Relation
of the Holy Spirit to the Believer
By
Susan A. Duncan
In the book of Romans the
Holy Spirit is mentioned but once in the first seven chapters. These chapters
deal with the failure of man, but in the eighth chapter, which is the triumphant note of the overcoming life, the Holy Spirit
is mentioned nineteen times. I am sure this is significant, and not until you
come through the blood of the third chapter, into the Holy Spirit of the eighth chapter, do you get the power of the Spirit. The blood delivers from the guilt and penalty of sin, and the Holy Spirit delivers
from the power and dominion of sin, one is just as much needed as the other, and the one does not take the place of the other.
In the eighth chapter the
Lord makes a distinction between children and sons. We know that a little babe
is a son even while it is a babe, but it is not a grown-up son; the Word of God makes this distinction in the Greek. “Sons” and “children” do not come from the same Greek word. You will find the babe in the sixteenth and seventeenth verses of the eighth chapter:
“The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.”
That is, you are full born
– the babe that is born into the family of God. “And if children,
then heirs.” If you are just born, you are an heir to something, though
you were born but yesterday and die today. In the original it is a babe, the
one just born, and so into the heart of the little child is put that cry: “Abba, Father,” which is baby talk,
and then it goes on to say that because you are children you are heirs, but not joint-heirs with Christ unless some other
things follow.
Notice in the fourteenth and
nineteenth verses: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” They are the “grown-up sons.” “For the earnest
expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the grown-up sons of God,” I might put it. There is that difference exactly in the original words. The
creation is not waiting for the manifestation of the babes, but of the grown-up sons, those who have really gone on into the
fullness of the life of Christ.
That same thought comes out
in Eph. 4:13. “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man,
unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” That is a full-grown
son. “That we henceforth be no more children,” or a babe. Do not stay in that infantile experience which is good, but initial.
God has made provision for grown-up sons: He says children are tossed to and from with every wind of doctrine; they
only know God in the slightest way; they are without development and are exposed to all sorts of errors, which Satan may sugar-coat
with just enough truth to make them believe it is all truth – Christian Science, and all similar teachings creeping
into the church, because of the babes in it and so few grown-up sons. The full-grown
sons are not tossed about; they know God.
I know the Spirit called my
attention to this fact – “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons.” This means those who have been continually abandoning themselves to the Holy Spirit. He is rearing them; He is educating them; He has charge of their lives; He is leading them all the time
and about everything. They are in the charge of the Holy Spirit, and He leads
them quickly out of babyhood, step by step until they come to the full measure of the stature of the sons of God. It does not mean the occasional leading of which perhaps every Christian knows something, no matter what
their state – that is not the meaning here. As many as are led by the Spirit,
are these grown-up sons.
He it is who really takes
us by the hand and shows us what we are ourselves, and then leads us step by step into the truth, and reveals the Lord to
us. O, He is the One Who does everything concerning those babes whom He is going
to bring into full-grown sons, into the manifestation finally of a company of people that the Spirit alone has developed into
full sonship – that is what the creation groans and is waiting for till we, seeing what the Holy Spirit is given for,
commit ourselves to Him, let ourselves go into His hands, submit to His training, His criticism, His proof, to all His dealings,
and as we do, He can bring us rapidly into real sonship. You can never come any
other way; you will remain a babe to the end of the chapter, no matter how long you have been in the kingdom of God.
He brings us to see how helpless
we are, that like the little babe we can do nothing. Often a father will take
his little child down the street; it is full of traffic and noise and confusion, and this child could not possibly makes its
way, it would get into such confusion as to be panic stricken – how easily it could lose its life. If it were going alone it would be almost sure to meet with an accident; that little thing has no power
to go down the street in the traffic of a city; but the father conducts the child, and often, when crossing the street, he
takes it up in his arms and comforts it and allays its fears when it would be frightened.
Thus it is with the Holy Spirit, in the home, and in the business, and in the street, all the time we can have our
hands in the hand of the Holy Spirit, and He has to be referred to about everything.
As the Spirit has been revealing this more and more to me, so many passages of Scripture have become light, and I see
how little we know the real work of the Spirit.
I am reminded of something
which happened in the beginning of our work. We had just opened a mission, and
we knew very little about the responsibility of a faith life, in fact, we knew nothing; we were just babes in that sort of
living, and I can see now we had not really trusted the Spirit as much as we should.
We had trusted in a way, and we had received what we felt was the baptism of the Spirit: we had the correct doctrine,
and were in a sense submitting as best we knew how. I remember coming home from
meeting one night, and as was our custom, my sisters and myself, got down to pray about the work, the meetings, and the difficulties
which arose, in fact, this work has been carried on our knees – and as we were praying, and one began to pray aloud,
somehow I found myself shaking exactly as some do now in the Pentecost. I remember
there was a power within me which seemed as if it must burst forth, and this was the prayer that kept coming almost like gasps:
“O Lord, bring the people down to the feet of the Holy Ghost.”
