1.The Person We May Not Know Well

Ask an ordinary Christian about God the Father, and he will have something to say. Ask him about the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son, and he will have much to say. But ask him about the Holy Spirit, and very often he will grow hesitant and unsure. The Spirit has sometimes been called the forgotten member of the Trinity, or the One we know least well — and for many believers this is sadly true. Some think of the Spirit only as a vague power or influence; others are simply confused, and hardly know what to think at all. Yet this ought not to be so. The Holy Spirit is not a lesser or shadowy figure at the edge of the faith; He is fully God, and He is deeply and truly personal, and He is at work in every believer at every moment. Indeed, it is by the Holy Spirit that we were brought to Christ, and by the Spirit that we now live the Christian life at all. And so it is worth taking real care to learn who He is. In this reading we shall consider three great truths about Him: that He is a Person, that He is God, and that He is the third Person of the one Trinity.

2.The Spirit Is a Person, Not a Force

The first and most important thing to grasp is that the Holy Spirit is a Person — not a thing, not a mere force or energy, not an impersonal "it." This matters enormously, and it is easy to get wrong, partly because we speak of the Spirit as "it" is used of the wind or of breath, and partly because the Spirit does not have a face or a body as the Son took on. But the Scriptures everywhere treat the Spirit as a Person. Most strikingly, the Lord Jesus, in speaking of the coming Spirit, deliberately used personal pronouns for Him: "When He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth." Jesus did not say "when it comes, it will guide you," but "He." And everything the Spirit does is the action of a Person: He teaches, He speaks, He guides, He comforts, He commands, He forbids, He appoints, He prays for us. You cannot teach or comfort or pray if you are only a force. The difference this makes is very great. If the Spirit were only a power, our chief concern would be to get more of it, to use it, to harness it for our own ends. But because the Spirit is a Person — and a divine Person — our concern is rather to know Him, to yield to Him, to walk with Him, and to let Him possess and fill us. We do not use the Spirit; the Spirit, if we will let Him, takes hold of us.

3.Mind, Will, and Heart

We can see the Spirit's personhood still more clearly when we notice that He possesses all the marks of a personal being: a mind, a will, and even feelings. He has a mind, for the Scripture says that "the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God," and that as no one knows the thoughts of a man except that man's own spirit, so no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. He knows, He understands, He searches out truth — and a mere force knows nothing. He has a will, for when the Spirit gives gifts to the church, He does so, Paul says, "distributing to each one individually as He wills." He chooses; He decides; He acts with purpose — and a mere energy wills nothing. And He has something like feelings, a heart that can be touched, for we are commanded, "do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God." You cannot grieve an influence or wound a force; you can only grieve a Person who loves. Here, then, is no vague power to be tapped, but a living, knowing, choosing, feeling Person — One who can be known and loved, and One who can be resisted and grieved. The way we treat Him is the way we treat a Person, for that is exactly what He is.

4.The Spirit Is God

The Holy Spirit is not only a Person; He is a divine Person — He is God Himself. The Scriptures make this plain in several ways. He is directly called God: when Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit, Peter told him, "You have not lied to men but to God" — equating the Spirit with God in the same breath. He possesses the attributes that belong to God alone: He is eternal, He is present everywhere, He knows all things. The psalmist asks, "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?" — and the answer is nowhere, for the Spirit, being God, fills all things. And He does the works that only God can do: He was there at the creation, moving over the face of the deep; He gives life; He gives the new birth. When we come to the Holy Spirit, then, we are not dealing with some created being, however exalted, nor with a mere power sent out from God. We are dealing with God Himself. The Spirit who convicts us, who dwells in us, and who works in us is very God of very God — the same in substance, and equal in power and glory, with the Father and the Son.

5.The Third Person of the Trinity

How, then, do these truths fit together with what we know of the Father and the Son? They fit together in the great mystery that lies at the very heart of the Christian faith: the mystery of the Holy Trinity. There is one God, and only one; yet this one God exists eternally as three Persons — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the third of these Persons. He is truly distinct from the Father and from the Son; He is not merely another name for them, nor a part of them, but a Person in His own right, who can be spoken of, and spoken to, as "He." And yet He is not a third God, but is one God together with the Father and the Son, sharing fully in the one divine being. This is a truth too deep for us ever to master, and we should not expect to comprehend it; how could the infinite God be fully understood by finite minds? But though we cannot fully explain the Trinity, we can gladly believe and adore it, as the church has always done. And in it the Holy Spirit takes His place, eternally and gloriously, as the third Person of the one true God.

