WE GO ON: “In him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:13–14). “In him you . . . were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.” Why only in Him is the Holy Spirit given? Is this narrow and exclusive? No, it is no more narrow than it is narrow that two and two make four. Two and two make four fits the facts—two and two make five doesn’t fit the facts. The Holy Spirit can be given only in Him, for He is the only mold that fits the facts. The Holy Spirit is a Christlike spirit, and if He were given in any other mold except in Christ, He would be an un-Christlike spirit. So God is shut up to the necessity of giving the Holy Spirit to those in Christ, for any other mold would be a mold for un-Christlikeness. This would make God the author of untruth, for Christ is Truth.
“Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39). “Because Jesus was not yet glorified”—Jesus had to live, teach, die, rise again, and go to the right hand of the Father before the mold was ready—the mold of the meaning of Christlikeness. Then and only then could God lavish upon us the gift of the Holy Spirit. The power could be safely entrusted to this pattern.
A newspaper clipping read: “Incarnation of Durga” (Kali). “An eight-year-old girl is attracting large crowds. The girl is often seized with spasms when her tongue protrudes out by about six inches and her eyes shine strangely.” She is an “incarnation” of the blood-thirsty goddess Kali. Could God give the Holy Spirit if that type of strange weird power were the pattern? No, the pattern had to be Jesus.
O Father, Thou couldst not back Kali-ism or any other ism, for in Jesus we have seen “the express image” of Thy person. What an image! That image doesn’t misrepresent Thee—it represents Thee. So we wait for the Holy Spirit—wait in Him. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I wait for the spirit in Him. I am bound to find, for the Spirit is in Him, therefore in me.