It continued to pour through
me for an hour, and I had to hold on to the chair or I would have been prostrated on the floor. I was a bit frightened – my whole body was trembling as they do now under the power of the Holy Spirit
– and I was praying just that prayer – “O Lord, bring the people down to the feet of the Holy Ghost,”
and that prayed itself out exactly as tongues come, and I could not say anything else.
Finally I really stopped myself, for I felt as if I could go on forever, and I remember that I could scarcely arise
from the floor, was unable to walk to my room; and I had to sit down for a time in order to gather strength to move.
The next morning at prayers
the same thing happened, the same shaking and the same prayer. I tried to say
some other things and succeeded with a few sentences only, then I stopped for I could not pray, and was not willing to pray
that repetition. I went up to my room, and the same power and the same prayer
came again – “O Lord, bring the people down to the feet of the Holy Ghost.”
I did not know myself what I meant, but I said, I am not going to pray that one sentence anymore, and I forced myself
to cease. I did not know then that the Holy Spirit Himself was putting that cry
through my lips. O, He saw the work before us, and saw that no one could do it
but the Holy Spirit, and He saw the need of our trusting Him with every step, not only for our work, but for our lives.
I understand it now, though
I did not then, and we went on trusting the Holy Spirit with no thought of that identical prayer being answered. But I was thinking today, - Lord, we are going to pray it now with understanding – “O, bring
the people down to the feet of the Holy Spirit,” and He dwelling in them will be the power they are so conscious of
lacking.
As many as are led by the
Spirit they are sons, they are not babes any longer. He leads them into the mind
and the Word of God; He opens the divine mystery of their own hearts to them, a mystery we will never know without His power. O, this is the cry of our God today, that His people might be brought down at the
feet of the Holy Spirit, where they will trust Him. One of the names of the Holy
Spirit is the Paraclete, and that means one called along-side to help – one whom God has sent to stand within us alongside
of our poor self, and be all we need.
“The Spirit quickeneth,
the flesh profiteth nothing.” We read the words, but we have learned it
only in the smallest measure. The flesh profiteth nothing in this new and divine
and spiritual life. All our efforts and all our wisdom and all our striving profiteth
nothing – it is the Spirit that giveth life. All the divine life that has
ever sprung up in our heart was a direct operation of the Holy Ghost. We all
feel the need of life. I really expect that if every one of you sitting here
in this room told your deepest conscious need, you would say, O, I want more life, I haven’t life enough to bring forth
the fruits of the life of Christ. Why is our faith weak? We haven’t life enough. We are babes yet with the weakness
of children, the new man in us has not had power to grow, because it has not been quickened by the Spirit, because we have
not trusted Him to do it. We have often labored ourselves and tried to bring
life by works of the flesh.
We desire to love God as we
should, to love our enemies and our brethren, but we have not trusted to the quickening of the Holy Spirit.
Then He is the only One who
can make the Book life. This Book is life, “The words that I speak unto
you are spirit and they are life,” but that means when the Holy Spirit takes that word and makes it life. It has life-giving property when it is in the hands of the Spirit, we begin to see that God meant thus
and so, and we understand, and somehow lay our hearts alongside that truth, and lean upon the Spirit to make it good to us.
I have a deep sense that the
Lord is bringing us into the place where we will consent without dismay to the fact of our utter helplessness. We usually consent to it with regrets – we turn our face away and do not like to contemplate it,
it is too painful, we turn away from it in hopes that He will change it, but the Lord wants us to come to the place of consenting
to perfect helplessness without dismay and without discouragement as you consent to the fact that the sun shines, or there
is a power of electricity. You simply consent to an eternal fact that the “flesh
profiteth nothing.”
The Lord is going to bring
us where we will have a strange trial of deadness and dryness laid upon us, when instead of struggling, He wants us to consent
to our helplessness and say to the Spirit, “As long as You want me to lie here in this dead position, I consent to it,
but I know You will quicken me; I will not lift a finger, ‘You will quicken me,’” – and you know,
life that is eternal is going to spring up, life that comes out of the heart of the Spirit, life that never came by force
of ours and is not flesh.
There were three days in the
life of Jesus that He lay in the tomb absolutely helpless. Jesus did not raise
Himself, He had to consent to die like other men and go helpless into the grave, and He Himself never lifted a finger to come
forth. We have a lot of beautiful phraseology in hymns that says He burst the
bands of death, but He did nothing of the kind; the Holy Spirit brought Him forth. The
Bible says again and again – “raised by God” – “God who raised Him from the dead.” His body was just as helpless as any other man that went into the grave, with no movement
upon His part to come forth, but the Spirit of God began to quicken that body and brought life into it, and He rose through
the same Spirit through whom He had done His works, and through whom He offered Himself at last as a sin offering. Before He went into the grave, He depended upon the Holy Spirit to bring Him forth. We have a theology which teaches that we are to be raised from the dead if we die before Christ comes. When that takes place it will be though the quickening of the Spirit as in the case
of Jesus.
