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The Holy Spirit and the Sons of God
If, then, it is to believers as sons of God, to whom and in whom and through whom the Holy Spirit manifests His pres ence and power, it would follow that whatever Jesus did in order to fulfil His mission in the power of the Spirit, believ ers must do; and we find His life to have been a life of prayer for all the gifts and helps of God, a life of obedience, always doing the things that pleased the Father; and so, never left alone, a life of faith in the present power of God, a life of devotion to the glory of God, so that at its close He, through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without blemish unto God. But the chief and all-including condition and proof is the desire and purpose to glorify Christ. The prayer should not be so much for this or that gift, or this or that result, as for Christ Himself to be made manifest to us and through us. The Apostle who was most filled with the Spirit sums all up in that one great word, “For me to live is Christ” As Jesus the Son of God glorified the Father, so the sons of God are to glorify Christ. The Spirit cannot be where Christ is denied as Redeemer, Life and Lord of all. Christ is “the Truth,” and the Spirit is “the Spirit of the T ru th ;” all is personal, not ideal, for the sum and substance of material wherewith the Spirit works is Christ. The Spirit cannot be teaching if Christ is not seen in “the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms,” as well as in the Gospels, or if Christ is not acknowledged to have continued “to do and to teach” in the Acts and in the Epistles what He began in the Gospels. If Christ is indeed the wisdom of God unto salvation, the Holy Spirit alone can demonstrate it unto the minds and hearts of men; and He has no mission in the world separable from Christ and His work of redemption. The outer work of Christ and the inner work of the Spirit go together. The work for us by Christ is through the blood, the work in us by the Spirit is through the truth; the latter rests upon the former; and without the Spirit, substitutes for the Spirit and
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