The Spirit-filled Life # 3

Life On The Highest Plane

The realization of Christ's presence. Is not this the greatest need as, I dare say, it is the deepest desire of some of us? He said, "I will come unto you" and with our intellect we believe He has com but our hearts cry out for a deeper realization of His blessed presence within. The lives of the early Christians seemed fairly surcharged with such a joyous, vivid consciousness of the presence within them of their living, glorified Lord. He was so real to them that he seemed to be the home of all their thoughts and the horizon of all their affections. Is the spiritual presence of the living Lord such an intense reality to you? Are you occupied with Christ? Are you satisfied in Christ? Can you say from your heart, "Thou, O Christ, art all I want; More than all in Thee I find?"

To have Christ abiding in us in all His fullness is to have every need supplied, every desire fulfilled, every hunger satisfied, every thirst quenched. It is to have our whole life perpetually refreshed and replete in Him. Such a realization of His abiding presence in its fullness is one of the rich rewards of a Spirit-filled life.

Ephesians 3:16, 17, 19, "That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man; ... That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith ... That ye may be filled unto all the fullness of God."

The reproduction of Christ's holy life within the believer is another unspeakable precious benefit of the Spirit-filled life. Who of us has ever had a real vision of the Lord Jesus who has not abhorred his own sinfulness and longed passionately for Christ's holiness? Who has ever really seen the King in His beauty and not longed intensely to be like Him? But His is a life that defies imitation. No counterfeit is ever so quickly detected and so heartily detested as a counterfeit of the Christ. There is no possibility of likeness to the character seen in Jesus Christ except through the reproduction of His life in us.

To communicate the life of the living Head in heaven to the body on earth, making the visible part of Christ of the same character as the invisible part, is the work of the Holy Spirit. To reproduce the life of the Lord Jesus in us in a growing perfection is the mission of the Holy Spirit and His ability to perform this task is in proportion to the freedom given Him to do it. The Spirit-filled Christian is the one who is most like his Lord.

2 Corinthians 3:18, "But we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit."

Galatians 5:22-23, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self control: against such thee is no law."

Compressed into these nine exquisite graces is a marvelous word-picture of the character of Jesus Christ in its essential beauty, symmetry and perfection. Such character can never be produced through human effort for it is not the product of human nature but the fruit of the divine nature. Only the divine can produce the divine. "As without the sun the photographic image cannot be printed upon the sensitized film, so apart from the Holy Spirit, the moral glories of the Lord Jesus can never become ours in any sense save that of desire." But, when the Holy Spirit is permitted to fill us, He brings forth His own fruit in a  character of growing likeness to that of our Lord.

The reenactment of Christ's supernatural power through us is the third outstanding mark of a Spirit-filled life. All power belongs unto God and He has delegated this power to His Son and the Son in turn transmits that power to the one whose life is united with His. When He gave that last commission to the disciples He said, "All power hath been given unto me in heaven and upon earth, go ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations." The "therefore" fully implies that,as He sent them forth to accomplish such a superhuman task, He promised to endue them with supernatural power. Just before His ascension He told them to wait until they were "endued with power from on high? and in giving this command He reiterated His promise to send forth to them the Holy Spirit upon His return to glory (Luke 24:49). So their enduement with power and their reception of the Holy Spirit evidently had a vital connection. The last words He spoke, as He was lifted up out of their sight declared this.

Acts 1:8, "But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."

A study of the book of Acts shows us that those who were filled with the Holy Spirit were full of power. They had power to suffer and to sacrifice; to teach and to preach; to witness and to work. Thousands of souls were born into the Kingdom of God and blessed through their ministry. But this work of grace was not wrought through human energy, zeal, wisdom or eloquence, but through the power of the ascended Lord poured forth through Spirit-filled lives.

Have you the power of the Holy Spirit? Through you is He working mightily to convict men of sin, to constrain them to believe in Christ, and to conform them to the image of the Lord Jesus. If not, is it because you are not filled with the Holy Spirit? Wherever He is in fullness He manifests Himself in power. "In order to have the Holy Spirit's competency we must have His control."

~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with # 4)