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The Holy Spirit in Relation to The Glorified Christ and The Believer

by T. Austin-Sparks

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazines, 1932, Volume 10-3 - 10-4.

Contents

Part 1

Part 2

Part 1

Readings: John 16:5-15; 7:38-39.

"He that believeth on Me as the scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake He of the Spirit which they that believe on Him were to receive: for the Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified.)"

Beloved of God, for some considerable time my heart has been growingly exercised concerning the Holy Spirit. I believe that the Lord has something that He wants to say to His people in this connection, and something that He wants to do in and through His people in this connection in some new way in this end-time. If one has not misread the leading of the Spirit, we are right in gathering at this time for the Lord to speak to us on this matter. I am quite sure that we, with a great many more of the Lord's people, are deeply conscious, and increasingly conscious, of the need for some fuller expression of the life, power, and work of the Holy Spirit in the Church; which of course means in ourselves as members of Christ. And while it is not my thought at this time, or the leading which I have, to seek to present a system of doctrine concerning the Person and work of the Holy Spirit, I do feel that the Lord has some things within that compass that He really does want us to take heed unto. We are not going, for instance, to discuss whether the Holy Spirit is a Person or not. I think we can all take that as settled. If it is not, well, let us get it settled outside, for that is not the matter which concerns the majority of us here, who have, I am sure, settled that matter long ago. There are other similar matters in relation to the Holy Spirit which we will take as settled and for granted, but there are some things which, while we may be well acquainted with them, we need to have renewed as a serious matter of quest and enquiry before the Lord.

There are, I think, in the main two or three directions in which this matter of the Holy Spirit concerns us spiritually in these days. There is, for instance, the matter of power. Power by the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit as a Spirit of power. That is a matter that concerns us, for the Lord's people are almost universally, at least very generally, conscious that the forces which are against His Testimony, His work, are well nigh too much for them, if not altogether beyond their ability to cope with. There is a sense of severe limitation, real weakness, inability to make much headway, a mighty withstanding and obstructing, a terrific pressure and adversity which raises the whole question of power. We are all in our hearts just crying to the Lord that we might know more of the power of God in our lives, and then in what ministry the Lord may give us beyond the ministry of the individual's life testimony, that is, in specific ministry that may be entrusted to us. That is one realm in which the whole matter of the Holy Spirit is a living one for us today. And then again, the question of truth; this is, I think, equally a living one at this time.

While we are up against that force of opposition, that power of evil, that mighty antagonism of the adversary, we are also up against widespread and growing error which is taking the subtle form of a counterfeit of the Holy Spirit. There is no doubt but that there are movements in the earth at this time which are a counterfeiting of the Holy Spirit even in the matter of regeneration or new birth or conversion; and in many other connections the Holy Spirit is being counterfeited; and the sad, grievous tragedy of it all is that multitudes of the Lord's own dear children are being carried away by these things. It is quite easy for us to say that we do not want teaching, we want life, we want power, we want work, we want activity, but, beloved, we need teaching. The matter of truth by the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth is a very, very vital, important matter for us today. We cannot speak about wanting power as something in itself; these two things must go together, truth and power, power and truth.

The Peril of Making Experience an End in Itself

Now the third thing, which of course embraces these two, is the question of experience, and here we are on perhaps the most dangerous ground of all, for so many of the Lord's dear children, in conscious disappointment and weakness and insufficiency, are just crying, praying, longing, for an experience, a new experience, a fresh experience, and are stretching themselves out for such. They relate their experience mentally to the Holy Spirit, they speak about the "baptism of the Holy Spirit" and such like terms are used, but it is an experience that they are after. Now that is right and it is wrong, and we want to be very clear as to the right and the wrong of an experience in relation to the Holy Spirit.

It is a most dangerous thing to go out for an experience as such, to have an experience as an object in view in itself. It opens the way for deception, for delusion and for the inrush of counterfeit. It draws out our soul-life, and brings us into a strained and almost occult state, making many of the Lord's dear children mediumistic, and they are carried away, therefore, by anything that the counterfeiter of the Holy Ghost likes to offer them, providing it is couched in biblical terms and presented in a semblance of evangelical doctrine. The danger there, beloved, is the supreme peril of the hour, a stretching out of the soul for an experience, as such. But oh, my heart in these days is terribly burdened concerning the Lord's people, that He would say something, if possible here, but that He would in any case raise up a ministry for the safeguarding of His people in these very perilous days, these days which are perilous in these particular respects.

