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THE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
June, 1941
“which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in' your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:19, 20). Friends, I am amazed when I pray with Christians to find how many ear nest bom-again Christians pray that the Holy Spirit will come into them, or that the Holy Spirit will never be taken from them. Both prayers are absolutely unscriptural, because if one is a Chris tian, he has received the Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit is indwelling him, and our Lord Jesus Christ said when He promised that the Spirit would come, that He would come to abide" forever, forever! He will never be taken out of us, never! We are going to learn how we can grieve Him and quench Him, but we can never grieve Him away; we can never quench Him away. He is there, and He is there to stay. Do you believe it? Do you act as tttbugh you believed it ?, Our life first became Christ-centered through being bom of the Spirit and being baptized of the Spirit. Tens of thousands of Christians stop there and are satisfied. God never stops there. God is not satisfied with that. He wants our life to be Christ-conformed. Is yours? Is mine? That is a work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is there in order to make this radical reversal of all your relationships a practical, living, vital reality.
Christian as He comes to indwell him. Through that wonderful oneness, the very fullness of life in Christ is made potential, for Christ becomes our sanc tification and the life becomes Christ- centered. The believing sinner is sealed also with the Spirit. The saint is one who is set apart for God and as God’s, and the seal of God’s possession is the Holy Spirit Himself: “After that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise” (Eph.- 1:13). We have briefly touched upon the Holy Spirit’s work in salvation, and now we turn to His work in sanctification. We are taking up only one phase of it here— His work as the indwelling Spirit, and we can touch only upon those phases of this great truth that relate t PROGRESSIVE SANCTIFICATION [Continued from Page 219] escaped the corruption that is in the world t h r o u g h lust” (2 Pet. 1:4). Through the new birth, we are provided both with a life and a nature that per fectly equips us to live in that new sphere which is the spiritual sphere. Now I pause to ask you a personal question. Are you bom again ? Have you had a personal experience with the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you Know the ground on which you stand? Do you have the assurance that leaves you un shakable in your convictions? Do you know you are bom again as truly as you know you were bom into this world? If not, you ought not to sleep tonight until you absolutely know that. The Holy Spirit’s Work In connection with his new birth, the believing sinner is baptized with the Spirit. “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13). The believer by that baptism with the Spirit is united with Christ. Christ be comes the Head of the Body, and the Head and Lord over the Christian, who has become a part of that Body. And that oneness unites him with the Holy Spirit who is the heart of the Church and becomes the heart of the individual Do You Know Some One Who Has Just Been Saved? A Scofield Reference Bible will help him. With helps on the page where they are needed, this Volume, representing the work of several famous Bible teachers, has brought many to a better un derstanding of the Word. The Church of the Open Door has a limited number of its Silver Anniversary edition of the Scofield Bible, available at $3.25 per copy, postpaid in the U. S. A. These Bibles are attractively bound in flexible blue Keratol with, silver edging of the pages (6 in. by 8J4 in.), and are stamped in silver. They He will need to feed on the Word if he is to grow in grace. are printed on regular Bible paper in clear type and have all the references and notes, with the exception of the concordance, the more expensive Bible has. A t this price you can have a real ministry for the Lord in putting these study Bibles into the hands of young Christians. Door - Los Angeles, California The Church of the Open 558 S. Hope Street
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