Victorious life studies

by Robert Crawford McQuilkin

Another Christian worker had a longing for heart purity and a life free from any feeling of condemnation because everything was not pleasing to God. He heard a testimony from a brother who had been in a like state and had learned that it was not by effort or struggle or trying that he was to get peace and purity, but by the work of God through the Holy Spirit coming into or upon the believer and purifying the heart. As the first mentioned brother did, he asked God for this gift and then by faith believed that his prayer was answered. The result was an amazing transformation, a life of joy and liberty which was such a miracle revelation and so different from the average Christian experience that many came to him asking for the secret. He told them what had happened, and he too proceeded to put together his doctrine of the Holy Spirit and taught that every Christian who was born of the Spirit needed to seek as a second work the baptism of the Holy Spirit to bring purity of heart.

There is no question that these brethren experienced the gracious power of the Holy Spirit. But they did not accurately relate those experiences to the teachings of the Word.

In John 7:39 is suggested what the fundamental, primary work of the Holy Spirit was to be, and why He was able to come into the world in a new way at Pentecost. After our Lord, in the last great day of the feast, cried, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water,” the apostle explains, “But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believed on him were to receive for the Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified.”

The Spirit was to be given at Pentecost in a way in which He was not given before. And it is expressly stated that the one thing needed before His being thus given was the glorifying of the Son of man.

Link this with our Lord’s word in John 16:13, 14 and we have clearly revealed the connection between the glorifying of the Son of man and the work of the Spirit: “He (the Holy Spirit) shall not speak for himself.... He shall glorify me.”

This is His specific work, to glorify Jesus. But how?

“Nevertheless I tell you the truth: 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 go, I will send him unto you. And he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more; of judgment, because the Prince of this world hath been judged” (John 16:7-11).

How is the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, of righteousness, of judgment? Notice it is conviction of one sin, not many, the one sin of rejecting the Saviour. It is one righteousness, the righteousness that Christ is. It is one judgment, the past judgment upon Satan, the completed victory over our great Adversary won by Christ.

In the words “ye behold me no more,” we have the key to the marvelous truth of this revelation concerning the Holy Spirit. The only example the world had of God’s righteousness (which is the only kind of righteousness there is,) was the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of Man. When He goes to the Father how is the world to know what righteousness is? for it can behold the righteous one no more. They cannot know it by reading about it. There is one way, and one way only to reveal righteousness, that is in a human being living a righteous life. To secure this Jesus Christ the righteous One must be manifest in the life. “They see me no more. They must know righteousness by looking at you. I have been the light of the world while in it. Now you, having become sons of light, are to be the light of the world” (John 12:23, 31, 35, 36; John 17:1, 22).

This is how the Holy Spirit glorifies Christ, by crowning Him Lord in the life, and manifesting the Son of man in each of His brethren. The world is convicted of sin by seeing the meaning of rejecting the Saviour as revealed in the man who accepts Him. The world is convicted of righteousness, and the difference between God’s righteousness and man’s morality, by seeing a righteous man. The world is convicted of the judgment of the prince of this world by seeing a life set free from the power of Satan.