6.Named with the Father and the Son

That the Spirit stands as an equal Person alongside the Father and the Son is shown very beautifully in two familiar places of Scripture, which the church has treasured from the beginning. The first is the command of Jesus at the end of Matthew's Gospel, that His disciples be baptized "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Notice that it is one name, shared by all three; and the Spirit is placed there without hesitation beside the Father and the Son, as fully their equal. The second is the apostle Paul's great benediction: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all." Here again the Spirit is joined with the Father and the Son as the source of divine blessing. No mere creature, and no mere power, could ever be so named — sharing the one divine name in baptism, and pronounced as an equal fountain of grace in blessing. These simple, well-loved words, spoken over the water and at the close of worship down through all the centuries, quietly confess the deepest truth: that the Holy Spirit is a divine Person, one with the Father and the Son.

7.Why It Matters

All of this may seem, at first, to be doctrine for its own sake — but in fact it touches our lives at every point. If the Holy Spirit is a Person, and God, then several wonderful things follow. It means that we may actually know Him, and enjoy real fellowship with Him, just as Paul's benediction speaks of "the communion of the Holy Spirit." He is not a power to be used, but a Person to be known and loved. It means, too, that we should treat Him with the reverence and love that are due to God — taking care not to grieve Him, but to walk in step with Him and to yield ourselves gladly to His leading. And it means that the work the Spirit does in us is nothing less than the work of God Himself. When the Spirit convicts us of sin, it is God convicting us; when He comforts us, it is God comforting us; when He gives us power, it is the very power of God. We are never left to face the Christian life on our own poor resources, for God the Holy Spirit is with us, and within us. To know the Spirit rightly, then, is to know that we are never alone, and never without divine help, for God Himself has come to dwell in us.

8.God Himself Within Us

And that is the wonder with which we close, and the truth that opens up all the rest of this course. The Holy Spirit is a divine Person — the third Person of the eternal Trinity, truly and fully God, sharing the one divine name and being with the Father and the Son. And this divine Person, astonishingly, does not remain far off in the heights of heaven, but comes down and takes up His dwelling within the humblest believer. The God who made the stars, the God who cannot be contained by the highest heavens, comes to live inside frail and ordinary people like us. This is the great gift of the gospel, and the theme of everything that follows. In the readings to come, we shall trace what this indwelling Spirit does — how He applies the saving work of Christ to us, how He is the Comforter present with us, how He gives us power for life and witness, and how He brings forth His own fruit in our character. But it all begins here, with who He is. So learn to know Him, and to love Him, and to honor Him as God. For the Holy Spirit is not a distant force, but a divine Person — and He has come, in grace, to make His home in you.

9.Taking It to Heart

1.From the Cross to the Heart

At the cross, the Lord Jesus accomplished everything needed for our salvation. He bore our sins, paid our debt, and reconciled us to God; and by His resurrection He proved it all complete. But now a question arises. That great work was done long ago, and far away, on a hill outside Jerusalem. How does what Christ did there and then become ours here and now? How does the salvation He purchased actually reach us, and take hold of us, and become our own? This is the special work of the Holy Spirit. If the cross is the fountain from which all our salvation flows, the Spirit is the channel through which it is carried to us. If Christ's finished work is a treasure laid up for us, the Spirit is the one who brings it and places it in our hands. Everything that Christ accomplished for us, the Holy Spirit now applies to us and works in us. Without His work, the cross would remain only a distant fact of history, admired perhaps, but never possessed. By His work, that distant cross becomes our very own salvation. Let us trace, then, the steps by which the Spirit brings the work of Christ home to a human heart.

2.The Spirit of Christ

Before we do, we must see how closely the Spirit and Christ belong together. The New Testament calls the Holy Spirit "the Spirit of Christ" — so closely is His work bound up with the Lord Jesus. When Jesus had finished His work and returned to the Father, He poured out the Spirit upon His people, and the Spirit came, above all, as the Spirit of the risen and glorified Christ, to make Christ real and present to His own. Andrew Murray, in his rich book on the Spirit of Christ, dwelt on this precious truth: that the Spirit does not come to give us some blessing apart from Jesus, but comes to give us Jesus Himself — to unite us to Him, to form Him in us, and to fill our hearts with His presence. This is why the Spirit and Christ can never be separated, and why we must never seek the Spirit in a way that leads us away from Christ. The Spirit's whole delight is to take of the things of Christ and to give them to us. Wherever the true Spirit of God is at work, He is drawing us nearer to the Lord Jesus, and making Him more precious to our souls. To have the Spirit is to have Christ; and to grow in the Spirit is to grow ever closer to Him.

