This is the crowning and has been the constant work of the Spirit.
He glorified Christ in the prophecies, sacrifices and promises of the ancient economy, in the sinless humanity with which He clothed Him; in the public ministry to which He set Him apart; in the holy life He caused Him to live; in the sufferings He enabled Him to endure; in His glorious resurrection, ascension and triumphs in the day of Pentecost. But the text points beyond these. Our Lord referred to the spiritual illumination which would make men acquainted with Him, so that whereas He had before been treated ignominiously would in future be honoured for ever. The Spirit would lead men to glorify Christ
I. BY THE VIEWS WHICH HE WOULD ENLIGHTEN THEM TO ENTERTAIN OF HIM. This implies that there is in Christ that which no eye can discover until opened by the Spirit of God. This our Lord intimated to Peter--“flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee,” &c. The illumination of the Spirit leads to a saving discovery of the glory of
1. Christ’s Person, into the mystery of Godliness.
2. His work of redemption.
3. His offices, as Prophet, Priest and King.
II. BY THE AFFECTIONS WHICH HE CAUSES HIS PEOPLE TO CHERISH TOWARDS HIM, which are highly honourable to Him.
1. Faith. What an honour to receive the trust of a redeemed world.
2. Gratitude.
3. Love.
4. Hope.
5. Joy.
Men are honoured by these affections; but we can only exercise them in part because of the defectiveness oft he worthiest objects. It is Christ’s glory to be worthy of them and to receive them completely.
III. BY THE SUPREMACY WHICH HE CLAIMS AND SECURES FOR HIM AMONG ALL THE CREATURES OF GOD. Christ is now supreme
1. Over every heart that is given to Him.
2. Over His own Church.
3. Over the world.
4. Over other worlds.
This supremacy will, under the guidance of the Spirit, be eventually acknowledged.
IV. BY THE LIFE WHICH HE INDUCES HIS PEOPLE TO LIVE FOR HIS SAKE. “Let your light so shine,” &c; “Ye are not your own,” &c. In this life the believer joyfully acquiesces. How honourable to Christ the lives of saintly men!
V. BY THE PRAISES WHICH SHALL COMPASS HIM ABOUT FOR EVER.
1. Of angels.
2. His redeemed.
3. Every creature.
Conclusion: If we would glorify Christ we must
1. Be taught by the Spirit.
2. Be quickened by the Spirit.
3. Be sanctified by the Spirit.
4. Submit to a supremacy which the Spirit claims for Christ.
5. Be “made meet for the inheritance of the saints to light.” (J. Morgan, D. D.)
The glory of Christ in the mission of the Holy Ghost
I. CONTEMPLATE THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT
1. He awakens the attention of the thoughtless and slumbering world to the truth of God.
2. He convinces of sin.
3. He regenerates the soul.
4. He is the Comforter.
II. THE GREAT AND DIVINE AGENT IS THE MESSENGER OF CHRIST.
III. HIS MISSION ILLUSTRATES THE GLORY OF CHRIST.
1. Furnishing additional proof of the great facts which form the substance of Christianity.
2. Giving efficacy to the work already accomplished by Christ’s death and resurrection.
3. Enabling us to form some estimate of the blessings Christ bestows.
4. Giving hope to the world, (G. Spring, D. D.)
The Holy Spirit glorifying Christ
We shall use our text
I. AS A TEST. There are a thousand things that claim to be of the Holy Ghost; how can we know whether they are or not? Here is a simple mode. Apply this test
1. To ministries. Now, there are some ministries which clearly are not of the Holy Ghost, because they
(1) Glorify ceremonies.
(2) Extol doctrine. Against a sound creed we have not a word to say; but still we must exalt Christ rather than Calvinism, or any other system of theology.
(3) Magnify a certain experience--If you have felt thus, and thus, no words of praise can be too strong for you; but if you have been led in another way, you never knew vital godliness at all. I say not a word against experimental preaching, but it must be experience about Christ.
(4) Exalt morality. If we will do this, and that, and the other we shall be saved. But if any man put the works of flesh before the finished work of Christ, his ministry is not of the Holy Ghost.
