Ever Increasing Faith - 10. Life in the Spirit
by Smith
Wigglesworth
Bible Reading, 2 Corinthians
3
We are told that we are to leave the first principles of the doctrine of
Christ and go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance
from dead works and the doctrine of baptisms and other first principles
(Hebrews 6). What would you think of a builder who was everlastingly pulling
down his house and putting in fresh foundations? Never look back if you want
the power o f God in your life. You will find out that in the measure you have
allowed yourself to look back you have missed that which God has for you.
The Holy Ghost shows us that we must never look back to the law of sin and
death from which we have been delivered. God has brought us into a new order
of things, a life of love and liberty in Christ Jesus that is beyond all human
comprehension. Many are brought into this new life through the power of the
Spirit of God, and then, like the Galatians, who ran well at the beginning,
they try to perfect themselves on the lines of legalism. They go back from the
life in the Spirit to a life on natural lines. God is not pleased with this,
for He has no place for the man who has lost the vision. The only thing to do
is to repent. Don't try to cover up anything. If you have been tripped tip on
any line, confess it out, and then look to God to bring you to a place of
stability of faith where your whole walk will be in the Spirit.
We all ought to have a clear conviction that salvation is of the Lord. It is
more than a human order of things. If the enemy can move you from a place of
faith, he can get you outside the plan of God. The moment a man falls into
sin, divine life ceases to flow, and his life becomes one of helplessness. But
this is not God's thought for any of His children. Read the third chapter of
John's first epistle and take your place as a son of God. Take the place of
knowing that you are a son of God, and remember that, as your hope is set in
Christ, it should have a purifying effect on your life. The Holy Spirit says,
"Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for His seed remaineth in him:
and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." There is life and power in the
seed of the Word that is implanted within. God is in that "cannot," and there
is more power in that word of His than in any human objections. God's thought
for everyone of us is that we shall reign in life by Jesus Christ. You must
come to see how wonderful you are in God and how helpless you are in yourself.
God declared Himself more mighty than every opposing power when He cast out
the powers of darkness from heaven. I want you to know that the same power
that cast Satan out of heaven dwells in every man that is born of God. If you
would but realize this, you would reign in life. When you see people laid out
under an evil power, when you see the powers of evil manifesting themselves,
always put the question, "Did Jesus come in the flesh?" I have never seen an
evil power answer in the affirmative. When you know you have an evil spirit to
deal with you have power to cast it out. Believe it and act on it, for greater
is He that is in you than he that is in the world" (1 John 4:4). God means you
to be in a place of overcoming, and has put a force within you whereby you may
defeat the devil.
Temptations will come to all. If you are not worth tempting you are not worth
powder and shot. Job said: "When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as
gold." In every temptation that comes, the Lord lets you be tempted up to the
very hilt, but will never allow you to be defeated if you walk in obedience;
for right in the midst of the temptation He will always "make a way of
escape."
Tongues and Interpretation: "God comes forth and with His power sweeps away
the refuge of lies and all the powers of darkness, and causes you always to
triumph in Christ Jesus. The Lord loveth His saints and covereth them with His
almighty wings."
May God help us to see it. We cannot be to the praise of His glory until we
are ready for trials, and are able to triumph in them. We cannot get away from
the fact that sin came in by nature, but God comes into our nature and puts it
into the place of death, that the Spirit of God may come into the temple in
all His power and liberty, that right here in this present evil world Satan
may be dethroned by the believer.
Satan is always endeavoring to bring the saints of God into disrepute,
bringing against them railing accusations, but the Holy Ghost never comes with
condemnation. He always reveals the blood of Christ. He always brings us help.
The Lord Jesus referred to Him as the Comforter who would come. He is always
on hand to help in the seasons of trial and test. The Holy Ghost is the
lifting power of the church of Christ. And Paul tells us that we "are
manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ, . . . written not with ink,
but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshly
tables of the heart." The Holy Ghost begins in the heart, right in the depths
of human affections. He brings into the heart the riches of the revelation of
Christ, implanting purity and holiness there, so that, out of its depths,
praises may well up continually.
The Holy Ghost will make us epistles of Christ, ever telling out that Jesus
our Lord is our Redeemer and God has never put away that revelation. And
because of the perfect atonement of that slain Lamb, there is salvation,
healing and deliverance for all. Some people think that they have only to be
cleansed once, but as we walk in the light the blood of Jesus Christ is ever
cleansing.
