We ask again, O Lord, that in this very time that same Holy Spirit may be to us the Spirit of revelation, opening the eyes of our hearts more widely and showing us Christ. Let it be so, even now, we ask in His name. Amen.
The Lord has led us, dear friends, in this season to occupy ourselves again with something of the significance of the Holy Spirit. We have seen the Day of Pentecost, one of the four great crises in the history of God’s purpose, and it was indeed a great turning point.
Now, in the very brief time that we have this morning, we are going to look at but a fragment of the Holy Spirit’s significance. I turn you to the letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 1.
In whom ye also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation—in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,
which is an earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of God’s own possession.
And Chapter 4:
Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith,
and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
unto a full-grown man,
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
At Verse 30 of that chapter:
And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God,
in Whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption.
In these words of the apostle, we have a great depth of meaning as to the Holy Spirit. You will notice that there are three major words in the passage that we read: earnest, seal, and inheritance.
They are interesting words with a very significant background. Having believed, you receive the Spirit as an earnest of the inheritance. Today, we call that a deposit.
The earnest was just something in advance, betokening that all the rest would surely follow. It was the guarantee of the completing of the transaction. It was in itself a representation of all that was promised.
The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of promise. We have already seen how that means, from the letter to the Galatians, a promise made to Abraham: the promise of the Spirit in Christ.
The promise to Abraham, we have seen, was sonship in Christ, made good in the Holy Spirit, or by the Holy Spirit. That is the inheritance. We are told that we are heirs of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. The Spirit is the Spirit of that inheritance, that promise.
But it is not just a promise. He is the earnest of the promise. He is given as a present deposit, in which deposit there resides all the potentialities, all the meaning, all the values, of the final fulness of what God is yet going to do for those who believe.
Earnest of the inheritance; sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Another business word.
In those days, as in our own, a transaction was sealed. It might be a document. When the business was concluded, it was sealed. It might be a consignment, something to be sent away. As an earnest, a part was to follow; it was sealed as it was sent.
And the seal was the seal of the one to whom it belonged. The seal said, “This belongs to so-and-so. His name, his sign, is upon it. It is his. You must not interfere with that. It is not your property; it is his. It is sealed unto him.”
The Holy Spirit is said to be the seal, declaring that we belong to the Lord. The Lord has put the seal upon us in giving us the Holy Spirit. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
So the Spirit is here seen in two of His functions, or meanings. He is the earnest of all that is yet to be, and He is the seal by which we are secured unto all that.
And then you notice, “unto the redemption of the purchased possession.” That is an aspect of redemption that is future. It is not that aspect which is in the past: “We were redeemed, not with corruptible things, silver and gold.” That is the beginning of redemption.
But this redemption is that to which Paul refers in his letter to the Romans: the complete redemption of the whole creation, and of ourselves included; the full redemption of all things that have been purchased, that have been sealed, that have been betokened in the Holy Spirit.
Wonderful meaning of the gift of the Spirit. The gift of the Spirit, then, is the authentication of sonship. Because we are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts.
The authentication of sonship: seal and earnest of all that sonship is going to mean. As John says:
Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us,
that we should be called children of God; and such we are.
Beloved, now are we children of God,
and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be.
But we know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him;
for we shall see Him even as He is.
What better and greater inheritance does anybody want than that? The Spirit given is the earnest of that—the Spirit of sonship. The Spirit given is the seal of that.
Now, right alongside of that, we have this exhortation and injunction: “Grieve not the Holy Spirit, whereby ye were sealed unto the day of redemption”—the full realization of that which was given to you in token when you believed.
Grieve not the Holy Spirit. There are two things that very clearly emerge in any consideration of the Holy Spirit.
The first is that nothing is possible apart from, without, the Holy Spirit. That is made abundantly and unmistakably clear. The Lord Jesus Himself made that clear: nothing was possible till the Spirit was come. He would not allow any attempt at anything, even after His resurrection, until they had received the Spirit.
Everything depends upon the Holy Spirit. He has taken over. Indeed, He has always been in charge from the creation, but in a new way, on the Day of Pentecost, He took over. He took over the commission to preach the gospel in the whole creation. He took over everything on that day, and He is wholly and alone in charge of everything. Nothing can be without the Holy Spirit.
And the other thing is: the Holy Spirit is always positive in His attitude, in His mind, in purpose and object. That is, He is what we may call the going Spirit.
Borrow that from Ezekiel: the going of the wheels and the cherubim, because the Spirit was in them. Going. The Holy Spirit, in His very disposition, is the Spirit of going, of energy, of movement.
There can be nothing more fatal than that the Spirit should stop going in any life, in any place, anywhere. When the Spirit stops going, then nothing more can be. You have nothing more at all. It is only as the Spirit is going that there will be anything.
Hence, grieve not the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. That could be put another way: do not arrest the going of the Spirit. Do not allow anything to come up or come in that will impede the movement of the Spirit.
Do not allow the Spirit, by any means or in any way, to be obstructed. He is a going Spirit, and it is fatal if He should be stayed. Grieving the Spirit is just hindering the Spirit, obstructing the Spirit, arresting the Spirit, delaying the Spirit.
That is what they did in the wilderness. As you know from the letter to the Hebrews, He said, “Forty years was I grieved with that generation.” I was grieved with that nation. The Spirit, Who is ever a going Spirit, was grieved.