(5) And what might I say of many who produce their pretty little essays, and high-sounding periods, but that they are as “sounding brass, and a tinkling cymbal,” inasmuch as they forget Christ. How bitterly shall we lament much of our ministry because it hath not glorified Christ on our dying beds. What joy it shall be to remember that, however feebly, we did extol Him.
2. To doctrine. Any teaching, whatever authority it may claim, which does not glorify Christ, is most assuredly false. Socinianism must be utterly abhorred of us, for it strikes at once at the Deity of our blessed Lord and Master. If, on the other hand, a doctrine layeth man in the dust and lifteth up Christ as a Saviour, the Alpha and Omega of salvation, you may safely say that is the Holy Ghost’s doctrine, for He shall glorify Christ.
3. To the conviction through which a sinner passes. In the first dawn of our spiritual life, a mighty tempest of spiritual influence sweeps over the heart. The Holy Ghost is active, and the Prince of the Power of the air is active too. How, in this confusion, can a man know what part of his conviction is of God, and what part of the devil? You have a thought in your head that you are too great a sinner to be saved. That is not of the Holy Ghost, clearly, because it detracts from the power of Christ as a Saviour. “I am not fit to come to Christ.” Surely this is not of the Holy Ghost. What, are you to make yourself fit to come to Christ? Why that is making you a Christ “But I heard Mr. So-and-So say, that when he was converted, he seemed to be dragged by the hair of his head to the very depths of hell, lost beyond the reach of mercy.” No doubt that was his experience; but do you want to experience every piece of devilry that a good man has known? Much of what your friend felt was not of God, but of his own corrupt heart. If the Lord brings thee to put thy soul just as it is into the hands of the Redeemer, honouring him by a childlike trust, thou hast an experience infinitely more precious than the ravings of thy proud heart could ever yield thee.
4. To what is called experience. Much of the experience of a Christian is not Christian experience. If any person should mount the platform and inform us that he had been five times tried at the Old Bailey, you would say, “Well, you may have experienced that disgrace, but it is not fair to call it human experience.” So, a Christian man may fall into great darkness, and sin. But if he shall set up his darkness and sin as being Christian experience, we say, “No; you may be a Christian and know all this, but we cannot allow you to decide our spiritual state according to your peculiar method of feeling.” When we get to that which cometh from beneath we ought to say “Oh! wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord.” That only which glorifies Christ is true Christian experience.
5. To ourselves. Art thou saved or not? If saved, the tenor of thy life is to glorify Christ. What sayest thou in looking back? And what about the present and the future?
II. A DIRECTION. How are we to glorify Christ? We must have the Holy Spirit. Let our text, then
1. Be sanctified to our humiliation. Here are we saved, and yet such weak things that we cannot glorify Christ without the Holy Ghost. Thou hast ten talents, but those ten talents shall make thee ten times a worse defaulter to thy Master unless the Holy Ghost help thee.
2. Be an excitement to earnest prayer.
3. Teach us entire dependence upon the Holy Spirit. All the farmers in England cannot make it leave off raining, but when it does leave off, and the sun shines, they can get their wheat in as quick as they can. All the sailors on the ocean cannot make a capful of wind; but when the wind does blow they can crowd on every yard of canvas. So all the Christians in the world cannot make the Holy Spirit work. “The wind bloweth where it listeth,” &c., but when we have the Holy Spirit, we can use Him; when He is with us we can work.
III. A STIMULUS. Does the Holy Ghost glorify Christ? Then
1. How should we aim to do it! You have been in a large way of business. Could you say that your object was to honour Christ in it? You have come down in the world; but suppose you can glorify God more. Then you are in a better position than you used to be.
2. While we make this our aim, let us take every opportunity of glorifying Christ. We throw thousands of opportunities away. Whether ye work at a lapstone, or drive a plough, or lay the stones in a building, or are diligent with the pen, or buy and sell, do all, even to your eating or your drinking, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and so, like the Holy Spirit, let it be said of you, “He shall glorify Me.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The Holy Spirit the Revealer of Christ
We are living in the dispensation of the Spirit. What does that mean? It means that we are living on a higher plane than ever has been occupied before. We gather this
1. From a comparison of this dispensation with others that have preceded it. True religion is more widely disseminated in this than it has been in any preceding dispensation.