3.He Convicts and Draws

The Spirit's saving work begins before we are even aware of it, while we are still turned away from God and dead in our sins. For left to ourselves, we would never see our need, never desire the Savior, never turn to Him at all; we are too blind and too bound. And so the first thing the Spirit does is to open our eyes. Jesus said that when the Spirit came, "He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment." It is the Spirit who brings home to a careless heart the truth of its own sin and danger; who makes us feel our lostness and our need; who shows us the beauty and the sufficiency of Christ; and who gently but powerfully draws us toward Him. This drawing work of the Spirit is a work of grace, and it is a work we could never do for ourselves. Yet it does not force us against our will, as though we were stones or machines; rather, the Spirit works upon our hearts and minds, awakening, convicting, and drawing, so that we come. When at last a sinner turns from sin and casts himself upon Christ, it is his own real choice — and yet, behind it and beneath it, it is the gracious Spirit of God who has opened the way and moved the heart to come.

4.The New Birth

The greatest and most fundamental of all the Spirit's works in us is the new birth. To Nicodemus, a religious and respectable man, Jesus said the startling words, "Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" — and again, "Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." By nature we are spiritually dead, cut off from the life of God; and no amount of self-improvement can give us the new life we lack. What we need is nothing less than a new birth — a birth "from above," a fresh beginning, the imparting of a new spiritual life within us. And this is precisely what the Holy Spirit gives. To the one who turns to Christ in faith, the Spirit imparts new life, making him a new creation, a true child of God, born not of the will of man but of God. Paul calls it "the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit." This is why the change wrought in a true Christian goes so deep: it is not merely a turning over of a new leaf, but the beginning of a whole new life, breathed into the soul by the Spirit of God. No one can give himself this new birth, any more than a child can give birth to himself. It is the gift of the Spirit, received by faith in Christ.

5.United to Christ, Indwelt by the Spirit

When the Spirit gives us new life, He also joins us, in that same moment, to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. This is one of the most wonderful truths of the gospel: that every true believer is united to Christ, made a living member of His body, joined to Him as a branch is joined to the vine. And it is the Holy Spirit who forms this union. "By one Spirit," Paul writes, "we were all baptized into one body" — brought together into Christ and into one another. And in that same act, the Spirit comes to take up His dwelling within us. The believer's body, Paul says elsewhere, becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit; God comes to live inside His people. So the Christian is never a mere admirer of Christ from a distance, nor a lonely follower struggling on his own. He is joined to Christ by an unbreakable, living bond, and he carries within him the very Spirit of God. All the life, and grace, and strength that are in Christ the Head now flow, by the Spirit, into every member of His body. To be a Christian is to be united to Christ and indwelt by His Spirit — and this too is the Spirit's own gift and work.

6.The Spirit of Adoption and Assurance

The Spirit does more still: He assures us that we truly belong to God, and fills our hearts with the confidence and joy of being God's own children. When we were brought to Christ, we were not only forgiven and given new life; we were adopted into God's family, made sons and daughters of God Himself. And it is the Spirit who makes this real to us. Paul writes that we "received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, 'Abba, Father'" — the Spirit puts into our hearts that trusting, tender cry to God as our own dear Father. And more: "The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God." When a believer knows, deep within, that God is his Father and that he is truly loved and accepted, that inward assurance is the gracious witness of the Holy Spirit. Nor is that all. Paul says that believers are "sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance." The Spirit within us is God's own seal of ownership upon us, and His pledge and down-payment of the glory that is to come. So the Spirit does not leave us in doubt and fear, but gives us the settled comfort of knowing whose we are, and where we are going.

7.He Always Glorifies Christ

Through all of this saving work, there is one thing the Holy Spirit is always doing, and it gives us a sure test by which to know His true working. The Spirit always glorifies Christ. Jesus said of Him, "He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you." The Spirit does not come to draw attention to Himself, nor to lead us off into experiences that leave Christ behind. His whole delight and purpose is to make the Lord Jesus great in our eyes, to show us His beauty, to lead us to trust and love and obey Him. This gives us a simple and reliable test. Wherever the Spirit is truly at work, the result will be that Christ is exalted, that sin is grieved over and forsaken, that the Scriptures are loved, and that believers are drawn closer to the Savior and made more like Him. Any spirit or teaching that draws attention away from Christ, or that leaves people fascinated with themselves or with mere experiences, is not the work of the true Spirit of God, however impressive it may seem. The Holy Spirit is content to remain, as it were, in the background, ever pointing away from Himself and toward the Lord Jesus. And that self-effacing love is itself a mark of His divine and holy character.

8.All Christ Won, Made Ours

Gather it all together, and we see the beauty of the Spirit's work. Everything that the Lord Jesus won for us at the cross, the Holy Spirit takes and makes truly our own. It is the Spirit who opens our blind eyes and draws us to Christ; the Spirit who gives us the new birth; the Spirit who unites us to Christ and comes to dwell in us; the Spirit who assures us that we are God's beloved children and seals us for the day of redemption. From first to last, our salvation is the work of God — the Father who planned it, the Son who accomplished it, and the Spirit who applies it to us. And this teaches us, above all, to depend upon the Spirit. We cannot come to Christ, cannot be born again, cannot know assurance, by our own strength or wisdom; at every step we lean upon His gracious work. Yet the Spirit does not work over our heads, but through the gospel we hear and the Christ we are called to trust; and so we must respond to His drawing with real repentance and living faith. Depend, then, wholly upon the Spirit; yield gladly to His work; and let Him do in you all that Christ has done for you. For it is by the Spirit that a distant cross becomes your own salvation, and Christ Himself becomes yours forever.

