The Spirit-Filled Life
THE SPIRIT-FILLED LIFE
“Be filled with the Spirit.”—Eph. 5:18.
The Spirit dwells in the believer and the believer lives in the Spirit. The Spirit finds in the believer His home, medium, and means; and the believer finds in the Spirit his sphere and element. “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.” The Spirit is the element in which the soul lives and moves and has its being. Element must be mutual. The element of man’s natural life is the atmosphere, and in order to live the man must be in the atmosphere, and the atmosphere in the man. The element of spiritual life is the Spirit, and the man must be in the Spirit, and the Spirit in the man. Element is greater, wider, and larger than the creatures that live in it; essential to them but independent of them; inexhaustible and indivisible, the whole is at the disposal of each. We depend upon the atmosphere for our life, but we cannot divide it, monopolise it, or exhaust it. Every thing that breathes has all the supply of the heavens at its disposal. If there is any shortage, it is because we have set some hindrance to that which surrounds and presses upon all. So it is with the Spirit. He fills the earth, fills the soul, and we live in Him. All the resources that are in Him are for the supply of each. The command to be filled with His presence implies the possibility of so opening the avenues of our life that He may fill every part of our being.
Filled with the Spirit
Every need of Spiritual life and Christian service is supplied in the fulness of the Spirit. Christian experience is the work of the Spirit; begun, nourished, developed, consummated, and glorified by Him. Christianity is the dispensation of the Spirit; holiness is the fruit of His indwelling; preaching is His message spoken in the demonstration of His power; and all Christian work depends for its efficiency and effectiveness upon His presence and energy. He is the executive of the God-head, in whom resides the fulness and sufficiency of the Kingdom of God. In Him is the supply of every need, the solution of every problem, and the strength for every conflict. Defect and defeat find their explanation in the absence of His power.
Whatever the reason, there are many Christians who do not live in the fulness of the Spirit. There can be no doubt of their sincerity. They have received the Spirit for without Him no man can be Christ’s, but they are not filled with the Spirit. Their lives are not conspicuous for spirituality and power, but are characterised by defeat, dissatisfaction, and unrest. Their experience lacks vitality and vigour, their progress is disappointing, and their service without enthusiasm. Faith is unsteady, and love intermittent. The yearnings after holiness are hindered by the lusts of the flesh. There is war in the members, and often the consciousness of failure and upbraidings of conscience. The soul braces itself repeatedly for new endeavour and strains after its ideal, but there is no sense of fulness and none of the ease of power. They live, but not with an abundant overflowing life.
The seventh chapter of Romans seems to mark some such stage between the blessings that accompany justification and the Spirit-filled life of the following chapters. Although salvation is potentially complete in regeneration, it is only gradually realised in experience. The lack of fulness may be due to lack of knowledge or of faith, but it is frequently the result of disobedience, and failure to follow the light. To be filled with the Spirit is every believer’s birthright, but there are many Esaus. Fleshly desires hinder the work of the Spirit, and the inheritance is bartered for the things of earth.
Roots of bitterness which defile are allowed to spring up in the heart, and while these remain there can be no experience of the fulness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ. An inheritance is an obligation. The command to be filled with the Spirit is as imperative as that to abstain from being drunk with wine. Without it the demands of the Christian life cannot be met. There is no safety, efficiency, or satisfaction in anything less than being filled with the Spirit of God.
William Arthur in The Tongue of Fire, describing the effects of fulness, says, “A piece of iron is dark and cold; imbued with a degree of heat, it becomes almost burning, without any change of appearance; imbued with a still greater degree, its very appearance changes to that of solid fire, and it sets fire to whatever it touches. A piece of water without heat is solid and brittle; gently warmed, it flows; further heated, it mounts to the sky. An organ filled with the ordinary degree of air which exists everywhere is dumb; the touch of the player can elicit but a clicking of the keys. Throw in not other air, but an unsteady current of the same air, and sweet, but imperfect and uncertain notes immediately respond to the player’s touch; increase the current to a full supply, and every pipe swells with music. Such is the Soul without the Holy Ghost; and such are the changes which pass upon it when it receives the Holy Ghost, and when it is filled with the Spirit. In the latter state only is it fully imbued with the Divine nature, bearing in all its manifestations some plain resemblance to its God, conveying to all on whom it acts some impression of Him, mounting heavenward in all its movements, and harmoniously pouring forth, from all its faculties, the praises of the Lord.”
