Hello amazing people of God. How are you holding up?
Today, I want to share with us my thoughts from my recent study of the Bible.
God manifested His three dimensions in the Old Testament but was concealed in types and shadows. Just as Jesus was not revealed as the Son, the Holy Spirit was not revealed as the Comforter.
“And the Spirit of the Lord came upon..” is one of the the most recurring phrases in the Old Testament (Judges 3:10;14:16,19; 15:14; I Samuel 16:13; Isaiah 11:2; Isaiah 61:1; Ezekiel 11:5; Joel 2:28).
If you check out these scriptures, you will notice that when the Spirit of the Lord comes upon any of those characters, action seems to follow immediately, indicating supernatural enablement. The Holy Spirit was much featured but was not presented as a personality but rather as a divine force that enables men to so the humanly impossible. Hence, it always “came upon” rather than indwell the man. And once the mission is accomplished the spirit relieves the man.
It was by that spirit that Samsom was able to kill a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass. By that Spirit he uprooted the city gate of the Philistines, carried it on his shoulders and walked miles away with it. By that Spirit prophets boldly delivered God's message to the wicked rulers. David did great exploits by that Spirit. So it was indeed necessary not to execute any work of God without the Spirit's empowering. “The Spirit upon” was a sign of approval from God that a man was His chosen vessel.
Similarly, the “spirit within” is indicative of two things:
The human spirit (Job 32:18; Psalm 142:3; Isaiah 26:19; Zechariah 12:1)
The indwelling Spirit of God (Isaiah 63 11; Ezekiel 11:19; 36:26-27)
The “spirit within” is used to refer to the inner workings of a man's heart, or the Spirit of God impressed on the heart that causes attitudinal adjustments. When David realized that what he had done with Uriah's wife and to Uriah was the extreme of a wrong heart and spirit. How could he commit adultery with the wife of a man who was fighting in battle for his nation, with his life, and intentionally caused the man to die in the war front so he could marry the woman? That was unlike the man of God David was. In repentance, he prayed, “create in me a clean heart, o God, and renew a right spirit within me”(Psalms 51:10).
Proverbs 20 vs 27 tells us that “the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly”. God changes people from the inside out. The human spirit is the place of his conscience. A man whose conscience is alive and good can feel guilt, shame, remorse and repentance. Whereas, a man with a dead conscience feels none of those things.
It is the spirit disposition of men and women that most times determine why God chose them for His work. Pride is an attitude of the spirit —and God resists the proud altogether. No man can follow God with an unrenewed spirit. Sin is basically a damage of the human spirit. Sin nunbs our spirit, and makes it insensitive and unresponsive to God. This is why no level of moral training can put a man in a right standing with God. Morality can only produce self righteousness which is no more than a “filthy rag” before God. To become a true child of God one must receive the Spirit of God. Regeneration begins from the inside.
God knows that it will take more than just a right human spirit to become His child, so He promises an indwelling of His Spirit in everyone. By this shall men and women become “sons of God”(John 1:12). It is the only way to be adopted into the family of God. So, anyone who does not receive this “Spirit of adoption”, though he/she may be morally upright (which is good), has not been entered into the register of Sons. For it is by this Spirit God becomes our Father and we — His Sons (Galatians 4:6 KJV).
Paul the Apostle showed how important receiving the Holy Spirit is. In Acts 19 vs 1-5, he showed the superiority of the Spirit's baptism over water baptism. Not to say that water baptism isn't necessary, but that it isn't just all they needed. (I hope to explain Baptism in my next blog). Water just wasn't enough. They needed the Holy Spirit.
We now have the Spirit within us and the Spirit upon us, which are one and the same Spirit. The former “works in us both to will and to do of His pleasure”. In other words, it is the Spirit within us that works in us for sanctification, edification, obedience and transformation so as to bear fruit of the Spirit. While the Spirit upon us is for the outward manifestation of God's power in the field of ministry (Joel 2:28; Acts 1:8)
I hope this piece leave no room for controversy?