then what? What will happen? Well, we will have such a good time; we will have ecstasies; we will have enjoyment; there will be power in our life.” You see, all those things are thought about when we think about being filled with the Spirit.
Oh, that is a wonderful idea. But do remember, dear friends, that the filling with the Spirit is in line with that eternal purpose of God, that eternal thought that He, the Son, shall fill all things.
You can have these experiences, these ecstasies, these emotions, and all these things, and yet, and yet, be sadly letting in the Lord Jesus. You may have all the teaching, true teaching—yes, yes—and yet the measure of the Lord Jesus may be so small, so small.
It is terribly sad to go about the world and meet Christians who would lay down their lives for the doctrine of the Holy Spirit: “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Person of the Holy Spirit,” and so on. Yet you do not meet the Lord; you meet them, and come up against something that is themselves. You are hurt by them.
No, simply not essentially. The Holy Spirit is committed to one end, one end only: to fill all things with Christ.
If you want to know what it means when it says, “They were filled with the Holy Spirit,” you see it by the effect. They simply talked about the Lord Jesus; they preached Christ. Everywhere they went, it was Christ. They were bringing Christ with them wherever they went.
As far as consent was given, and openness of heart was provided, they, so to speak, filled people with Christ, filled places with Christ, filled companies with Christ. That was the work of the Holy Spirit.
Unto that end, the Holy Spirit is always seeking a transformation in believers. Naturally, we are not a bit like Christ. Naturally, we do not give very much place to Christ. The work of the Holy Spirit is to transform us into the image of Christ.
It is Christ—only Christ—the beginning and the end.
Now, that connection, the great governing truth, is that the nature of Christ is the foundation of the work of Christ. The character of Christ is the foundation of the work of the Holy Spirit. The measure of Christ is the measure of the Spirit.
You cannot have more of the Holy Spirit than you have of Christ.
These two things are so painfully overlooked: the detaching of the Holy Spirit from Christlike character, and thinking of Him as something in Himself—the Holy Spirit, the work of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Spirit, the works of the Spirit, working for the Lord. They are things in themselves, so often, in the thoughtless mentality of so many.
But the Holy Spirit is not thoughtless about this. He is not a bit thoughtless about this. The Holy Spirit only commits Himself to Christ. Make no mistake about that. He will not commit Himself to you or to me, or to any institution, or anything. He only commits Himself to Christ.
It is according to the degree of Christ that the Holy Spirit commits Himself. And when we say the degree of Christ, we mean the character of Christ.
The whole Bible comes down powerfully and mightily upon that truth. All the types and figures of the Old Testament concerning the Holy Spirit—the anointing oil, and so on—bear this out.
If you look more closely, you will find that a certain provision is always prescribed by God for that symbol. Take the oil alone: that oil shall not come upon man’s flesh. The anointing requires garments that cover man’s flesh. It requires certain provisions and prescriptions of God before that anointing oil dare be applied.
We could extend the symbolism further, but there it is. And then you understand, you see, that prescription of God—whether it be the garments or whatever it may be, and the basis required by God for the oil to come upon that person—you will find that that prescription is something relating to the character of Christ.
The character of Christ. And it is, therefore, quite sure that the Holy Spirit is only given to the Lord Jesus.
He will only be given to you and to me as the Lord Jesus has His place, and in proportion to the measure in which He has His place. You say, “More of the Spirit, more of the Spirit, a greater fullness of the Spirit.” Very well: you are asking for the Holy Spirit to displace you and all that is of self. You are going to have a bad time.
Have a wonderful, marvelous time of ecstasy if only you get filled with the Spirit? Do not make any mistake about it: that may be one sign of it. It may be that you will have to be taken through the fire and through the mill to come there.
It depends upon how much resistance there is to Christ. The more helpless the material, the quicker it can be done.
But the principle, the principle, is this: these two things go together—the work of the Spirit and the character of Christ. Do not get away from that. The character of Christ is the foundation of the work of the Holy Spirit.
That, of course, brings us face to face with the fact that Christ is an altogether different creation from what we are. He is a different creation.
When He was here, He was a stranger in this world. He was a stranger. It is written:
The world knew Him not.
— John 1:10
While, of course, that applies specifically to His deity, it also applies to His unique, unique humanity. The world did not know Him in the sense that it could not understand His mentality, His difference, His ways, His character.
It could not understand that by which His conduct was governed. The world does not do it like that. The one thing the world does not do is act on principle; the world acts on policy. Jesus absolutely refused, from beginning to end, to be governed by policy.