2. We know that this Dispensation is an advance, because God Himself is advance--progress. He never goes backward.
3. The same fact is clear from the structure of Scripture.
4. The whole historic development of man, looked at in the line of the plan of redemption, is clearly enough in this upward direction. The work of God is from matter toward spirit. The child leaves his playthings behind, and comes to despise them. The college student turns his back on the pleasures and games of his boyhood. The professional man has forgotten the rivalries of college life--as narrow as its walls; and the mellowed and matured philosopher “lives already amid the peace and the power of invisible scenes,” and draws from above and beyond him the springs of incentive and action. The same principle holds throughout nature. Time and again our attention is drawn to the fact that there is an invisible world, and that that invisible world bears down upon and overpowers the visible. That thought and feeling and volition are stronger than substance and quality and force, and that from within what is unseen and supersensible and supernatural flow the “upper springs” of all inferior energy and action.
5. But we are not left to gather up an inference from observation, nor speculation, nor from logic. “Our Saviour Himself now assures us, that if we believe in Him we shall do greater works than even those which He performed on earth, and that we shall do them precisely because He goes to the Father.”
I. THE ONE ESSENTIAL TO SALVATION IS THE REVELATION OF CHRIST. How essential this is may be gathered from reason, from conscience, and from the light of the Scriptures.
1. From reason. Nowhere, outside the radius of Christianity, is there either holiness or peace. Look at Africa. Look at China. He who knows anything of the history of moral light knows that it has followed, as its centre, the planting of the cross of Christ--that just as races have receded from the light of God in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ, so they have sunken to a brutish level, and have died in the distractions of an utter unrest.
2. Conscience affirms the same truth. Conscience, in every man, says: “You are guilty! You are a sinner! God is holy. He cannot acquit!” Conscience, whatever modern thought may say, cries--“Eternal Justice is Eternal Fact, and God is just; and How can justice clear the guilty?” and to this cry of conscience is no answer but in Christ and in the sacrifice” of Christ.
3. And these deductions of our reason and our conscience are confirmed by Scripture. Now the Bible affirms. It comes straight out and says: “Apart from the knowledge of Christ there is no salvation.”
II. THE HOLY GHOST IS THE ONLY REVEALER OF CHRIST. He alone makes Christ glorious. The Holy Ghost has given us all the knowledge that we have of Jesus Christ. Where do we get that knowledge? How do we know that there is such a thing as a Saviour? From the Bible. Outside the covers of this Book there is not a hint of a Christ. And whence came the Bible? It was inspired. Who inspired it? God, the Holy Ghost. Not only so, but, with the Bible in our hands, how can we know anything of Christ, save as the Spirit reveals Him? Miracle never changed any man. Appearances--like that of the angels to Abraham. Abraham saw Christ’s day. How did he see it? By illumination--by the Holy Ghost. Moses recognized God at Horeb. How? By the fire? No, but by God speaking out of the midst of the bush. Ezekiel was transformed at Chebar. How? By the wheels? No, but “the Spirit,” he says, “entered in me.” Israel was to be revived under Elijah. How? By the wind? By the earthquake? By the fire? By any sensible or ocular demonstration? No; but by the still small voice. That was the lesson taught to the prophet. The same fact comes out in the New Testament. How many saw Christ--touched Christ--said they believed on Christ in the flesh, who never went beyond impressions of their outward senses. What makes a Christian is the spiritual apprehension of Christ, and the Holy Ghost alone can reveal Him. Take the Levitical sacrifices how without these could we explain the Atonement? Yet only a few who read them under the Old Dispensation saw Christ in these Scriptures, and why? Because they needed more than the most perfect description. They needed light on the light. They needed, like David, to have their eyes opened to see wondrous things out of God’s law. The same thing is true of the New Testament. The Holy Ghost reveals Christ. He glorifies Christ. Notice: He does not create Christ; He shows Him. When we were sailing in the Grecian Archipelago we came, at dawn of day, to the Island of Rhodes. At first we saw only a grey indistinctness--the shapeless outline of vast rocks rising out of the water. Then as the sun came up, how glorious! There lay the harbour once bestridden by the famous Colossus, the sapphire ripplings of the water touched with rose and gold--the ships, the flappings of their sails stirred lightly by the morning breeze. There stretched away the green fields and the mountains round which poetry had thrown her charm; midway in the perspective rose the ancient castellated ramparts of the fortress of the Knights of St. John, all flashing, glowing, burning, touched and “transfigured by the ministry of light.” “That which doth make manifest is light.” The Holy Ghost is the only revealer of Jesus. And the Holy Ghost glorifies Christ or reveals Him in His true glory now, as He could not possibly do were Christ present. The apostles loved Christ too much, as the carnal loves the carnal. That is the error of Rome, with her crucifixes, her Mass, and her sensuous ecstasies. Read the memoirs of Santa Teresa and of St. John of the Cross, and you will find the love they express for the Saviour is sensuous--carnal There is something lurid about it. You are afraid of it. It was necessary that that sort of thing should be broken--that there should come an experience, which, permit me to say it, should emancipate Christ--should burst the tomb and the grave-clothes, and set Him Infinite, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Heavenly--working above, as ever in, and through His Church--an experience like that of St. Paul when he says: “Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more.” We only know Him as the Spirit reveals Him. You have known a man by his clothes--by his face--now you come to know him by his character. Something reveals him in his abilities, in his integrity, in his truth, as your friend. The Holy Ghost reveals Christ. But let us come closer; the ulterior and special object of the Spirit’s revelation is God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ.
III. “He shall glorify” “MAKE ME GLORIOUS.” St. Paul expands our Saviour’s statement in these words: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” The world without Christ, or Christ in twilight--beneath the dawn-line of the Old Testament--beneath the histories, and types, and prophecies--beneath the horizon of an Arctic winter, and then, and all at once, and for ever, the Sun of Righteousness is visible perfection of His glory--the Mystery of Godliness--the Day-spring from on high! The statement of this point involves, of course, three. That there is such a thing as the knowledge of the glory of God--that this knowledge is unfolded in the face of Jesus Christ, and that it comes by a Divine in-shining.
1. The knowledge of the glory of God. If God be God, He is glorious, for glory is manifested excellence, and God is most excellent, and cannot be hid. The glory of God is not only His greatness, but the equipoise of His character. Satan is great, i.e., in faculties, but he is in no wise glorious, but infamous, because of the defect of his character. God’s glory is the equipoise of His attributes. With Him nowhere is there too much--nowhere a deficit. It is important to put emphasis upon the fact before us, because the effort of to-day is to destroy the balance of the attributes of God--to posit in that justice, for example--and in measurement and in adjustment everything comes back to the straight line--that justice in God is a merely optional attribute. “How can God,” says one of our modem neologians, “how can God be free if He be the slave of His own justice?” As well ask, “How can I be free if I cannot rid myself of my backbone? I am the slave, then, of my backbone. But how can I be a man and have no backbone?” For God to be free from His justice would be for Him to be free from Himself as moral, and therefore immoral; for justice is simply looking on things as they are, and treating them accordingly, and to deny this is to deny rectitude, and to deny rectitude is to deny God and make Him immoral. Justice optional! What should we think of a man to whom it were optional to be just, or to be unjust? The moral grandeur of God is His balance, His poise, that He rights Himself. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
2. The glory of God then, as it stands revealed in vast concentric haloes, circles upon circles of immeasurable excellence, is at its brightest spot--its centre--and when focalized and gathered to one burning-point, nothing more, nothing less than conciliation of justice and grace. “How can God be just and justify the guilty?” lies at the root of the gospel. The answer to that question is the gospel, and Christ on the cross is its sum. Christ on the cross, not Christ in pre-existence, transcending thought as is the mystery of everlasting generation. Not Christ again in all the grand kaleidoscopic aspects of His ministry, as miracles spring up beneath His footsteps like fresh flowers. Not Christ in any, nor in all, these revelations, glorious as they are, but still subordinate, but Christ upon the tree. It was there seen that God could not swerve--that sin must be punished. What is the upshot of this? The upshot is that from the instant you and I look away to Christ as our Substitute, we are eternally saved. Is not that glorious? Bursts there not a glory from that torn flesh which hangs and writhes upon those ragged nails, which challenges all suns to rival it in splendour? Is not here God’s glory focalized, as it swings low and kisses even your and my horizon? When we were at the North Cape, at midnight, a French gentleman took out a sun-glass and burned a hole in his hat with it. Low as the sun was, he was still clothed with all his burning power. So it was with our Saviour on the cross. “For though He was crucified through weakness, yet He liveth.”
