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THE KING’S BUSINESS
look within for a single moment. Get rid of that old idea, For one look at self take ten looks at Christ.” Take eleven at Christ, and none at self ! Be occupied with Him, and as the spiritual horizon is filled with the Lord, you may be sure that the Holy Spirit is doing His work Qf glorify ing Christ. I want you to notice that the Holy Spirit does not occupy the soul with Himself. '1'hc Holy Spirit occupies the soul with Christ. It is only indirectly that the Holy Spirit witnesses to our sonship; He witnesses to Christ, and in that is everything. Here let me remark that I think there must be a great mistake in the minds of many about Romans 8:16, “ The Spirit witnesseth with our spirit.” How many Christians read that as though it were, “ The Spirit wisnesses to our spirit.” That is not true. The Spirit witnesses on parallel lines, "together with,” our spirit. To whom? To God. The soul says, “ Abba, Father,” and the Holy Spirit says the same, “ He is Thy child.” - It is not that He wit nesses to yis ^ it is that He witnesses with us to God, as the parallel passage in Galatians 4 '6 clearly shows, for there it plainly is the Holy Spirit cry ing, “Abba, Father.” So I come to this once again: Christ glorified by the Holy Spirit is the sure and infallible mark o f the fulness of the Holy Ghost. Then in Ephesians 5 you have that phrase, “ Be filled with the Spirit.” It is often taken out of its context, and made a separate and independent com mand. Look ^t the text. Those of you who know your Greek Testament will remember that’ wherever the Spirit as the Gift is concerned, , the Genitive is always used: “ Be filled with (or o f) the Spirit,” '- But wher ever the ^Dative is used, the Spirit is the instrument: “ Be filled by the Spirit.” That text has the Dative, not the Genitive. In the last verse of Acts 13 it is “with the Spirit” (bu t here in Ephesians 5 it is “ Be filled by
the Spirit.” And if you want to know what the Spirit. fills you with, look at the next verses, with the four par ticiples: “ Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks al ways for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.” Along the lines of those four underscored participles the Holy Ghost does His work; and if you can say thosé four are true of you, you can be perfectly certain the Holy Ghost has been fill ing you by means of His own Divine grace. So I say again, it is not as we look within, but- as we look with out. Then some one says, “ How can this be? What do you mean by look ing without?” That brings me to my second and last point this morn ing: II. The Pattern of the Christian Life. I wonder whether you have noticed that the words “ as He,” or ‘even as He” occur eleven times in this Epistle, nine times one Greek word, and twice another Greek word. "Even as He,” here is our pattern. It is a divine standard, and you and I can test ourselves as to whether the Holy Ghost is filling us, if we are living according to the pattern. That is why I speak of the standard. I shall only have time to mention the texts. Indeed, there is no need to elaborate. Of the eleven times that “ even as lie ” occurs, there are six that refer to Christ and ourselves. You Will find them in three pairs ; one pair in relation to God; one pair in rela tion to self, one pair in relation to others. “ Even as He.” Let us look at them briefly. First, the pair in re lation to God. “ If we walk in the light as He is in thè light” ( 1 :7 ). We are to walk in the light. ’While we are walking in the light, as He is in
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