The very life of Christ has been put within us, and is moving within us-a
perfect life. May the Lord help us to see the power of this life. The years of
a man's life are threescore and ten, and so in the natural order of things, my
life will be finished in seven years, but I have begun a new life that will
never end. "From everlasting to everlasting Thou art God." This is the life I
have come into, and there is no end to this life. In me is working a power
stronger than every other power; Christ, the power of God, formed within me. I
can see why we need to be clothed upon from above, for the life that is in me
is a thousand times bigger than I am outside. There must be a tremendous
expansion. I see, and cannot help seeing, that this thing cannot be understood
on natural lines; no natural reason can comprehend the divine plan.
"We are not sufficient to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency
is of God." If you go back, you miss the plan. We leave the old order of
things. We can never have confidence in the flesh; we cannot touch that. We
are in a new order, a spiritual order. It is a new life of absolute faith in
the sufficiency of our God in everything that pertains to life and godliness.
You could never come into this place and be a Seventh-day Adventist. The law
has no place in you. You are set free from everything. At the same time, like
Paul, you are "bound in the Spirit" so that you would not do anything to
grieve the Lord.
Paul further tells us that He has made us "able ministers of the New
Testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but
the spirit giveth life." It is one thing to read this, and another to have the
revelation of it and to see the spiritual force of it. Any man can live in the
letter and become dry and wordy, limited in knowledge of spiritual verities,
and spend his time everlastingly in splitting hairs; but as soon as he touches
the realm of the Spirit, all the dryness goes, all the spirit of criticism
leaves. There can be no divisions in a life in the Spirit. The Spirit of God
brings such pliability and such love! There is no love like the love in the
Spirit. It is a pure, a holy, a divine love that is shed in our hearts by the
Spirit. It loves to serve and to honor the Lord.
I can never estimate what the Baptism of the Holy Ghost has been to me these
past fifteen years. It seems that every year has had three years packed into
it, so that I have had forty-five years of happy service since 1907. And it is
getting better all the time. It is a luxury to be filled with the Spirit, and
at the same time it is a divine command for us, not to be filled with wine
wherein is excess, but to be filled with the Spirit. No Pentecostal person
ought to get out of bed without being lost in the Spirit and speaking in
tongues as the Spirit gives utterance. No one should come into the door of an
assembly without speaking in tongues or having a psalm, or a note of praise.
We emphasize that at the incoming of the Spirit He should so fill us that the
last member in the body is yielded to Him, and that no one is baptized in the
Spirit without speaking in tongues as the Spirit gives utterance; and I
maintain that, with a constant filling, you will speak in tongues morning,
noon and night. As you live in the Spirit, when you walk down the steps of the
house where you live, the devil will have to go before you. You will be more
than a conqueror over the devil.
I see everything a failure except that which is done in the Spirit. But as you
live in the Spirit, you move, act, eat, drink, and do everything to the glory
of God. Our message is always this, "Be filled with the Spirit. This is God's
place for you, and it is as far above the natural life as the heavens are
above the earth. Yield yourselves for God to fill.
Moses had a tremendous trial with the people. They were always in trouble. But
as he went up into the mount, and God unfolded to him the ten commandments,
the glory fell. He rejoiced to bring those two tables of stone down from the
mount, and his very countenance shone with the glory. He was bringing to
Israel that which, if obeyed, would bring life.
I think of my Lord coming from heaven. I think all heaven was moved by the
sight. The law of the letter was brought by Moses and it was made glorious,
but all its glory was dimmed before the excelling glory which Jesus brought to
us in the Spirit of life. The glory of Sinai paled before the glory of
Pentecost. Those tables of stone with their "Thou shalt not, thou shalt not,"
are done away; for they never brought life to anyone, and the Lord has brought
in a new covenant, putting His law in our minds and writing it in our hearts,
this new law of the Spirit of life. As the Holy Ghost comes in, He fills us
with such love and liberty that we shout for joy these words of this 11th
verse, "Done away! Done away!" Henceforth there is a new cry in our hearts, "I
delight to do Thy will, O God." He taketh away the first, the ministration of
death, written and engraven in stones, that He might establish the second,
this ministration of righteousness, this life in the Spirit.
You ask, "Does a man who is filled with the Spirit cease to keep the
commandments?" I simply repeat what the Spirit of God has told us here, that
this ministration of death, written and engraven in stones (and you know that
the ten commandments were written on stones) is "DONE AWAY." The man who
becomes a living epistle of Christ, written with the Spirit of the living God,
has ceased to be an adulterer, or a murderer or a covetous man; the will of
God is his delight. I love to do the will of God; there is no irksomeness to
it; it is no trial to pray; no trouble to read the Word of God; it is not a
hard thing to go to the place of worship. With the psalmist you say, "I was
glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord."
