| Office Work of
the Holy Spirit By Heny Albert Erdmann |
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Chapter 2 THE HOLY SPIRIT AS COMFORTER John 14:15-17
John 14:26
John 16:7-14
The word Comforter, in the above text, is not considered the best rendering. The Greek word is Parakletos, and literally means, "God at hand, One by our side, One whom we may call upon in any emergency." The Latin word advocatus has practically the same meaning: "One summoned or called to another; one ever within call." In the Scripture passages quoted, the Holy Ghost is represented to us as the present and all-sufficient God. Of course there is comfort, infinite comfort, in the knowledge of this fact. What a blessed reality it is that the omnipotent Comforter has been sent down from heaven to wait by our side wherever we go. But the world cannot receive Him. Consequently we must become separated from the world and all worldliness, before we can receive the divine Comforter. We must become like the disciples -- separated from the world. Jesus prayed for them, "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." But the primary idea of our receiving the Holy Spirit is not so much that we receive spiritual enjoyment as that we obtain divine sufficiency for every occasion and emergency that arises. This is just what the Holy Ghost is: God at hand, under all circumstances, and equal to all demands. What comfort this knowledge brings to our oppressed and struggling lives! A God, able to make all grace abound toward us! The promise which Jesus made to His disciples, that He would send the Comforter, had great significance in Christ's day; and it has had through the centuries since. Over and over in His last discourse to His disciples, Jesus told them about the Holy Ghost. Christ had been a Comforter and Guide to the apostles, but now as He was about to go away, He promised to send them "another Comforter," who would abide with them forever. The MODE of His presence: "He shall be in you." The presence of God throughout the Old Testament, and even through the ministry of Christ, was a presence with them. Here we see plainly specified the difference between the regenerated and the sanctified. The Holy Ghost abides with the regenerated as an Illuminator, Teacher, Guide, and Protector; but with the sanctified He is actually dwelling in them, having taken up His abode in their heart to dwell there as a blessed Heavenly Guest, filling the soul with sunshine, the life with victory, and the mind with glorious anticipation of heavenly triumph the moment their work on earth is done. The Holy Ghost is to become corporately united and identified with the life of the believer so that He may bring the believer into direct personal union, acting not upon him, but in him, from the inmost depth of his being. Here is the great difference between the two classes of Christians we find today. One class does right from a sense of duty and compulsion; the other, from an inner spontaneity. This truth is difficult to explain. It is impossible to make spiritual mysteries plain to any who have not experienced them. The apostle Paul declares: "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (I Cor. 2:14). It is even difficult to explain many natural phenomena. How the personality and influence of a friend become a as he acts, is difficult to explain. This is but a distant approximation of the blessed mystery of the Holy Spirit's entering, as a Person, into the life and very being of a consecrated disciple. He then controls every choice and affection, every thought and action. The DURATION of His abiding: "He shall . . . abide with you for ever." He does not come as an ordinary guest, to sojourn for a season and then go on his way. Even such a limited visit of the Holy Spirit would be worth everything to a God-loving soul. For one to have the privilege of His fellowship only at times, instructing him and helping him to settle the problems of life, would be wonderful. But the Christian's privilege is one infinitely greater than that. The Comforter comes into a heart with the intention of staying there, and He will remain unless He is grieved or insulted and thereby forced to take His unwilling departure. When He comes, He seals the heart unto the Day of Redemption; and no one -- no earthly power -- can break that seal except the individual himself. What is the Holy Spirit's relation to Jesus Christ? The Savior spoke of the Holy Spirit: "Whom the Father will send in my name," that is "to represent Me." The Holy Spirit was to be "another Comforter." He was to correspond, in His relation to the disciples, to Jesus Christ; indeed, He was to be to them more than Christ had been. "It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you." Yes, the Holy Spirit became more to the disciples, and has become more to later Christians, than Christ was to His followers. The disciples had leaned upon Jesus, were utterly dependent upon Him for everything, and yet He said, "It is expedient for you that I go away." Christ's departure from earth and ascension to heaven marked a new and grand epoch in the development of the redemptive scheme, proving His Messiahship; and they became the grand fulcrum on which the lever of justifying and sanctifying faith has rested through all subsequent ages. QUESTION: Is the Comforter more to you, dear