9.Taking It to Heart

1.“I Will Not Leave You”

On the last night before His crucifixion, gathered with His disciples in the upper room, Jesus told them that He was about to leave them. Their hearts were troubled and afraid, for He had been everything to them — their Teacher, their Master, their friend, the very center of their lives — and now He was going away. But into that fear He spoke one of the most tender promises in all the Gospels. "I will not leave you orphans," He said; "I will come to you." And He told them how: "I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever." Jesus was going away in the body; but He was not abandoning them. In His place, and to carry on His own work of presence and comfort, He would send the Holy Spirit to be with them, and in them, and to stay with them always. This promise was not for the eleven only. It is for every believer, in every age. To all who belong to Christ, the same word is spoken: you are not left alone; the Comforter has come, and He abides with you forever.

2.Another Helper

The word Jesus used for the Spirit is a rich one, translated "Helper," or "Comforter," or "Advocate." It means one who is called to our side to help us — a companion, a supporter, a friend who stands with us and acts on our behalf. And Jesus called Him another Helper — another of the same kind as Himself. That is, the Spirit would be to the disciples all that Jesus had been to them, and more; He would carry on the very ministry of Christ's own presence among them. While Jesus was on the earth, He had been with them, at their side. But now, He said, something even more intimate would take place: the Spirit "dwells with you," He told them, "and will be in you." The presence that had walked beside them would now come to live within them. This is the great advance of the new covenant. God no longer dwells only in a temple of stone, nor walks only beside His people in the person of the incarnate Son; by the Spirit, He now comes to dwell inside every believer. The Helper is not far off, to be visited; He is within, our nearest and most constant companion.

3.He Abides Forever

There is a precious word in that promise which we must not pass over: the Spirit was given to abide with us "forever." When Jesus walked the earth, His bodily presence with the disciples was, by its nature, for a time only; He would be taken from them, and even after the resurrection He would ascend to the Father. But the coming of the Spirit was different. He came to stay. He does not visit the believer and then depart; He does not come and go with our moods, or our worthiness, or our feelings. He takes up His permanent dwelling in the heart of every child of God, and He never leaves. This is a truth of the deepest comfort and security. There may be days when we do not feel His presence, when our hearts are cold or dark or dull; but His presence does not depend upon our feelings. He is there, whether we feel Him or not, according to the sure promise of Christ. The believer is never, for a single moment, without the indwelling Spirit of God. God has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you" — and by His abiding Spirit, He makes that promise good every hour of every day, forever.

4.The Teacher

What, then, does this indwelling Comforter do for us? First, He is our Teacher. Jesus promised, "The Helper, the Holy Spirit… He will teach you all things," and, "He will guide you into all truth." Left to ourselves, the things of God are beyond our understanding; the natural mind cannot grasp them. But the Spirit who inspired the Scriptures also opens our minds to understand them, and lights up their meaning to our hearts. It is one thing to read the words of the Bible with the eyes; it is another to have the Spirit take those words and make them living, clear, and precious to the soul. Every believer who has ever felt a passage of Scripture suddenly open up, or a truth about God shine with new light and warmth, has known the teaching work of the Spirit. This is why we should never read the Bible in mere reliance on our own cleverness, but should ask the Spirit, its Author, to be our Teacher. And it is worth noting: the Spirit teaches us through the very Scriptures He inspired, never against them or beyond them. He does not lead us into private notions of our own, but ever deeper into the truth God has already given in His Word. The Author of the Book Himself becomes the Teacher of the reader, and there is no better Teacher than He.

5.The Guide

The Spirit is also our Guide. "As many as are led by the Spirit of God," Paul writes, "these are sons of God." The indwelling Spirit does not leave us to find our own way through life, but graciously leads and directs the children of God. He guides us, however, in ways that are steady and wise, and that we should learn to understand rightly. Chiefly, He guides us through the Scriptures, applying their truth and their commands to our particular situations. He guides us through the wisdom and sound judgment He gives to a mind soaked in God's Word. He guides us through a conscience made tender and alert by His work. And He guides us through the unfolding circumstances of His providence, opening some doors and closing others. We should be humble and sober in this, and not rush to claim that every impulse or feeling is the voice of the Spirit; His leading never contradicts the Scripture He has given, and it walks hand in hand with prayerful wisdom. But we may trust, with quiet confidence, that the God who lives within us will indeed lead His trusting children, step by step, in the way that they should go.