“But if the Spirit of
Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you,” – that is the Holy Spirit – “He shall also quicken
your mortal bodies.” The ultimate thought is resurrection, while the near
thought is the present quickening through His indwelling. So we have to go into
the grave (if the Lord tarries) with the same faith in the same Spirit to bring us forth.
Our body will lie as helpless as the clods of the earth until there comes that mighty quickening which will bring resurrection
life into the dust, and it shall rise again in the likeness of Jesus’ glorious body.
I have a sense that this is a little parable of what He wants within us in the Spirit – that we come to the place
of death; to the place where we will not lift our hand; where we will make no struggle; where we do nothing and there is nothing
but an intense looking to the Holy Spirit, which is the highest faith we ever put forth in our lives – a leaning wholly
upon the Spirit, saying, “Lord, no word can come through my lips with any power if it be mine, no faith that is effectual,
no love that is worth anything, nothing, nothing, and I wait for Thy quickening; I wait for Thee to bring forth.”
And, you know, it is so hard
some days when we feel as if God were dead, and as if there were no life in our soul, and as if faith and love had gone, and
then sometimes the enemy will take advantage of it to put special condemnation on, then it is hard to say, Lord, I will bear
this till You lift it.
I believe, friends, God is
bringing us there, and the life that springs up is divine life, and the faith that springs up will find all things possible. O, that is the faith that will work miracles – I see now – it is no faith
that we can produce; it is something that is going to spring up in us by the quickening of the Spirit. He will spring up in us to work signs and wonders when His hour comes, and then we will sit down as weak
and helpless as ever. It is the Spirit that will rise up and say, “Arise
and walk,” to some one, and the next day we could not say anything. That
is being led by the Spirit; those are the sons of God in whom the life of Jesus will be brought in by the Holy Spirit Himself. The place of death is so hard to bear; that awful deadness and dryness and weakness. We shuffle out of it – we will fast and pray and weep to get out of it. Well, we will never get out of it on the life-side till we get still as Jesus was
in the grave, and we wait for the Holy Spirit to raise us up, and when He does, it is not the flesh but the Spirit quickening,
it is the real life of Jesus. That word “quickening” means “to
impart life.” The Word says, the Spirit imparteth life, life to faith,
life to love; He is the Author of life. If we are willing to come that way, by
the death side, I know He will bring us out.
Not
Idleness
I want to say another word,
because it is so very hard to announce a truth without misunderstanding. That
awfully helpless state, folding our hands and doing nothing, is not idleness; when we are absolutely looking with our whole
being in expectancy to the Spirit to raise us up and quicken us, it is the largest faith we ever had, it is the biggest activity
we ever had, and it is the effective activity, because it is the link that links us to life.
It is not a disappointed attitude, or a stoical or hopeless attitude; it is faith itself, and somehow out of that very
helplessness, we have no one in heaven or on earth to look to but the Spirit. We
turn instinctively to Him and tell Him in our deadest state, “I know You will quicken me, and You will raise up, and
I will wait till You do it.” Are we able to drink this cup?
O, friends, that is the way
to real and effectual power, to effectual life; the way to something that will last, which is eternal and like God Himself,
and nothing can rob us of it. That is when there is a death of all the activities
and expectation of the flesh – when we can say not with our mind, but in our heart of hearts, the flesh profiteth nothing,
and we wait then for the quickening power of the only One who can quicken.
There is a work being done
in our very inmost being by His operation while we thus trust Him. That is how
we will come to be full-grown men and women; that is being led by the Spirit and changed by the Spirit. There are times when the stress of life will be so heavy and the pressure of the enemy will be such we
just seem fainting under life itself, and we long to get out of it. The Holy
Spirit is a Comforter. We think of Him too often as One who reproves and convicts,
but He is a Comforter. Do you know Him as the Comforter? Often a little child gets alarmed or hurt, and the mother takes it up in her arms and comforts it. I believe there are times when our souls are fainting within us; when Satan seems
to be wringing our life out of us; then He will take us up, the Spirit of God, and comfort us.
I never had such a sense of
the glorious possibility opening as now; I have a feeling as if there was a great open door and we can go through it. We always have such a feeling of limitation – it seems as if there were no feelings
of limitation any more. Do not expect it is all going to be done in a minute,
and do not expect we will see everything flourishing at once. The full corn does
not come out of the ground the first thing, the shoot is very small. Let us be
willing to have the Lord work just as He pleases – we will have to do it. We
have to trust the wisdom of the Spirit, His fidelity, His faithfulness that He is working and doing the right thing at the
right time, and it is nothing to us what He is doing providing we are trusting Him and in His hands. If He lets us go under a cloud, let us go, but say, “Lord, You will bring me out;” there can
not be a day so dark or a place so hard, but if we have faith and obey Him, He will bring us out; we never can be discouraged
or hopeless again; we are in His hands, and He is going to work it out, and we shall know the life more abundant, even a life
in the Holy Ghost.