There is going to be a terrible state of things before very long in the discovery of multitudes of dear children of God that they have been misled, they have been led off and that the thing that has carried them away is not the true, although it had all the marks of the true as far as they were able to see; but it was another, another and not the truth as the truth is in Jesus. As far as the Lord would enable us, we should seek to come into true light today by the Word of the Lord, and full understanding, that on our part we might be preserved, and that also we may be able to help in the preservation, and safeguarding of other children of God. Pray that the Lord may raise up that ministry and pray that even now, in this message if it be His will, there may be that which shall be for the saving of His own people in a day like this.

Now with regard to experience. Things, of course, must be experimental as differing from merely doctrinal, theoretical. There must be experience and there must be experience in relation to the Holy Spirit; but in what way is experience safe? Well, let us remind ourselves of the New Testament position about this matter, that while the Holy Spirit's manifestation, coming, presence, activity in the New Testament was ever an experience on the part of those concerned, it was not just an experience, it was not an experience just in itself, something that they felt, something that they heard, something that broke in upon their senses; the experience was always related to a Person and that Person was the glorified Lord Jesus, and the experience always brought Christ glorified personally into evidence, so that their immediate, spontaneous expression was the glorifying of Jesus in word, in testimony, in life, in manner, in every way. Christ glorified came into evidence at that moment, and they did not go about saying that they had had some kind of beautiful sensation, emotion, high-tensioned experience; they went immediately to speak about the Lord Jesus. That is the only realm in which the experience is a right quest. We must always relate the Holy Spirit in every form and fragment of His activity, to the Person of the Lord Jesus, for that is where the New Testament makes the link. And so we must cease to seek for an experience in itself. We must seek for an expression, a manifestation, a glorifying of the Lord Jesus by the Holy Spirit as our experience.

Beloved, if the Lord Jesus is glorified in our lives we have the Holy Spirit, for that is not possible otherwise. If He is the One who is before the consciousness of others as glorified, that is the testimony, coming right from our innermost being and registering itself upon others, you may take it for granted the question of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is alright, it is settled. But though we may have had all kinds of wonderful experiences, and people are impressed with us and something that has happened to us, and we are brought into evidence, and we are circling around ourselves and our own experience, and the Lord Jesus is not the registered fact upon other consciousnesses, but we occupy the field, there is some real question of our having become controlled, dominated, filled, baptized (whatever you like to call it) by the Holy Spirit. It must be related to Him. That is why we have read this passage as a key to whatever the Lord Jesus may have to say to us. "This spake He of the Spirit which they that believe on Him should receive: the Spirit was not yet because Jesus was not yet glorified." The Spirit could not begin His work until He had got that which was essential to His work. The Holy Spirit's ministry could never be commenced within a believer until He had got that which was essential to His ministry in full, which was Christ glorified. Which means that the ministry, the work of the Holy Spirit in and through the believer is based wholly and solely upon the glorification of the Lord Jesus.

Why did the Holy Spirit Come?

Now then, let us begin to sift this out and bring it down to a few quite clear, concise facts, realities. We begin by asking one very general question. Why did the Holy Spirit come? I think, as far as I know, the best answer to that question is: to take the place of the Lord Jesus here. That will embrace a great deal. "It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away the Holy Spirit will not come." So that the Lord Jesus considered that the presence of the Holy Spirit here was more important than His personal human presence on the earth, that it at least meant what His presence meant in the flesh, but more. So that we might quite safely and truly say that the Holy Spirit came to take the place of the Lord Jesus here.

