The Ministry of the Spirit

by A. J. Gordon

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VI

THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIRIT

The familiar benediction which invokes upon us the "communion of the Holy Ghost" has probably a deeper meaning in it than has generally been recognized. The word "communion"—choinônia—signifies the having in common. It is used of the fellowship of believers one with another, and also of their mutual fellowship with God. The Holy Spirit dwelling in us is the agent through whom this community of life and love is effected and maintained. "And truly our fellowship," says John, "is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ" (1 John 1: 3). But this having in common with the first two persons of the Godhead were only possible through the communion of the Holy Ghost, the third person. In his promise of the Comforter, Jesus said: "He shall take of mine and show it unto you." As the Son while on earth communicated to men the spiritual riches of the invisible Father, so the Spirit now communicates to us the hidden things of the invisible Son; and if we were required to describe in a word the present office-work of the Holy Ghost, we should say that it is to make true in us that which is already true for us in {100} our glorified Lord. All light and life and warmth are stored up for us in the sun; but these can only reach us through the atmosphere which stands between us and that sun as the medium of communication; even so in Christ are "hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," and by the Holy Spirit these are made over to us. It will be our endeavor in this chapter to count up our hid treasures in Christ, and to consider the Spirit in his various offices of communication.

1. The Spirit of Life: Our Regeneration. Not until our Lord took his place at God's right hand did he assume his full prerogative as life-giver to us. He was here in the flesh for our death; he took on him our nature that he might in himself crucify our Adam-life and put it away. But when he rose from the dead and sat down on his Father's throne, he became the life-giver to all his mystical body, which is the church. To talk of being saved by the earthly life of Jesus is to know Christ only "after the flesh." True, the apostle says that "being reconciled" by Christ's death, "much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his life." But he here refers plainly to his glorified life. And Jesus, looking forward to the time when he should have risen from the dead, says: "Because I live, ye shall live also." Christ on the throne is really the heart of the church, and every regeneration is a pulse-beat of that heart in souls begotten from above {101} through the Holy Spirit. The new birth therefore is not a change of nature as it is sometimes defined; it is rather the communication of the Divine nature, and the Holy Spirit is now the Mediator through whom this life is transmitted. If we take our Lord's words to Nicodemus: "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God," and press the "again" anôthen back to its deepest significance, it becomes very instructive. "Born from above," say some. And very true to fact is this saying. Regeneration is not our natural life carried up to its highest point of attainment, but the Divine life brought down to its lowest point of condescension, even to the heart of fallen man. John, in speaking of Jesus as the life-giver, calls him "he that cometh from above" (3: 31); and Jesus, in speaking to the degenerate sons of Abraham, says: "Ye are from beneath, I am from above" (John 8: 23). It has been the constant dream and delusion of men that they could rise to heaven by the development and improvement of their natural life. Jesus by one stroke of revelation destroys this hope, telling his hearer that unless he has been begotten of God who is above as truly as he has been begotten of his father on earth, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Others make these words of our Lord signify "born from the beginning." There must be a resumption of life de novo, a return to the original {102} source and fountain of being. To find this it is not enough that we go back to the creation-beginning revealed in Genesis; we must return to the precreation-beginning revealed in John, the book of re-genesis. In the opening of Genesis we find Adam, created holy, now fallen through temptation, his face averted from God and leading the whole human race after him into sin and death. In the opening of the Gospel of John we find the Son of God in holy fellowship with the Father. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward God", pros ton theon—not merely proceeding from God, but tending toward God by eternal communion. Conversion restores man to this lost attitude: "Ye turned to God, pros ton theon, from idols to serve the living and true God" (1 Thess. 1: 9). Regeneration restores man to his forfeited life, the unfallen life of the Son of God, the life which has never wavered from steadfast fellowship with the Father. "I give unto them eternal life," says Jesus. Is eternal life without end? Yes; and just as truly without beginning. It is uncreated being in distinction from all-created being; it is the I-am life of God in contrast to the I-become life of all human souls. By spiritual birth we acquire a divine heredity as truly as by natural birth we acquire a human heredity.

In the condensed antithesis with which our Lord concludes his demand for the new birth, we have both the philosophy and the justification of his {103} doctrine: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I say unto you, Ye must be born anew" (John 3: 7, R. V.). By no process of evolution, however prolonged, can the natural man be developed into the spiritual man; by no process of degeneration can the spiritual man deteriorate into the natural man. These two are from a totally different stock and origin; the one is from beneath, the other is from above. There is but one way through which the relation of sonship can be established, and that is by begetting. That God has created all men does not constitute them his sons in the evangelical sense of that word. The sonship on which the New Testament dwells so constantly is based absolutely and solely on the experience of the new birth, while the doctrine of universal sonship rests either upon a daring denial or a daring assumption—the denial of the universal fall of man through sin, or the assumption of the universal regeneration of man through the Spirit. In either case the teaching belongs to "another gospel," the recompense of whose preaching is not a beatitude but an anathema.[1]

The contrast between the two lives and the way {104} in which the partnership—the choinônia—with the new is effected, is told in that deep saying of Peter: "Whereby he hath granted us his precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become partakers—choinônia—of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption which is in the world by lust" (2 Pet. 1: 4, R. V.). Here are the two streams of life contrasted:

1. The corruption in the world through lust.

2. The Divine nature which is in the world through the incarnation.