Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.
Sealing of the Spirit
What are we to understand by the sealing of theSpirit? It is that act of the Holy Spirit by which the work of grace is deepened in the heart of the believer, so that he has an increasing conviction of his acceptance in Jesus and his adoption into the family of God.
1. It is sometimes a sudden work of the Spirit. A soul may be so deeply sealed in conversion, may receive such a vivid impression of Divine grace, as it never afterwards loses.
2. But in most cases the sealing of the Spirit is a more gradual work. It is a work of time. There are, then, degrees, or progressive stages, of the Spirit’s sealing.
(1) The first impression is made in regeneration. This is often faint, and in numerous cases scarcely perceptible. The first impression is as much the work of the Spirit as any deeper one in after years. Let not the weak believer undervalue what God has done for him.
(2) But a yet deeper impression of the seal is made when the believer is led more fully into the realisation of his sonship, when he attains to the blessed sense of the “adoption of children.” Oh, what an impression is then left upon his heart, when all his legal fears are calmed, when all his slavish meanings are hushed (
(3) In the process of sanctified affliction the soul often receives a fresh and a deep impress of the seal of the Spirit. The furnace works wonders for a believer. The hour of affliction is the hour of softening. Job bore this testimony: “He maketh my heart soft.” Let it not, then, be forgotten that an afflicting time is often a sealing time. We would remark, in this connection of the subject, that the sealing of the Spirit does not always imply a rejoicing frame. It is not necessarily accompanied by great spiritual joy.
I. It is the duty and privilege of every believer diligently and prayerfully to seek the sealing of the spirit. He rests short of his great privilege if he slights or undervalues this blessing. Be not satisfied with the faint impression which you receive in conversion. In other words, rest not contented with a past experience.
II. Again, I remark, this blessing is only found is the way or god’s appointment. He has ordained that prayer should be the great channel through which His covenant blessings should flow into the soul. (O. Winslow, D. D.)
The sealing of the Spirit
Christ is the first sealed (Joh_6:27). God hath distinguished Him, and set a stamp upon Him to be the Messiah by the graces of the Spirit. Christ being sealed Himself, He sealed all that He did for our redemption with His blood, and hath added for the strengthening of our faith outward seals--the sacraments--to secure His love more firmly to us. But in this place another manner of sealing is to be understood.
I. What is the manner of our sealing by the spirit? Sealing, we know, hath divers uses.
1. It imprints a likeness of him that seals. When the king’s image is stamped upon the wax, everything in the wax answers to that in the seal. So the Spirit sets the stamp of Christ upon every true convert. There is no grace in Christ but there is the like in every Christian in some measure.
2. It distinguishes. Sealing is a stamp upon one thing among many. It distinguisheth Christians from others.
3. It serves for appropriation. Men seal those things that are their own. So God appropriates His own to show that He hath chosen them for Himself to delight in.
4. It serves to make things authentic, to give authority and excellency. The seal of the prince is the authority of the prince. This gives validity to things, answerable to the dignity and esteem of him that seals.
II. What is the stamp that the spirit seals us withal?
III. How shall we know that there is such a spiritual sealing in us? (R. Sibbes, D. D.)
The seal and earnest of the Spirit
I. God hath sealed us by His spirit. Seals are employed--
1. To authenticate a document or confirm it as genuine (1Ki_21:8; Est_3:12). So by the Spirit the believer has the assurance that he is a genuine disciple of Christ (Rom_8:16). The Christian knows that the Holy Ghost has been exerting His agency within him when he perceives that the fruit of the Spirit has begun to make its appearance in him.
2. As a mark to distinguish property. We have something like it in the trade marks of the manufacturer, and in the broad arrow, which indicates that the thing so stamped is the property of the Government. In ancient times the servants, cattle, and goods of a rich man were distinguished by his seal. In like manner believers are recognised as the property of God by the seal of the Spirit. And, as sometimes a seal has an obverse and reverse side, so is it in the case of believers. On the hidden side, visible only to Jehovah, is--“The Lord knoweth them that are His”; on the other side, where all men may read it, there is--“Let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” When the coinage of a country has worn thin and light, so that no one can See the image or superscription, it is called in, reminted, and sent forth anew, with a distinct impression from the original die. And so, when our Christian characters are rubbed down by the abrasion of the world to such an extent that the image of the Lord in us has been well-nigh effaced, there is need to submit to the reminting of the Holy Spirit, that we may come forth anew and bear unmistakable witness to Christ’s property in us.