Let us ask another question which will bring us a step further toward our ultimate conclusion. Why did the Lord Jesus spend thirty years first, three and a half years second, and forty days third, here on earth? The answer of course is a simple one. In order that, firstly, He might be associated with humanity vitally and practically; that is the meaning of the thirty years beginning with the Incarnation. You have no need that we take up all that the scripture has to say about the Incarnation; one scripture is enough, I think for the moment. "Inasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, He also partook of the same that through death He might destroy him that had the power of (the hold) of death and deliver all those who all their lifetime were subject to bondage through fear of death." He also partook of the same. "Being made in the likeness of man and being found in fashion as a man," a second very strong scripture. And thirdly, "Though He was a son yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered." Many more scriptures bringing Him into a vital relationship with humanity could be cited, but I think we recognise that He should have been here, though silently and mainly in seclusion for thirty years before His manifestation to the world, is not without point, not without reason and not without the best of reasons. When you remember that in the Old Testament He appeared in the form of a man again and again and was seen and spoken with in a full-grown man's form - where He got that body you do not know, I do not know; where it went to you do not know, I do not know, but on many occasions He was seen as a man. The scriptures make it absolutely clear and certain that that One who appeared was God, but He then for specific purposes, at given times, just for a moment, took a man's fully-developed form and appeared to accomplish something, and then disappeared. We do not know any more about the means of His manifestation then, but here He chooses to come by the way of an infant's birth and abide for thirty years, and there is something different here from that, and it is because, now, as differing from then, He has become vitally linked with the race as He was not then, partaking of the same flesh and blood, yet without the stain of sin.

Well, the thirty years primarily, I think, represents His relationship to humanity, vitally; that is, livingly and practically, I mean in a practical way. He was a baby, and He was a boy, and He was a youth, and He was a young man and went through all that such go through, and you do not want to put a halo round His head and make of Him an extraordinary exception from all boys and youths and men, except that you will not find sin in Him; yet He had a boy's life, a youth's life, and young man's life. He is in a practical way related to humanity. The three-and-a-half years are the second phase and they bring in new factors, as to why He was here. Well, they bring into view the fact that He was here to reveal, to manifest the Father's mind, the Father's love and the Father's power. They were the years of the unveiling of God's mind, God's thought in and through Christ.

Beloved, everything that you will find subsequently in the New Testament in the book of Acts, in the Epistles or in the Revelation as truth, you will find its seed, its germ, in the gospels. That is an important thing to remember. Put that down, that you will not find in the subsequent writings of the New Testament what you cannot trace in germ in the teaching of the Lord Jesus. His three and a half years' teaching was the seed plot of all Divine revelation. That will give you enough study to the end of your days! It was the revelation, not that man apprehended it, grasped it, understood it, not even those nearest to Him understood; nevertheless it was the revelation of the Father's mind for man. How wonderful it is. We might spend many hours, many weeks with that alone, to see the aspects of that truth, the revelation of the Father's mind and the riches of that teaching. And ought we to make comparisons? Perhaps not, but one was going to say, the richest is John's record. And what has John, as differing from the others, to reveal about the Father's mind? It is this, the Father's coming down all the time to man. It is a wonderful revelation of how God takes the initiative toward man. The whole aspect of John's Gospel of the teaching and work of the Lord Jesus is God taking the initiative, God coming down. That is blessed, that is precious, follow that out in the rest of the New Testament. You know what we are trying to do, trying to pump up this vile stream of our humanity to reach God, when God is pouring down the stream of Divine life to reach us. We are struggling somehow to get up in all the vileness of our flesh, into touch with God, and it never succeeds. But the revelation of God's mind is that God has come down to us in all His holiness. That is "John". That is comforting surely, to our hearts. I merely touch it as signifying what I meant by revealing the mind of God in the three and a half years. And then, revealing the Father's love.

Part 2

Where shall we begin when we want to consider the revelation of the heart of God in Jesus Christ in those years? "God so loved the world." Think of John's usage of the very term "Father." That is a new revelation, for the most part, to humanity. It comes in in a fulness and depth of meaning in the New Testament which is quite fresh. The heart of God is laid bare in the Lord Jesus. Oh yes, to the shame of us Christians so often, to my shaming, perhaps to yours, our attitude towards sinners, the discredited, the loathsome, the repulsive, the antagonistic, the rejecting, the despising, the malicious, so often, is such a different attitude from His. What an attitude He took. Without condoning sin, and never justifying evil, nevertheless, He went on with a love and a forbearance and a patience and a yearning that, I say, shames us. One has a reason and an object in view in saying this, to which we are working in a minute. And then, of course, His three and a half years were for the manifestation of the power of God, the mighty works of God which were wrought by Him and through Him. The power of God was clearly set forth and administered by Him. Men had very ample opportunity of seeing the power of God manifested through Him. Of course, the appreciation of men, carnal men, worldly men, lies very largely within their own realm of what is physically demonstrated. They cannot appreciate spiritual power in the spiritual realm. But the power of God was displayed to them in the realm where they could recognise it. All manner of sicknesses and infirmities, as well as power over nature, power over temporal conditions, power in many realms, and, of course, power in the spiritual realm, but man could not go that far; but these years were occupied with the display of the Father's power, mainly in the behalf of man for his good and blessing and benefit. Well, that is all very clear, I think.

