The Holy Spirit

by T. Austin-Sparks

Edited and supplied by the Golden Candlestick Trust.

Contents

Chapter 1 - The Holy Spirit's Purpose

Chapter 2 - The Holy Spirit's Object in Coming

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ISBN: 978-1-927326-14-5

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Chapter 1 - The Holy Spirit's Purpose

"That which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse" (Rom. 1:19-20).

"And they, when they heard it, lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, O Lord, thou that didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that in them is" (Acts 4:24).

"Worthy are thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the glory and the honour and the power: for thou didst create all things, and because of thy will they were, and were created" (Rev. 4:11).

I want to stand right back from the Bible for a minute, and give you a word of advice with regard to studying it. You can take any particular subject that is in the Bible and gather up all that is said about it, and then ask yourself one question: "Why is that?" For example, begin with the coming into the world of the Lord Jesus. Gather up all that is said in the Bible about it and then ask "Why the incarnation?" Or take the cross and gather up from the Old and the New Testaments all that is said about it, and then ask yourself "Why the cross?" Similarly gather up all that you can find about the church and ask "Why the church?" And we should try to give the answer in one single statement. The Lord Jesus came into the world just for this one single purpose. What was it? He went to the cross just for one reason. What was it? The church was brought into being just for one thing. What was that? There may be many aspects of each of these, but they are only aspects of the one thing. It is most valuable to be able to put your finger on the one reason and to be able to say, "That is it". That is a suggestion for Bible study. What we are going to speak about now will be an example of this.

When we have said all the things that can be said about Him, they are only different aspects of one thing. So we come to the question: "Why the Spirit?"

You may not have recognised it, but that one thing was in the passages which we have quoted.

You will remember that the Holy Spirit initiated all the new movements of God. At the beginning of the Bible He was the divine agent in the creation; in Exodus it was the Spirit, as typified in the pillar of cloud and fire, who led the children out of Egypt to become a new nation; then in the wilderness the pattern of the tabernacle was given to Moses and by the Spirit Bezaleel and Aholiab were equipped to make all manner of things for it. Later David said that by the Spirit, God had made known to him the pattern of the temple and lastly, the revelation of the House given to Ezekiel was all by the Spirit.

Turning to the New Testament we find that the Lord Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit and was anointed for His ministry by the Spirit, He was raised from the dead through the power of the Spirit and the church was born on the day of Pentecost by the Holy Spirit. These look like many things which the Holy Spirit did, but really He only did one thing in all of them. What is the one all-inclusive work of the Holy Spirit? And it is a matter of the greatest importance for us here to be able to answer that question.

Why did the Holy Spirit bring the creation into existence? Why did He bring Israel out of Egypt? Why did He enable for the building of the tabernacle in the wilderness? Why did He reveal the pattern of the temple to David? Why did He show the House to Ezekiel? And then in the New Testament, why did He bring the Lord Jesus into the world? Why did He anoint Him? Why did He raise Him from the dead? And why did He bring the church into being? There is just one answer to all those questions.

Now we must get right back behind all that; we have to get back behind the creation to look into the heart of God and when we do so we find one great thing. God wanted to express Himself.

Before that God was somewhere away outside this world and was unknown here. He had never shown Himself. Then God wanted to put Himself into expression. He wanted there to be a manifestation of Himself in a great creation. It was His desire to put Himself into a manifest creation so that whenever you look at anything that God made you would see Him. Look again at Romans 1:20: "the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made". And then in Revelation 4:11: "Worthy art thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the glory and the honour and the power: for thou didst create all things, and because of thy will they were, and were created". Then turn to the passage in between - Acts 4:24: "O Lord, thou that didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that in them is." I used to wonder why they prayed like that; and if you look into the Bible you will find that those words are very often used as an appeal to God: "O Lord, that didst create the heaven and the earth." I used to think that that was just an appeal to His power, but I have come to see that it means something very much more than that.

Why did He create the heaven and the earth? It was in order that it might be an expression of Himself and if you can put your hand on the purpose of creation you are in line with the purpose of God. If you can be one with the purpose of God, you can be one with the power of God.

