- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
BE FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT.
By R C Morgan
“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4 v30).
Christians receive the Holy Spirit when they believe and confess Jesus as Lord, yet it is possible that they may not be filled with the Spirit. Indeed, this is not an act, but a condition of heart and a daily duty of the soul. If we are born again, we have received the Spirit once, for all eternity. But we are not filled with the Spirit once for all. There is no finality in the life of the believer, either in this world or the next. We shall go from strength to strength, like the heavenly creatures, the cherubim. They speed back and forth like flashes of lightening, and then they stand before the Throne of God for fresh commands. This is how we will be, with ever increasing wisdom and responsibilities being given to us.
The power of the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, and they became Christ’s faithful witnesses, bearing the disgrace that He bore outside the camp (Hebrews 13 v13). This subjected them to the threats of the Jewish priests who knew that they had been with Jesus, whom they feared and hated. The witnesses prayed to God for boldness to speak the Word, and that signs and wonders might be done in the Name of His Holy Servant Jesus. The room they were in shook, and then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, in order to receive power for the work of the Gospel. This fact appears to be mentioned to teach us that Christ’s called and empowered witnesses need to be daily filled with the same Spirit, even as our bodies need to be sustained by daily food.
Barnabas, the Son of Consolation, was full of the Holy Spirit. Paul had seen the Lord in His risen glory and had humbled himself by becoming a minister of the things he had seen, and he was baptised and filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 9 v17, also 13 v9). Yet these two contended sharply in the matter of whether or not to travel with John Mark, to such an extent that they separated from one another (Acts 15 v36-39).
The Apostle Peter at and after Pentecost gave up eating with non-Jews at Antioch, fearing persecution, and others including even Barnabas were carried away with this mistake. Paul opposed Peter to his face, so that the truth of the Gospel might continue with those among whom he ministered.
We must be thankful for the record of these significant incidents, which show us that even the best people are simply people at their best. The important thing is that the truth of the Gospel must be kept untouched by our individual weaknesses, like Peter’s impulsiveness and fear of others or like Barnabas’ tendency to be timid. But these early believer’s failures are no reason why we should fail too. For Jesus the Son of God, our great High Priest in heaven, is “able to save completely those who come to God through Him, because He always lives to intercede for them” (Hebrews 7 v25).
How can a child of God, who has received the Spirit, also be filled with the Spirit?
The Gospel proclaims a full, free, perfect, finished and eternal salvation. There remains no more that can be done on God’s part, either for His own glory, the overthrown of the Devil, the salvation of the sinner or the completeness of the Christian. The sinner nourishes unbelief by asking that something may be added to or taken from the finished work of the Lamb of God, who took our sins in His body on the tree. Also, the believer should never put onto God the responsibility of their being filled with the Spirit. If we are not filled daily to receive fresh supplies of grace then we are the reason for this, not the God of all grace.
No direction and no encouragement is given to seek another outpouring of the Spirit after Pentecost, nor is any baptism of the Spirit spoken of after that promised baptism took place. How are we to account for the experiences whether slow or sudden in many lives that some describe as being sealed, baptised, sanctified, or the second blessing? This question can be answered by another, how do we account for the similar experience, which accompanies conversion, the passing from death to life? We have seen light come into the new believer’s eyes and a new joy, because they received Christ into their hearts. “To all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God” (John 1 v12).
In Him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Christ, according to Colossians, is the fullness of God in bodily form and we, believers, have been given the fullness in Christ. We cannot appreciate all at once the heavenly blessings which are ours in Him. However, the Spirit reveals them and we receive them. We must daily submit ourselves to the responsibilities that they involve, and as we do so our joy will become continuous.
Jesus, on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles cried, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink” (John 7 v37). “By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive” (John 7 v39). So that before He had been glorified and before the Holy Spirit had been outpoured, our Lord Himself declared that the thirst of the human spirit is satisfied only by drinking from the Spirit who was about to poured out.
Agreeing with this, the Apostle says, “we were all baptised by one Spirit so as to form one body” and he continues, “and we were all given the one Spirit to drink” (1 Corinthians 12 v13). Every true believer added to the Church since Pentecost has been baptised into the body of Christ, and baptised in the Holy Spirit, and gains all the privileges and responsibilities, just as one who joins a society becomes entitled to all the advantages, and subject to all the obligations, attached to its rules. And having been baptised into the Church which is His body, the believer is given the one Spirit, outpoured at Pentecost, to drink. This flows like a river of living water from the throne of God and the Lamb, and cannot cease to flow as Jesus continues to be glorified, by the Father, the angels in heaven and by a people on earth.
The Apostle Paul says, “do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5 v18). To get drunk with wine a person must drink. How can we be filled by the Spirit? By coming to Jesus as members of the Church, which is His body, and drinking of the one Spirit by faith. How can we drink? When we eat our food it is digested and strengthens our body, so also we should feed our spiritual nature with the words which we take into it. All that we can know about God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is contained in His written Word. We can only drink of the Spirit, and be filled with the Spirit as we read, learn and digest the Bible’s Divine truths, its exceeding great and precious promises.
We first received Christ as believers and so we must go on receiving Him, connecting with Him and understanding Him. For “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you” (John 6 v53). When we received Christ, we also received the Holy Spirit. When walking with God, to be balanced believers we receive Him in thought and heart so that we are filled with the Holy Spirit. We must eat the little scroll lying open on the pierced hand of the Angel of the Covenant (Revelation 10). Like Ezekiel’s scroll, it is sweet to the taste, but bitter afterwards. And once eaten, we cannot help prophesying. For out of the good things stored up in the heart the mouth speaks (Luke 6 v45).
An important truth to remember is that just as a new recruit is immediately a soldier when they join the army, so also believers are witnesses of Christ and soldiers of the Cross from the moment they believe. This is when they are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s own possession (Ephesians 1 v13-14).
Christians are not sent as witnesses on their own missions, for the Lord will give them the power to prophesy. They are prepared by the Holy Spirit to becoming fools for Christ. For Jesus, the Son of God, in whom all the promises of God are yes and amen, promised, “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1 v8).
But if we withdraw from the identity of being a witness, or if we are only soldiers at a ceremony and not at a war, then the fullness of the Spirit, who is our weapon for the conflict can neither be given nor received.
All our works will be burned up if we do not build on the one and only foundation, Jesus Christ. After which we will receive an abundant entrance into the eternal kingdom of Christ. Everything depends on our being witnesses of a rejected Christ to a world that rejects Christ, pulling souls out of the fire, and hating sin that contaminates lives. Just as our salvation depends on the human side of our own will, “yet you refuse to come to Me to have life” (John 5 v40), so the fullness of the Spirit depends on us being a witness and sharing this faith with others even at great risk. “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body” (2 Corinthians 4 v 10).
From ‘Overcomer, April 1962’.