3. As a means of security. Thus the stone laid at the mouth of the den into which Daniel was thrust was sealed with the king’s signet, etc.; and when Jesus was laid in the grave the Jews made the sepulchre sure, “sealing the stone and setting a watch.” In like manner believers are kept secure in the world by the seal of the Spirit. The reference here is not to God’s almighty protection, nor to the ordering of His all-wise providence, but to the characteristics and habits which are acquired by the believer through the grace of the Holy Ghost. The Christian’s graces are his armour also. Our security is perfect, and yet it is not without our own exertions, for” it is effected by the constant manifestation by us of the qualities which are formed and fostered in us by the Holy Ghost.
II. God hath given us the earnest of the spirit. The term is borrowed from a custom in connection with the transfer of property, when the buyer received a small instalment at once as a sample of it, and as a pledge of full delivery. So, when the Spirit in our hearts is styled an earnest, we have implied--
1. That the fruit of the Spirit which we here enjoy is the same in kind with the blessedness of heaven.
2. That the fruit of the Spirit is a pledge that the full inheritance of heaven shall yet be ours. “He who hath begun a good work in us will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” This is not quite the same as the security suggested by the seal. That was the pledge that we should be kept for heaven; this is an assurance that heaven shall be ours. Conclusion: I come to-day as the spies came to Kadesh-barnea, with the Eshcol cluster of grapes as a sample of the products of the goodly land which they had been to see. Beware how ye receive our report. Remember what happened to the tribes when they refused to go up and possess the land, and “take heed lest ye fall after the same example of unbelief.” (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
The sealing Spirit
I. St. Paul reminds us of our peculiar obligation to the Spirit by pointing to one of the primary characteristics of his work. “Sealed” by His indwelling witness, and that not for a favoured moment only, but “unto the day of redemption.” This custom, on which the Bible metaphor rests, of sealing letter, decree, edict, or title of possession, came from the East, and is of obvious significance. It gives validity, assurance, legal effect to contract, declaration, or title-deed, and affirms proprietorship over the things upon which it is carried out. With the spread of education the personal signature comes to take the place of the old-fashioned seal. Some years ago a bundle of unsigned Bank of England notes was stolen. A note without that signature at the bottom, familiar to most of us, would be valueless. Religious life, endeavour, relationship, anticipation, borrow force and validity from the sealing of the Spirit. The intermediate position in the religious history of God’s saved people into which Paul puts this act of sealing clearly indicates its nature and purport. Whilst a solitary believer slumbers in the sepulchre, Christ looks upon His inheritance as but incompletely redeemed. It is till Christ’s power has wrought through its last redemptive cycle and undone the remotest disaster of sin that the Spirit seals us. “Sealed unto the day of redemption.”
II. This sealing by the Spirit implies that the reconciliation in which we are so deeply interested is more or less secret and unseen. After long and anxious debate, the terms of peace between two belligerent powers are fixed. But, pending the formal ratification of the treaty, and possibly for some time after, the contending parties occupy the same positions on the field. You can scarcely predicate the cessation of hostilities from what meets the eye. But to the commanders on either side the message has passed along the wires, and the genuineness of the message is vouched for by the cypher in which it is sent. When the children begin to play about the homesteads, the peasants to till the hillsides, the nightingales to sing in the myrtle bush, the golden crops to sway in the warm winds, and the church bells to chime again through the valleys, there will be no need to prove the reality of the peace by the seal or official announcement of the fact. It will be then proved by every sight and sound and movement within the horizon. For the present our personal reconciliation to God is an unseen fact, and is only attested by the indwelling Spirit which seals us. The heritage has not been fully and finally released and redeemed. The law yet seems to rumble with ominous curses. Nature often seems hostile in the last degree. We are left under conditions that sometimes suggest that awful and hopeless war is still going on, and yet the peace has been secretly sealed and its conditions ratified. One day the last thunder will have rolled itself into silence, the last bolt have hurtled through the air, the last hostile footstep be gone, and the stormless peace of eternity hide us in its sacred wings. The seal will then be needless.
