Monday, January 16, 2023

[Continued from yesterday]

The sovereign antidote against strife and confusion, the supreme principle of unity and service in the Church, was also the greatest gift of the Spirit, and the perfect and abiding proof of its presence, namely, love. This introduces a third criterion of the Spirit, and on the wider stage of the moral life. It is loyalty to the moral ideal of Christ. “If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk” (Gal. 5:25). Where the Spirit dwells, it produces a new, a higher, a unique type of moral life. For Paul, the Christian life was not the normal and natural product of human activity (Rom. 8:18), but a gracious divine gift, received by the descent of the Spirit into the human heart, for “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance” (Gal. 5:22-23). And there is yet one higher manifestation of the Spirit, the participation in the divine sonship of Jesus Christ. “And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Gal. 4:6). Where sonship is, there the Spirit is. On the other hand, “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God” (Rom. 8:14). Where the Spirit leads, there sonship is... The possession of the Spirit and participation in Christ’s sonship are but two aspects of the same experience. Here, the phenomenon, if it may be so called, bears its own credentials. Sonship is a self-evident work of the Spirit. But the evidence is available only for its owner. In order that the Spirit of adoption may attest itself to others, it must issue in the life according to the Spirit, by walking in the Spirit and bearing the fruit of the Spirit.

... Thomas Rees (1869-1926), The Holy Spirit in Thought and Experience, New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1915, p. 89 (see the book; see also Rom. 8:13-19; John 13:34; Rom. 7:14; Gal. 4:6; 5:22-25; Phil. 1:9-11; 2:14-16; Col. 1:10-12; 1 John 4:21; more at Christ, Experience, Holy Spirit, Love, Loyalty, Morality, Spirit)

 
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        Curator, Christian Quotation of the Day,
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Last updated: 01/08/23

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