6.The Comforter in Trouble

He is called the Comforter, and comfort is one of His most tender ministries. This life brings many sorrows: grief, loss, fear, pain, loneliness, and hardship of every kind; and to those who follow Christ it often brings, in addition, opposition and even suffering for His name. But into every trouble, the indwelling Spirit brings the comfort of God. Paul speaks of "the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation." The Spirit brings the promises of God to our remembrance just when we need them; He sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts; He gives a peace that the world cannot give and cannot take away; He raises up hope in the darkest hour, and courage in the face of fear. Countless believers, in prison, in persecution, in sickness, and at the graveside, have found welling up within them a strength and a peace they could not explain and did not possess of themselves — and it was the comfort of the Holy Spirit. This is a comfort the world knows nothing of, and one that no earthly loss or hardship can ever take away. If you are passing through sorrow or trial, you do not face it alone or unhelped. The Comforter Himself is within you, and He is well able to sustain your heart until the storm is past.

7.The Helper in Prayer

The Spirit is our Helper too in the great work of prayer, in which we are so often weak. How many times have we longed to pray, and yet found we did not know what to say, or how to say it? Our burdens are too deep for words; our hearts are heavy, and the right words will not come. Here, too, the indwelling Spirit comes to our aid. "The Spirit also helps in our weaknesses," Paul writes; "for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us." When we cannot find the words, the Spirit prays in us and through us, carrying the true desires of our hearts up to God, and shaping our poor prayers into what they ought to be. This means that no sincere prayer of a believer is ever really alone, or ever falls to the ground; the Spirit Himself is at work within it. And it means we need never be silenced by our own weakness in prayer. When we can only sigh, or groan, or manage a few broken words, the Spirit takes even that and makes it a true and acceptable prayer before the throne of God. Our very weakness becomes an occasion for His gracious help.

8.Never Alone

Let us gather up this great comfort and hold it close. The Lord Jesus did not leave His people as orphans; He sent us another Helper, the Holy Spirit, to be with us and in us forever. And so the believer is never, at any moment, alone. Wherever you go, the presence of God goes with you, for the Spirit of God lives within you. In your studying of the Word, He is your Teacher; in the decisions of your life, He is your Guide; in your sorrows and trials, He is your Comforter; in your prayers, He is your Helper. You do not have to summon Him from far away; He is already there, closer than your closest friend, nearer than your own breath. This changes everything about how we may face life. We may face our loneliness knowing we are not truly alone. We may face our weakness knowing we are not without help. We may face our troubles knowing the God of all comfort dwells within us. So learn to walk through each day in the conscious company of the indwelling Spirit — speaking to Him, leaning on Him, and drawing on His help. Take care not to grieve so dear a Guest, but welcome Him, and rejoice in Him. For God Himself has come to live in you, and He will never leave.

9.Taking It to Heart

1.A Power We Often Lack

When we read the account of the early church in the book of Acts, we cannot help but notice something we too often miss in ourselves: a divine power at work among them. A handful of ordinary men and women, with no wealth, no standing, and no earthly advantages, turned their world upside down, and no opposition could stop them. Where did such power come from? Not from themselves. Just before He ascended, the risen Lord Jesus had told His disciples to wait, and had made them a promise: "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me." And so it happened at Pentecost, and so it continued. The power that marked the early church was the power of the Holy Spirit. Now here is a searching question for us. If the same Spirit dwells in every believer today, why do we so often live and serve in weakness, defeated by sin and fruitless in witness? Part of the answer, surely, is that we have not learned to draw upon the power that is offered to us. God has power to give; our need is to learn how it is received. Let us consider, then, this power of the Spirit — what it is for, and how it comes.

2.Power for Two Great Ends

First, we must be clear about what kind of power the Spirit gives, for it is easy to misunderstand. The power of the Spirit is not given for show, nor for our own greatness, nor to make us feel important or impressive before others. Whenever the Spirit's power is sought for the exalting of self, it is being sought amiss. Rather, the Spirit gives His power for two great and God-honoring ends. The first is a holy life — power over sin, that we may become like Christ in character and conduct. The second is fruitful service — power for effective witness to Christ, and for whatever work He calls us to do. These two belong together, and both aim at the glory of God and the good of others, never at the glory of ourselves. The disciples received power, Jesus said, precisely so that they might "be witnesses to Me" — the power was for Christ's sake, to make Him known. So as we seek the Spirit's power, let us seek it with a pure aim: not to be great, but to be holy; not to be admired, but to be useful; not for ourselves at all, but for our Lord and for the souls of others.