Let us go back to the beginning of the Bible again. When God had created the heavens and the earth, then He created man. Why did He create man? Perhaps you have often wondered why you were created. You may have wondered what is the explanation of your having a being. Well, why did God create Adam? The answer is found in what God said then, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Gen. 1:26). If you look at an image or a likeness you expect to see the person of whom it is an image. When you look at a photo of a friend, usually you are able to say: "Isn't it just like him or her?" So God made man in order that in man He might manifest Himself. So that when you see man as God intended Him to be, you are able to see what God is like. Of course Adam spoilt the image and there never has been a man (except One) who showed us what God is like.

When the Lord Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit into the world, it was to show us what God is like. That was getting right back to what God intended at the beginning when He made man. That is why the Holy Spirit brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, that all the nations round about, in looking at Israel, might see what God is like. But Israel failed God, just as Adam had done. That is why the Holy Spirit made the tabernacle in the wilderness. It was intended to be in all its parts an expression or manifestation of God. I expect some of you have studied the type of the tabernacle. Every little part of that tabernacle is a representation of something about God. God is in the innermost part of it. He dwells in the most holy place. Everything, from the centre right out to the outer court, is an expression of something about God. So, you see, the Holy Spirit made the tabernacle in accordance with God's great desire to express Himself. And when we look at the tabernacle, if the Holy Spirit opens our eyes, we see God everywhere.

The same is true of all the other works of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. It was always to bring God into expression. Of course, that was all type and symbol, but when we come to the New Testament, we come to the reality. Jesus is not a type - He is the real thing. And when we look at Jesus, we truly see God. Not one of us would know really what God is like if we had not met Jesus. You know how true that is in your own experience. When you came to the Lord Jesus, what was the first thing that you experienced? Was it not this, "Now God is no longer far away so that I don't understand or know Him. He is right here in my life and He is very real".

And then again, before we came to Christ, we were very afraid of God. We thought that He was the great Judge of our sins, a very terrible Being. But when we came to the Lord Jesus, we discovered that God was not like that. Now we agree with John when he says that God is love (1 John 4:8). How many of you can say that? How did you know that? Only by coming to the Lord Jesus. He has manifested the Father. He is the answer to God's one eternal desire to manifest Himself.

Then we come to the next thing in the New Testament. On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit brings in the church. Why does He do this? It is for the very same reason that He has done all the other things - that the church might be a manifestation of God in this world. This explains all the work of the Holy Spirit.

Now, do you see where that brings us to? If we are born-again children of God, then we are members of the Body of Christ which is the church and as members of the Body we receive the Holy Spirit. And it is that we should be a manifestation of the Lord so that the work of the Holy Spirit is to make every one of us an expression of the Lord.

Why are we Christians? Are we Christians just to be saved from our sins, just to be delivered from judgement, just to receive forgiveness and eternal life? And then is it just to go to heaven when we die? Is that why we are Christians? Well, that is not God's thought about it. All that may be true and included. God is saying to us, "I have saved you, forgiven your sins, given you eternal life, for one purpose only - that you should be an expression of Me". All the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is to produce the likeness of the Lord. If we have been forgiven, given eternal life and if we do a great deal of work for the Lord and yet the Lord is not manifested in us, we shall have missed the purpose of our creation. That is why the Lord allows us to suffer, that the Holy Spirit may make us like Christ through our sufferings. And is it not wonderful how sufferings make Christians like Christ? They do not make people of the world like Christ, but the Holy Spirit uses our sufferings to make us like Christ.

Now you have got to the heart of Romans 8.28: "God works good in all things to them that are called according to His purpose". What is His purpose? That we should be a manifestation of Himself. So the Holy Spirit works in everything to bring that about. Now may I ask you another question? What would you think would be the greatest good that could come to you? You see, Romans 8:28 says that God works good in all things. What do you call the greatest good that you can think of? Now, if I was asked that what would I say? Well, I could give you an answer quickly right from my heart. The greatest good that could ever come to me would be likeness to my Lord. I hate myself. I long to be like Him. What do you say to that? I am sure that is your answer too. The greatest good that can come to any one of us is that we should be like our Lord. That is the good that God is working in all things to them that love Him. What is the good of my suffering, of all my difficulties? It is this. The Holy Spirit is using them to make us like Christ.

I have told you about the two people whom I saw die. The woman of whom I spoke, was my own mother. Now, she had terrible sufferings all her life, but do you know, her favourite hymns were all about the love of God. When I was a small boy and could think about things and saw her suffering, my wicked little heart used to wonder how she could possibly sing of the love of God. I thought that if I were like her, I would never believe that God is love. But you see, the Holy Spirit was using those sufferings to make her like her Lord. She would say to me: "My boy, we have to learn patience. And what a joyful thing the love of God is! Prove how faithful He is and how He uses all these sufferings to teach us these lessons." It is not surprising that when she suffered it was all glory.