The command to be filled with the Spirit is given to the Ephesians who had already received the Baptism. The fulness of the Spirit having been once received, there is a new filling for every new demand. For every new call to service there is a specific preparation and equipment. Every new temptation and trial of our faith is met with a new and enlarged gift of the Holy Ghost. Increased demand brings increased supply, and enlarged capacity is met with a larger fulness. The soul’s powers are possessed as they develop, and the demands are met as they arise. The need is to be full; and since we are commanded to be filled with the Spirit, the responsibility for the fulness is with man and not with God. The Spirit fills all we open to His presence and consecrate to His indwelling.
Jesus Christ is the supreme Example of the Spirit-filled life
To Him the Spirit was given without measure. His life was lived in abiding surrender to the will of the Spirit. Never was consecration so complete or obedience so absolute. He is the ideal and pattern of the life made possible to all by the coming of the Spirit. We may never attain His perfection, but we do receive from Him His own quality of life. Our life in Christ is Christ’s life in us. This oneness of life brings correspondence in experience. As He is, so are we. Whatever is characteristic of His life in the Spirit, we are warranted in expecting will be manifest in our own. The leading features of the Spirit’s work in Him are marked by special mention of the Spirit as directly connected with them, and in the study of them we may find the distinctive marks of the Spirit-filled life.
The Spirit-filled life is a life of conquest over temptation
The three Gospels which record the temptation of Jesus emphasise its connexion with His baptism. S. Matthew says, “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.” S. Mark says, “And straightway the Spirit driveth Him forth into the wilderness. And He was in the wilderness forty days tempted of Satan; and He was with the wild beasts.” S. Luke says, “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days, being tempted of the devil.” The temptation of the Christ followed His baptism not only in the order of time, but in the order of consequence.
His baptism furnished the opportunity and the basis of the temptation. The order is inevitable and universal. Being full of the Spirit does not bring immunity from temptation but exposure to it. If Jesus was tempted like as we are, it follows we shall be tempted as He was. Every man’s Pentecost is the signal for Satan to gird himself. Temptation comes to the spiritual man in its intensest and most subtle forms. The works of the flesh are manifest. There is no mistaking the sinfulness of “fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like.” These are not the temptations with which Satan assails men filled with the Spirit. He comes to them as an Angel of light. The newly-found consciousness furnishes the material for his evil design, and the ground of appeal is not vice but virtue, not flesh but spirit, not sin but self. The attack is secret and subjective, and at the very citadel of the soul. The subtle suggestions spring out of the new revelation. Its reality is not denied, but its outworking in practical life is questioned, and its powers challenged.
If this revelation be true, what then? What is the relation of hunger, thirst, and the natural resources of life to this new gift of power? The world has to be faced. Life will have to be adjusted in all its bearings to the new consciousness, and the exact privileges and limitations of the Spirit’s work discovered. It is in this adjustment of life that Satan finds his opportunity. He seeks to switch off the soul from the centre of power by diverting its trust and misdirecting its energies. We cannot stay either at the Jordan or in the Upper Room. Their very gifts drive us forth to face life’s problems and fulfil its duties. In the wilderness and the street we have to discover the true order of the material and the spiritual, and until we face that problem we never know how subtle and terrible temptation can be.
