SUMMARY OF THE BIBLICAL REVELATION.

The perspective of truth in the Bible is clear and significant. There are three dispensations of the Divine revelation to man, involving a progressive economy of grace.1 First, God is revealed as transcendent, and exercises His ministry either by prophecy, or by symbol, or by wisdom. Then, the Father becomes manifested in the Incarnate Son and God is revealed to man in Christ. Then, when the work of the Incarnate Son is accomplished, the revelation of God to man becomes real and actual in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit; the ' other Comforter,' or Advocate, Whose presence was only possible when the first Advocate, Jesus Christ, had ascended into heaven. We are therefore now living in what is called the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. Everything else was preparatory to this, and the purpose of the two prior dispensations was to prepare for the gift of the Holy Spirit whereby man could be brought into fellowship with God, the power of sin overcome, and human life in relation to God truly restored.

' The dispensation of the Spirit, properly so-called, did not dawn until the period of preparation was over and the day of out-pouring had come.... It is not that His work is more real in the new dispensation than in the old. It is not merely that it is more universal. It is that it is directed to a different end... for the perfecting of the fruitage and the gathering of the harvest. The Church, to use a figure of Isaiah's, was then like a pent-in stream; it is now like that pent-in stream with the barriers broken down and the Spirit of the Lord driving it. It was He who preserved it in being when it was pent in. It is He Who is now driving on its gathered floods till it shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. In one word, that was a day in which the Spirit restrained His power. Now the great day of the Spirit is come.'2

As we review the teaching of the Bible on this profound theme, it is essential to remind ourselves again that the true way of approach is by means of personal experience.

' Certain it is that the language of the Holy Ghost can never be fully understood by an appeal to the lexicon. The heart of the Church is the best dictionary of the Spirit.'3

Four lines of teaching stand out with great prominence,

1. The intimate and essential relation of the Spirit to Christ. While in the later books of the Old Testament the Spirit becomes associated with Messianic prophecy, it is the unique feature of the New Testament revelation that the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Acts ii. 33). Most modern writers call special attention to this essential relationship of the Spirit to our Lord. Thus, Sanday says:

' With Paul as well as with John it is Christ Himself Who comes to His own in His Spirit.'4

And Moberly, similarly:

' Christ in you and the Spirit of Christ in you: these are not different realities, but the one is the method of the other. It is in the Person of Christ that the eternal God is revealed in manhood to man. It is in the Person of His Spirit that the Incarnate Christ is Personally present within the spirit of each several man. The Holy Spirit is mainly revealed to us as the Spirit of the Incarnate.'5

2. The Spirit is ' the Executive of the Godhead ' in and for the Christian Church. He is the Spirit of God, of Christ, of Truth, of Holiness, of Grace, of Glory, of Adoption, of Life, of Jesus, of His Son, of the Lord. By the Holy Spirit the work of Christ is applied and realised, and any subordination recorded is only in the sense of that self-abnegation which is true of each Person of the Trinity in relation to the others. Thus the Father glorifies the Son, and the Son the Father; the Spirit glorifies the Son, and the Son sends the Spirit. No blessing comes to us from God apart from the Spirit of God.

3. The Deity of the Spirit. The association of the Spirit with the Father and the Son in the baptismal formula (Matt, xxviii. 19), and the Benediction (2 Cor. xiii. 14) clearly implies and teaches the Godhead of the Spirit. And yet no embarrassment is felt by New Testament writers from any contradiction with the unity of the Godhead. The Deity of the Spirit is always found in the closest association with Jewish Monotheism.

4. The Personality of the Spirit. This, again, seems clear, even if it be only by implication, in the New Testament. The Spirit is personal because God is personal, and Divine because God is Divine, and although it cannot be said that the Personality of the Spirit is made as clear as the Personality of the Father and the Son, yet it is impossible to think truly of the Spirit as impersonal, since definite personal attributes and powers are given to the Spirit.

