By Rev. W. J. Erdman, D.D., Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
It is evident from many tracts and treatises on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit that due importance has not been given to the peculiar characteristic of the Pentecost gift in its relation to the sonship of believers.
Before considering this theme a few brief statements may be made concerning the personality and deity of the Holy Spirit and His relation to the people of God in the dispensations and times preceding the Day of Pentecost.
- The Holy Spirit, the Comforter, another Person, but not a different Being.
In general it may be said, He is not an “influence” or a sum and series of “influences,” but a personal Being with names and affections, words and acts, interchanged with those of God.
He is God as Creator. (Gen. 1:2; Psa. 104:30; Job 26: 13; Luke 1: 35.) He is one with God as Jehovah (Lord) in providential leading and care, and susceptible of grief on account of the unholiness of His chosen people. We cannot grieve an “influence,” but only a person, and a person, too, who loves us. (Psa. 78:40; Eph. 4:30.) He is one with God as Adonai (Lord), whose glory Isaiah beheld and John rehearses, who commissioned the prophet and sent forth the apostle. (Isa. 6: 1-10; John 12:37-41; Acts 13: 2; 20: 15-18.) In these Scriptures one and the same act is that of Jehovah and of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit.
Besides the clear evidence of personality and equality in the baptismal words and in the benediction (Matt. 28: 19; 2 Cor. 13: 14), the promise of Jesus affirms the presence and the abiding of the Spirit to be one with His own and with the Father’s in this Word. “If a man love Me he will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him” (John 16:23). Above all, the name “another Comforter” (Paraclete) suggests a Person who would do for the disciples what Jesus the other Comforter (Luke 2:25) had been doing for them. He speaks, testifies, teaches, reminds, reproves, convicts, warns, commands, loves, consoles, beseeches, prays, intercedes, (often the word is “paracletes”); in brief, all these and other acts and dealings are not those of an impersonal medium or influence, but of a person, and One who in the nature of the case cannot be less than God in wisdom, love and power, and who is one with the Father and the Son; another Person indeed, but not a different Being.
- The spiritual, Divine life in the people of God is the same in kind in every age and dispensation, but the relation to God in which the life was developed of old was different from that which now exists between believers as sons and God as Father, and in accordance with that relationship the Holy Spirit acted.
He was of old the Author and Nourisher of all spiritual life and power in righteous men and women of past ages, in patriarch and friend of God, in Israelites as minors and servants, in pious kings and adoring psalmists, in consecrated priests and faithful prophets; and whatever truth had been revealed, He employed to develop the Divine life He had imparted. From the beginning, He used promise and precept, law and type, Psalm and ritual to instruct, quicken, convince, teach, lead, warn, comfort and to do all for the growth and establishment of the people of God.
The Psalms run through the gamut of the spiritual experience possible for those, who while waiting for the consolation of Israel and the future out-pouring of the Holy Spirit, were “apart from us” not to be “made perfect” as sons and as “worshipers.” More than one prayed, “Teach me to do Thy will, for Thou art my God; let Thy good Spirit lead me into the land of uprightness” (Psa. 143: 10). But there was then still lacking among men the consummate Reality and perfect Illustration of a Son of God.
When at last, all righteousness and holy virtues appeared in a Life of filial love and obedience, even in Christ “the first-born of many brethren,” then the Mould and Image of the spiritual life of the saints of the old covenant, who were waiting for sonship, was seen perfect and complete.
It was pre-eminently the life of a Son of God and not only of a righteous man; of a Son ever rejoicing before the Father, His whole being filled with filial love and obedience, peace and joy. In ways Godward and manward, in self-denial and in full surrender to His Father’s will, in hatred of sin and in grace to sinners, in purity of heart and forgiveness of injuries, in gentleness and all condescension, in restful yet ceaseless service, in unity of purpose and faultless obedience - in a word, in all excellencies and graces, in all virtues and beauties of the Spirit, in light and in love, the Lord Jesus set forth, the mould and substance of the life spiritual, divine, eternal.
- Redemption must precede both the sonship and the gift of the Spirit.