The exposure to temptation is the deliberate act of the Spirit. God does not keep His saints in cotton wool. The Spirit thrust forth the Christ to His testing. Satan tempts to seduce, God tests that He may prove, and He uses Satan for our testing. In the temptation of Job God seems to retire from the scene of conflict, but the Spirit was with Jesus through all the forty days. He led Him in and led Him through. The presence of the Spirit is manifest in the discernment of the evil in the devil’s appeals, in the answers that met the assault, and in the power of resistance. The proposals looked innocent, devout, and reasonable enough, but the Spirit laid bare the bait and supplied the answers. The Spirit that exposed Him secured His complete and abundant triumph.
The first temptation in the Spirit-filled life is the temptation of bread. The spiritual life has to be lived in a bodily tenement and a material world. Though we enter a spiritual element we cannot dispense with material conditions. However full a man may be of the Spirit he still needs bread. All the needs of the natural life are represented by bread. What are the true demands and possibilities of the natural and supernatural in the spiritual life? What is its relation to the natural demands of the flesh, the problem of bread, and the obligations of common toil? Is the body to be starved in the interests of the spirit, or is it to find a freer indulgence through the new gift of power? Is it to be denied in rigorous asceticism, and disciplined by strenuous toil, or to be indulged with bread secured without labour? Is the logical issue of being filled with the Spirit a life of spare diet lived in the desert, or a life without restraint in the ordinary ways of the world? These are the questions the spiritual man is called upon to answer in the solitude of his own soul.
The temptation is to use the gift of God for self-gratification. Satan urges the use of the power for selfish ends; to make it a means of getting bread. The Holy Spirit scrutinises motives. For what have we sought the gift of the Spirit? Even when we have sought it with the purest intention, the possession of the gift brings the temptation to seek in it our own gratification and satisfaction.
Self cries out against crucifixion and pleads the new gift for itself. If a Son of God, why hunger? The flesh asserts its claim to first consideration. It demands its need shall be made a first charge in all the work and will of God. Before the called of God go forth, its claims must be heard. What about bread, bread, bread?
The second temptation deals at the root with the same question as the first. It is still self, only at the other extreme. The temptation comes in the discrimination between courageous faith and reckless presumption. The first appeal was to give self the first care, the second to give it no care at all. If this baptism is a reality and supernatural power dwells within the person of the Spirit, then live a supernatural life, ignore natural limitations and ordinary precautions, trust and dare! To be filled with the Spirit brings to some the temptation to vain-glory in the wonder and applause of men at the greatness of their faith. It turns them into cranks and fanatics. They glory in the parade of power. To make occasions for the parade of faith is sin. Natural means are of God, and no man honours God by leaping from a pinnacle when there are steps.
The third temptation is also a question of adjustment. The baptism of the Spirit is a call to service. The Spirit is given for ministering, and to the Spirit-called and Spirit-filled worker there comes the problem of the relative positions of the human and the divine, the natural and the spiritual, in the work of God. In his zeal there is urged upon him the use of carnal weapons for spiritual ends. The devil can always suggest short cuts by which the world may be won and the Cross escaped. “All these,” for a mere bend of the knee. Is it not the motive that gives the moral quality to an act? What harm can come of an outward conformity for so good an end? Thus the very fire of the Spirit’s zeal for the kingdom leads men to listen to the suggestions of the tempter, and having begun in the Spirit they end in the flesh.
The Spirit-filled are tempted, but in the Spirit they prevail. Their attitude in temptation is marked by discernment, antipathy, antagonism, and authority. They are taught of the Spirit by whom they are led. Filled with Christ’s Spirit they abhor sin and hate the devil, and hate him most when he comes in the guise of sanctity and holy zeal. Baptized into the Saviour’s spirit they seek the destruction of the devil and all his works; knowing that their Lord has spoiled principalities and powers, they command with authority the enemy of their souls. No more shaking and fear; no more humiliation and defeat; the Spirit-filled are more than conquerors through the indwelling might of God. They prevail in the secret places of the soul and are kept from sins of the spirit and the mind. The imagination is cleansed, desire purified, and every thought brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. The fulness of the Spirit brings decisive, abiding, and abounding conquest over temptation. Our defence is the all-pervading fire of the Divine presence.