III. This sealing declares the relationship of dignity and privilege we sustain before God. In Oriental life the seal is necessary to accredit a man to the office his master may have bestowed upon him. The messenger of the throne is recognised by the imperial seal he bears. When he has fulfilled his term of office, let him go back to the palace, stand amidst its fabulous splendours, and move to and fro beneath the eye of his imperial master, and there, at the centre of government once more, he will no longer need the seal, as a personal credential at least. His dignity is recognised and promptly acknowledged on all sides. The seal is indispensable when he has to cross the mountains or sail up unknown rivers, and go into districts where he must deal with semi-aliens. And it is whilst we pass as strangers and pilgrims through the earth that we need the seal which attests our true standing before God. Our majesty is obscured, our bodies are inglorious and subject to decay, and our garments torn and stained with travel. The world knows us not, as it knew not God’s greatest Son.
IV. This sealing marks out the believer as thesubject of a specific providential care. In this sense was it that circumcision stood to the Jews both for a sign arid a seal. The rite proclaimed God’s special proprietorship over the nation, and singled out its separate members for such defence, tender oversight, strenuous protection as a father exercises over the little ones of his family.
V. The seal is a token of proprietorship. You watch a ship as it is being loaded for a voyage, and amongst other cargo notice a number of boxes bearing a significant seal. These are not stowed away in the hold, like consignments of common goods, but are taken to some place where they will be constantly watched by the responsible officers of the ship. The chests are chests of sealed treasure. Should the ship spring a leak and be endangered, after the safety of of the passengers has been provided for, these sealed chests will be the first things to be put into the lifeboats. The seal marks them out for special care and defence, and whatever human vigilance, foresight, and valour can do will be done to deliver them to the consignees. And so with that sealing of the Spirit affixed to sincere believers in Jesus Christ. They are subject to the same risks, vicissitudes, and temptations as other men; but all that God’s power can do to help and deliver them shall be done. This special sealing marks out body and soul alike for God’s special possession and guardianship.
VI. This sealing goes on to mark out those who receive it as the types of a pure and incorruptible life. God seals us for our humbler vocation no less infallibly than He sealed the only-begotten Son. He is incapable of the folly of sending into a disloyal, suspicious, and sense-ridden world an unsealed servant and message-bearer. And by the holy fruit which appears in our lives, the world, if it be not altogether thoughtless and unteachable, will be compelled sooner or later to see that we are of God. The Holy Spirit is ever working a continuous transformation and ennoblement within us which is the distinctive mark of the children of the kingdom. When we shall have come to bear in our transfigured flesh the power and potency of all Divine qualities, this sealing will be needless. Till that day of perfect redemption dawns we cannot afford to despise this high signature. “Sealed unto the day of redemption”--sealed for our Own assurance, and also for a witness to the world. (T. G. Selby.)
The seal and earnest
The three metaphors in this and verse 21--“anointing,” “sealing,” and “giving the earnest”--
1. All refer to the same subject--the Divine Spirit.
2. All refer to one and the same act. They are three aspects of one thing, just as a sunbeam might be regarded either as the source of warmth, or of light, or of chemical action.
3. All declare a universal prerogative of Christians. Every man that loves Christ has the Spirit in the measure of his faith. Note:--
I. The “seal” of the spirit. A seal is impressed upon a recipient material, made soft by warmth, in order to leave there a copy of itself.
1. The effect of the Divine indwelling is to mould the recipient into the image of the Divine inhabitant. There is in the human spirit a capacity of receiving the image of God. His Spirit, entering into a heart, will there make that heart wise with its own wisdom, strong with its own strength, gentle with its own gentleness, holy with some purity of its own.