What is policy? It is the way of this world. But He was a strange Person from another world, Who did not do that in some way or another. No, the world knew Him not. He was a special and different kind of Person, a different creation from what we are.
That was the real explanation of what a difficult time He had in this world. He was differently constituted. You see, He was Holy Spirit-constituted. He was begotten of the Holy Ghost. He was Holy Spirit-constituted by birth and by anointing for His mission.
Being so different in His constitution, upon that basis He was tested and perfected in a contrary world. Get hold of the significance of that, because it explains a lot.
When you and I are born anew, we are born of the Holy Spirit—begotten of God, born of the Holy Spirit. In the deepest reality of our being, there is a difference of constitution.
If that is not true of anybody who bears the name of Christian, they are not a Christian. A Christian, born anew, has in the innermost part of their being another constitution introduced. It may be in an embryonic form, as in babyhood, but it is something different—altogether different.
It is the difference that separates us from all other people. Now then, the whole of our life under the Holy Spirit is the testing and trying of that other constitution in a contrary world.
We are in a world now, as born-again believers, which is contrary to our nature, contrary to our constitution. That constitutes our difficulty, our suffering, our trial, our testing, and the basis of our perfecting.
You know quite well that anything, anything in creation, that does not become subject to adverse forces never becomes anything with any stamina or endurance in it. Is that true?
Hothouse plants cannot stand up to anything. You have to nurse them all the time. Anything that you protect from adversity will suffer terribly and come, really, to nothing that abides or can stand up to anything.
The Lord knows that stamina, endurance, strength, maturity, and abiding come out of testing, trying, and adversity. That may explain a lot why the Lord allows the winds to blow so cold and fiercely against His church and His people.
But there it is. What is the Lord doing? Here is His own Son in this world with another constitution, being tested, tried, and perfected by the very difference of the world in which He was placed—the difference to His own constitution.
He was made perfect through suffering, and the suffering was of this kind: conflict of two constitutions, one in the world and the one in Himself.
You and I are supposed to have this heavenly constitution, and it is an awful thing to live in this world with a heavenly constitution. It ought to become more and more so. If you can settle down and become deeply comfortable and happy in this world, you have abandoned the very constitution of Him.
But if it is true that, more and more, it is difficult for you to endure this world as being what it is, that is a good sign. That is a good sign.
Now, that is exactly what happened to the Lord Jesus. He was of a different order, and His suffering came along the line of testing and trying by reason of another constitution in the midst of which He had to live.
This heavenly constitution had to triumph. He had to triumph over the other that was all about Him, pressing upon Him. Thus He was made perfect through suffering. There is no other way for you and for me.
It explains a lot. In the end, if we have been faithful, if we do not cast away our confidence, if our faith does not give way because of the difficulty and hardness of this spiritual conflict, if we do not let go, we shall emerge a full-grown spiritual man.
The stature will increase unto the stature of Christ. Well, that is the history of the church, and that is the history of believers.
Where does the Holy Spirit come into this? Well, you see, the Holy Spirit came from heaven when that question had been fully answered in the Lord Jesus.
I put it in this way—whether it sounds doctrinal or not, I do not know—but there was a question all the time through the earthly life of the Lord Jesus. Really, there was no doubt as to the issue, but there was a question. A battle was going on, and when there is a battle, there is always a question as to the issue.
Was this heavenly thing going to gain the ascendancy, or was Satan’s power going to gain the ascendancy? It was a big battle on this one question: the heavenly kingdom opposed to an earthly kingdom, the kingdom of God opposed to the kingdom of Satan. It all focused upon and centered in the soul of this one Man.
The battle raged right to the end, right to the end, to the last moment of the cross. Who was going to prevail? Which side was going to win? Was the heavenly nature going to triumph over this diabolical nature?
When that question was fully and finally answered, it was answered when He reached heaven. He was received. That is the right way to speak about the ascension: being received, getting a reception in heaven, means that the question is finally answered.
The heavenly Man has triumphed in His constitution in a world so utterly different from His constitution. The question is answered. The whole thing is settled.
And when that is settled, the Holy Spirit comes. What does He come to do? He comes to bring the heavenly nature of that Man into believers, and then the battle starts up again.
That is the battle that you and I are in. After all, it is not a battle of outward things; it is a battle of spiritual things. That is where it comes to, is it not?
It may take up many forms—people, situations, circumstances—but, after all, it focuses upon our spirit, upon our heavenly life, upon our heavenly constitution. That is the center of it all. That is the battle.
