_>^__here is in the Sermon on the Mount this wonderful utterance of our Lord: “ how much more?” In Luke 11:13 where He repeats the question, there is a difference. Instead of speaking, as then, of giving good gifts, He says, “How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit?” He thus teaches us that the chief and best of these gifts is the Holy Spirit, or rather, that in this gift all others are comprised. The Holy Spirit is the first of the Father’s gifts and the one He delights most to bestow. The Holy Spirit is therefore the gift to first and chiefly seek. The unspeakable worth of this gift we can easily understand. Jesus spoke of the Spirit as “ the promise of the Father,” the one promise in which God’s Fatherhood revealed itself. The best gift a good and wise father can bestow on a child on earth is his own spirit. This is the great object of a father in education — to reproduce in his child his own disposition and char acter. If the child is to know and understand his father; if as he grows up he is to enter into all his will and plans; if he is to have his highest joy in the father and the father in him — he must be of one mind and spirit with him. And so it is impossible to conceive of God bestowing any higher gift on His child than this, His own Spirit. God is what He is through His Spirit; the Spirit is the very life of God. Just think what it means — God giving His own Spirit to His child on earth. Or was not this the glory of Jesus as a Son upon earth, that the Spirit of the Father was in Him? At His
baptism in Jordan the two things were united — the voice proclaim ing Him the beloved Son, and the Spirit descending upon Him. And so the apostle says of us, “ And be cause ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” A king seeks in the whole education of his son to call forth in him a kingly spirit. Our Father in heaven desires to educate us as His children for the holy, heavenly life in which He dwells, and for this gives us from the depths of His heart His own Spirit. It was this which was the whole aim of Jesus when, after having made atonement with His own blood, He entered for us into God’s presence that He might obtain for us and send down to dwell in us the Holy Spirit. As the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, the whole life and love of the Father and the Son are in Him; and coming down into us He lifts us up into their fellowship. As Spirit of the Father, He sheds abroad the Father’s love with which He loved the Son in our hearts and teaches us to live in it. As Spirit of the Son, He breathes in us the childlike liberty and devo tion and obedience in which the Son lived upon earth. The Father can bestow no higher or more won derful gift than this: His own Holy Spirit, the Spirit of sonship. This truth naturally suggests the thought that this first and chief gift of God must be the first and chief object of all prayer. For every need of the spiritual life this is the one thing needful: the Holy Spirit. All the fullness is in Jesus; the fullness of grace and truth out of which we receive grace for grace. The Holy
Spirit is the appointed conveyancer whose special work it is to make Jesus and all there is in Him for us ours in personal appropriation, in blessed experience. He is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus; as wonderful as the life is, so wonderful is the provision by which such an agent is provided to communicate it to us. If we but yield ourselves entirely to the disposal of the Spirit and let Him have His way with us, He will manifest the life of Christ within us. He will do this with a divine power, maintaining the life of Christ in us in uninterrupted con tinuity. Surely, if there is one prayer that should draw us to the Father’s heart and keep us there, it is this: for the Holy Spirit, whom we as children have received, to stream into us and out from us in greater fullness. In the variety of the gifts which the Spirit has to dispense, He meets the believer’s every need. Just think of the names He bears. The Spirit of grace, to reveal and impart all of grace there is in Jesus. The Spirit of faith, teaching us to begin and go on and increase in ever believ ing. The Spirit of adoption and assurance, who witnesses that we are God’s children and inspires the confiding and confident Abba, Fa ther! The Spirit of truth, to lead into all truth, to make each work of God ours in deed and in truth. The Spirit of prayer, through whom we speak with the Father; prayer that must be heard. The Spirit of judgment and burning, to search the heart and convince of sin. The Spirit of holiness, manifesting and communicating the Father’s holy presence within us. The Spirit of power, through whom we are strong
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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