I
.WHAT IS THE SPIRIT?
In
a word it may be said that the spirit is the divine element in man, or perhaps
more correctly, that which is cognizant of God. It is not the intellectual or
mental or aesthetic or sensational part of man but the spiritual, the higher
nature, that which recognizes and communicates with the heavenly and divine.
1.
It is that in us which knows God, which directly and immediately is conscious
of the divine presence and can hold fellowship with Him, hearing His voice,
seeing His glory, receiving intuitively the impression of His touch and the
conviction of His will, understanding and worshiping His character and
attributes, speaking to Him in the spirit and language of prayer and praise and
heavenly communion. It is, also, directly conscious of the other world of evil
spirits, and knows the touch of the enemy as well as the voice of the Shepherd.
2.
The spirit is that which recognizes the difference between right and wrong,
which loves the right and thinks, discerns, chooses in harmony with
righteousness. It is the moral element in human nature. It is the region in
which conscience speaks and reigns. It is the seat of righteousness and purity
and sanctity, it is that which resembles God, the new man created in
righteousness and true holiness after His image. Every one must be conscious of
such an element in his being and feel that it is essentially different from the
mere faculties of the understanding or the feelings of the heart.
3.
The spirit is that which chooses, purposes, determines and thus practically decides
the whole question of our action and obedience. In short, it is the region of
the will, that mightiest impulse of human nature, that almost divine
prerogative which God has shared with man, His child, that very helm of life on
whose decision hang the whole issues of character and destiny. What a momentous
force it is, and how essential that it be wholly sanctified! As it is, or is
not, sanctified, the life is one of obedience or disobedience, and when the
will is right, and the choice is fixed, and the eye is single, God recognizes
the heart as true and pure, “If there be a willing mind it is accepted
according to what a man has and not according to what he has not.”
4.
The spirit is that which trusts. Confidence is one of its attributes and
exercises. It is the filial quality in the child of God which looks in the
Father's face without a cloud, which lies upon His bosom without a fear and
puts its hand in His with the abandonment of childlike simplicity.
5.
The spirit is that which loves God. It is not now the human emotional love of
which we speak, for that belongs to the lower nature of the soul and may be
most fully developed in one whose spirit is still dead to God in trespasses and
sins; but it is that divine love which is the direct gift of the Holy Spirit
and the true spring of all holiness and obedience. It is nothing less than the
love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit, and its appropriate
sphere is the human heart.
6.
The spirit is that which glorifies God, which makes His will and honor its
supreme aim and loses itself in His glory. The very conception of such an aim
is foreign to the human mind and can be only received by a spirit which has
been born again and created in the divine image.
7.
The spirit is that which enjoys God, which hungers for His presence and
fellowship and finds its nourishment, its portion, its satisfaction, its
inheritance in Himself as its all and in all.
This
wonderful element of our human nature is subject to all the sensibilities and
susceptibilities which we find in a coarser form in our physical life. There
are spiritual senses and organs just as real and intense as those of our
physical frame. We find them distinctly recognized in the Scriptures. There is
the sense of spiritual hearing, “He that has an ear let him hear what the
Spirit says to the churches,” “Blessed are your ears, for they hear,” “My sheep
hear my voice and they follow me.” There is the sense of vision, “Your eyes
will see the King in his beauty and the land that is very far off,” “Looking
unto Jesus,” “Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord,” “Having eyes they
see not,” “He has sent me to open the blind eyes and turn them from darkness
unto light and from the power of Satan unto God.” There is the sense of
spiritual touch, “That I may apprehend, (or, grasp with my hand) that for which
I am apprehended of Christ Jesus,” “Who touched me,” “As many as touched him
were made perfectly whole.”
There
is the sense of taste, “He that feeds on me will live by me,” “Oh, taste and see
that the Lord is good,” “He that comes to me will never hunger, and he that
believes on me will never thirst.” There is the sense of smell. Very definitely
is it referred to in the 11th of Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord will rest upon
him and will make him of quick smell in the fear of the Lord.” The spirit is a
real subsistence, and when separated from the body after death it will have the
same consciousness as when in life, and perhaps intenser powers of feeling,
action and enjoyment.
Such
is a brief view of this supreme endowment of our humanity, this upper chamber
of the house of God, this higher nature received from our Creator, and lost,
or, at least, degraded, defiled and buried through our sin and fall.
II.
WHAT IS IT FOR THE SPIRIT TO BE SANCTIFIED?
It
is indispensable, first of all, that it be quickened into life. Naturally it is
dead, and the work of regeneration quickens it into vitality as a newborn life,
inbreathed, given from heaven as unto us in the first creation, as from the
very lips of God. So, in one sense, the unregenerate soul is not spiritually
alive. Its faculties are alive, its animal life is active, but spiritually it
is dead in trespasses and sins. When “By one man sin entered into the world and
death by sin,” not only did man become subject to physical death but spiritual
death reigned also. Thank God for the grace of God revealed in the gift by
grace. Jesus Christ, whereby He has delivered us from the bondage of death and
enables us to reign in life by one, even Jesus Christ.
But
now what is a sanctified spirit?
1.
It is a spirit separated.
Have
you ever looked upon the dark, cold ground in early spring, through which if
you drew your hand, it would chill and defile your fingers and perhaps it was
mixed with the manure of the barnyard and the crawling earth worms that
burrowed in it? Yet, have you never seen, growing out of that dark soil, a
little plant or flower, with roots white as the driven snow, and leaf as
delicate and petals as pure as a baby's dimpled cheek, separated by its own
nature and purity from the dirty soil that was all around it and could not even
stain it? So the spirit born of God is separated in its own divine nature from
its own self and the sinful heart, and the very first step of sanctification is
to recognize this separation and count ourselves no longer the same person, but
partakers of the divine nature and alive unto God as those who have been raised
from the dead.
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