So that is why we belong to the Lord; it is the only reason why He has brought us to Himself. Then when others look at us, they should be seeing more and more of the Lord. Do take that to your hearts. It is true of us as individuals. It is also why the Holy Spirit brought the church into being. It was not that we should have meetings and Bible studies and preaching and nice fellowship together. These things may have been included. The purpose of the Spirit was that in all places where the Lord's people were, He might be seen. When people come into touch with any company of the Lord's children, it should not be that they merely say that they like the singing or that they are interested in the preaching. No, it should be that they feel that when they meet that people, they see what the Lord is like.

So if you belong to any little company in any place on this earth, the Lord's purpose is that together you should express Him, that people should know that they can find God in your midst, and that they might know what God is like through being with you. They should be able to say that by being with you, they know a little of what God is like.

Satan will do everything he can to spoil the likeness of the Lord, and will try always and everywhere to spoil the expression of God. We should look at everything in the light of that question: does this express the Lord? If two Christians fall out of fellowship, the only way to deal with it is to remind them that they are not expressing the likeness of the Lord. Therefore they are serving the enemy's purpose of spoiling the expression of what God is like. If this is true of us individually and of little local companies, then God intends it to be true of the whole of the church. What a sad thing it is that it is not generally true, but God is going to have it like that at the end.

The last picture of the church in the book of Revelation is as the new Jerusalem. John says: "(He) showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God" (Rev. 21:10-11). The last picture of the church is a church that is full of glory.

So Paul closes one of his great prayers with these well-known words: "Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever" (Eph. 3:20-21). Glory in the church for ever and ever. God has at last got what He intended to have, a wonderful expression of Himself right at the very centre of the universe.

That is the calling with which we are called. Will you make it a personal matter? If we do this, then of course the local churches will be all right, and so will the universal church. So then, the one purpose of the Holy Spirit and the one business of every Christian is that the Lord may be seen in us. Will you make that your concern? Pray earnestly every day, "Oh Lord, make me like Christ. Not I, but Christ, be honoured, loved, exalted, seen, heard and known".

Chapter 2 - The Holy Spirit's Object in Coming

Reading: Matt. 3:16; Gal. 3:13-14.

In our previous meditation, we noted in the first place how the Scriptures in every connection make it clear that whenever God has moved to realize any phase of His comprehensive purpose, He has done so by the agency of His Spirit. Then we went on to point out that the pattern of this great divine purpose to which the Holy Spirit is committed is God's own Son, our Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit comprehends Christ, and the purpose of His coming is to reveal Christ and to constitute things according to Christ.

Now we go on a little further, for thus we are brought immediately to the Holy Spirit's object in coming and then the Holy Spirit's method of attaining His object. We see that He alone knows Christ. "What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him?" (1 Cor. 2:11). You can only understand a man by having a man's nature. "Even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God." To know the things of God you must have God's nature and that is a spiritual nature. He alone knows, but He has come to make known what He knows as the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him. But He is an inward revealing and teaching Spirit; that is, His revealing of Christ has got to be of an inward nature, it has got to be a heart thing. It is not just an objective presentation of truth or truths. It is not just to see in an objective way things as to Christ, but rather to constitute the nature of the child of God according to Christ, that what is true as to the Holy Spirit is made true as to the child of God.

I have just cited that passage - "What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God." Here, you see, like is necessary and essential, to knowledge. That is the law that governs here. Like is necessary. A dog can understand a dog, a man can understand a man. A man does not understand a dog and a dog does not understand a man. They require their own constitution and their own nature. People can go a long way in guessing and arriving at conclusions, but there is still a long way to go to understand how the lower sentient creation communicates its knowledge mutually, exactly how these creatures make known to one another what they are thinking, feeling, wanting and intending, but it happens, there is no doubt about it. They do know from one another in their own way what is intended, what is wanted and what is felt, because they have a nature which is capable of intercommunication in its own realm.