The Spirit-filled life is a life of service
“And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and a fame went out concerning Him through all the region round about. And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all, and He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up.”
The baptism of the Spirit is a call and equipment for service. It is still necessary to emphasise the elementary truth that we are saved to serve. Many Christians are but half-pagans. They have a pagan conception of God, a pagan idea of religion, and they live a pagan life labelled with Christian names. To some, religion is a luxury. Worship must be smooth, soft and soothing, that their senses may be lulled and gratified. Truth must excite the intellect, and Church organisation yield to their whims and flatter their vanity. To others, religion is a penance. It is a system of self-mortification for the good of the soul. They fill up their programme with self-imposed crosses, denying themselves all pleasant things, and forcing themselves to do disagreeable things that their own righteousness may be established. To many, religion is an investment seeking a return with interest in this life or the next. Christianity is not for self-indulgence, not for self-mortification, not for self-interest, but for service. Everything in the work of the Spirit is preparatory and subservient to the ministry of the kingdom of Christ.
The preparation, the call, and the equipment for Christian service is of the Holy Ghost. Experience is the University in which He prepares His workers, the vision of the open heavens is His call, and the fulness of His coming is the equipment. The new religion of humanity declares these unnecessary for service, but its goal is not the kingdom of God, but the kingdom of man. For the service of God, man needs both the Divine vision and the gift of power; and the only adequate service of man is in the service of God. Apart from Him there can be no accurate gauge of man’s need, nor adequate resources for their supply. There can be no salvation of man but in the power of the Spirit of God.
This is His work. The distribution of gifts, the appointment for service, and the enduement of power are all with Him. His operations are not always attended with startling results. He does not work apart from nature’s provision, but He possesses and vitalises every natural gift. It is the power of God working in each for some particular service. Sometimes there seem to be great gaps between vision and sphere, gifts and opportunity, but there is no caprice and nothing arbitrary in the method of the Spirit. The coming of the Spirit of Power will not make all apostles, nor all evangelists. It will not secure for all the same manifest results, but it will fill each to the full limit of his powers; it will quicken, sanctify, and strengthen every faculty to the utmost of its capacity, and it will make every one efficient and effective in the work to which he is called in the will of God. The Spirit-filled have illumination, inspiration, and force. The Spirit instructs in all details of policy and method, inspires the right word in public utterance and private speech, and invests the worker with the gift of power. Men may not receive him, but they cannot ignore Him. They may not be converted, but if not, they will make haste to thrust Him beyond their border.
This is our one great need. In no age has the Christian Church been so equipped on the human side as now. The material and mental resources for effective service were never so great. We have great wealth, magnificent buildings, and splendid appliances. The Churches never had such scholarship, culture, and social influence. All these are channels of great opportunity for the salvation of the world, but there is no flood. The magnificent channels carry but a dribbling stream instead of rivers. Our need is not more Churches and better appliances, but a universal baptism of the Spirit of God. Material prosperity and intellectual pride are our greatest peril. When we increase in riches and social influence we are in danger of substituting them for the simple and primal elements of power, and then we find it easy to raise anything but men.
The prayer-meeting becomes impossible, the social revives, but the spiritual dies and conversions cease. The river dries up because there is no rain in the land. What a difference a flood-tide of the Spirit would make in our Churches! Spirit-filled men in the pulpit: Spirit-filled singers in the choir: Spirit-filled men at the door and in the aisles: Spirit-filled men in the official meetings: Spirit-filled men at the prayer-meeting: Spirit-filled men seeking the lost in street and shop, home and by-way! We lack nothing for service but the real Christianity which is the reign of Jesus in the fulness of the Spirit.
The Spirit-filled life is full of joy
“Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit.” “Be not drunken with wine wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit: speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.”