Are we going to yield to the devil, so that his constitution gets the upper hand in irritability, bad temper, loss of faith, and all that? Or is this other thing—faith in God, the love of the Spirit, the patience of Jesus Christ—going to triumph? That is the point of the battle.
The Holy Spirit has come to bring into us another constitution, and then so to work as completely to develop us according to that new constitution, until we too are perfected in Christ.
It comes back, does it not, all the time, to that matter: the measure of Christ.
There is no substitute for the Holy Spirit. I said this afternoon: there is no substitute for the Holy Spirit.
That opens the door at once to that whole terrible change which came about so early after the apostles—even before they had gone, and after they had gone: the substitutes for the Holy Spirit.
There they are: the crystallization of Christianity into an absolutely man-made system; the composing of priests, Christian rites, things becoming legal forms of government; forms, vestments, and orders; clericalism, and what not. All came in so early.
Organizations—yes—all substitutes for the Holy Spirit. Moving away from the spiritual to the ecclesiastical, the sacramental.
The result? The world triumphs, and the devil laughs. An enervated, emasculated Christianity, which cannot stand up to the forces that are at work in this universe.
No, no. Let us come to one thing. We are talking about what the Holy Spirit is.
He is inclusively, we have said, the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of the Christ. And we have further said that that means the character of Christ.
We will just look at one thing this evening about the character of Christ, as taken up by the Holy Spirit in His own nature and therefore in His own work. The Holy Spirit was called by the Lord Jesus the Spirit of truth.
The Spirit of truth.
Now, there is a very large place given by God to truth. He is the God of truth. He is very jealous over the truth. He desires truth in the inward parts. He holds lying in abomination. He has consigned all liars to the lake of fire, says the Lord. He excludes from the New Jerusalem everything that makes a lie.
Jesus called Himself the truth:
I am the truth.
— John 14:6
And He is called the faithful and true Witness. On the other hand, Satan is called the liar and the father of lies.
The whole structure of creation collapsed when the lie entered in. Satan injected a lie into man. Man accepted it, received it. The result: the whole structure of creation collapsed.
Man himself became and remains an apostate. He is not the man that God made him, or intended him to be. He is a deceived creature. There is a lie in the very constitution and nature of man as he is.
He is not the true man that God intended. He is a misrepresentation of the man that God spoke of when He said:
Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.
— Genesis 1:26
There is a lie in the very makeup of man and in all his works.
He hopes, and believes, and works, and strives, and comes to the end. In the end, it is in vain. Disappointment waits at the end of all his strivings and all his works.
He thinks and argues that he is free, but he is a prisoner. He thinks and believes that he knows; he proves to be a fool.
He thinks that he can do, and he does many, many great, seemingly wonderful things. Yet all his doings lead to greater problems to be solved. The greatest problem of all is satisfaction—is rest, is joy, is peace.
No, man is building not on rock, but on sand. His world is run by lies.
This is a terrible thing to say: how rare downright honesty is in this world. What a lot of misrepresentation, deception, pretense, mixture, exaggeration, and appearance are drawn into the running of this world. Is it true?
Many well-meaning men, whose own soul revolts against it, will tell you that it is not possible to be successful in a world like this if you are going to be honest—absolutely honest.
And the lie has got into religion. The indictment of our Lord against the Pharisees and the scribes was: hypocrites, pretending. Yes, because this is true: this creation is shot through and through with lying deception.
Man cannot stand. A false world is doomed to collapse. If there is anything that is not absolutely true according to God in Christianity, it will go to pieces. It will go to pieces.
Anything, anything that has in it an element of untruth has in it the seeds of its own ruin.
The Holy Spirit, therefore, is called the Spirit of truth. Jesus is the truth.
The eternal values are those which are absolutely true according to the standards of God. The value of the gospel is that it is the truth. The triumph of the gospel, the eternal certainty of Christ, is that He is the truth.
Now, this is a very challenging thing. It separates; it discriminates between not merely the black lie and the transparent truth, but between the beautiful lie, the soulish lie, the sentimental lie, the formal lie, the religious lie.
John the Baptist said about the Lord Jesus that He would lay the axe to the root, and that His winnowing fan was in His hand, and He would thoroughly purge His threshing floor. What is the axe? What is the winnowing fan? It is the truth.
So He looked on the temple in Jerusalem, and He looked on the temple on Mount Gerizim in Samaria. Then, to the woman who thought that one or the other—especially that one to which she was attached in Samaria—was the true thing, He said:
Believe Me, woman, the hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father.