' The New Testament and Christian experience are at one in teaching that the Christian conception of God includes all that is meant by Father, Son, and Spirit; and as the omission of what is meant by any of these terms leaves the Christian conception unsatisfied, it may fairly be said that the doctrine of the Trinity is the fundamental doctrine of our faith. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit in their unity constitute the God Whom we know as the God of our salvation.'6

It will be seen from the foregoing that the distinctions in the Godhead involved in the New Testament doctrine of the Spirit are always connected closely with the Divine operations rather than with the Divine nature. There is nothing philosophical or speculative in the Biblical revelation. All is vital and personal.

' The evidence from the New Testament (Acts and Paul perhaps especially) teaches us that we must keep in view both aspects of divine-human relationship, the influence and the Person, the Giver and the Gift, the spirit and the Spirit; we are conscious, as was the first age of Christians, of the work, then of the Worker, of the in-ourselves previous to the Not-in-ourselves.'7

Not the least significant point in the New Testament is the incidental and almost constant mention of the Holy Spirit. This feature is to be specially observed. It represents an atmosphere, a life. The Holy Spirit is regarded as normal in the life of the believer, who is enabled thereby to ' live ' and ' walk ' and even ' step ' in the Spirit (Gal. V. 16, 25, Greek).

6. The fundamental conceptions and experiences are the same throughout the whole of the New Testament. The only varieties are found in the types of thought and mental expression. It is impossible to trace any development of the doctrine of the Spirit through Ebionism to Orthodoxy. From the earliest to the latest the essential ideas are the same, however they may vary in aspect and degree of presentation.

' The Holy Spirit is, in the strict sense of the word, divine. No biblical writer yields any support to the Arian conception of a created Intelligence above the angels but inferior to the Son, to whom the name " Spirit of God " is improperly applied.'8

Everything connected with the Spirit of God in the Bible can be summarised in the one thought that from first to last the life of the believer depends upon God for its complete realisation, and this dependence is connected at each point with the Spirit of God. All that Jesus Christ was, and did, and is, becomes vital only by means of the action of the Spirit of God on those who are willing to receive Him.

' The essential thing, in summary statement, is that in relation to Christ men have to do with God, and may experience in themselves the energies of God. We have as much of God as we get through Christ; we think of God as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit of God, Whose presence in the believer's heart makes the new life of sonship, is the Spirit of Christ, or is Christ Himself, for the Spirit is God present with us, and we find Him present in and through Christ. Here, then, we have the dynamic of the Christian life, the power of God unto salvation; the life of faith is essentially the life of dependence on Him Who dwells in the heart by its faith. There is here, obviously, an element of intelligent knowledge concerning Christ, and faith must have its preachers; but the chief and central thing is the new dynamic, the whole resources of the Spirit of God through which not only Christ is raised from death, but every one also who is crucified with Him in spirit.'9

And thus we see the force of the conclusion that

' the unification of all the religious life under the Spirit is the last stage in the biblical development of the idea. It is the last stage that ever can come in its development, unless there be retrogression; for nothing more complete, in the relation of God to the human soul, can be conceived than the idea that the entire religious life originates from and is guided by God acting immediately on the human spirit. In biblical literature itself, then, the conception of the Spirit reaches its perfect end.'10

So that whatever lines of thought may be followed by the Church, and whatever avenues of experience may be entered, it will be impossible to arrive at any point, or to come upon any discovery, that is not in some way or other explicit or implicit in Holy Scripture.

' Conditioned as we are, we cannot really go beyond the New Testament doctrine of the self-witness of God through the Spirit in and through men.'11

1 See note O, p. 281.

2 Warfield, Presbyterian and Reformed Review, Vol. VI. p. 687.

3 A. J. Gordon, The Ministry of the Spirit, p. 44.

4 Criticism of the Fourth Gospel, p. 215.

5 Atonement and Personality, p. 194.

6 Denney, Article ' Holy Spirit,' Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, p. 744.

7 Winstanley, Spirit in the New Testament, p. 161.

8 Swete, Article ' Holy Spirit,' Hastings' Bible Dictionary, p. 410.

9 H. W. Robinson, The Christian Doctrine of Man, p. 324.

10 Wood, The Spirit of God in Biblical Literature, p. 269.

11 Winstanley, op. cit. p. 166.