2. There are, however, characteristics which are not so much copies as correspondences--i.e., just as what is convex in the seal is concave in the impression, and viceversa, so, when that Spirit comes into our spirits, its promises will excite faith, its gifts will breed desire; yearning love will correspond to the love thatlongs todispense, emptiness to abundance, prayers to promises; the cry, “Abba! Father!” to the word, “Thou art My Son,”
3. Then, mark, the material is made capable of receiving the stamp, because it is warmed and softened--i.e., my faith must prepare my heart for the sanctifying indwelling of that Divine Spirit. God does not do with man as the coiner does with his blanks--put them cold into a press, and by violence from without stamp an image upon them; but He does as men do with a seal--warms the wax first, and then, with a gentle, firm touch, leaves the likeness there.
4. This aggregate of Christian character is the true sign that we belong to God, as the seal is the mark of ownership. I believe that Christian people ought to have a consciousness that they are God’s children, for their own peace and rest and joy. But you cannot use that in demonstration to other people. The two things must go together. Be very sure that your happy consciousness that you are Christ’s is verified to yourself and to others by a plain outward life of righteousness like the Lord’s. Have you got that seal stamped upon your lives like the hall-mark that says, “This is genuine silver, and no plated Brummagem stuff”? And is it woven into the whole length of your being like the scarlet thread that is spun into every Admiralty cable as a sign that it is Crown property?
5. This sealing, which is thus the token of God’s ownership, is also the pledge of security. A seal is stamped in order that there may be no tampering with what it seals--that it may be kept safe from thieves and violence. And our true guarantee that we shall come at last to heaven is present likeness to the indwelling Spirit. The seal is the pledge of security just because it is the mark of ownership. When, by God’s Spirit dwelling in us, we are led to love the things that be fair, and to long after more, that is like God’s hoisting His flag upon a newly-annexed territory. And is He going to be so careless in the preservation of His property as that He will allow it to slip away from Him? But no man has a right to rest on the assurance of God’s saving him into the heavenly kingdom unless He is saving him at this moment from the devil and his own evil heart.
II. The earnest of thespirit.
1. It is the guarantee of the inheritance.
(1) The experiences of the Christian life here are plainly immortal. The resurrection of Christ is the external proof; the facts of the Christian life are the inward proofs of a future life. Howsoever much we may say we believe in a future life and in a heaven, we really grasp it in the proportion in which here we are living in direct contact with God. What have faith, love, fellowship with God, to do with death? They cannot be cut through with the stroke that destroys physical life, any more than you can divide a sunbeam with a sword.
(2) All the results of the Divine Spirit’s sealing of the soul manifestly tend towards completeness. The engine is clearly working only half-speed. Those powers in the Christian man can plainly do a great deal more than they ever have done here, and are meant to do a great deal more. The road evidently leads upwards, and round that sharp corner, where the black rocks come so near each other and our eyesight cannot travel, we may be sure it goes steadily up still to the top of the pass, until it reaches “the shining tablelands whereof our God Himself is Sun and Moon,” and brings us all to the city set on a hill.
2. It is part of the whole. The truest and loftiest conception that we can form of heaven is the perfecting of the religious experience of earth. The shilling or two given to the servant of old when he was hired is of the same currency as the balance that he is to get when the year’s work is done. You have but to take from the faith, love, obedience, communion of the highest of moments of the Christian life all their imperfections, multiply them to their superlative possibility, and stretch them out to absolute eternity, and you get heaven. So here is a gift offered for us all, a gift which our feebleness sorely needs, the offer of a reinforcement as real and as sure to bring victory as when, at Waterloo, the Prussian bugles blew, and the English commander knew that victory was sure. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The Spirit as an earnest
I. We are the heirs of a spiritual inheritance. It is quite consistent with the present economy of mercy that we should enjoy some of this whilst on earth, and before we are put in full possession. Many things in the Divine purpose, and in the history of the world, preceded Christ’s personal mediation, prepared the way for it, and passed over, through His work, in blessings upon our souls. We were originally members of a disinherited race. The inheritance under consideration was the rightful possession of our Lord as the Only-begotten of the Father. As to our interest in it, it lay under a forfeiture, and we were treated as aliens. It is also) a merciful part of the plan that it should, at least for a time, be vested in Christ as trustee for us. In Eden, the inheritance of life was vested in the first man, who lost it to himself and all his posterity. God is our inheritance, and heaven is the place where most perfectly we shall enter upon its full and undisputed enjoyment. This is our estate; not ours for years merely, but for eternity, It will then be subject neither to corruption nor violence. Heaven, with its freedom from sin, sickness, pain, the curse, and death, is ours in reversion.
