DON'T MAKE THE MISTAKE OF MANY TODAY

DON’T MAKE THE MISTAKE OF MANY TODAY

John 15:26 “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me.”

The purposes of the coming of the Spirit as to the disciples we have already seen incidentally. Let us now state them definitely. He came first to disannul orphan hood, to take away the sense of loneliness, to make desolateness impossible; and all this entirely and only by creating the con­sciousness of Christ. A great many people are making the utmost mistake of expecting a consciousness of the Spirit; yet that which the Spirit creates is not a consciousness of Himself, but a consciousness of Christ. Upon this the Lord was most explicit from beginning to end; the Spirit shall not speak of Himself, or concerning Himself; so that the test of the measure of our fellowship with the Spirit is not our knowledge of the Spirit, but our knowledge of Jesus Christ Whom the Spirit reveals. He came secondly to recall to the disciples the words of past commandments; thirdly to cooperate with them in their witness to Christ, and finally to guide them into all the truth.

The purpose of the coming of the Spirit as to the world was that of conviction, that is, interpretation, discerning judgment, illumination on the great cardinal matters of religious experience. Wherever there is a true religious experience in the history of a man, these are the cardinal matters  sin, righteousness, judgment; sin as a fact, however it may be explained; righteousness as a great ideal, however unattainable it may be; judgment as a terrific necessity, however much it may be denied. The ministry of the Spirit in the world is to put Christ at the center of all these cardinal matters of which the world becomes conscious when it comes to religious awakening of any kind. Sin in the presence of the presented Christ becomes refusal to believe in Him: righteousness is demonstrated as possible to men because of the triumph of the Christ, and judgment is revealed as already accomplished by the Christ in His conflict with evil. The Spirit was to come to make these things real in the consciousness of the world.