You and I have our basis of relatedness, communication, knowledge and understanding because we share human nature. But it is not so in the higher realm. Naturally, we do not know the mind of God, the thoughts of God, the intents of God, the desires of God. Naturally the ways of God are far removed from our ways. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts" (Isa. 55:9). There is a difference, and the difference is the difference of constitution. We are flesh and He is Spirit. We are soulical in our nature and He is spiritual in His, and these are two orders. They cannot commune in full, understanding fellowship. Only that which is spiritual can apprehend the spiritual; the spiritual is never apprehended by that which is not spiritual. "He that is spiritual judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no man" (1 Cor. 2:15); he is inscrutable. No one can understand the spiritual man but a spiritual man. No one can understand the Spirit of God save he in whom the Spirit of God is and who has been constituted by the Spirit of God a spiritual man. It is a different nature.

This is the way of divine knowledge, of knowing Christ. We may have all the information that it is possible to accumulate throughout the ages about Christ and not know Christ. We may be very fully informed on all the truths as to Christ doctrinally - His person, His work, and all that has to do with Him - and still we may be in the dark as to Christ Himself. This is not a matter of an informed mind. This is a matter of a constituted nature and in the last analysis we only know Christ in the measure in which we have been constituted according to Christ, made after Christ, like Christ, partaking of His very nature. That is the only true knowledge of Christ, and that is what the Holy Spirit has come to do; not just to present truths, but to do some great thing which makes over again according to Christ so that the knowledge and understanding of Christ is in our very being. We feel it. It is a power, a force, an energy. We know. You say, "How do you know?" We may not be able to tell you how, may not be able to define it, explain it, but we know. The thing is settled in our very being and it is not a matter of being able to give up this, to give it up as something we have taken on, teaching that we may abandon which we once adopted and accepted. No, this knowledge of Christ is something which has become our being and it lives with us and dies with us in that sense that it is part of us. Oh, there are far too many people who feel themselves to be in a position of being able to take up this teaching and give up this teaching at will. They can take it or refuse it. That is not the knowledge of Christ. The knowledge of Christ is not something from which you can resign, which you can give up, abandon. You may grow, you may advance in many mental conceptions, but the true knowledge of Christ is a part of your being.

The Holy Spirit is constituting on the basis of what Christ is and when at last that corporate Body of Christ, the Church which is His Body, is perfected, it will be a perfect universal expression of what Christ Himself is. And that is its calling and its function, and that is the object of its eternal election - to be in this universe that comprehensive expression in nature, not in words, ideas or teaching, but in nature, in ways, what Christ is. That is the only satisfactory and adequate meaning of the very term - His Body.

And what is going to be true of the whole of that Body is to be true now progressively of every part. Thus the work of the Holy Spirit in each part of the Body, in you and in me, is to conform us to the image of God's Son, to constitute us after Christ. How different is this organic process, this spiritually biological basis, from a system of doctrine, a system of truth, a system of teaching, and all that outward form which has now come to mean Christianity! You can have it all and yet not meet the tremendous spiritual impact of Christ; all the orthodoxy that it is possible to have, all the right form and order, perfect in its outward shape, method and observance, devout, and yet with no registration of the spiritual power of Christ. That is the terrible tragedy. The Holy Spirit has not come just to make models. He is not here just to set up churches, to have a perfect replica of something. He is here to bring Christ in living, mighty, spiritual reality as a force at the centre of this universe; to register. We can have the doctrine in perfection and the church order and polity complete, absolute. We may have the New Testament model of a church with all the right forms and orders, and I am not saying that these are not necessary, but we can have them all and yet there be lacking this tremendous influence and power as of a living dynamic Person. While the order may be necessary to the Holy Spirit, the order can be there without the Holy Spirit. Well, this is the Spirit's vocation in this dispensation, to bring Christ in all that He is according to divine constitution, and thought; to bring Christ, as it were, into increasing presence in God's universe. I know that in Himself He is full and complete, in Himself He is present in God's universe in a finality to which nothing can be added, but what He is in Himself is the Spirit's ground of operation to expand, to extend, to impart into a Body in the first place, the Church which is His Body.

So that the first thing that the Holy Spirit is here to do in this dispensation in relation to the comprehensiveness of Christ, is to make inward the outward work of Christ and what Christ did for us on our behalf, all that He accomplished in His incarnation, by life, by death, by resurrection, ascension and exaltation. All that is the ground of the Spirit's operation to make it inward in believers and in the Body, to put Christ in the sum of His work at the centre of things, and then work to make that centre the nature of the circumference. The objective is to be made subjective by the Holy Spirit. He has been manifested. He was manifested to "destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8). The Son of God was manifested; He has been brought into this world literally, objectively, and has accomplished a perfect work.

