My dear readers,

The Apostle Paul has useful advice to someone who encounters an unreasonable and argumentative person. His advice is: If a man holds to a faulty point of view, Paul says, "ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ" (Gal 6:1-2).

"For if a man think himself to be something (or somebody), when he is nothing (nobody), he deceiveth himself" (Gal 6:3).

We continue from last week’s "The Personal Spiritual Life": "How Do We Treat the Holy Spirit Within Us?" (Part II) "Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you" (1 Cor 6:19).

A mysterious question in James 4:5asks: "Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?" This has been more helpfully rendered: "... the Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously over us." With powerful, protective love He grieves over our backslidings and failings, as we would do over the mishaps and misfortunes of our own children. If only we were more constantly aware of the Spirit’s sufferings over us, what a difference it would make.

Paul seems to have been very aware of his debt to the Spirit, saying, "Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for the love of the Spirit…" (Rom 15:30). How he loved the Holy Spirit! In this passage he says, in effect, if only we would love the Spirit, we would not grieve Him, but pray as never before for the progress of the Gospel. The exhortation to "grieve not the holy Spirit" is made in the context of holy living…. Corrupt speech is to be curbed, whether boastful, worldly, dishonest, exaggerated, unclean and lustful remarks, or bitterness, and hurtful words.

How do we grieve the Holy Spirit? By ignoring the pangs of conscience that the Spirit activates, and failing to check offensive words or deeds. If we suppress these promptings, and sin regardless, then they will eventually cease, conscience will become dormant, and we will fall headlong into sinful speech and action.

Perhaps it will help if we consider some of the possible reasons why the Holy Spirit is grieved over us. Clearly the first reason for the Spirit’s grief is that He is holy.Of course the holy One is offended when those He indwells prefer to wallow in things that to Him are filth and stench. The altogether pure and holy One stoops to indwell, but we entertain and harbour offensive things in our thought life, to injure Him.

The Spirit will also be grieved when we trample on all His past work in our souls. It was the Spirit who opened our hearts to the Gospel by a regenerating act, softening our antagonistic wills, opening our eyes to our spiritual predicament, bringing us under deep conviction of sin, and showing us Christ the Lord as the only Saviour. We then yielded to Christ, and pledged ourselves to Him, but now we may pay little heed to the Spirit’s continuing shepherding, and in practical terms barely acknowledge His existence.

The Spirit will equally be grieved owing to what Christ has done for us. Who knows more than He and the Father how great a price the Saviour paid for the redemption of each single soul? The eternal, crushing weight of sin was taken by Christ to redeem us, so that He is ours, and He will be our visible King in the eternal glory. But how do we repay him? So often by an inconsistent walk, treating slightly the duty of stirring ourselves to holiness, and sometimes serving our earthly interests with greater fervour than the work of the Lord.

The Holy Spirit is undoubtedly also grieved for our sake, because He knows the consequences we bring upon ourselves by neglecting His promptings, such as the loss of assured communion with God, the loss of instrumentality for the Gospel, the loss of response to our prayers, and the loss of deep Christian joy.

Surely, also, the Spirit will grieve because of the blow our lacklustre spiritual walk delivers to the cause of Christ, as younger believers receive from us no example of holiness and zeal, and as watching eyes, especially those of unconverted people around us, see our coldness and inconsistency.

The Spirit is bound to be grieved when the Garden of Eden is replicated in our hearts; when in moments of rebellion we draw back from full commitment to some Christian obligation or duty, thinking to ourselves in words like those of the serpent, "Has God said there will be consequences?" If pride grows, and self-love increases, or if covetousness gets control, or ingratitude deepens, then the Spirit will grieve over us to a degree we cannot grasp.

In all that we have said here about the promptings of the Holy Spirit, we do not mean to give the impression that the Spirit will reveal things to believers that are outside the Bible. He will not, for example, reveal to us authoritative doctrine, because Scripture teaches clearly that everything we need to know has been revealed once for all in the Book of God. This Bible is the complete, full and sufficient authority for the knowledge of God, for salvation, for the living of the Christian life, and for the operation of churches. All modern claims to fresh information by vision or direct word are totally mistaken.

The Holy Spirit, however, constantly stirs the conscience, reminds us of Scripture, enables us to understand the Bible (if we humbly ask, and use the Bible’s own rules of interpretation), clarifies our minds (as we think through issues), and even reminds us of spiritual duties and of other important things that we may forget. Frequently He pours into us immense joy and appreciation of the Word, as we reflect upon its riches. The mighty Holy Spirit, dwelling within, interacts constantly with believers, but never so as to bypass or cause neglect of the infallible Word already revealed by Him. The person who says, "The Lord told me this," following an imagined inner voice, has wandered far from the standard of the Bible. (To be continued …)

Yours faithfully in the Saviour’s Service,

Dr SH Tow, Sr Pastor