reader, than Jesus was to His Galilean followers? Is He the Counselor and Companion of your every step? The source of all your strength and joy in life? All this He desires to be to every follower of the Son of God. All this He will be to the individual who desires that He be, and who will give Him admittance into, and control of, his life. He will give counsel in every time of perplexity, when one hesitates because he does not know the right step to take. He will be a Companion to bring cheer and gladness when other companions have failed or have left one utterly alone. He will lead and guide when the clouds hang low and the way seems dark and obscured -- when without His leadings one would lose the way. He will be the Source of abundant strength to bear the burdens that are incident to the Christian life. He will bring joy to the soul when it seems there is nothing to be joyful about. GLORY! Christ could be present only in one place, but the Comforter can be everywhere at the same time. When Christ spoke to His followers, He spoke to them from outside; the Comforter speaks from within. Therefore the joy and comfort the Holy Spirit gives are not in any way dependent on outward circumstances. He dwells within, and therefore one's joy is within the individual. Was the Holy Ghost, then, to supersede and substitute for Jesus Christ? NOT AT ALL. He was to make Christ more real to His followers than He had ever been, or ever could have been without His coming to dwell within their hearts. A great mistake is often mode in people's zeal for the honor of the Holy Ghost. They represent Christ as being far away at the right hand of God -- And, mistakenly, they think that they honor the Holy Ghost when they thus exclude the personal presence of the Master. But that idea is not in harmony with what Jesus taught. Listen: "He [the Comforter] shall testify of me," and "He shall not speak of himself." Again He said, "I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you. At that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me and I in you." These statements from the lips of the Savior reveal that Jesus Christ was to be with His people through the ministry of the Spirit, the Comforter. The great business of the Holy Ghost is to make Jesus real. Just as the telescope reveals, not itself, but the distant stars, so Christ is revealed by the blessed Spirit, as the medium of our spiritual vision. The Holy Ghost reveals the truth. "He will guide you into all truth." The Holy Ghost brings to us great comfort in making more real the person of Christ. But He also brings comfort in revealing the truth which Christ taught. In speaking to His disciples and teaching them, Jesus Christ said, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself." Before the disciples were sanctified they were too weak and spiritually immature to comprehend the full meaning of spiritual language. But after the Holy Ghost came into their hearts, they had a new illumination; the Holy Ghost could reveal to them all things they needed to know of Christ. In all the subsequent centuries, the Holy Spirit has been illuminating the minds of men by revealing and expounding to them the deep things of God. And this divine instruction brings great comfort to the child of God. The Holy Ghost makes the truth intelligible as well as intensely interesting and real to the one who earnestly seeks to know it. He makes the Scriptures so clear and so comforting to him that he does not read the Bible from a sense of duty. It speaks to him as the living message from his Master, a love letter from his Bridegroom's heart. How gentle and patient the Holy Spirit is in speaking to us! And He has promised He will guide us into all truth. Yet it is a sad fact that He must often keep back much because we are not ready to receive it. "He will shew you things to come." Oh, how this promise was to be fulfilled in the later teachings of the Epistles and the Apocalypse, concerning the blessed hope of our Lord's return! The same Spirit who gave the light of prophecy can also give the light of understanding. He alone can make the things of Christ clear to us. He alone can center our hearts in the blessed hope of Christ's coming. The world is overrun with many false religions because men are constantly trying to understand and explain the Scriptures without the illumination of the Holy Spirit. It is not enough to know that Christ is coming again, and even to desire His coming. The soul's interests must become centered in His return, so that the source of attraction is removed from the earth to the heavens. It is one thing to be lifting up the world from the earth side; it is another thing to be drawing up the world from the heaven side. It is one thing to be a man on the earth, living for the glory to come; it is another thing to be a man in the glory, living for the world. We must be taken, as it were, out of this world, and then be sent back into it, to be a blessing to it. One great reason why Jesus lived as He did was because He belonged to heaven. The Father sent Him into the world, to do His work; and we, as men who dwell in heaven, must be sent into the world by the Spirit, to work for Christ. Oh, may the Holy Spirit so show us things to come, that we shall ever live and labor to save the lost!
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