II. The spirit is given to us as an earnest of this splendid inheritance.
1. It is supposed that the word and its use came to the Greeks from the Syrian and Phoenician merchants, just as the words “tariff “ and “cargo” came to England from Spanish merchants. The technical sense of the word signifies the deposit paid by the purchaser on entering into an agreement for the purchase of anything. The identity of the deposit with the full payment is a very essential consideration in the force anduse of the word. In many of the rural districts of Scotland, and possibly in other places, a shilling, or small sum of money, is put into the hand of a servant when hired for a certain work as handsel-money, and as a pledge that when the whole work is done the whole wages shall be paid. Two things, therefore, seem to be included in the meaning of the word used: first, that it should be the same in kind as the fulness of which it is a part; and, secondly, representing our present state as Christians, it affirms the certainty of our privileges in this world and the next. As God Himself is said to be our inheritance--as we are said to have the inheritance in Christ--so the Holy Ghost is Himself the earnest of it in our hearts. It is not a work which He delegates to another; nor would it suffice to say that any one blessing, such as pardon, life, or peace, is the earnest of heaven it is the Spirit Himself only. He is the earnest of heaven.
2. The earnest is thus part of- our future inheritance, and identical in kind with it. An infant has a title to an inheritance which has descended from his deceased father; and though not legally, or in fact, in possession, except as under tutors and governors, certain advances are made from it to conduct his education, and in this way foretastes of it are given to him. As he passes through the family mansion, forests, and fields, and meets with the servants of the estate, he has in this walk, and in the loving respect of faithful dependents, an earnest of what he is speedily coming to; and we can imagine how his breast, as heir, would heave with excitement on the eve of possessing the inheritance. This experience of the earthly heir may help us, as an illustration, to understand our present enjoyment of “the firstfruits of the Spirit,” which, upon the testimony of the apostle, we now have. To take the blessing, eternal life, it is obvious, from both our Lord’s teaching and that of His apostles, that in all the essential elements of eternal life we are equal to “the spirits of just men made perfect” (Heb_12:23). We form part of the same family. Life in heaven is just our spiritual life here, excepting the amplification and elevation which death, as a freedom from the body and from the fretting power of sin, will confer upon us. Again, how vivid is the writer’s conception of the likeness, and indeed identity, of the earnest to the whole in his view of the nearness of the believers on earth to heaven. “But ye are come unto Mount Sion” (Heb_12:22-23). Portions of this inheritance are ministered to us in advance. True, it is but twilight yet with us. But as the sun is seen from the lofty Swiss mountains to throw forward on the distant peaks his rays, as skirmishers before an army, to announce his coming, so our present foretastes of heaven--the earnest of our inheritance, calm, intelligent faith in the Lord, love to Him and to His people, and our luminous hope cast as an anchor within the veil--testify that the day in which there shall be no night is at hand. All these experiences are pledges of our immediate admission into heaven when we die.
3. The earnest of the Spirit, which is thus a real part of the inheritance of heaven, is only a part of it. There is no principle or fixed rule by which we could define theproportion which it bears as a part to the whole. A handful of wheat offered by the farmer in the market as a sample to the purchaser of the entire crop, though identically the same, bears a very small proportion to the whole. We may safely infer that the earnest is less than the whole. The Spirit who Himself is the earnest, with all the grace and love which He is pleased to bestow upon our souls, is but a part. All the blessings of which God kindly thought and devised for us in eternity, which cost the Redeemer His life to secure and bestow as the efficient cause of oar salvation, and which the Holy Ghost came down from heaven to reveal, are undoubtedly involved in this earnest. How stupendous a thought that something greater--and how much greater!--awaits us when we shall see God! It may be said that even here we have God, and what more can we have inheaven? But there He will be our God without any of the deductions made for our present imperfections and actual transgressions (1Co_13:12; 1Jn_3:2). (A. Douglas McMillan.)
