The Purpose of the Spirit’s Coming
The clearest teaching on the place and purpose of the Holy Spirit’s coming is found in our Lord’s last discourses with His disciples prior to His death.
After disclosing to them the fact of His return to the Father, He tells them that He will pray the Father “and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth.” But in the next verse He says “I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you,” and again “At that day (that is, when the promised Spirit has come) ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” From all of which it follows that the Holy Spirit will so join believers in spiritual union with their ascended Lord, that Christ Himself will be in them through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in their hearts.
It is further made clear that the purpose of the Spirit’s coming is to exalt and glorify Christ. The Father will send the Spirit in Christ’s name, and bring to the remembrance of the disciples all that Christ had taught them. “He shall glorify me,” Jesus says in John 14:13, “for He shall receive of Mine, and shall shew it unto you.” Thus the Spirit was to glorify Christ in the mind and heart of His own followers. He has come also to bear witness to Christ in the world (John 15:26). “He will convict the world,” Jesus says in John 16:8-11, “of sin, and righteousness and judgment,” and our Lord explains how He will do this. The Spirit will convict of sin because men and women do not believe on Christ. He will convict of righteousness because Jesus is about to go to the Father, having fulfilled all righteousness in His own Person, which righteousness was vindicated by the Father in His ascension. The Spirit will convict of judgment because the Prince of this world is judged, and His judgment is consummated in the Cross (see John12:31, 32). Thus all that the Holy Spirit will do in the world is based upon what Christ has done for the world, and in regard to believers, the purpose of the Spirit’s coming is to make real and actual the presence of the Lord Christ in their hearts.
The ministry of the Holy Spirit is always Christwards. His constant aim is to turn the attention of men and women towards our Lord, rather than towards Himself. We may find here a simple test which can be applied to every form of teaching concerning the Holy Spirit. “How far,” we may ask, “does this teaching exalt Christ, and lead the Christian into a closer walk with Him?” The answer to this question will determine how far the teaching in question is in accordance with the Bible doctrine of the Holy Spirit. At no stage of our journey from the Cross to the Crown does the Lord Jesus Christ pass in any sense into the background. The work of the Holy Spirit is indeed indispensable, but its purpose is to reveal, to exalt and to glorify Christ. “He,” Paul says, “is the Head of the body, the church . . . that in all things He might have the pre-eminence.” This, of course, does not mean that the Holy Spirit is less than God. The whole of Scripture makes the Godhead indivisible, and there is an unbreakable harmony between the Son and the Spirit in their joint ministry.
What has been said above is exemplified in the historical coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Here, if anywhere, we might have expected the wonders of the Saviour to be forgotten for a while, and the Holy Spirit alone to be glorified. But it is not so. The filling of the disciples with the Holy Spirit left Christ all the more enthroned in their hearts, and made Him central to their preaching. It was to Christ that the Spirit testified through the lips of Peter, and Christ was glorified that day, as three thousand were convicted of sin and confessed their faith in Christ as Saviour and Lord. And so it is throughout the Book of Acts, which in a very real sense is the record of the enthroned Christ still at work in the world, as He dwells in His believing people by the Holy Spirit.
Dr. James Denny has said, “What vindicates any utterance as spiritual is that it is a testimony to the historical Saviour.” Every victory in the experience of the Christian depends upon the exaltation of Christ through the ministry of the Spirit. Christ’s Lordship on the throne in glory must be matched by His Lordship in the heart of the believer. The Holy Spirit has come to make this a reality, and thus to provide the secret of abiding peace and constant triumph.
– H. W. Cragg, The Conqueror’s Way