What does it mean to grieve the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30)?

In what way can the Spirit be grieved? Every allowance of the flesh in the walk and ways of the believer grieves the Spirit. The verses that circle round this passage show that it is largely through our tongues that we grieve the Spirit. The tongue gives vent to feeling inside. So we are warned against corrupt communications coming from our mouths, of bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil speaking, malice. Let these things be put far away from the believer. It is when we find the flesh in others, that we so quickly find the flesh rising in ourselves.

Believers should not, but can, grieve the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:30). The surrounding verses give some examples of how and why this might occur: ‘corrupt words’, ‘bitterness’, ‘heat of passion’, ‘wrath’, ‘clamour’, ‘injurious language’, and ‘malice’. These things are examples of the (sinful) activity of the flesh. When a believer fails in this way the Holy Spirit will be grieved and, therefore, will not be able to help us enjoy the things of Christ, guide us further into the truth and so on until the matter is confessed (see Q.32).

Hitherto we have had grounds of holy action, as well as guards against sin, found in the features of the new man. But this, we know, does not give us the full character and power of the christian man. The holy Spirit of God dwells in him. This blessed but solemn truth is now pressed in its practical bearing. We are said (Eph. 2:22) to be built together for an habitation of God in Spirit; and therefore do the apostles exhort us (Eph. 4) to walk worthy of the calling wherewith we have been called. But there is an individual indwelling of the Holy Ghost, as well as His relation to the house of God. We have been sealed by the Spirit, appropriated thereby to God on the ground of accomplished redemption. The precious blood of Christ has washed away our sins; in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of offences, according to the riches of God's grace. Thus, His sacrifice has effaced before God and to faith all our evil, and a new nature is ours in Christ; so that the Holy Spirit can come and dwell in us, and seal us for the day of redemption, when our body shall be transformed into the likeness of the glory of Christ, as surely as our souls are now quickened into His life. In presence of this infinite present privilege and pledge of glory for ever, the apostle adds, "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption." He is the spring of energy to strengthen the saint unto all that is well-pleasing to God. But this supposes that there is self-judgment and dependence on God. Otherwise we grieve Him, and are made to feel, not His power, but our own wretched unfaithfulness.

In our talk and conduct, we are to consider the Spirit of God. He has sealed the believer positively as God's own property in view of "the day of redemption," the redemption of the body at the coming of the Lord (v.30). Not the slightest question of the permanency of this sealing is raised. Rather, the believer's absolute security as God's possession is positively stated. This being so, improper words and conduct will certainly grieve the Holy Spirit of God, for they are contrary to His nature.

Verse 31 speaks of those things which result from the nursing of bad feeling in the heart -- bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking, together with malice. These sinful attitudes and practices are to be judged unsparingly, and resolutely put away. There is no place for them among the saints of God. We must not allow ourselves the slightest excuse for the breaking out of such things, for they stem from sin, not from infirmity.

Thirdly, there is this beauty in precepts: they do greatly honour the doctrine; they are the expression of the hidden moral virtue that lies in the doctrine. For instance, "Grieve not the holy Spirit of God." The doctrine had already taught me that I had received the Spirit as the seal of salvation. The precept tells me that the Spirit I have received is sensitive of the least touch of unholiness. So the doctrine is glorified by the precept.

Our present enjoyment of divine things depends upon the measure in which we keep from things and ways which would grieve the heavenly Seal, the Holy Spirit. He is sensitive to all that offends holiness, in conduct, speech, or disposition of heart as detailed from Eph. 4:20 and onwards. He will never withdraw Himself from the one sealed; that would be to falsify the whole truth of redemption. But He does, when grieved, withdraw joy and power from the Christian's life until the fault is confessed, and the frame of mind which allowed the old man to act again is judged. The reason that a Christian out of communion is inwardly wretched (even if he be outwardly placid) is not that the Spirit has abandoned him, but that He will not abandon him; necessarily depriving him of happiness until he has returned to his Lord in broken confession.

Now it is in these other things, that fill so much of our thoughts and time and energies, that the hindrances to the realization of power are to be found; and in this connection we have to contemplate not only things positively evil but many things that are trivial and profitless. Hence we get the word, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God" (Eph. 4:20). If we grieve Him, we do not lose His indwelling presence, for the verse continues, "whereby ye are sealed to the day of redemption." We do however lose much of the benefit of His presence. Both spiritual joy and spiritual power are lost until the grieving thing is put away. Some of the things which grieve are mentioned in the verses which precede and which follow. How much the Spirit of God has been grieved by malice, evil-speaking and bitterness amongst saints. The wonder is that His power is manifested at all!

But through carelessness we fail to "mortify the deeds of the body;" we give room to the flesh, and even make provision for it to fulfil its lust. As a result, the Holy Spirit is grieved. Mark, he is not grieved away — that could never be; but He can no longer occupy us with our Lord; He must occupy us with our failures. You will notice that grieving the Spirit is connected particularly (Eph. 4:30) with those forms of fleshly indulgence most common among Christians — malice, strife, bitterness, an unforgiving spirit. Ah, upon how many has the sun gone down in this wrath! — their day of communion exchanged for the night of a grieved Spirit. Other and grosser forms of fleshly indulgence are specified, but any, even the slightest yielding to that, grieves the Holy Spirit of God.

And what a mercy it is that this is the case. How many a child of God has been brought to himself by the consciousness of having grieved the Spirit. His peace is gone, his communion has ceased, he is miserable until he judges the evil, confesses and forsakes it. Instead of going on in carelessness, only to fall deeper and deeper into sin, he is made to feel the seriousness of that which blocks the intercourse between the Spirit and himself.

We lose the joy of the relationship of sons when we grieve the Holy Spirit, though not the knowledge of the relationship, and often the Spirit uses the knowledge that we have of the relationship to produce in us the deepest repentance and fullest confession for our having sinned in spite of it. Not only what we may call sin grieves the Holy Spirit; earthly-mindedness, worldliness, and everything that would cause us to be indifferent to Christ, or to think little of our heavenly place and inheritance — these are the things and ways that grieve Him, just as Israel grieved Him in the wilderness when they despised the pleasant land and turned in heart back again to Egypt. And the impoverished, lethargic, lack-lustre Christian lives, and immature fruit in them, are the result of the Spirit being grieved. But if Christ is the heart's object, if He is paramount in our lives, all is well. We may often fail on that road and sometimes stumble and fall, but there is grace for all that, and in spite of our failure the Spirit will find His delight in leading us into a fuller knowledge of Christ and of those blessed relationships into which grace has put us. The listening ear and responsive heart, the single eye and the subject will, these are the Holy Spirit's delight, whilst self-sufficiency, pride, indifference to His holy mission and the glory of Christ, these are a perpetual grief to Him.

The life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God; and hence I do not measure sin by breaking commandments merely, though that of course is sin, but rather by the presence of the Holy Ghost in me; as it is said, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption." If I grieve the Spirit I lose my discernment, and sin dims my power of sight, and deadens my spiritual senses; so that the Spirit of God is obliged to bring me to the miserable work of being occupied with my sin (as Peter was) instead of being occupied with all that is precious and joyous in Christ. It is very grievous that, instead of doing the work which it is His delight to do - even revealing Christ - He is obliged to reveal our sins to us, till we weep like Peter over our self-confidence and departure from the Lord. All is manifest unto Christ.