But now an apostle will speak about "it pleased God... to reveal His Son in me" (Gal. 1:16). He has been revealed objectively, but this has got to be made subjective in me. The historic Christ will not do to accomplish the end of God. If God were only working sovereignly and mechanically, it would be enough, but seeing God is working constitutionally, it is not enough. The thing has got to be put into the very nature of things, and the revealed Son of God has got to be revealed in us. The new creation has got to follow in principle the law of the old creation. "It is God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6). It is inward revelation of the knowledge of the glory of God, inward revelation in our hearts. The new creation is constituted by an inward revelation of the light of God in the heart. When the light of God has shined into the heart, what a new world, a new order, at once springs into being; what a change! Until that light has shined into the heart, it is no use arguing, reasoning, discussing, trying to thrash things out. It is no use sitting down even with a well-instructed ruler of Israel - Nicodemus - to go into the matters of the Kingdom of God. The light has got to shine in inside and then all the argument becomes unnecessary. At once the subject says, "I see! I have struggled, strained, groaned, longed, agonized, for years and years, but I have not been seeing, I have been in the dark, but now I see!" God has shined; God Who brought the old creation into being by shining in the dark has shined into the darkness of this heart and I see the light of God, the light of the glory of God, and the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ! For the new creation is in Christ Jesus. Thus the apostle will say - "This mystery, this secret, this hidden secret of God which is now out, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). That is the Spirit's work, to make inward all that Christ is and Christ has done.

That is very simple and elementary, but it is the basis of everything. There is no hope until that is done, and that is not only the initial breaking in. It is the basis of all spiritual progress, growth and increase, that the Spirit is continually increasing in the believer this illumined knowledge of Christ in this inward way.

Here you have the apostle Paul, a man of a vast spiritual apprehension, a great spiritual knowledge, gigantic in comparison with the rest of men is his apprehension of Christ. What he has been shown! He has seen all that tremendous significance of the glorified Christ revealed to him on the Damascus road. He has, at a later date, been caught up into heaven and shown unspeakable things which it is not lawful for a man to utter (2 Cor. 12:4). He has got all that teaching of the Holy Spirit apart from these specific advents of God in his life, these particular, peculiar epochs. He has all that and yet well on towards the end of such a life, so rich, so full, this man is stretched out, he is found to be reaching forward. He is like a runner in the race, he is bounding forward to grasp, to apprehend. He is, in a sense, a long way ahead of himself in his attitude. He is going because he is drawn on by something. And what is it that makes that man go on, what is it that is drawing him on, what is it that is making his life to be characterised by this one thing - "I press... I am a man who is on full stretch!" It is just that the Holy Spirit has shown him that Christ is far greater than ever yet he has seen or imagined, that he has this living sense of a knowledge of Christ which is after this mark - not just information - this order of knowledge which is transforming knowledge, constituting knowledge, which is going to result in his attainment unto the very glory of Christ itself. It is the intimation, the revelation, of the Spirit within him of the greatness of Christ; what there is to be known. "That I may know Him" (Phil. 3:10), "...the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord" (Phil. 3:8).

My point is that the very power of spiritual progress, advance, growth, development, is this work of the Spirit making us realize that we do not know anything yet in comparison with what God wants us to know and to know in this transforming, this transfiguring, way. I ask you, have you any sense of that? Do you feel that you are just paddling in the very shallows of a vast ocean, which ocean is Christ, and you know out there, there are depths and fulnesses which are going to mean everything to you if only you can get there. How different from a satisfied Christian life, satisfied in any measure. I do not mean that we should be restless, discontented people. Let us be careful how we interpret this. There is a wonderful satisfaction about every little bit of fresh knowledge of Christ. Satisfaction deepens and there is no realm in which satisfaction is deeper than in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus. How wonderful it is, when we have been in the dark, perplexed, distressed, rowing hard against contrary currents and winds, and He appears in the darkness and we see Him in some new way that just answers to that particular need. What rest of heart there is. You are not surprised that it says in that story in the Gospel that then they were at the land. They had been rowing out in the deep all night and land seemed far away. As soon as he appeared, they were at the land (John 6:21). You feel you have arrived immediately you see Christ, as He answers to that particular need, how He applies there. It is heart rest and satisfaction.

