T. Austin-Sparks · 1 of 5

The Holy Spirit's Place and Work

"Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, out of his inner man shall flow rivers of living water. 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" (John 7:37-39).

We take it that a message is something which has been at work strongly and deeply in the heart of a messenger; something about which the messenger himself has been quite definitely exercised, and something which, more than being an activity of the mind in connection with truth, is a conviction of the heart, the result of a real movement of the heart resulting in the coming of such a messenger, either for the first time or again, to some very definite position before the Lord. If it is that which constitutes a message and a messenger, then we have no doubt that we are in the way of a message. We simply mean this: that we bring to you something which has been very strongly and in a renewed way (for it is not the first time) going on in our heart and concerning which there has been, as it were, a bringing back on the part of the Lord to an emphasis, a strength of position, and, we believe, with definiteness of meaning on His part. It is concerning the place and work of the Holy Spirit.

We trust that what is said, though in substance it may not be fresh, may have a newness about it in its application by the Lord Himself to our hearts. There will not be many of the Lord's people who will not be concerned with such a passage as the above; that is, concerned with the flowing out from their innermost being of rivers of living water. That is only one aspect of the many-sided meaning, value and activity of the Holy Spirit in our lives, but we have come especially to that because of the immediate association with it in the chapter: "This spake He of the Spirit... the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified." You will immediately recognise that the advent of the Holy Spirit is essentially related to the glorifying of the Lord Jesus. It is related to the fact that the Lord Jesus is glorified, that is, that He is now at the right hand of the Majesty on High, crowned with glory and honour. All the work of the Holy Spirit is bound up with that fact. The work of the Holy Spirit is the bringing forth of the meaning and content of that fact, to reveal, show and work out in part all the values and the virtues of the Lord Jesus being glorified. It is very important, when we are contemplating the work of the Holy Spirit, that we should know exactly where to begin, and that is our main note in this meditation.

The Starting Place of the Holy Spirit's Activity or Ministry

What is true of the Holy Spirit Himself in that matter has to become true, very really and definitely, in our consciousness. Sooner or later we shall be brought to the place where we are fully alive to the basis upon which the Holy Spirit takes up His work, so that it should be to our help if that is brought before us definitely and clearly. The starting place of the Holy Spirit's work and ministry in the life of anyone, or any company, is the place of recognition of the fact of the utter impossibility of anything without Him.

It sometimes requires time, and often very drastic activities, history or experience, but we may take it as a settled thing that the Holy Spirit begins at zero, demands zero, and stands back until zero is struck. But zero is to be struck in our consciousness; we have to be made aware of its fact.

We are called with a great calling. We are called into the fellowship of God's Son; called to a great life, into living relationship to God Himself. We are called to a high life, a life which is God's own Life in its nature, in its virtues: a holy life, a glorious life, a mighty life, a rich life.

We are called also into a great service, the fellowship of the gospel. It is the greatest work into which man has ever been called - workers together with God; God's fellow-workers. All of us are called into an eternal, heavenly and universal vocation. And yet the fact remains that neither you, nor I, nor any man, can breathe the first breath of that Life, or take the first step in that vocation without the Holy Spirit; and every subsequent breath and every subsequent step is in utter and entire dependence upon the Holy Spirit and impossible apart from Him. He is the vitality of that life and that service, and He is the quality of it. He is the very energy of it, and He is the nature of it.

There is a great utterance of the Lord Jesus which is very far-reaching, and has a very profound meaning: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Now, there you have two creations, and one of those creations is said to be the direct and immediate result of the Holy Spirit. But, mark you, the distinctive feature of that creation is not that it is just produced by the objective fiat or order of the Holy Spirit, as though the Spirit said: "Let it be!" It is not as though the Spirit commanded a creation to come into being, and it came in; as though there went forth a word and a power, and as the result some order of things was constituted. That is only half. The essential thing is this, that the Holy Spirit gives the character to the thing which He brings forth. He gives it its nature and its quality. It is Spirit! It is not merely something produced by Divine power, but something with a certain quality, a certain nature. It is Spirit; that is, right at its innermost reality it is spiritual. That makes possible its relationship to God, who is a Spirit; and because of that, everything else follows.

Take the matter of goodness, holiness. There is no goodness outside of God. That sweeps the board of all the counterfeits, all the false philosophies, the humanitarianisms, and the substitutes of the devil. Even the Lord Jesus Himself will interrogate a man who says to Him: "Good Master". He will say: "Why do you call Me good? There is none good but one, that is, God." There is, of course, a deeper meaning of that interrogation. It carries with it this further interrogation: 'Do you recognise who I am?' But still the principle holds good: "There is none good but one, that is, God." Goodness is inseparably bound up with God.

