A New Spirit, and God\’s Spirit (ii)
SCRIPTURE: A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you. And I
will put my Spirit within you. -Ezekiel 36: 26, 27.
In the words of Ezekiel we find, in the one promise, this twofold blessing God bestows
through His Spirit very strikingly set forth. The first is, \’I will put within you a new spirit,\’
that is, man\’s own spirit is to be renewed and quickened by the work of God\’s Spirit. When
this has been done, then there is the second blessing, \’I will put my Spirit within you,\’ to dwell
in that new spirit, Where God is to dwell, He must have a habitation. With Adam He had to
create a body before He could breathe the spirit of life into him. In Israel the tabernacle and
the temple had to be built and completed before God could come down and take possession.
And just so a new heart is given, and a new spirit put within us, as the indispensable
condition of God\’s own Spirit being given to dwell within us. The difference is the same we
find in David\’s prayer. First, \’Create in me a clean heart, O God! and renew a right spirit
within me;\’ then, \’Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.\’ Or what is indicated in the words, \’That
which is born of the spirit is spirit\’; there is the Divine Spirit begetting, and the new spirit
begotten by Him. So the two are also distinguished, \’God\’s Spirit beareth witness with our
spirits that we are the children of God! Our spirit is the renewed regenerate spirit; dwelling in
this, and yet to be distinguished from it, is God\’s Holy Spirit, witnessing in, with, and through
it.\’
The importance of recognising this distinction can easily be perceived. We shall then be able
to understand the true relation between regeneration and the indwelling of the Spirit. The
former is that work of the Holy Spirit, by which He convinces us of sin, leads to repentance
and faith in Christ, and imparts a new nature. Through the Spirit God thus fulfils the promise,
\’I will put a new spirit within you.\’ The believer is now a child of God, a temple ready for the
Spirit to dwell in. Where faith claims it, the second half of the promise is fulfilled as surely as
the first. As long now as the believer only looks at regeneration, and the renewal wrought in
his spirit, he will not come to the life of joy and strength which is meant for him. But when he
accepts God\’s promise that there is something better than even the new nature, than the inner
temple, that there is the Spirit of the Father and the Son to dwell within him, there opens up a
wonderful prospect of holiness and blessedness. It becomes his one great desire to know this
Holy Spirit aright, how He works and what He asks, to know how he may to the full
experience His indwelling, and that revelation of the Son of God within us which it is His
work to bestow.