Holy Spirit: Course 1, Lesson 2
The Holy Spirit in the Life of the Christian by R. A. Finlayson
Here we study the subjective work of the Holy Spirit that perfects and consummates His objective work. He works in us what was wrought by Christ for us, and in the case of the believer the operations of the Spirit are effectual. These may be viewed in the following order, which is the logical sequence of the Spirit’s ministrations rather than that of the soul’s personal experience. There is first of all the implanting of the new life, or regeneration. There is then the call of God to which the new life responds by faith. This is followed by the experience of conversion, which is the beginning of a conscious process of sanctification, and the expression of sanctification that manifests itself in obedience. There is finally the completion of sanctification which results in complete redemption and glorification.
These are all links in the chain of the Spirit’s operations, and though the subject of these operations may not be able to observe this order, and may even claim that this is not the order of his experience, we believe, none-the-less, that as processes undertaken by the Spirit of God, this is the divine order.
The Divine Call
It is convenient, even if it is not strictly logical, to begin with the divine call. It has its origin in the grace of the Holy Spirit, by which God approaches the sinner when he is dead in trespasses and sins. If that be indeed the condition in which the call of God finds every soul to whom it comes, we might well ask what the soul can do about it. Can he do anything at all? True, it is a living death, a death in which there is progression, an intake of wages, an absorbing of the qualities of death, yet that gives no power to heed God’s wooing call. It is true that man was endowed with free will, yet in the act of sinning, man has put his will into the power of another, and it is now in bondage. If it be still free, it is free only to choose the evil and to refuse the good; certainly it is incapable of exercising its freedom to turn to God. It is rather like a car whose engine is fixed in reverse gear: every time the engine is 92 started, the car moves backwards! In the same way any move that man makes of his own volition is in the direction of departure from God. Thus it is that every movement God-wards is of grace from first to last.
God takes the initiative and maintains the initiative in all His dealings with man. He is working graciously towards the soul even when the soul is not able to recognise His hand. This is what our fathers, from Augustine onwards, used to speak of as prevenient grace - the grace that goes before saving grace, the grace that anticipates salvation. This is the grace that brought Zacchaeus into the sycamore tree to await the Saviour; the grace that brought Lydia to the riverside where she was to hear of the Saviour and have her heart opened; the grace that took Onesimus to Rome to meet with the messenger of the cross that he might be free for ever.
Though God the Holy Spirit can use any instrument He chooses in His gracious call, and make any approach to the soul that He in His wisdom sees fit, He commonly uses the Word read or preached, and, in any case, whatever His mode of approach may be, sooner or later He directs the soul to the written Word which is His usual channel of enlightenment and blessing.
Regeneration
What is the good, it may be asked, of bringing the divine message to the soul if the soul is dead and so incapable of responding? If the car, to use the figure we have already introduced, has its gear fixed in reverse, what is the use of starting the engine? What it needs first is the skilled hand of the motor engineer! Even so with the souls of men: the skilled hand of Him who is Creator and Redeemer is needed before there is a God-ward response to the divine call. The creative power of the Holy Ghost must come into the field. The divine surgery envisaged by Ezekiel must take place: ‘A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart and I will give you a heart of flesh’ (11:19). Thus the first decisive and effective act of saving grace is regeneration, an act by which the soul is endowed with spiritual life from God.
The necessity for this is apparent if we reflect that the taint and blemish of sin have invaded the whole of man’s nature, so that no part of his being is immune. This is what we understand by ‘total depravity’ - depravity that has affected the totality of our parts. The very foundations of our nature have been marred, and God steps in to lay new foundations, and to impart a new governing principle that affects the entire man. This is tantamount to a new creation, for there is Imparted a new life, a life that is animated by the principle of the life of God, so that we are said to become ‘partakers of the divine nature’, not indeed in the sense that we have a part of God’s life, and are therefore divine. It is not a matter of essence but of life, not a matter of being but of character. Nevertheless the nature that is imparted is divine and therefore holy as God is holy, and incapable of becoming polluted by sin.