3.Power Over Sin

Consider first the Spirit's power for holy living. By nature we are weak in the face of sin. The pull of the flesh is strong, our old habits are deeply rooted, and we know from bitter experience how often our best resolutions fail. Sheer willpower, we discover, is not enough to make us holy; we cannot conquer sin simply by gritting our teeth and trying harder. But the good news is that we are not left to our own weak strength. The indwelling Spirit gives us power to overcome. "Walk in the Spirit," Paul writes, "and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." And again, "If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." Paul prays that believers may be "strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man." Here is the secret of a holy life: not our own effort alone, straining to be good, but a real reliance upon the power of the Spirit within us, who strengthens us to say no to sin and yes to God. This is a great relief to the weary soul that has struggled and failed. We are not called to defeat sin by ourselves; we are called to walk in step with the Spirit, and to let His power do in us what we could never do alone.

4.Power for Witness and Service

Consider next the Spirit's power for witness and service. The disciples, before Pentecost, were timid and afraid; they had hidden behind locked doors. But once the Spirit came upon them in power, they became bold as lions, standing before hostile crowds and rulers and proclaiming Christ without fear. The same Spirit gives power for witness still. He emboldens the fearful to speak of Christ. He takes the simple testimony of an ordinary believer and drives it home to the hearer's heart, doing what no cleverness of ours could ever do; for it is the Spirit, not our persuasiveness, who convicts and converts. He equips each of God's people, in the place and calling where He has set them, with what is needed to serve Him and to build up others. Our part is to be available and willing; His part is to supply the power that makes our service fruitful. This should greatly encourage us. We may feel weak, unqualified, and afraid, and think we have nothing to offer; but the effectiveness of our witness and work does not finally rest on our own gifts or eloquence. It rests on the power of the Spirit working through us. A weak and trembling witness, filled with the Spirit, can accomplish more for God than the most gifted person working in mere human strength.

5.Power Through Prayer

How closely the Spirit's power is bound up with prayer! The old writer E. M. Bounds gave his life to pressing this one truth upon the church: that real spiritual power comes through prayer, and that no amount of talent, learning, or method can ever take its place. The men and women whom God has used mightily have always been, first of all, people of prayer; and where prayer is weak, spiritual power is weak, whatever else may be present. This is because prayer is the great channel through which the power of the Spirit flows to us. In prayer we wait upon God, confess our own emptiness, and open ourselves to be filled and empowered by Him. As we saw, the Spirit Himself helps us to pray; and prayer, in turn, is the appointed way in which we receive His power for life and service. There is no shortcut around this. We will not have the Spirit's power for holiness, nor for witness, nor for any work God gives us, if we neglect the secret place of prayer. But those who learn to wait upon God in earnest, believing prayer will find that the power they lack in themselves is supplied, again and again, from above. The praying believer is the powerful believer.

6.Filled with the Spirit

How, then, do we come to know this power? The New Testament speaks of being "filled with the Spirit," and gives it to us as a plain command for every believer: "Be filled with the Spirit." Notice that this is not a rare privilege for a special few, but a standing command addressed to all of God's people; and it speaks not of a single experience never to be repeated, but of an ongoing, day-by-day reality — to go on being filled with the Spirit, continually. To be filled with the Spirit is to be wholly yielded to His control, so that He fills and directs the whole of our lives, as breath fills the lungs or as water fills a vessel. It is not that we get more of the Spirit — for every believer already has the whole Spirit dwelling within — but rather that the Spirit gets more of us, filling and possessing every part. The early believers, we read, were filled with the Spirit and then spoke the word of God with boldness; and when the need arose again, they were filled afresh. So this filling is to be sought again and again, all our lives. And it comes not through some technique we master, but through humble surrender and simple faith — yielding ourselves fully to God, and trusting Him to fill us.

7.Not Our Strength but His

We must hold fast to one truth above all here, or we shall go badly astray: this power is God's own power, and never our achievement. It is easy, even in spiritual things, to slip back into self-reliance — to trust in our own gifts, our own zeal, our own efforts and methods. But the power of the Spirit is not given to the strong, the clever, or the self-confident; it is given to those who have come to the end of themselves, who know their own weakness and emptiness, and who cast themselves wholly upon God. The word the Lord once spoke to Zerubbabel remains the abiding principle: "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the LORD of hosts." The great condition for receiving the Spirit's power is not strength but surrender, not cleverness but dependence, not self-confidence but humble, believing prayer. This is deeply humbling to our pride, for it means we can take no credit for any good that is done through us; but it is also deeply freeing, for it means the weakest and most ordinary believer, wholly yielded to God, may be filled with a power not his own. God delights to pour His strength through empty and dependent vessels, that all the glory may be His.