Nothing that does not come from God can get back to God; therefore, the Holy Spirit must be the quality of that which is going to get back to God. That is the profoundest element in the new birth, being born of the Spirit, that the Holy Spirit gives a Divine quality to that which comes to Him, making it possible for that to come to God; and apart from that kind of birth nothing will ever get to God. From the very first act of the Holy Spirit in new birth, in introducing that Divine quality, that Divine element, right on, all goodness is mediated by the Holy Spirit and is never found anywhere else. You and I cannot produce it, constitute it, provide it or contribute one fragment of it. Every bit of it comes by the Holy Spirit. The increase of holiness, of goodness, of Divine nature, is by way of the Holy Spirit all the time.

When that is taken in its inclusive meaning, it is seen that the life of a child of God is an impossible thing without the Holy Spirit. We cannot live the Christian life apart from Him. But that also means this: that to live the life of the child of God fully, we must be filled with the Spirit. We shall live as children of God in the measure in which the Holy Spirit has possession of our lives, and no more. If the Spirit fills, we shall be living the life of a child of God on a very full scale. If the Spirit is not filling, then our lives as children of God will be at low ebb, or proportionately without the Holy Spirit.

What is true in the matter of the life is true in the matter of the service. No matter how much knowledge there may be, enthusiasm, vigour, interest, activity, the measure of the abiding, eternal, universal fruitfulness is essentially the measure of the Holy Spirit doing the work. It is not for us to judge, but it is for us to recognise facts. It is for us to recognise the laws that God has already laid down. Nothing which is not done by the Holy Spirit is done of God.

That is a challenging statement, and it may raise many problems, and provoke many questions. Nevertheless that fact is sure, and even to disciples who had seen all that the Lord Jesus had to show them in the days of His flesh, and heard all that He had to say to them in those days, and had recognised His cross, and had seen Him after His resurrection, the Word is still: "Tarry ye... until ...". And then from zero: the first breath, the first activity by the Holy Spirit, right on through everything afterwards there must be the activity of the Holy Spirit. When that ceases to be the order of the day, and men assume responsibility for the work of God, you find a different state of things coming in. That is responsible for a very painful history, of which we are all too well aware as having gone on through the centuries.

It is fruitless to contemplate such questions as what would have happened if things had continued as they were at the beginning, and if only we could have had another generation on the basis of the ministry of the apostle Paul. It was said some years ago that if things had continued on the basis of the worldwide activity of the Moravian brethren in their first years, the whole world would have been evangelised in less than a generation. Here today, two thousand years afterwards, the whole world is nothing like evangelised. Why? Well, things did not continue as they were at the beginning, and that is the answer. But it is a very forceful answer. It is a mighty way of enforcing this fact, that, pile up your activities, pour in your energies, and let them be other than the activities of the Holy Spirit, and you spread things over an indefinite time, and never reach your end.

That is taking a wide view, but what belongs to the wide view comes down to the individual. None of us can live or serve to any Divine purpose except by the Holy Spirit.

That means, then, that we shall have to come to that consciousness - in a very real way - of the Holy Spirit's basis of beginning and going on. We shall be compelled sooner or later to take that position, either by force of outward circumstances (and who shall say that that is not moving again today in a very real way, in the realisation of ineffectiveness and inability to cope with the situation), or by reason of our own inward state, our utter weakness, the breakdown in the realm of our own efforts, where we come in every part of our being to recognise that that is something beyond us, we cannot touch it.

Oh! The utter folly of trying to inflate human energy and activity in the enterprise of the gospel, and thrusting out into this universal conflict human stuff upon the basis of: Go and do the best you can for Christ! That spells ruin sooner or later. Oh, that every one who went out into the work of the gospel had first of all been brought to this place of tarrying until they were endued with power from on high, and that under the deep consciousness that the whole thing was beyond them otherwise.

The Lord Jesus kept men near to Him for three years and more, and during that time we have a very clear manifestation of the fact that they were unfit for this work. How they did break down on the right hand and on the left! And how their deepest and strongest confidence in themselves was proved to be the leaning upon a broken reed! One who would with loudest voice, and with truest motive and meaning as far as he knew himself, declare that he would go even to death with his Lord, would be found within a very few hours denying his Lord in order to save his own skin. How little we know ourselves until we are put to the test! The Lord knew quite well that there were big tests ahead for these men. He knew what was in man, and He sought to let them know it, so that they came to the place where they knew so deeply that there was no shadow of a doubt about it, that it was impossible to them. God only must do it, and if God did not do it, then it could never be done.