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In the last two lessons on the Holy Spirit, we have seen that the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, entered the world on the Day of Pentecost to fulfill a definite appointed mission.
He is in the world today in as much reality as was Christ during His earthly ministry, although He cannot be contacted by the physical senses of man.
We have seen why it was that He could not come before the Day of Pentecost, and what took place in the upper room that day. In this lesson we shall further study the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Church today.
Christ taught His disciples that another Comforter would come to take his place. If the Holy Spirit takes the place of Christ, we know that He is doing what Christ would do if Christ were here.
If Christ were here in a human body, as He was before His ascension, His ministry would be to reveal to man what he had wrought for him by His death and resurrection. His aim would be to show every man that He could become sin on his behalf; that he might become righteous, and make every man to see the tragedy in rejecting the substitutionary sacrifice of Himself.
So the Holy Spirit today is making real to human hearts the work of the Son of God. The Spirit's teaching and communication are not His own; they are Christ's (John 16:13-14). Christ gave us the three-fold method of the Holy Spirit in making His work real to the world in John 16:7-11.
It was expedient for Christ to go to the Father and the Holy Spirit to take his place, for Christ's ministry to man through human body would have been localized. The Holy Spirit, however, can reach the world.
It is necessary that we understand how the Holy Spirit deals with an unsaved man, so that we can let Him work freely through us. As we study His method of presenting the work of Christ to them, we shall see how wrong has been most of our evangelistic preaching.
John 16:8-11 Note: The Holy Spirit convicts the world of judgment because the prince of this world has been judged. What has the judgment of Satan to do with man? Everything, because man has become his child and Satan's eternal home has become man's eternal home (Matthew 25:41).
After the Holy Spirit shows a man that he is a child of Satan, not only now but also for eternity, He convicts him of righteousness, because Christ has gone to the Father. He shows man that he has a Mediator before God, one who with His own blood, after providing eternal redemption for man, entered heaven on his behalf. He shows man that he may become the righteousness of God.
Then He convicts man of the sin of rejecting Christ, the only way of redemption from Satan's authority (John 14:6, Acts 4:12, Hebrews 2:14-15). The sin of choosing to remain a child of Satan after man has learned of God's love and Christ's death on his behalf constitutes the sin of separation. There is no forgiveness for the man who continues in Christ rejection.
How out of harmony with the Holy Spirit's method has been our preaching. We have not shown man that he is a child of Satan, or have we shown him his legal rights to the righteousness and the nature of God.
We have preached the sinner under condemnation because of sins committed. God does not condemn a man because of what he does, but because of what he is, and convicts him only of one sin - the sin of rejecting Christ, and choosing to remain a child of Satan.
The Holy Spirit works through His Word. It is His sword (Ephesians 6:17). It is through the word, God's revelation to man, that the Holy Spirit shows an unsaved man his need of Christ. We are the instruments that the Holy Spirit uses for we have had committed to us the word of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).
If we do not know how to rightly divide the Word of Truth, and intelligently present it to an unsaved man, we cripple the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
After the Holy Spirit has convinced one of his need of Christ, if that one believes upon Christ, the Holy Spirit imparts to that one the nature of God (John 1:12-13).
Christ said, "I am come that they might have life, and have it abundantly." (John 10:10). Christ came to make it possible for man to actually receive the nature of God - eternal life (1 John 5:11-13). The man who receives Christ as Saviour, receives this nature of God, and actually becomes God's child (John 1:12-13). The blessed, faithful Holy Spirit is the Mediator through whom this life is transmitted.
Christ said, "Except one be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto you, you must be born from above. The wind blows where it wills and you hear the sound thereof, but know not where it came from, or where it goes, so is everyone that is born of the Spirit."
The New Birth is a hidden action, yet the greatest of all miracles. The Holy Spirit overshadows the one who believes on Christ and imparts to that one the life of God, and he becomes a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). "Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God" (John 1:13).
We see that it is the Holy Spirit who convicts the natural man of his need of Christ and then imparts the nature of God to his spirit when he accepts Christ. Then the Holy Spirit, if intelligently invited, indwells the one whom He has called the new creation in Christ. The body of the child of God becomes His temple. During this period of the Holy Spirit's residence upon the earth, His home and place of abode is the body of Christ, the Church.
Just as Christ's physical body was the temple of God while He was here upon earth (John 2:21), His body, the Church, is the temple of the Holy Spirit during His ministry here. Let us note the comparison. A literal translation of John 1:14 says, "The word was made flesh and tabernacled among us." The word "tabernacled" is the word used in scripture for the place where God dwells among men. God's dwelling place is a temple.
Then when God was tabernacled in Christ, Christ's body became His temple. Christ when speaking to the Jews called His body a temple. He said, if they would destroy His body, the temple of God, He would raise it again.
When God was tabernacled among men, the Shekinah Glory rested upon the mercy seat (Exodus 25:21-22). So also when God was tabernacled among men in Christ, "They beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).