But what about the third phase, the forty days? It is a testing phase. It has a meaning of its own, and it was unto the establishing of the fact and nature of the perfect redemption which He had accomplished for man in spirit and soul and body. The record is that "by many infallible proofs" He appeared unto them - was made known unto them - after His resurrection. There was the establishment first of all of the fact that He was risen, the fact that Christ who had died was alive. Read in Acts 17:31 "God hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained."

Here in the resurrection you have - while God, very God - yet Man in a state of perfect redemption where the whole man is represented in his completely redeemed state. The forty days represent man in Christ as God intends man to be. Why does He call attention to Himself as He does, "Handle me and see: a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have." "Reach hither thy hand and put it into my side" - "feel these hands, it is I myself - handle me and see." Why is it? And yet that body, that humanity, which could be handled, felt, touched, could pass through doors that were bolted, and be found at great distances in a moment of time. That is not a spirit, this is a spiritual body. There is all the difference between a spirit and a spiritual body. We are not going to be disembodied spirits floating, about in the air. We are going to have glorified bodies, and here is the earnest, here is the type, here is the representation.

Forty days is the Bible probation period which is always intended to issue in glory. Forty years for Israel ought, in the purpose of God, to have issued in Canaan. His forty days were a probation period for manifestation ere He entered into glory:- the manifestation, the establishment of the fact and nature of redemption for man, which He had accomplished and which He gathered up in His own Person as representing man fully redeemed, spirit, soul, and body. That is why Christ spent thirty years, three and a half years, and forty days here on the earth.

Now then, what has that to do with the Holy Spirit? Beloved, why did the Holy Spirit come? We said, to take Christ's place here. In other words, the Holy Spirit is here to inwardly work towards that in the believer:- as the Spirit of the glorified Christ, to bring to birth, so to speak, Christ within. The One who fully forms Christ in that believer, and conforms that believer to the image of Christ until, apart from His Deity and His Godhead, there is a manifestation of Christ glorified in every believer in the consummation of the redemptive activity of God. That is the Holy Spirit's purpose in being here. To take up Christ in the completeness of His work and Person as Son of Man glorified, and work toward that in every believer. But go back over the ground. The Holy Spirit is here in relation to the thirty years to bring Christ glorified into a vital relationship to us, a vital relationship; there is the spiritual counterpart of the thirty years. "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit" and the Holy Spirit is here to link Christ with us and us with Christ in a vital oneness and relationship so that it is "Christ in us" and "Christ our life." You cannot have anything more utter than that. Christ our life. There is the relationship. It does not mean He loses His personality or His individual identity, but it does mean that He links Himself with us and us with Himself in new birth so that we are one, and we can say "I am His and He is mine for ever," the oneness is absolute.

Then the Holy Spirit is here also in relation to the purpose of the three and a half years, the manifestation of the mind of God in the believer:- taking of the heavenly, the Divine things, and showing them. There is no knowledge of God in reality, apart from the Holy Spirit. There is no knowledge of the mind of God without the Holy Spirit. But He has come that within us there might be a revelation of the Father's mind in Jesus Christ. Says the apostle John, "The anointing which you have received abideth in you and ye have no need that any man should teach you, the anointing in you teacheth you all things." "He that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man." Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit." The revelation inwardly of the mind of God is the work of the Holy Spirit, "He shall take of mine and reveal it unto you." "He shall not speak of Himself but whatsoever He shall hear that shall He speak" "All things that the Father hath are mine, therefore said I, he shall take of mine and shew it unto you." You see it is the Father's things given to Christ, taken by the Holy Spirit and revealed to us:- the mind, the love. Oh, let us stay here in heart if we cannot in word, stay here in heart for this is where we need the Holy Spirit, if we need the Holy Spirit anywhere. A revelation of the Father's heart. The Holy Spirit has come as the Spirit of Christ glorified, to take up that object of His being here, and work that object out now, not as merely a public historic testimony, but as an inward spiritual reality, "the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost." It is the work of the Holy Spirit to do that, and there is no love that is truly the love of God, and will stand the test and go all the way that God's love goes without the Holy Spirit, but given the Holy Spirit love becomes almost, I was going to say - omnipotent, given the Holy Spirit there is little impossible in the realm of love: but oh, we know so little of that. That is why I am talking about the need of the Holy Spirit; but if you and I need one thing more than anything else, it is more of that love of God shed abroad in the heart, poured forth in the heart by the Holy Spirit. We will have to come back to that again before we are through, I think.