But at the same time we know that there is very much land to be possessed and we can never be content in a wrong way with less than all that God wants, for after all, is it not a feature of the Holy Spirit's presence and activity in us that we are those who are stretched out, reaching forward and pressing on, going on, to full growth? That is a fruit of the Spirit in us. Anybody who settles down with their measure of spiritual life and knowledge of Christ has left the place of the energies of the Holy Spirit. Thus the Holy Spirit has come to make inward in our very hearts, in our very beings, all that Christ is and has done. That is the first thing in this particular dispensation.

Then, to constitute us as believers spiritually according to Christ; initially by new birth, for that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:6); that is a new constitution. Then progressively to conform us to the image of His Son; and then consummately, the body of this humiliation shall be made like unto the body of His glory (Phil. 3:21) which is the consummation of the Spirit's work in us.

With one further word, I close this meditation. This, as we have said, begins with the individuals. It is a personal and individual matter. The very meaning of our having received the Spirit as an earnest of our inheritance, the very reason why the Holy Spirit enters into believers, is to make this all true in them personally. Are you grasping this - all that this means that the Holy Spirit is in us? What a vast world you have right at the centre of your being if you have the Holy Spirit! What possibilities and potentialities there are if we have the Holy Spirit, Who knows everything about this matter, resident within. Oh, for our lives to be really more under the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit. We shall know what we ought to do and ought not to do without being belaboured, without it being laid down for us as a rule. We will know. Brother Nee's word always comes back - the 'Resident Boss' will make us know. The 'Resident Boss', said a newly-converted China-man, "would not let me." That is how he put it. It is like that; we know. It is so gloriously possible to trust people when the Holy Spirit really has His place inside. You go back after years and find they have gone on. Oh, for more of those men who are so truly born of the Spirit, so truly constituted by this birth of the Spirit, that they can go out into the world, go out into our Forces abroad, and not meet another Christian, not have any Christian fellowship, any meetings to attend, but have to encounter all the opposite, and yet be found to be going on with the Lord, growing. There are those like that. But why, how, when so many who have been brought up and nurtured in our meetings, in our churches, and have all the evangelical doctrine, when they get out they lose it? Why these others? Because they have been inwardly reconstituted; the Spirit is there, they know the Lord in an inward way. This is reality. Oh, have we grasped this? It is the basis of our growing knowledge, intelligence, understanding.

We are supposed to have the Holy Spirit resident within us and that is no small thing. That is God, infinite God, infinite in knowledge. "He that is perfect in knowledge is with thee" (Job 36:4). That can be said now in a New Testament sense in which it could not be said when it was said in the Old Testament. With thee - yes; but now, in thee. Perfect in knowledge, perfect in power. That is an inward reality for the born-again child of God. Lay hold of it, believe it, trust the Holy Spirit, have real living dealings with the Holy Spirit to bring you into all the will of God.

I have said this begins with us individually. It is a truth, a fact, concerning us individually as members of Christ. But the Holy Spirit is here also to reproduce Christ in this other, this greater organism, the Church which is His Body, to reproduce Christ in this corporate wide way of a whole collective Body who are sharing His one life.

How will Christ be reproduced? Not by the acceptance of creeds and doctrines and teachings and orders, but by the receiving of His organic life, His divine life, His life from above, His life of the ages. And that life is not an abstract thing. It is the Holy Spirit Who is the Spirit of life, and the value of that is that we are not just under the urge of an abstract force called 'life', 'spiritual life', 'divine life', or 'eternal life'. We are under the instruction of an intelligent Holy Spirit Whose means of making us know both right and wrong and all the things of God is life. You can come into a meeting and if you are spiritually alive, how do you know that the thing is true? Not because it answers to the set standard of your orthodox truth or tradition. You have a witness in the thing, the thing is alive in a sense that means quickening to you. It answers to you in an inward way, and very often you have to go away and say, 'The way in which it was put was beyond me, but that was not the end of it; it was something that met me inwardly. I realised that there was life and power. There was meaning beyond my apprehension, but it was meaning and value, and it has meant something to me although I could never write it down.' It is like that, the Spirit of life teaching us in that way.

May the Lord make good in the case of every one of us and in all of us as a part of that great Body, the wonderful work of His Spirit.