The Power of the Holy Spirit
The Power of the Holy Spirit
Augustus Toplady’s hymn speaks of the “double cure” —that is, cleansing from both sin’s guilt and power. We saw earlier that God does indeed cleanse us from sin’s guilt through the death of His Son. God does not forgive because He wants to be lenient with us; He forgives because His justice has been satisfied. The absolute forgiveness of our sins is just as rock solid as the historic reality of Christ’s death. It is important that we grasp this wonderful truth of the gospel because we can face our “respectable” sins only when we know they are forgiven.
However, Toplady’s hymn speaks of cleansing from not only sin’s guilt but also its power. Sometimes when we are struggling with some particular expression of our sin, we wonder if the gospel does address the power of sin in our lives. We wonder if we will ever see progress in putting to death some persistent sin pattern we struggle with. Can we honestly say with Toplady that Christ, the “Rock of Ages,” does indeed cleanse us from sin’s power as well as its guilt?
To answer that question, we need to see the cleansing from sin’s power in two stages. The first is deliverance from the dominion or reigning power of sin that is decisive and complete for all believers. The second is freedom from the remaining presence and activity of sin that is progressive and continues throughout our lives on earth. Paul helps us see this twofold deliverance in Romans 6.
In verse 2, Paul writes that we “died to sin,” and in verse 8, he says, “we have died with Christ.” Through our union with Christ in His death, we have died not only to sin’s guilt but also to its reigning power in our lives. This is true of every believer and is accomplished at the time of our salvation when God delivers us from the domain of darkness and transfers us to the kingdom of His Son (see Colossians 1:13).
Paul’s statement that we “died to sin” is a declarative statement. It is something God does for us at the moment of our salvation. Nothing we do subsequent to that decisive transaction can add to or subtract from the fact that we died to both sin’s guilt and dominion.
At the same time, however, Paul urges us to “let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions” (Romans 6:12). How can sin possibly reign if we have died to it? Here Paul is referring to the continued presence and ceaseless activity of sin that, though “dethroned” as the reigning power over our lives, still seeks to exert a controlling influence on our daily walk. It continues to wage spiritual guerrilla warfare in our hearts. This warfare is described by Paul in Galatians 5:17:
The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
We experience this struggle between the desires of the flesh and the desires of the Spirit daily. This tension causes us to sometimes wonder if the gospel really does address this aspect of sin’s power to pull us toward its desires. This seems especially true in the more acceptable sins in our lives. Some of these subtle sins seem tenacious and we must battle them daily. With others, we sometimes think we’ve turned the corner on one, only to discover a few days later that we’ve just gone around the block and are dealing with it again.
At this point in our struggle, we are prone to think, It’s fine to be told sin no longer has dominion over me, but what about my daily experience of the remaining presence and activity of sin? Does the gospel cleanse me from that? Can I hope to see progress in putting to death the subtle sins of my life?
Paul’s answer is found in Galatians 5:16: “I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” To walk by the Spirit is to live under the controlling influence of the Spirit and in dependence upon Him. Paul says that as we do this, we will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
Practically speaking, we live under the controlling influence of the Spirit as we continually expose our minds to and seek to obey His moral will for us as revealed in Scripture. We live in dependence on Him through prayer as we continually cry out to Him for His power to enable us to obey His will.
There is a fundamental principle of the Christian life that I call the principle of dependent responsibility, which states that we are responsible before God to obey His word by putting to death the sins in our lives, both the so-called acceptable sins and the obviously not acceptable ones. At the same time, we do not have the ability within ourselves to carry out this responsibility. We are in fact totally dependent upon the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. In this sense, we are both responsible and dependent.
As we seek to walk by the Spirit, we will, over time, see the Spirit working in us and through us to cleanse us from the remaining power of sin in our lives. We will never reach perfection in this life, but we will see progress. It will be incremental progress, to be sure, and sometimes it will appear to be no progress at all. But if we sincerely want to address the subtle sins in our lives, we may be sure the Holy Spirit is at work in us and through us to help us. And we have His promise that “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). The Holy Spirit will not abandon the work He has begun in us.
How the Holy Spirit works in us and through us is a mystery in the sense that we cannot comprehend or explain it. We simply accept the testimony of Scripture that He dwells in us and is at work in us to transform us more and more into the likeness of Christ (see 2 Corinthians 3:18). We do need to actively believe this great truth about the Holy Spirit. We need to believe that as we seek to deal with our subtle sins, we are not alone. He is at work in us, and we will see progress as we walk by the Spirit.
One of the ways the Holy Spirit works in us is to bring conviction of sin. He causes us to begin to see our selfishness, impatience, and judgmental attitudes as the sins that they truly are. He works through the Scriptures, which He inspired, to reprove and correct us (see 2 Timothy 3:16). He also works through our consciences, which are enlightened and sensitized by exposure to His Word. I have even known Him to bring to my memory a specific act of a subtle sin and, using that single act as a starting point, begin to point out to me a pattern of that sin in my life. It stands to reason that conviction of sin must be one of His vital works because we cannot begin to deal with a sin, especially one that is common and acceptable in our Christian culture, until we have first realized that the particular pattern of thought, word, or deed is indeed sin.
Another way in which the Holy Spirit works in us is to enable and empower us to deal with our sin. In Romans 8:13, Paul exhorts us by the Spirit to “put to death the deeds of the body.” In Philippians 2:12-13, he urges us to “work out [our] own salvation . . . for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Paul urges us to work in the confidence that God is at work in us. Though Paul refers to God, presumably God the Father, as the One at work, we have already seen that God works through the Holy Spirit as the transforming agent in our lives.
Then Paul says in Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” We can deal with our pride, lust, impatience, and critical and judgmental spirits as we depend on the Holy Spirit to empower and enable us. Thus, we should never give up. Regardless of how little progress we seem to make, He is at work in us. Sometimes He seems to withhold His power, but this may be to cause us to learn experientially that we truly are dependent on Him.