Then the third thing concerning the three and a half years - the power of God. This again is a thing to be considered by itself, but we merely mention it in this connection. "It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart I will send Him unto you." "But if I go away." What is bound up for us in the coming of the Spirit? "The works that I do shall ye do and greater than these shall ye do, because I go to the Father." This is, in effect, because in My going the Holy Spirit comes! "And greater works than these shall ye do." How? Why? In as much as the spiritual and eternal are greater than the physical and the temporal, in that degree the greater works are wrought by you in the power of the Holy Spirit. They could not appreciate that in those days. Whether it takes more power to say 'Rise, take up thy bed and walk' or 'Thy sins be forgiven thee' - 'But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power to forgive sins' - a sign of that greater thing - "He said to the sick of the palsy, 'Rise, take up thy bed.'" It was a sign of greater power in the spiritual realm. It is a far greater thing to raise the spiritually dead than the physically dead; a far greater thing to open spiritually blind eyes than the natural. The physically raised from the dead will die again, those who are blind physically may have their eyes opened and be given their sight, but it is only for three-score years and ten "and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow." The opening of spiritually deaf ears is greater than opening naturally deaf ears. "Greater works than these shall ye do because I go to the Father." 'The Holy Spirit is coming to do in the spiritual realm what I have been doing in three and a half years as only a sign.' Well, they passed from that realm to a realm where everything was heavenly, everything spiritual, where God was no longer going to do things to judge and condemn doubly an unbelieving race.

"Greater works... because I go to the Father." You see the power of God is to be manifested by the Holy Spirit in the higher realm of spiritual resurrection, enlightenment, quickening, and all those counterpart activities of what Christ did in the three and a half years. The Spirit is here to take up the three and a half years, but He is also here to take up the forty days. Oh no, not to give us glorified or spiritualised bodies now, but, beloved, if the Holy Spirit does not come inside and begin to make us spiritual men and women, with a spiritual mind and spiritual apprehension and spiritual sensibilities, senses and faculties, and develop them, you may take it for granted you will never have a spiritual body. It will take a spiritual inner man to have a spiritual outer man. "And to every seed its own body." The seed of the resurrection body is the New Man, the Christ within, and that man is being formed now. As Paul prayed, "My little children for whom I travail again till Christ be fully formed in you." That forming of Christ within, and that conforming to the image of Christ is the Spirit's movement toward clothing that inner new man with the heavenly body. "To every seed its own body." And the forty days represent that full model, pattern of God's glorified humanity towards which the Holy Spirit's incoming and activity is directed for every man.

Now that is all elementary and simple, for I said we would reduce it to a few concrete propositions. There are some basic primary facts which must be laid down once and for all by us, and in mentioning these perhaps we will close.

Firstly, salvation from the start to finish, from the first simple exercise of faith right on through all its course and development to the last touch of an instantaneous glorification, the whole from beginning to end is inseparable from the Lord Jesus in Person. That is a simple statement. You need not use as many words as I have used, put it in your own way. Salvation from the start to finish is inseparable from the Lord Jesus in Person. It is the "salvation which is in Christ Jesus" and there is none outside. That is the first thing that has got to be settled once and for all. You cannot come to the Lord Jesus as you would go to the grocer's shop and get salvation and take it away in a parcel. Forgive that way of putting it but some people talk about salvation as though it was some thing they got. We never get salvation as some thing, but as some One. The whole of salvation in every part and fragment is bound up with Christ in Person and you cannot separate the thing from Him. It is Christ, and not salvation as something in itself.