In its action, regeneration takes place instantaneously in the hidden depths of the soul, so that the person himself is not actually conscious of what has happened. How long it may remain dormant, as it were, we cannot say, for it differs in different cases. Some, like John the Baptist, may be filled with the Holy Ghost from their mother’s womb, and become fully conscious of it only when they come to years of discretion and understanding. But even in such cases we believe that the divine Spirit who watched over the unborn manhood of our Lord, watched over the life He has implanted, preserves it, and in His own good time, brings it into the consciousness of the soul. It is at that moment that the soul hears the call of God and responds to it, and there is a new birth in the conscious experience.
Thus the first action of the new nature inborn in the soul is to answer the call of God, as an infant of days responds to its mother’s voice. The response is made by faith, the active principle of the new life that has been imparted, a new faculty of the new-born soul. While this is undoubtedly the divine order of working, it is very unlikely to be the order of our experience. Though the nature to respond to the call of God is implanted before the response to the call can be given, yet in our experience we are conscious only of hearing the call and responding, of seeing the light and believing, or being given the offer and accepting. Until the new life was imparted, however, there was no ear to hear, no eye to see, no hand to accept. But since the new birth and the exercise of faith constitute our first conscious experience of having passed from death unto life, it may well be said to mark the beginning of our Christian state.
It is well to note, however, that regeneration, though as radical as a new creation within the soul, does not entail a change in the essential substance of the soul, and our manhood or womanhood, that is our personality, is not impaired. In other words the being of man is not changed, though his nature is, for though sin corrupted the nature, the being is intact. On the other hand, it is not a change merely in one faculty of the soul; it extends its influence to the whole being of man. As sin affected us totally, so grace must affect us totally.
The most serious implications of regeneration, however, is that there are now two natures in the Christian, the old and the new. This entails conflict - unceasing antagonism between light and darkness, between the corrupt nature and the divine nature within. (It is very probable in this light that we should understand Paul’s conflict recorded in Romans 7.) But although the old nature is not improved it is being gradually subdued, its propensities come more and more under the restraint and direction of the new nature, and it is being, surely, albeit slowly as it may seem, supplanted.
Conversion
When the faith that is quickened in regeneration operates in the life there is conversion. And conversion is thus the outer expression of the inner life. It can, therefore, be said that while regeneration refers to the inner nature, conversion refers to the outer life. They are inseparably linked, however, in that conversion is the natural and inevitable expression of the new life that has been communicated by the Holy Spirit. Conversion may, therefore, be said to be an act of God by which He causes the regenerate soul, in conscious life, to turn to Him in new obedience.
Conversion will thus be seen to affect, not the state of man, but his condition, and for that reason it takes place in the conscience life, even though its roots are in the subconscious. It is decisive and occurs in a moment. It is not a process. And in its fundamental aspect it cannot be regarded as repeated: it is once for all, and after that there may be, again and again, the experience of restoration.
Though conversion is due, as we have already observed, to an immediate act of God the Holy Spirit, bringing the principle of regeneration to fruition in the life, man is nevertheless fully conscious, and he co-operates with the Spirit even though the capacity to cooperate - the Power ‘to will and to do’, as Paul puts it - comes from God. Yet in a real sense man is enlisted on the side of God, and that means the whole man from the very centre of his being. Conversion is thus both human and divine - God has spoken and the soul acts on what He says. It is significant, in this connection, that the Scriptures refer to conversion as an act of man some 140 times, while it refers to it as an act of God only 6 times. It suggests, perhaps, that we should preserve this proportion, this weight of emphasis, in our preaching.
The two elements in conversion that make room for man’s co-operation are repentance and faith. These two acts cannot be regarded as separate and apart, for they go together: there is faith in all true repentance, and there is repentance in all true faith. Nor are repentance and faith to be regarded as merely exercised, once for all, in Conversion: they are permanent elements in the conscious experience of the converted one. The Holy Spirit ordinarily uses the Word to give repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. The four main centres of life affected by repentance and faith may be said to be the mind involving knowledge, the conscience involving conviction, the heart involving feeling, and the will involving decision, and these four are exercised throughout the whole of the Christian’s life on earth.