3. This glory hath in-shined--that is the third point. It hath shined not historically--not in the face of a physical Christ, although these, of course, are included; but through the veil of the heart. Christ’s glory to mere worldly men is a veiled glory; “the veil” says the Apostle, “is upon their heart.” That veil has been rent--not from our side--from God’s side. God hath “shined in”--not into the world only, that is not enough--could not be, for “the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.” Into believing hearts God hath shined. It is not simply knowledge, but it is the light of the knowledge. It is not Church instruction, but heart-work--interior regeneration. “When it pleased God,” says Paul, “to reveal His Son within me, immediately I took no conference flesh and blood.”
How then do we see the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ?
1. One way, by faith. Faith is the great opened eye of the soul.
2. Another way the light shines in us is by the witness of the Spirit. What is that witness if not a supernatural spiritual emphasis put on the assurances and promises of God, which makes them true to us without a question?
3. A third way light shines in is by consciousness. Consciousness of breathing goes with breathing. Consciousness of walking goes with walking. Consciousness of life and vigour goes with power. A man full of the Holy Ghost knows what he is full of, and that he is not empty. He knows that his light is not darkness--that his joy is not despair, and that his power is something other and more than physical elation or physical energy. “Can He not, through some interior eye which we know not, and for which we have no name, pour into us the radiance of His own infinite glory, though He be the King invisible, whom no man has seen, nor can see?” Can He not manifest Himself to the eye of interior consciousness with a distinctness of spiritual presence as satisfying as that which His bodily form gave to the external vision of His disciples? This revelation of Christ--fresh revelation I mean, satisfying our souls, filling, flooding--enlarging us with the light, and the love, and the joy, and the strength of the Lord is what we need. (G. S. Bishop, D. D.)
The promise of the Spirit--the fulness of Christ
“He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine,” &c., might be liable to misconstruction, and indicate that Christ would have Himself to be glorified, apart from the Father, and His own fulness drawn upon independently. As if to obviate this, Christ hastens to account for His having said it. “It is of the Father’s after all that He takes, when He takes of Mine. It is the Father whom He glorifies when He glorifies Me.” But the Lord had undoubtedly another reason. It is for their sakes, rather than His own, that He announces this truth, “I would not have said that were it not that all things which the Father hath are Mine; for otherwise it would have been poor consolation to you.” We are therefore naturally led, first, to consider what Christ has before examining the promise concerning what the Holy Ghost is to do.
The Lord might say, “All things that the Father hath are Mine,” in respect of
I. HIS ORIGINAL GODHEAD; and but for this He could not, without blasphemy, have said it. This the Jews well understood, when, for similar language, “they took up stones to stone Him,” and when they cried out at His trial, “He hath spoken blasphemy.” For it is impossible to explain away this claim of a right of property in all that is the Father’s, or to justify it if made by a creature. Often, during the days of His flesh, do we find Him dwelling with a holy and blessed complacency on thoughts connected with His being “in the bosom of the Father.”
II. HIS SUFFERING MANHOOD. It is this consideration, indeed, which makes the statement practically important in its application to us, viz., as being in our nature. Such is the glory of His person, as combining the Divine nature with the human; and such the value of His work that whatsoever is comprehended in the fulness of the Godhead is centred in “the Man Christ Jesus,” considered as obedient to the Father, “even unto death.” And as the recompense of that work, He receives, in His human nature, an interest in all that the Father hath. Hence the blessedness of His assurance, that “as the Son of Man He has power on earth to forgive sins.” Hence also the value of that deed of grant, by which, “as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself, that the Son also may quicken whom He will.” And hence the importance of the Father’s surrender, as it were, of the right of rule or judgment into the hands of the Son, for this very reason, that “He is the Son of Man.” These are among the things which the Father has, and these He has given to the Son. Now, in respect of His original Godhead, these things cannot be said to be given to Him. They belong to Him by necessity of nature. But as the Son of Man He receives this threefold prerogative as the gift of the Father.