8.Living in His Power

Let us bring this home. We were never meant to live the Christian life, nor to serve God, in our own poor and failing strength. God has provided something far better: His own power, given by the Holy Spirit who lives within us — power to overcome sin and grow holy, power to witness boldly and serve fruitfully, power supplied to us as we wait upon Him in prayer. Yet how often we live far below this provision, struggling on in our own weakness, defeated and fruitless, simply because we have not learned to draw upon the power that is ours in the Spirit. The remedy is not to try harder in our own strength, but to turn from self-reliance altogether — to yield ourselves wholly to God, to seek to be filled with His Spirit, and to wait upon Him in earnest prayer. Then the same power that transformed a handful of frightened disciples into world-changing witnesses is available to us as well. So do not settle for a weak and defeated Christian life. Come to the end of yourself, yield fully to the Spirit, seek His filling, and live each day in humble dependence upon His power. For the power of God is offered to you — not to make you great, but to make you holy, and useful, and a faithful witness to your Lord.

9.Taking It to Heart

1.The Crown of the Spirit's Work

We come now to the crowning work of the Holy Spirit in the believer, and to the true goal toward which all His other works are moving. For the Spirit did not come merely to give us power, or gifts, or feelings; He came, above all, to make us like Jesus Christ. The deepest purpose of the Spirit is to reproduce the character of Christ in ordinary people like us — to grow in us the very graces that shone in our Lord. And the Scripture has a beautiful name for this Christlike character: it calls it "the fruit of the Spirit." When Paul wished to describe what the Spirit-filled life actually looks like, he did not point to remarkable powers or spectacular displays. He pointed to character: "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." This is what the Spirit is chiefly after in every one of us. Not that we should merely feel more, or do more, but that we should become more like Christ — more loving, more joyful, more patient, more good. This is the crown of His work, and the surest evidence of His presence. Where the Spirit is truly at work, the fruit of Christlike character will, sooner or later, begin to appear.

2.Fruit, Not Works

It is worth pausing over that word, "fruit," for Paul chose it carefully, and it teaches us something vital about how this character comes to be. He does not call these graces the "works" of the Spirit, but its fruit. And fruit is not manufactured; it grows. An apple is not hammered together in a workshop by effort and skill; it grows, quietly and naturally, from a living, healthy tree that is rooted and nourished. And just so, the graces of love, joy, and peace are not produced by our own straining and striving. We cannot make ourselves loving by gritting our teeth, nor manufacture joy or patience by sheer force of will. Rather, these things grow in us, as the natural fruit of the Spirit's life within us, when we are rightly rooted and abiding in Christ. This is a truth of great comfort and freedom. The Christian life is not an exhausting labor of trying to produce good character by our own effort; it is the glad, restful growing of the Spirit's own fruit in a life yielded to Him. Our part is not to manufacture the fruit, but to abide in the Vine, to walk in the Spirit, and to let Him do His growing work in us. The fruit is His to produce; the abiding is ours.

3.Two Lives, Two Harvests

Paul sets this fruit of the Spirit in sharp contrast with something very different, which he calls "the works of the flesh." Before he lists the fruit, he lists these works: immorality, impurity, hatred, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, envy, and the like — the ugly harvest of a life ruled by our fallen nature, left to itself. Here, then, are two lives, springing from two different sources, and bearing two very different harvests. The flesh, when it rules, brings forth its bitter and destructive works, which tear apart the soul, the home, and the community. The Spirit, when He rules, brings forth His sweet and beautiful fruit, which heals and blesses all around it. Every one of us, in the daily course of our lives, is bringing forth one harvest or the other. And the question is one of rule: which source are we yielding ourselves to? The Christian is called to reckon the flesh, with its works, as crucified with Christ, and to yield himself instead to the Spirit, that the Spirit's fruit may grow. We cannot serve both. But as we turn from the flesh and walk in the Spirit, the ugly works give way, little by little, to the lovely fruit — and the whole character is slowly transformed.

4.Love at the Root

It is striking that Paul speaks of the "fruit" of the Spirit in the singular, not the "fruits." The nine graces he names are not nine separate items, from which we might pick and choose, but one single cluster — one unified character, all growing together, like the many facets of a single jewel. And at the head of them all, named first, stands love. Love is not merely one grace among the nine; it is the root and heart of them all, from which the rest spring and flow. For what is joy but love rejoicing? What is peace but love resting? What is longsuffering but love enduring; kindness but love serving; gentleness but love touching a wounded soul with a tender hand? All the other graces are, in truth, only love in its various expressions and situations. And this love is itself the Spirit's own gift, for "the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit." The Spirit takes the very love of God, with which God has loved us in Christ, and sheds it abroad within us, until it begins to flow out again toward God and toward all around us. So if we would know whether the Spirit is bearing His fruit in us, the first and surest test is simply this: are we growing in love?