“The fruit of the Spirit is joy.” He floods the soul with light and gladness and praise. The Spirit-filled sing and give thanks to God. Their joy springs up from within their souls, a perpetual fountain shimmering with light. They carry with them a refreshing and infectious gladness, and an abiding consciousness of peace. A joyless religion dishonours God. The man that repines and mopes, grumbles and growls, and goes about depressed and discouraged, is not living in the fulness of the Spirit. When He fills the soul it is as when men feel the tingling sensation of wine. It thrills and exhilarates the soul with an unspeakable sense of joy. The gladness will not manifest itself in all people in the same way. Water bubbles when it boils, but fat reveals its boiling by being still. It is not a question of bubbling or not bubbling; it is a question of boiling. There are diversities of manifestation, but all must be filled, and being filled rejoice evermore.
We cannot be gladsome by resolution. The conviction that we ought to be happy will never make us happy. Joy is a fruit, the natural product of an inner life. There is nothing more gruesome than soulless mirth, the hideous laughter of the mouth without the laughter of the eyes. The joy of the Christian is the unconscious ripple of the soul living in the fulness of life and light. Make a man happy and his heart will sing, and when the heart sings, it will find some way of making a joyful noise. Every revival creates a new hymn-book. When the soul is stirred it needs no hireling to send forth its praise.
How does the fulness of the Spirit open a fountain of joy? Moods are not lawless. What is the Spirit’s secret of perpetual gladness? The Spirit makes men glad with the consciousness of God, and a God-like enthusiasm for out-flowing. The soul sees God. When they stoned Stephen, “he being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God.” He rejoiced in the exalted Christ, and the ultimate triumph of His cause. Men shout at the sight of their King. The Spirit-filled live in a vision of the opened heavens, and that is why they rejoice amid the tumults of earth. Where others see nothing but disaster and darkness they behold the Glory of God. Life is linked with the throne of the Father in Christ Jesus. He can “give thanks always for all things.” That is not cant. What impressed the representatives of the press at the international gathering of the Salvation Army was the singing faces of the people. One of them thought he had got at the secret of their happiness in an incident, that was not in the programme. Standing on the main staircase of the hall, he saw a Salvationist coming up with a small boy in a red jersey beside him. The boy fell. When he was lifted to his feet tears were in his eyes and a woeful look on his face. Taking hold of his hand, the father said, “Don’t cry, laddie, say Alleluia!” The lad looked up through his tears and said, “A-A-Alleluia, F-F-Father,” and went smiling into the hall. The press-man argued that if the religion of these people made them say Alleluia! through their tears, it was no wonder they were happy. And he was right.
They rejoice because they share God’s enthusiasm for giving. Jesus Christ “through the eternal spirit offered Himself without blemish unto God”: and in the same offering He gave Himself for sinful man. Pentecost was followed by an enthusiastic sale of lands, and the offering of great gifts to God for the service of men. “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Misers never sing. The life that is poured forth for others is always full of joy. With gladness it yields to subjection that it may find occasion to serve.
There is no life like the life filled with the Spirit. It is beyond the power of speech to set forth its glory and its might. Filled with all the fulness of God, energised and sustained by His indwelling, more than conqueror in His strength, sharing His ministry, rejoicing in His glory, it transcends human power to describe; but it is every man’s privilege to realise it in his own soul. The Spirit waits to enter and abide; to take possession and endue with life and power.
Mendelssohn once visited the Cathedral at Fribourg, and having heard the great organ went into the organ loft and asked to be allowed to play it. The old organist in jealousy for his instrument at first refused, but was at length prevailed upon, and allowed the stranger to try what was claimed to be the greatest organ in Europe. After standing by in an ecstasy of delight and amazement, he suddenly laid his hands on the shoulders of the inspired musician and exclaimed, “Who are you? What is your name?” “Mendelssohn,” replied the player, and with tears the old man exclaimed, “And can it be I had so nearly refused to let Mendelssohn touch this organ?”
The Holy Spirit asks possession of your nature with all its possibilities and powers. Only He can fill your life and evoke from it all its melody and power. To be filled with the Spirit is to live the life of God.