III. HIS HEADSHIP OF THE CHURCH. In one sense, it is true, even as regards the wicked, that all things which the Father hath, He hath given unto the Son. The impenitent and unbelieving are consigned to His disposal; and on Him it devolves to award and inflict eternal judgment. But it is His own people that Christ has chiefly in His eye here.
1. They themselves belong to the Father. “Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me.” “All that the Father giveth Me, shall come unto thee.” All that the Father has are dear to Him as belonging to the Father, and as the gift of the Father, pledged to Him in the everlasting covenant, and bestowed in recompense of His making His soul an offering for sin.
2. And taking this people as His own, uniting Himself to them, identifying Himself with them, He says “All things that the Father hath are Mine,” for them, as “His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.” For them, “when He ascended up on high, He received gifts.” He has righteousness for them so that in Him the righteous God is well pleased. He has life with the Father, so that “they may live also.” He has the everlasting love of the Father. So that “the love wherewith the Father hath loved Him may be in them.” He has glory that they may “behold the glory which He had with the Father before the world was.” Conclusion: The Father entrusts His all to Christ, and so surely we might venture to entrust our all to Him. The Father’s glory is safe in His keeping; the Father’s riches of wisdom and grace and love are well and wisely expended by Him. Is it to such a Saviour that you, oh sinner, will hesitate about committing your soul? If He can take charge of all that is the Father’s as His own, may He not take charge of all that is yours? (J. S. Candlish, D. D.)
The promise of the Spirit--taking and showing what is Christ’s
In the words, “He shall receive of Mine,” &c., the Spirit stands in a twofold relation and discharges a twofold function--towards Christ on the one hand, and toward His believing people on the other.
I. HE SHALL TAKE OR RECEIVE OF MINE.
1. He is well entitled to take of what is Christ’s, because He is Himself a Divine person. The manner in which the Holy Ghost is here associated with the Father and the Son clearly shows that tie is such. In truth, for any other than a Divine Person to take part in this transaction were a liberty not to be tolerated. But the Holy Ghost, being Himself God, is a party to the whole arrangement by which all things that the Father hath become Christ’s: nay, more, He is a party to the carrying of that arrangement into effect. For consider how large a share the Holy Ghost had in the whole of that mediatorial work of Christ, which is the main ground of His saying, “All things that the Father hath are Mine.” His very coming into the world was by the Holy Ghost, by whom a body was prepared for Him. He was “anointed by the Holy Ghost without measure,” for the doing of His Father’s will. “Through the eternal Spirit He offered Himself, without spot, to God;” and He was “declared to be the Son of God with power, by His resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness.” In all the critical circumstances of His arduous undertaking, in His birth, His baptism, &c., the Holy Ghost stood by Him sustaining His human soul, and conveying to it the Father’s love.
2. Nor is He less qualified and able, than He is entitled, to receive of what is Christ’s. For, having been with the Father and the Son in the ordering of the plan from all eternity, and having been with Christ all along in the accomplishment of it, “He searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God:” and in dealing with what is Christ’s, He is in His element, so to speak, and at home (Joh_16:13). He can make us know “the things which are freely given to us of God;” past, present, and future; “opening our eyes to behold wondrous things out of God’s law.”
3. He is One whom Christ is, altogether willing to have taking of His. It is not a stranger who disposes of another’s property, or builds on another’s foundation. It is no rash or rude hand, indifferent to His interest or honour, that rifles His treasury and steals from His unsearchable riches. “He shall glorify Me,” says Christ Himself. He is of My council, and His sole aim is to carry out My work and to exalt My name.