God is Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
— John 4:21, 24
He was discriminating between the formal, the traditional, the historical, the symbolic, if you like, the best, and the real—the truth. He was saying that only that which is spiritual, after the very essence of the divine nature, is true.
Therefore, this temple and system will collapse. Not one stone will be left upon another. It is not the truth; it is not spiritual.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. It is, therefore, very, very important—solemnly important—that our position is a true position.
You and I have continually to look at our position. Is my position the true one? Is this secondhand? What is it? What is it? This position in which I stand—how did I come to this position? What is it that puts me in this position?
Is it to me so true that it is absolutely a matter of life or death? If it is true like that, you cannot resign from it. You cannot give it up. You cannot withdraw from it. It is your very life. To do so would be to commit spiritual suicide.
That is the Lord Jesus. Go through His life again, and hear Him speaking. This Man has not just come to perform something, to give some teaching, and that sort of thing objectively. This Man is this thing.
He is going to that cross to shed the last drop of His blood because it is a real, true position. It is Himself.
Our position must be true, or we will not stand. We will collapse. We will go to pieces. If there is a lie, we will disintegrate as creation did when the lie entered in.
Our life must be true. Our life must be true. Our conduct must be true. Our walk before others must be true. Our walk before God must be true. Our life must be true.
It is going to be an agony, mark you, for it to be so. But our testimony and our teaching must be true. Is it true?
Our fellowship must be true. No sham love, no pretense of fellowship, no trying to make believe, no merely outward things. Our fellowship must be true.
The Holy Ghost will be satisfied with nothing less than the truth in the matter. He will say, “Look here, look here, you are trying to make believe in that matter of fellowship with that person. You are trying to bolster something up. You are trying not to let something collapse, but it is not true.”
He will take you down deep until it is true.
Our church must be true. We could say much about that condition. Our business must be true.
Oh, do take this matter of the Holy Spirit into your business. Is your business really true? Is your manner of business really true?
When you are going to pay for something, are you quite sure that you are paying all that you ought to pay for that? Are you not getting it to your own advantage while someone else is going to suffer in this transaction? Is that true?
You see, even John the Baptist raised questions like that at the Jordan—exacting no more than should be exacted.
Yes, in business we must be true. We cannot have one order of things in Christianity and another one in the world. True in business.
We must never be less than we profess. God help us. We must never be more than we profess. God help us.
He is the Spirit of truth. That, you see, is the character of the Lord Jesus. To be filled with the Spirit is a very, very exacting thing.
Do not try to steal an advantage from the Holy Spirit. Oh no, He is not to be taken advantage of like that. You cannot deceive the Holy Spirit. We cannot.
Now, that is very solemn. What do you think of me talking about being filled with the Spirit? You all want to be filled with the Spirit. We all do. We hear the command, “Be filled with the Spirit,” and we want to be filled with the Spirit.
But understand: the Spirit is the character of Jesus Christ, the Spirit of Jesus Christ. In this one respect, He is the Spirit of truth. To be filled with the Spirit means that everything has got to be true—exact, right, real.
No lie, no falsehood, no hypocrisy, no make-believe, no pretense, no exaggeration, no imitation. Everything true, genuine. Oh, God, make us like Thy Son in this.
Then the Holy Spirit will do things. The Holy Spirit will do things in a church like that, for people like that, and through lives like that. He will. You will not have to try and get it done. He will do it.
You see, that brings us right back to the point of this afternoon. Why did things change when, at the beginning, they were so spontaneous—so spontaneous, so nice, so wonderful?
He was present as the Spirit of truth, and when He came up against something that was untrue, it was dealt with. It was not tolerated. It was fierce—Sir Peter, I know—but He was jealous with the jealousy of the Holy Spirit for the truth.
He sees that the church can be wrecked and ruined if there is a lie within it, and Satan is seeking to bring it in.
Why hath Satan filled thy heart…?
— Acts 5:3
Well, I do not want to go away and press things heavily, but we started off by saying that we are concerned about this matter: a life of fullness, a powerful witness in the world, and trouble because that impact upon the world is not as it was in the beginning.
You see, it ought to be. The Holy Spirit has not changed. God has not changed. Christ is the same.
If it is true that the Holy Spirit commits Himself to the Lord Jesus, then once more the answer is: we need more of the Lord Jesus. And when we say that, we mean Him in His character.
We only begin with this matter of truth. Character is much more than that, but truth is the foundation of everything.