Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3062
“He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive ofMine, and shall show it unto you.” John 16:14.
[Other Sermons by Mr. Spurgeon upon this passage are as follows—#465, Volume 8—THE HOLY SPIRIT GLORIFYING CHRIST; #2213, Volume 37—“HONEY IN THE MOUTH”; #2382, Volume 40—THE HOLY SPIRIT’S CHIEF OFFICE. An Exposition ofJohn 16:1-22, was published with #3052, Volume 53—CHRIST’S LONELINESS AND OURS.]
MANY persons are anxiously asking the question, “Are we partakers of the Holy Spirit?” With enlarged anxiety, they reason thus, “We have felt certain inward emotions. There has been in us, we trust, a change of life. Eager are our desires for God and His Grace. Do these come of the Spirit of God? When we find a suggestion which appears to be holy in our soul, does it come from Him? When we are at any time filled with earnestness and pray, or our soul has peculiar delight in considering Divine things, may we say with truth that we are under the operation of the Holy Spirit?” I do not intend to go thoroughly into the resolution of these scruples—that would be too wide a subject for a short evening’s discourse—but there is one point which may often relieve your perplexities. It appears from the text that it is the work and office and custom of the Holy Spirit to glorify Christ. If, therefore, with much strength and fervor in your soul, you glorify Him, you may trust that it comes from the Spirit of God. But if there is anything in you which is derogatory to the Character or Person or Glory of the Lord Jesus, it may either come from Satan or from your own corrupt mind. But from the Spirit of God it never came and it would be blasphemy to impute it to Him. Whatever you feel which lifts Christ on high in your soul comes of the Spirit—but whatever there may be which exalts self or anything else in the place of Christ—no matter from where it comes—the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with it!
Let us then just handle this point. The Holy Spirit glorifies Christ in His people. How does He do it and how far may I judge that He is at work in me?
One way in which the Holy Spirit glorifies Christ is this—He gives us more and more debasing views of ourselves. There are two Gods, as it were. One the true, the other the false. Self first mounts the throne in our heart and the higher the throne of self is exalted, the lower must Christ go. Much of self, little of the Savior. Exalted views of self, self-power, or self-righteousness, and then there are sure to be low views of Christ. But when self goes down, then Christ at once rises. It may be said of self, as John the Baptist once said of Christ and himself, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” If you have had shallow views of your own natural depravity, then you have had very shallow thoughts of Christ. If you think sin to be delightful, if Gethsemane, Golgotha and Calvary seem to you to be names without weight or meaning. If you have never groaned under sin, I do not wonder that you think little of Christ’s groans, griefs and bloody sweat. But when you come to know yourself as verily lost and undone, then you will prize your Deliverer! When the dread word, “lost,” has seemed to fall like a death knell upon your ears, then the tidings that the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost will be as sweet to you as the Christmas carol of the angels, when they sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” If you feel the disease, you will value the Physician. If you know your own emptiness, you will prize Christ’s fullness. But if you reject the teaching of the Holy Spirit which shows you your utter helplessness and worthlessness, in so doing you have rejected Christ and put far from you that Savior who alone came to save sinners! It is, then, a most precious thing when we begin to sink lower and lower in our own estimation. At the commencement of spiritual life we believe that we are nothing. As we advance, we find that we are less
than nothing. May the Holy Spirit so work in you! Some of you are, perhaps, depending and thinking that you are not children of God, or else you would not be so cast down as you are. I pray you to understand this matter aright. Instead of having any reason for despondency, you will find a subject for joy, for I am sure that the Spirit is honoring Christ when He is lowering you in your own estimation.
Still more to the point, when the Holy Spirit really works in the heart of man, He honors Christ in every respect. He honors the Person of Christ. Those who think but little of His Deity are not taught of the Spirit of God. No man is taught by the Holy Spirit to regard the only-begotten Son of the Father as a secondary God, for the Holy Spirit teaches us upon this wise, “When He brings in the First-Begotten into the world, He says, “And let all the angels of God worship Him.” “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Spirit always teaches concerning Christ that He is God over all, blessed forever. Some have had lowering views of His Humanity. Every now and then we hear dark hints about the Human Nature of our Lord Jesus Christ, His peccability and so on. But this never comes from the Spirit of God. Both the Deity and the Humanity of Christ receive honor in the Christian’s soul when the Spirit comes there with the Light of God—