Secondly, Christ is the personal representative of God's new creation, that is, in resurrection. See Christ in resurrection and you see the personal representative in fulness of God's new creation, God's new creation man.

Thirdly, the Holy Spirit is the personal representative of Christ. They are one, He is the Spirit of Christ. As such, He is the Spirit of the new creation.

Now you put those three together before we go further and you see; salvation in its entirety is inseparable from Christ in Person. Christ is the representative of God's new creation: you have Christ, you have God's new creation, you have got all that is included in the new creation. The Holy Spirit is the personal representative of Christ; they are one, and He is the Spirit of the new creation; therefore, when we are saved, it is that the Holy Spirit has brought Christ as God's new creation into our hearts, the representative of God's new creation has come in, and from that moment everything is related to Christ within us, the Holy Spirit working in relation to Christ in us. And then finally, the new creation therefore, is all of God. If Christ is all of God, and the new creation is Christ dwelling within the renewed spirit, then the new creation has a new nature. That is not in our own selves, that is Christ, and that is Christ in our renewed spirit. Whether we live in the new or in the old depends upon whether we are living in the spirit or in the flesh; that opens up the whole of that realm of flesh and spirit. If we walk in the Spirit we shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh, but there is that indwelling Representative of God's new creation which is all and utterly of God in its nature. Yes, in mind, the mind of Christ; the heart, yes, the heart of Christ; the will, yes, the will of Christ, as the mind, heart and will of God were in Him now they are in us by the Holy Spirit. Divine disposition is there by the Holy Spirit as Personal Representative of Christ, it is there, a divine disposition.

Now as we have just said, everything for us from that time depends upon whether we are going to be utterly, absolutely surrendered to and governed by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, and let Him so work in us and we so co-operate with Him in His working in us that the mind which is the mind of the Lord, the heart which is the heart of the Lord, the will which is the will of the Lord, the disposition which is the disposition of the Lord, grows, transcending all the time the old mind, heart, will, disposition, and Christ thus being fully formed in us. That is new creation in Christ Jesus.

My emphasis at the moment is upon this, that the new creation is all of God, and in so far, beloved, as we are not all of God in mind, heart, will, disposition, or in any other way, in that degree we have come short of the full work of the Holy Spirit. Now that is not said to condemn or judge, for who on this earth can ever claim to have reached the fulness of the Holy Spirit's work in them? Not one of us here would make such a claim, but one says it in order to point out that when we come into evidence, with our mind, will, disposition, when we begin to allow that to assert itself, show itself, intrude itself, when we permit that in any way whatever, and do not immediately turn upon it in the power of Christ's death and repudiate it, in that measure we are not walking after the Spirit, in that measure we are failing to recognise this great thing, that the new creation is all of God. Oh, that we should immediately turn upon any kind of showing of ourselves and say "that is not of God," not excusing it, not covering it up, not saying that that is my weakness, infirmity, my temperament; no, that is not of God, that is not the new creation, that is not the Holy Spirit! That is the way we must deal with things. You and I must learn to deal with things thus and that is walking after the spirit. You find the Holy Spirit co-operates with that, for He has come as the Spirit of the glorified Christ. And what is that? Everything that cannot be glorified has to be put away by that cross, for God has never glorified the old man yet and the Spirit has not come in to glorify or excuse our old man, He has come in to do with him what Christ did with him in the cross, rule him out.

We have got a lot of work to do, haven't we? But remember this is the Spirit's way and while that may seem to be an appalling proposition from the positive side, beloved, "He that is in you is greater than he that is in the world." The Holy Spirit is mightier than our flesh. The Holy Spirit is mightier than the old man. Christ, by the Eternal Spirit gathered up all the old man of thousands of generations and proved more than a match, triumphant over all the power of fallen humanity; and the power of the Spirit, that Spirit of the glorified One is for us. To me it is tremendous that God has glorified man, a thing that He could not do with one man of all the teeming millions from Adam to Christ; He could never glorify a man until Christ came and put away that man for ever, and all the sin associated with him, and then arose as apart from Adam's humanity into a new humanity, God-glorified man, and He is the type and representative of the humanity that God will have when redemption has run its course. That is our hope, and that One is in us by the Holy Spirit. What hope - "Christ in you the hope of glory."