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February 1931
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
Meditations on the Spirit-Filled Life B y M ilton M . B ailes ( Tarpon Springs, Florida )
f T IS one thing to be born of the Spirit; it is anoth er thing to be filled with the Spirit. It is one thing to receive Jesus Christ as a personal Saviour in regeneration and, in that initial sense, to have the Holy Spirit enter the life with His divine de posit and witness, placing the believer in the fam ily of God; it is quite another thing to be filled with the Spirit. The new birth is one thing; the divine anointing and sealing of the Holy Spirit is something additional and sublimely different. It is one thing to come to the cross and find life; it is something else to come as a be liever and take one’s place upon the cross, dying with Christ and living again with Him. Living is one thing; life more abundant is something else. Regeneration is one thing, and a very important thing; sanctification, in the sense of separation from the world and deliverance from the love of the world, is another matter. The Spirit-filled life, then, is the secret of all Christ- like character and all holy living. The fruit of the Spirit is scarcely recognizable in any except in the lives of Spirit- filled believers. We cannot have fruit in excess of life, and life by the Spirit must be supplied every day from the heart and the hand of the Lord. We are acquainted with people whom we know to be Christians but who are living a life of struggle and defeat. They need to be emptied of self and filled with Himself. It is not enough to have Christ in the throne room; it is necessary to have Him on the throne, Lord over all, victorious forever. Experiences differ as to the circumstances of enter ing a Spirit-filled life. Just as a man may come either gradually or suddenly to the place where he confesses his sins and accepts Christ as his Saviour, so he may also come gradually or immediately to the point of complete dedication to Christ, accepting by faith the promised full ness of the Holy Spirit, and entering into the life of vic tory and blessing. Consecration is the negative side of the matter; receiving Him in this deeper and fuller sense is the positive side. As, in the realm of electricity, the negative and the positive elements must be joined together before light is given, so consecration and faith, the nega tive and the positive factors of the spiritual life, must unite in order to bring to the believer the full light and life of Jesus Christ. Both regenerating and sanctifying grace are unmer ited gifts of God. When a believer accepts this wondrous grace, God puts upon him His divine and everlasting seal of the Holy Spirit; and in a new sense he is God’s proper ty, cleansed and filled. The paramount need today is for Christians to sur render to the Lord Jesus Christ and be filled with the Spir it. Such a fullness of the Spirit solved every problem in the church on the day of Pentecost and in the days that immediately followed. In the same way it will solve every church problem today—the problem of church at tendance, of prayer, of missionary giving and going, of tithing, of revival, of holy living, etc. Modernism would disappear before such an anointing. The Lord, who would not allow His apostles to enter upon their work until filled with the Spirit, is still asking His servants to
meet Him in a life of surrender so that, yielding all, they may be endued with power from on high. Who are we that we should attempt to serve God without this anoint ing? The standard of Christian living that made the days of our fathers epochal days is not taken very seriously to day. Ex-President Coolidge has said: “The whole fabric of society rests upon religion. I do not see any method of improving our social or economic relations except through the teachings of religion. In fact, it is my be lief that we have gone as far as we can in progress; and reform until we have a more general acceptance of the truths of religion. If these are permitted to slip away from us, the progress and reform which we have ac complished will vanish with them.” The Wall Street Journal recently published this state ment: “What America needs more than railway exten sion and western irrigation and a new tariff and big wheat crops and a merchant marine and a navy is a revival of piety—the kind father and mother used to have—piety that counted it good business to stop for daily family prayer right in the middle of harvest; that quit field work half an hour earlier so as to get the chores done and go to prayer meeting. That is what we need now to clean this country of filth and graft and greed.” When secular papers and men who are not preachers express themselves thus, it is time for Christians to awake and take heed. “Be filled with the Spirit.” “Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” staged. So the prophet pictures it: “In that day they (the nations) shall roar against them (Israel) like the roaring of the sea” (Isa. 5:30). 7. The Millennium. It has a twofold purpose, typi fied in the double day of Genesis 1: (a) nature will be restored from the blight of sin’s curse; and (b) the man Christ Jesus, the Last Adam, will reign in righteousness. For this double picture the student must read Isaiah 11 and 12. This day, strange as it may seem, is followed by a night of rebellion. (See Rev. 20:7-9.) Then follows 8. God’s Eternal Rest —when the Son shall have de livered the kingdom to the Father, when there shall be new heavens and a new earth (Rev. 21 :1), and a day un broken by any night: “And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 22:5). New subscribers who wish to have all the articles by Dr. Harrison on the subject, “Structure in Scripture” may receive, without cost, the December 1930 number (in which the first installment appears), and have their sub scription begin with the January 1931 issue. Structure in Scripture (Continued from page 57)
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