5.The Ninefold Fruit

Let us look, briefly, at the whole cluster of the Spirit's fruit, for each grace is a facet of the beauty of Christ. First come the graces that root us in God: love, as we have seen, and then joy — a deep gladness in God that does not rise and fall with our circumstances — and peace, a settled calm of heart that rests in God's care even amid the storm. Next come the graces that flow out toward other people: longsuffering, or patience, which bears long with the faults and provocations of others; kindness, which is gentle and warm in all its dealings; and goodness, which is generous and active in doing good. And last come the graces that steady and adorn our own character: faithfulness, which can be relied upon and keeps its word; gentleness, or meekness, which is humble and not harsh; and self-control, which masters its own desires and appetites. Set them all together, and what do we see? We see a portrait of the Lord Jesus Himself; for every one of these graces shone in perfection in Him. The fruit of the Spirit is nothing other than the character of Christ, formed grace by grace in His people. To grow in this fruit is simply to grow more and more like our Lord.

6.Abiding in Christ

How, then, does this fruit actually grow in us? The Lord Jesus gave us the answer in His picture of the vine and the branches. "I am the vine," He said, "you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." A branch does not bear fruit by struggling and straining; it bears fruit simply by remaining joined to the vine, so that the life of the vine flows freely into it. Cut off from the vine, the branch can do nothing, and quickly withers; but abiding in the vine, it bears fruit naturally and abundantly. And so it is with us. We bear the fruit of the Spirit not by our own effort, but by abiding in Christ — by staying joined to Him in living faith, keeping close to Him, drawing our life from Him day by day through His Word, through prayer, through trusting dependence. The whole secret of a fruitful life is here: keep close to Jesus. Let His life flow into you. Do not cut yourself off from Him by neglect or by unconfessed sin, but abide in Him, and let Him abide in you. The branch that stays joined to the vine will surely bear fruit; and the believer who abides in Christ will surely grow in the fruit of the Spirit.

7.Absolute Surrender

Closely bound up with abiding is another key, on which Andrew Murray loved to dwell: the key of surrender. If the Spirit is to fill our lives and bear His fruit in us, He must be given full control; and that means we must yield ourselves to God wholly, holding nothing back. Murray called this "absolute surrender" — the glad and complete giving up of ourselves, our wills, our all, into the hands of God, that He may work in us according to His good pleasure. So long as we keep back some corner of our lives from God, clinging to some cherished sin or some private will of our own, the Spirit is hindered, and His fruit cannot grow freely. But when we surrender all — when we say to God, in honest sincerity, "I am wholly Yours; work Your will in me" — then the Spirit is free to fill and to transform us. Now this surrender is not a grim or fearful thing, as though we were handing ourselves over to a hard master. It is the gladdest and safest thing we can ever do, for we are giving ourselves into the hands of a Father who loves us perfectly and seeks only our highest good. To surrender to God is not to lose ourselves, but to find ourselves; and it is in a fully surrendered life that the fruit of the Spirit grows most richly.

8.When the Fruit Is Slow

But we must add a gentle and honest word here, for the growing of fruit takes time, and none of us finds it complete in a day. Fruit ripens slowly, through many seasons; and in every one of our lives there will be patches that are still unripe, graces that are still small and weak, places where the flesh still struggles against the Spirit. This is the normal experience of every honest Christian, and we should not be cast down or surprised by it. When we look within and find our love still shallow, our patience still thin, our joy still faltering, the right response is not despair, nor bitter self-reproach, nor a grim redoubling of our own efforts. The right response is to turn afresh to Christ — to abide more closely in Him, to surrender more fully to Him, to lean more simply upon His Spirit — and then to be patient, as God Himself is patient with us. For the growing of the fruit is the Spirit's own work, and He is not finished with any of us yet. He who began this good work will carry it on, season by season, to the end. So do not measure yourself by how far you still have to go, but keep abiding, keep yielding, and keep trusting the Spirit to do His slow and faithful work. The fruit will come.

9.Let Him Bear His Fruit

And so we reach the end of our study of the Holy Spirit, and it brings us to the great goal of all His work. We have seen who He is — a divine Person, the third Person of the Trinity. We have seen what He does — applying to us the saving work of Christ, dwelling within us as our Comforter, and empowering us for life and witness. And now we have seen the crown of it all: that He works to form the very character of Christ in us, the fruit of love, joy, peace, and all the rest. This is what the world most needs to see, and it is by this that the world will know we belong to Jesus; for He said, "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." So let this be your aim, above every gift and every experience: to grow in the fruit of the Spirit, and so to grow like Christ. And remember how it comes — not by your own straining, but by abiding in Christ, surrendering wholly to God, and walking day by day in the Spirit. Do these things, and be patient; and the Spirit Himself will bear His fruit in you. Yield yourself, then, fully to Him. Keep close to Christ. And let the Holy Spirit grow in your life the beautiful character of your Lord, to the glory of God.

10.Taking It to Heart