How does this new life work out? The thing works out because God works in you
to will and to do of His own good pleasure (Phil. 2:13). There is a great
difference between a pump and a spring. The law is a pump, the Baptism is a
spring. The old pump gets out of order, the parts perish, and the well runs
dry. The letter killeth. But the spring is ever bubbling up and there is a
ceaseless flow direct from the throne of God. There is life.
It is written of Christ, "Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness."
And in this new life in the Spirit, in this new covenant life, you love the
things that are right and pure and holy, and shudder at all things that are
wrong. Jesus was able to say, "The prince of this world cometh, and bath
nothing in Me," and the moment we are filled with the Spirit of God we are
brought into like wonderful condition, and, as we continue to be filled with
the Spirit, the enemy cannot have an inch of territory in us.
Do you not believe that you can be so filled with the Spirit that a man who is
not living right can be judged and convicted by your presence? As we go on in
the life of the Spirit, it will be said of us, "in whose eyes a vile person is
contemned" (Psalm 15:4). Jesus lived there and moved in this realm, and His
life was a constant reproof to the wickedness around. But He was the Son of
God, you say. God, through Him has brought us into the place of sonship, and I
believe that if He has a chance with the material, the Holy Ghost can make
something of us, and bring us to the same place.
I don't want to boast. If I glory in anything, it is only in the Lord who has
been so gracious to me. But I remember one time stepping out of a railroad
carriage to wash my hands. I had a season of prayer, and the Lord just filled
me to overflowing with His love. I was going to a convention in Ireland, and I
could not get there fast enough. As I returned, I believe that the Spirit of
the Lord was so heavily upon me that my face must have shone. (No man can tell
himself when the Spirit transforms his very countenance.) There were two
clerical mere sitting together, and as I got into the carriage again, one of
them cried out, "You convince me of sin." Within three minutes every one in
the carriage was crying to God for salvation. This thing has happened many
times in my life. It is this ministration of the Spirit that Paul speaks of,
this filling of the Spirit, that will make your life effective, so that even
the people in the stores where you trade will want to leave your presence
because they are brought under conviction.
We must move from everything of the letter. All that we do must be done under
the anointing of the Spirit. The trouble has been that we as Pentecostal
people have been living in the letter. Believe what the Holy Spirit says
through Paul-that all this ministration of condemnation that has hindered your
liberty in Christ is done away. The law is DONE AWAY! As far as you are
concerned, all that old order of things is forever done away, and the Spirit
of God has brought in a new life of purity and love. The Holy Ghost takes it
for granted that you are finished with all the things of the old life when you
become a new creation in Christ. In the life in the Spirit, the old
allurements have lost their power. The devil will meet you at every turn, but
the Spirit of God will always lift up a standard against him.
O, if God had His way, we should be like torches, purifying the very
atmosphere wherever we go, moving back the forces of wickedness.
Tongues and Interpretation: "The Lord is that Spirit. He moves in your heart.
He shows you that the power within you is mightier than all the powers of
darkness."
Done away! What do I mean? Will you be disloyal? You will be more than loyal.
Will you grumble when you are treated badly? No, you will turn the other
cheek. This is what you will always do when God lives in you. Leave yourselves
in God's hands. Enter into rest. "He that is entered into His rest, he also
hath ceased from his own works, as God did from His" (Hebrews 4). O this is a
lovely rest! The whole life is a Sabbath. This is the only life that can
glorify God. It is a life of joy, and every day is a day of heaven on earth.
There is a continued transformation in this life. Beholding the Lord and His
glory we are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even by the
Spirit of the Lord. There is a continued unveiling, a constant revelation, a
repeated clothing upon from above. I want you to promise God never to look
back, never to go back to that which the Spirit has said is "done away." I
made this promise to the Lord that I would never allow myself to doubt His
Word.
There is one thing about a baby, it takes all that comes to it. A prudent man
lets his reason cheat him out of God's best. But a baby takes all that its
mother brings, and tries to swallow the bottle and all. The baby can't walk,
but the mother carries it; the baby cannot dress itself, but the mother
dresses it. The baby can't even talk. So in the life of the Spirit, God
undertakes to do what we cannot do. We are carried along by Him, He clothes
us, and HC gives us utterance. Would that we all had the simplicity of the
babes.