Salvation, as St Paul understands it, includes our uttermost deliverance, the end of death itself (1 Cor. xv. 26). He renders praise to God for that He has sealed Gentile equally with Jewish believers with the stamp of His Spirit, which makes them His property and gives assurance of absolute redemption.
There are three things to be considered in this statement: the seal itself, the conditions upon which, and the purpose for which it is affixed.
I. A seal is a token of proprietorship put by the owner upon his property;[48] or it is the authentication of some statement or engagement, the official stamp that gives it validity;[49] or it is the pledge of inviolability guarding a treasure from profane or injurious hands.[50] There is the protecting seal, the ratifying seal, and the proprietary seal. The same seal may serve each or all of these purposes. Here the thought of possession predominates (comp. ver. 4); but it can scarcely be separated from the other two. The witness of the Holy Spirit marks men out as God’s purchased right in Christ (1 Cor. vi. 19, 20). In that very fact it guards them from evil and wrong (iv. 30), while it ratifies their Divine sonship (Gal. iv. 6) and guarantees their personal share in the promises of God (2 Cor. i. 20–22). It is a bond between God and men; a sign at once of what we are and shall be to God, and of what He is and will be to us. It secures, and it assures. It stamps us for God’s possession, and His kingdom and glory as our possession.
This seal is constituted by the Holy Spirit of the promise,—in contrast with the material seal, “in the flesh, wrought by hand,”[51] which marked the children of the Old Covenant from Abraham downwards, previously to the fulfilment of the promise (Gal. iii. 14). We bear it in the inmost part of our nature, where we are nearest to God: “The Spirit witnesseth to our spirit.” “The Israelites also were sealed, but by circumcision, like cattle and irrational animals. We were sealed by the Spirit, as sons” (Chrysostom). The stamp of God is on the consciousness of His children. “We know that Christ abides in us,” writes St John, “from the Spirit which He gave us” (1 Ep. iii. 24). Under this seal is conveyed the sum of blessing comprised in our salvation. Jesus promised, “Your heavenly Father will give His Holy Spirit to them that ask” (Luke xi. 13), as if there were nothing else to ask. Giving us this, God gives everything, gives us Himself! In substance or anticipation, this one bestowment contains all good things of God.
The apostle writes “the Spirit of the promise, the Holy [Spirit],” with emphasis on the word of quality; for the testifying power of the seal lies in its character. “Beloved, believe not every spirit; but try the spirits, whether they are of God” (1 John iv. 1). There are false prophets, deceiving and deceived; there are promptings from “the spirit that works in the sons of disobedience,” diabolical inspirations, so plausible and astonishing that they may deceive the very elect. It is a most perilous error to identify the supernatural with the Divine, to suppose mere miracles and communications from the invisible sphere a sign of the working of God. Antichrist can mimic Christ by his “lying wonders and deceit of unrighteousness” (2 Thess. ii. 8–12). Jesus never appealed to the power of His works in proof of His mission, apart from their ethical quality. God’s Spirit works after His kind, and makes ours a holy spirit. There is an objective and subjective witness—the obverse and reverse of the medal (2 Tim. ii. 19). To be sealed by the Holy Spirit is, in St Paul’s dialect, the same thing as to be sanctified; only, the phrase of this text brings out graphically the promissory aspect of sanctification, its bearing on our final redemption.[52]
When the sealing Spirit is called the Spirit of promise, does the expression look backward or forward? Is the apostle thinking of the past promise now fulfilled, or of some promise still to be fulfilled? The former, undoubtedly, is true. The promise (the article is significant[53]) is, in the words of Christ, “the promise of the Father.” On the day of Pentecost St Peter pointed to the descent of the Holy Spirit as God’s seal upon the Messiahship of Jesus, fulfilling what was promised to Israel for the last days. When this miraculous effusion was repeated in the household of Cornelius, the Jewish apostle saw its immense significance. He asked, “Can any one forbid water that these should be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we?” (Acts x. 47). This was the predicted criterion of the Messianic times. Now it was given, and with an abundance beyond hope,—poured out, in the full sense of Joel’s words, upon all flesh.
Now, if God has done so much—for this is the implied argument of verses 13, 14—He will surely accomplish the rest. The attainment of past hope is the warrant of present hope. He who gives us His own Spirit, will give us the fulness of eternal life. The earnest implies the sum. In the witness of the Holy Spirit there is for the Christian man the power of an endless life, a spring of courage and patience that can never fail.
II. But there are very definite conditions, upon which this assurance depends. “When you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation”—there is the outward condition: “when you believed”—there is the inward and subjective qualification for the affixing of the seal of God to the heart.
How characteristic is this antithesis of hearing and faith![54] St Paul delights to ring the changes upon these terms. The gospel he carried about with him was a message from God to men, the good news about Jesus Christ. It needs, on the one hand, to be effectively uttered, proclaimed so as to be heard with the understanding; and, on the other hand, it must be trustfully received and obeyed. Then the due result follows. There is salvation,—conscious, full.