When God was tabernacled among us in Christ, it was God's coming into union with perfect and sinless humanity, for Christ had not partaken of spiritual death, or come under its influence. So now also when the Holy Spirit becomes tabernacled in the body of Christ, it is God's coming into union with men who have become new creations, who have been delivered completely from spiritual death and all satanic authority.
The new man is created in "righteousness and holiness of truth" ready to become the temple of God. "In whom each several building fitly framed together, grows into a Holy Temple in the Lord, in whom you are built together for a habitation of God in the spirit" (Ephesians 2:21-22). "Or know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which you have from God and you are not your own" (1 Corinthians 6:19).
As with Christ the head, God ahs become incarnated in the Church. Because of the indwelling of God in Christ, He could say, "He who hath seen me has seen the Father." For the first time, God was actually revealed to man. No man had beheld God at any time, but in Christ He was made known to man.
When Christ left the world to take His place at the Father's right hand where He would have no more personal contact with men, He sent the Holy Spirit to become incarnated in His mystical body, the Church, that the revelation of God might continue.
It is the desire of the Father, that the body of Christ through the Holy Spirit, be filled with the fullness of God. "That you may be filled with all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:19). In fact, we are commanded to be filled with the Holy Spirit that He might be revealed to the world (Ephesians 5:18).
Christ has no contact with the world today except through His body. He cannot work independently of it. If our lives are not filled with the Holy Spirit so that He can freely work through us, we tie the hands of Deity.
This is the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. It is through Him that the Father and Son are working, and He works in and through the body of Christ. There cannot be a true manifestation of Christ to the world, if His body is not indwelt with the Holy Spirit.
In connection with this thought, there is a serious lesson found in 1 John 4:12. "No man has beheld God at anytime: if we love one another, God abideth in us and His love is perfected in us."
The word "perfect" means, "complete." The thought is that if God dwells in us, then His love can be completed through our lives. The implication is that His love cannot be made complete except as it finds expression through us. There is something lacking in it except as it works through our lives.
This is true. God's grace has abounded toward men in Christ. "For of His fullness we all receive and grace upon grace" (John 1:16). Grace is love at work. God's love has wrought a complete redemption for man. By His grace, Christ has tasted death for every man (Hebrews 2:9) and He has borne the diseases and pains of all humanity (Isaiah 53).
Yet the word of reconciliation which will bring to man the redemption which is in Christ, can only be given through the body of Christ. God has reconciled all humanity to Himself through Christ, and has given the message of reconciliation to the body of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:18-21).
If the body of Christ is not under the direction of the Holy Spirit, taking its place in the world, God's love cannot be expressed. No man has beheld God at any time, but if He can indwell the body of Christ as He did Christ, His love can find expression and reach humanity. His message to us is "I will dwell in them and walk in them" (2 Corinthians 6:16). If we let Him, then the world can behold His glory today and behold the works of His love as they did when God "tabernacled" among men in Christ.
When the Holy Spirit began His ministry on the Day of Pentecost, He began it under a new name. Christ had called Him the "Paraclete." It is a Greek word derived from the verb meaning, "to call to one's aid."
The sorrow that had come to the hearts of the disciples through the death of Christ had been turned into joy at His resurrection. However, there was to come a longer separation - His going to take His place at the Father's right hand. The third person of the Trinity is the One called to their aid. He came to fill the vacant place of their Master.
What great expectations must have arisen in their hearts! They had been thrilled by the coming of the Son of God to earth. Now another, on the same plane of the Lord Himself, is to come and abide with them forever. "I will not leave you orphans: I will come unto you" (John 14:18).
The "Paraclete" is to take the things that are Christ's and reveal them unto man. "Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth is come, He shall glorify me, for He shall take of mine and declare it unto you." (John 14:18)
We note here that the Holy Spirit does not reveal the earthly Christ to man. It is the glorified Christ at the Father's right hand whom the Holy Spirit reveals. He reveals the Christ who has conquered death, grave, and hell, and has been given a name that is above every name. He has revealed to us all of Christ's ministry that couldn't be disclosed to the senses of man.
He is the one who gave Paul the tremendous revelation of the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ, His conquering of Satan, His entrance into the holiest of all in the heavenlies with His own blood, having obtained Eternal Redemption for man, and His ministry now at the right hand of God. He also gives the revelation of the riches of His grace (Ephesians 1:7) and the riches of His glory (Ephesians 3:16).
There are many scriptures that reveal to us the different phases of the Holy Spirit's ministry. As we observe the ministry of Christ, who is our example, we find that His ministry was wrought in the Holy Spirit. Read: Matthew 12:28; Hebrews 9:14; Acts 1:2; Isaiah 11:2.
We find that the early Church went forth in the power of the Holy Spirit. Read: Acts 4:8, & 31; Acts 6:5; Acts 13:2, 4, 9, & 52; Acts 15:8, 28; and Acts 16:6-7.