Thus far we have traced the operations of the Holy Spirit in the soul and life of man, working independently of man’s strength or power, yet bringing man to cooperate in such a way that though God is in it wholly and completely in it - yet man is also wholly and completely in it, even when God’s will is behind man’s willingness, and God’s act behind man’s action. What a manifestation it all is of the love of the Spirit!
Conversion, however, is not an end in itself, as we so often seem to think; it is only the beginning of the Christian life and witness. Above all it is the beginning of a process of sanctification whose end is perfect conformity of life and character to the will of God, and to the likeness of Jesus Christ. Sanctification is supremely the work of the Spirit of God, a work in which the believer cooperates daily. But nonetheless it must be emphasised that we are no more sanctified by our own efforts than we are saved by our own efforts.
The Nature of Sanctification
Though the underlying thought in sanctification, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, is separation to God and dedication to Him, it bears in Christian experience the same meaning as holiness. It is a divine operation in the soul whereby the holy principle implanted in regeneration is strengthened, its exercise increased, and its dominion extended. Though man cooperates with God in faith and obedience, sanctification should not be represented as a merely natural process in the spiritual development of man. The exercises of the soul in sanctification are represented by such New Testament figures as a fight, a contest, a race, clearly marking it off as not a natural growth that goes on irrespective of man’s own effort. There is such a thing as arrested development in the life of sanctification. It is not a process that is inevitable: it can be hastened or retarded.
As a process sanctification may be conceived of as consisting of two parts, inasmuch as there are two natures in conflict in the Christian: the mortification of the old nature and the reviving and strengthening of the new life. On the one hand, the old man must be crucified and this involves conflict, pain and death. There must be a conscious resistance to sin and a forsaking of all appearance of evil. That, however, is only its negative aspect. Its positive aspect is that by the continual operation of the Holy Spirit the new life within the soul is strengthened and a new course of life entered upon more and more fully. These two activities - the mortification of the old nature and the advancement of the new - must go on simultaneously. The erection of the new does not wait till the old is completely demolished.
As to extent sanctification affects the entire man. As by total depravity we mean that sin has affected the totality of man’s parts, so by parity of reasoning, total sanctification should mean that sanctification affects the man totally, in all his parts and all his members. Thus all the faculties of mind and heart, all the members of body and spirit, participate in the work of sanctification There is a new man begotten, perfect in all his parts, even as a child of days is perfect, though not yet fully developed. For that reason sin in any part cannot be excused or condoned. Sin has no right to be present and God cannot recognise its rights. ‘Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect’ is Christ’s standard, and it can never be lowered. And the man must accept full responsibility for all sin that is present in the heart or life. He can never shelter under the facile excuse that it is ‘the old man’ that has sinned, and that, therefore, he is not responsible! The Christian has two natures, but he does not have a dual personality. His is a redeemed personality and it ought not to have any traffic with sin. Sin in the Christian is, for that reason, entirely his own responsibility, and must be inexcusable and intolerable.
As to degree, sanctification is, generally speaking, an extended process. Though God can complete it in a very short time, for God’s processes are not measured by time, yet as personal holiness our sanctification is normally a lengthened process, not fully completed till we pass through death. None-the-less, it must be understood that the new nature imparted to the soul is perfect from the first and remains wholly uncontaminated by sin. Though his new nature - the life of God in the soul - is developing and extending its dominion, the old nature in itself is not getting any better even when it is yielding ground. Nevertheless the leaven of the new nature is extending through the entire person, making its influence felt at every point and in that respect the person must be getting more and more holy. But the warfare between the old and the new natures never slackens; it rather tends to increase as holiness increases. The more we extend the circle of light the more we enlarge the circumference that makes contact with darkness; therefore as holiness increases, consciousness of sin increases and intolerance of sin increases also.
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