What is the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives today?

The Epistle to Timothy is written that we should know how one ought to behave oneself in the house of God. We have men, women, bishops, deacons, elders, widows, slaves, masters, rich, poor, and the conduct becoming each. The house is the assembly of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. He is by His Spirit here to take complete charge of the household. He is here to be all to us that Christ was to His disciples when He was upon earth. It is He who leads us on in the knowledge of God, instructs us in the truth of Scripture, builds us up on our most holy faith, fills our hearts with the love of God, fixes our attention upon Christ in heaven, enables us to call God our Father, witnesses with our spirit that we are God’s children, gives us to know the deep things of God, is our power for testimony, service, prayer, and worship, and it is He who unites us to our living and glorified Head in heaven as His body. In short, as Christ is everything to us objectively, so is the Spirit everything to us subjectively.

The Holy Spirit would ever encourage the believer in the desires and activities of the new nature. It is His special work to guide us into all truth and to take of the things of Christ, the living Bread and the living Word, and show them unto us (John 16:13-15). He would teach us to pray too - "Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit"; "praying in the Holy Ghost" (Eph. 6:18; Jude 20). Thus we must be walking in the Spirit if we desire that our new nature be fed and developed. If a believer disobeys the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, the Holy Spirit is grieved and quenched and He is not free to promote the desires of the new nature (Eph. 4:30). He can only convict such an one of sin and lead him to self- judgment and confession of sin. Walking in the power of the ungrieved Spirit, then, is vitally essential for the Christian life.

The truth relating to the Holy Spirit of God — His deity, His work, His abiding presence with believers — is one of the most important subjects of the holy Scriptures. Sometimes referred to as "the third Person in the Trinity," He is nevertheless possessed of full Deity — He is God. He has His place in the first sentence of the Scriptures. "In the beginning God" (Elohim — Hebrew plural indicating "three"), He "garnished — (Made beautiful) the heavens" (Job 26:13). He is the Source and Power of the new life in the believer; He helps in our warfare with the flesh (Galatians 5:17); He helps us in our infirmities and in our prayers (Romans 8:26); He is the strength and support of even the smallest of God's children against the power of Satan (1 John 4:4); by Him we are "sealed" and "anointed" and have the "earnest" of the inheritance; we belong to God; we have power to walk in the dignity and fragrance of Christ Himself, and the light of the glory to come illumines our path. By Him the love of God has been deluged into our hearts, and He enables us to respond to that love as we say from those full hearts — "Abba, Father" (Romans 5:5; Romans 8:15). He "abides" with us — the Comforter — alongside to help at all times.

Every true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has received the gift of the Holy Spirit, having been sealed for God on believing the Gospel of our salvation, which presents Christ to us as having died for our sins, and as having been raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. God's love has been shed abroad in the heart of the true Christian by the Holy Spirit, and He is also the Unction, and the Earnest of our inheritance and of every promise of God. It is by the Spirit that Christ is written on the hearts of believers, and it is by Him that we worship God and are brought into moral conformity to Christ. The New Testament abounds with references to the Spirit's work and function as indwelling the Christian.

But not only to work as believers, but to be in them individually, did the Holy Ghost come. "He shall be in you," the Lord declared. (John 14:17.) In accordance with this we read of saints receiving the Spirit (Acts 19:2; Gal. 3:2); of the Spirit being given to them (Rom. 5:5; 1 Thess. 4:8), and supplied, or ministered, to them (Gal. 3:5); of their having the Spirit (Jude 1:19), being led of the Spirit (Rom. 8:14; Gal. 5:18), and walking in the Spirit (Gal. 5:16); of their being sealed with the Spirit (Eph. 1:13; Eph. 4:30), and indwelt by the Spirit, as well as of the Spirit making intercession for them, helping their infirmities, and witnessing with their spirit of their relationship to God. (Rom. 8:9, 11, 16, 26.) But any, and all, of this is true only of believers. For whilst souls are born of the Spirit, He dwells only in such as are already believers. He was in the prophets of old as the Spirit of Christ. (1 Peter 1:11.) He was with them as David declares. (Ps. 51:11.) But that which was true of every prophet of old, and of every vessel taken up by God for special service, was not true of all God's saints before the cross. Now it is different. And though all are not gifts from the ascended Christ, to minister in the assembly; nor are all pastors, to care in a special way for the flock; nor are all prophets, to edify God's saints, though all can prophesy, if qualified by the Spirit to do it (1 Cor. 14:31); yet to each one a gift, or gifts, charismata, are given to profit withal. And it is the distinctive mark, as well as the common privilege, of every believer to have the Spirit of God within him. (John 14:17.) And everyone, who now with the heart believes God's testimony of forgiveness of sins through the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ, does share in this great, this blessed, gift (Acts 2:38; Acts 10:43-44; Gal. 3:2; Eph. 1:13) which it needed as a rule no apostle of old to give.

Every true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ of the present period is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, even as it is written, “In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession” (Eph. 1:13-14). The indwelling Spirit is the seal of God’s work in the soul, the earnest of what yet awaits us, and is the divine anointing by which we enter into the truth of God, and the power by which we are able to walk for God’s pleasure and carry out His will in our lives and service for Him.

That every true believer in Christ is indwelt by the Spirit of God, and that that Spirit is received when one believes the gospel, Scripture leaves no doubt upon the mind (Acts 10:44; Eph. 1:13; 1 Cor. 6:19; and many other passages). This Spirit is the Spirit of God’s Son, who gives us the consciousness that we are sons, and also the power to take this wonderful place of privilege, enabling us to address God as our Father (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6). He is also the seal of God upon us, marking us off as His; the earnest, or pledge, of the inheritance which we shall receive when it is redeemed by power; the anointing that teaches us all things, and who establishes us in Christ, or attaches us firmly to Him; and the One that unites us to Christ, and to all other believers as one body (2 Cor. 1:21-22; 1 Cor. 12:13).

The Holy Ghost personally on earth witnesses to the righteousness of God, and to the justification of the believer according to its full display. Eternal life by and in the Spirit, and its conscious possession, communicated to the believer by the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost acting as the power of this life in his walk, guiding, directing, controlling, and rebuking him. The believer sealed with the Spirit, uniting him to Christ — a Man in glory, his body a temple for His indwelling; and thus the bond of union between all those who are His, one with another, and with Christ, His presence and baptism constituting "one Body," composed of such, here in this world. God dwelling amongst His saints here, as a habitation, in Spirit, not in flesh.

THE HOLY SPIRIT TEACHES, TESTIFIES, GUIDES

We read, “But the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in My name, He shall TEACH you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said to you” (John 14:26). This was said to the apostles, who sojourned with our Lord when upon earth, but the principle stretches out to all God’s people. The Holy Spirit is the infallible Teacher. How important then is our study of God’s Word, which contains this teaching for our learning. We may rest assured that what the Holy Spirit taught the apostles is for us, and all things brought to their remembrance is found in the Word of God.

In the chapters in John already referred to (14, 15, 16), the Lord Jesus especially emphasized the teaching of the Spirit as regards His disciples. He would "teach" them "all things." He would "guide" them "into all truth." This was doubtless true in an especial degree of the apostles to whom He was speaking, inasmuch as they were to be the original depositories of the further revelations which are now contained in the Epistles. Admitting this, it is still true in a general sense of every believer, even the most recently converted — the babe — as 1 John 2:27 shows. The teaching work of the Spirit goes deeper than the mere imparting of information. He instructs so effectually that the believer not only knows mentally but is also possessed by the things that he knows. They are made living and operative in his life.