A New Spirit, and God\’s Spirit (iii)
SCRIPTURE: I will put a new spirit within you. Ezekiel 36: 26, 27
The question will be asked, how these two parts of the Divine promise are fulfilled?
simultaneously or successively? The answer is very simple: From God\’s side the twofold gift
is simultaneous. The Spirit is not divided: in giving the Spirit, God gives Himself and all He
is. So, it was on the day of Pentecost. The three thousand received the new spirit, with
repentance and faith, and then, when they had been baptized, the Indwelling Spirit, as God\’s
seal to their faith, on one day. Through the word of disciples, the Spirit, which had come
upon them, wrought mightily on the multitude, changing disposition and heart and spirit.
When, in the power of this new spirit working in them, they had believed and confessed, they
received the baptism of Holy Spirit to abide in them. And so still in times when the Spirit of
God moves mightily, and the Church is living in the power of the Spirit, the children which
are begotten of her receive from the first beginnings of their Christian life the distinct
conscious sealing and indwelling of the Spirit. When, the standard of spiritual life in a
Church is sickly and low, when neither in the preaching of the word nor in the testimony of
believers, the glorious truth of an Indwelling Spirit is distinctly proclaimed, we must not
wonder if, even where God gives His Spirit, He be known and experienced only as the Spirit
of regeneration. His Indwelling Presence will remain a mystery.
PRAYER: In the gift of God, the Spirit of Christ in all His fulness is bestowed once for all
as an Indwelling Spirit; but He is received and possessed only as far as the faith of the
believer reaches. Have you ever consecrated to seek for one gift of the indwelling Spirit to
manifest in your life -seeking for an extended period of time?