They could have said, “We are marching unto the land which the Lord hath given us.” But they grieved His Holy Spirit. “I was grieved with that generation forty years.” The result: the Spirit could not go through and on, and death came in, as you know—just grieving the Spirit.
We have, dear friends, no time this morning for trying to indicate how the Holy Spirit is grieved. We can only warn ourselves of the possibility and take to heart the injunction: grieve not.
But were I to try to compass this in one way, I would put it like this: grieving the Holy Spirit is just allowing anything that is contrary to the nature and the purpose of that Holy Spirit.
If we were just to take account of His nature and of His functions, we should immediately see what grieving the Spirit means. First of all, He is the Holy Spirit.
And to grieve Him is to allow, or persist in, something unholy—some unholy way, some unholy thing—in our lives, in our home, in our business, anywhere: something for which we have responsibility, where, if we only applied ourselves with diligence, we could make a difference. Something not holy.
All unholiness grieves the Holy Spirit—that which is contrary to His very nature.
He is the Spirit of truth. Wherever there is anything that is not true—not true—it is false. That is a lie. That is an exaggeration.
All the forms of untruth, whatever they may be: where there is anything like that, it is contrary to His nature, and it grieves Him. Anything untrue will grieve Him, and He will stop and say, “I cannot go on and go on.”
He is the Spirit of unity. That has been touched on this morning; it will be touched on more fully, probably, later.
The Spirit of unity—in this very letter from which we have read, there are the words, “Give diligence to keep the unity.” Give diligence to keep the unity. It seems that many people give diligence to break it, to spoil it. Give diligence to keep it.
See that you are doing that, giving diligence to keep—not seeking out or taking up the things that divide and making a lot of them. Where you do not agree, why not be positive? Concentrate upon the grounds of oneness and enlarge them, so that we get over the other.
Here is the Spirit of unity, the unity of the Spirit; and where there is disunity and division, He is grieved. And mark you, He will say, “I cannot go on. I am stopped. I am arrested.” He must have that which answers to His own nature.
He is here in this letter called the Spirit of revelation. If the Holy Spirit shows something, gives some light, gives some truth, gives some knowledge, and you and I do not apply ourselves to it, to obey it, to walk in it, the Spirit is grieved.
The Spirit of revelation will say, “I can give no more. I must stop giving—no more until what I have given has been obeyed.” He is grieved where He has given light and it is not obeyed.
He is the Spirit of grace. I would like to enlarge that word, because it does mean this: here is the Spirit of graciousness. It is true of the word, but after all, is not the grace of God His graciousness?
How we lack graciousness, do we not? How gracious the Spirit is. All those elements of longsuffering, and patience, and forbearance—what we owe to the Spirit of grace.
Brothers and sisters, we shall reveal how much of the Spirit there really is in us by graciousness. Make no mistake about it: a Spirit-governed life will be a gracious life—patient, forbearing, longsuffering, kindly, and courteous.
Courtesy, you know, is a New Testament word, not just a word in a book of etiquette. Look in the New Testament: be courteous. It is an aspect of graciousness, being courteous. You must think about what that means.
Yes, there are such things as Holy Spirit good manners, good taste, fitness in behaviour, in attitude. The Spirit of grace.
And where there is not graciousness—any of these things that are meant by grace—He is grieved. He is grieved if you and I should be ungracious, discourteous, rude. The Spirit is grieved.
You may have very big ideas of what it means to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, but it means that. It may mean power in service. It may mean being able to give addresses, maybe, and many of these public ways; but these you ought to attend to, and not neglect the other.
The others are kindness, helpfulness, and courtesy. They are marks of the Holy Spirit, and where they are lacking, He is grieved.
He is the Spirit of meekness. Meekness.
If we want another word for meekness, we could well employ the word brokenness, because there is no meekness without brokenness. It is in brokenness that our pride ebbs away. Through brokenness, our conceits and our arrogance and our self-importance go into the sand.
It is in brokenness that meekness is revealed. You may be very clever, may be very able in many ways, but a mark of the Spirit, undoubtedly, is meekness, or brokenness.
Have you been really broken by the Cross? Really broken by the Cross? Are you a broken spirit? Is there a fundamental brokenness in you, a brother or sister in Christ? Really, a brokenness?
Remember, there is no Pentecost until there is a Calvary. There is no Holy Spirit until there has been a Cross. And if the Cross speaks of one thing, it does speak of brokenness, does it not? He was broken. He was broken.
These men of the New Testament were broken men, broken vessels. Meekness adorned them because of that, and the Spirit is the Spirit of meekness.
Peter speaks about being adorned with a meek and quiet spirit. But so we could go on; this is enough, surely, to indicate that grieving the Spirit is just contradicting what He is in Himself and, in so doing, putting something in His way. He cannot go on.
Grieve not the Spirit of God, whereby you were sealed unto all that sonship means. And sonship means all these things that I have mentioned in their full development.
Sonship sounds a technical word, I know, a very theological word; but if you think about it, after all, it is only all that Christ is in His fulness.
This creation, yet to be redeemed from the bondage of corruption, is to be filled, to the exclusion of all else, filled with what Christ is, reproduced by the Holy Spirit in you and in me. That is sonship.
May we not put anything in the way of the Holy Spirit, grieve Him, give Him a clear way, a full way, to remain in us individually and in us together—the going Spirit, always going.