II. WHAT THE SPIRIT THUS TAKES OR RECEIVES OF CHRIST’S, HE SHOWS TO HIS PEOPLE.
1. What kind of showing is it that we need? How is it that what the Spirit takes of Christ’s must be revealed? Will it suffice to set before our eyes what is to be shown? Alas! the experience of the Lord’s actual sojourn here below gives but a sad reply. Nor is the case altered now. In the written Word, in the preaching of the gospel, in all the means and ordinances by which Christ and His salvation are brought before the minds of men and pressed upon their regard, the Holy Ghost is “taking of what is Christ’s and showing it,” and every time you open the Bible, or wait on the preaching of Christ crucified, if you continue unaffected and unmoved, you are resisting the Spirit. But there must be a showing of another kind; a work of discovery within, an opening of the eye of the carnal mind; a dispelling of the darkness of the evil heart, that “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” may shine. Now for this kind of showing, the Holy Ghost is the fitting agent. For being pure Spirit, He has access immediately to your spirits: and being almighty, He turns them whithersoever He will.
2. Mark the progress of the Spirit’s work, in showing you what He takes of Christ’s.
(1) Call to mind the first awakening of your soul to the apprehension of things divine. Think on the time, when, after a sudden and decided call perhaps, or a slower and more doubtful process of conviction, you have felt as if, all at once, the clouds broke and the sky cleared. What of Christ’s was it that the Spirit was then showing you? Did He not show you the Son obedient, and the Father well pleased: the righteous and holy love of God, which is Christ’s as the reward of His obedience unto death, in all its fulness and freeness?
(2) Or again, if you go back to any season of peculiar spiritual prosperity, what was it that quickened your holy graces, filled you with hatred of sin, and made duties a delight? What did the Spirit show to you of Christ’s then? What of holy beauty, or meek endurance, or tender sympathy in Christ? What of venerable authority and benignant complacency in God His Father?
(3) Learn to note in some such way as this the agency of the Holy Spirit in you, by observing what it is that He shows you of Christ’s and of the Father’s, in the critical periods of your Christian pilgrimage. See how He has used the “unsearchable riches of Christ” for the satisfying of your wants; how in your ignorance He has opened to you “the riches of His wisdom and knowledge;” in your waywardness and backsliding; “the riches of His forbearance” in your grief and despondency “the riches of His grace;” and amid the terrors of death “the riches of His glory.” Thus you will be able to stir up the gift that is in you, and to improve the Spirit’s gracious dealings with you to the uttermost.
3. Observe as an encouragement how this whole work of the Spirit is carried on, not against, but by means of our natural faculties of understanding and conscience. If He shows you must look. It is in the Word that Christ is set forth. Let the Word of Christ then dwell in you richly. Then will the Spirit be ever showing you out of the word by His inward teaching, more and more of what is Christ’s and opening your eyes more and more to “behold wondrous things out of His law.” And this the rather because
4. The work is according to the mind of Christ. He is the Spirit of Christ--the Spirit that dwelt in Him. And if the very Spirit that dwelt in Christ, and was intimately cognisant of all that passed through His soul in all His life of sorrows, and His death of shame, and His resurrection to glory, dwell in you; have you not here a connecting link which will give you a quick understanding and discernment of all that is Christ’s, and cause you to realize it as your own?
Conclusion:
1. The doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity is brought out in this, as it generally is in other passages of the Word, not abstractly and in the way of a naked statement of the truth, but practically, and with reference to what they severally do in the economy of grace.
2. The manner of intercourse between heaven and earth is here presented. The chain is formed--fixed on the throne of God at one end, twined round your heart at the other--waiting but the touch of the heavenly fire, the swift and secret influence of the Heavenly Spirit, to make it all instinct with life and meaning, so that signs and tokens may pass between. The ladder is set--reaching from the sanctuary above to the sanctuary of every church, home, and closet. And not angels only are ascending and descending on this ladder, which is none other than the mediation of the Son of Man--but the Lord Himself--the Spirit-As moving to and fro, communicating the fulness of the Father, through the Son. (J. S.Candlish, D. D.)
The Holy Spirit revealing the things of Christ
As the page may bear upon its surface writings traced in viewless ink, which are there, and yet are aa if they were not, until the nearness of the fire shall call them out into a new distinctness, so may all truth be written on the mind of man, and yet be dead and meaningless, until called into power and being by the falling on it of these rays of the heavenly fire; and then every word of Scripture, every voice of God in His Church, every sacrament, comes forth into shape and completeness, as Christ is seen by the soul to be there. (Bp. S. Wilberforce.)
