We finished our previous session with three simple diagrams representing: (1) the heart of the sinner, (2) the heart of the Born-Again individual, and (3) the heart of the cleansed and Spirit-Filled individual.
As we move into this session on the Spirit-Filled Experience, I would like to share with you one more diagram I have been working on that depicts who it is that is sitting on your Throne of Life:
SINNER BORN-AGAIN SPIRIT-FILLED
Down through the years, the “Spirit-Filled Life” has been described and referred to by religious
writers in different terms – for example:
Christian Perfection ( Matt 5:48) Sanctification, ( 1 Thess. 5: 23)
Baptism with the Holy Spirit, (Matt. 3:11)
Christian Holiness (Rom. 6:22) Perfect Love, (1 John 4:16-18) Heart Purity, (Acts 15:9)
Fullness of the Blessing (Rom. 15:29)
Generally speaking, it is agreed that the Spirit-Filled experience refers to the act of God that takes place subsequent to, or following the born-again experience. It is where the believer is freed from “original sin” or “inherited depravity”.
The new relationship is brought about by the baptism of the Holy Spirit which cleanses the heart and fills the heart with the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit-filled person is empowered to live the victorious and productive life here on earth.
As in the born-again life, the spirit-filled life is provided by the redemptive and cleansing blood of Jesus. It is experienced and realized by faith, and is based on the person’s total commitment to the Lordship of Christ. The Holy Spirit confirms the experience by the witness of the Spirit to the heart of the believer.
One of my favorite authors, Oswald Chambers, describes sanctification or the Spirit-filled life:
Salvation means that we are brought to the place where we are able to receive something from God in the authority of Jesus Christ, viz., remission of sins.
Then there follows the second mighty work of grace – “and inheritance among them which are sanctified.” In sanctification the regenerated soul deliberately gives up his right to himself to Jesus Christ, and identifies himself entirely with God’s interest in other men.
Many of our best-loved hymns sung through the years, have referred to the Spirit-filled or sanctified life. One of my favorite songs, written by Augustus Toplady, says it this way:
Let the water and the blood
From thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Save from wrath, and make me pure.1
Part 1: The Spirit-Filled Experience Begins with a Response
Earlier, we discussed how the experience of the Born-Again Life was a specific “turning point” in an individual’s life. It was a positive encounter for the good, where the individual changed directions and chose one life-style over another. The experience started with the Holy Spirit’s convicting and convincing the individual to recognize a definite need, realize the necessity of a moral choice, and then move on to make that choice by responding in an appropriate and enlightened way.
In the same beautiful, and kind, and consistent way, the Holy Spirit begins to initiate the Continuation process in the Born-Again individual, toward the Spirit-Filled experience. In like manner, the Holy Spirit responds to the individual believer’s need to be freed from that old “original sin” or “inherited depravity”.
Previously, the diagram that represents the “Continuation of the Born-again” experience was presented. As you will recall, it represented the spiritual continuation process only up to the “conflict phase.” That conflict phase had resulted from increasing awareness of debilitating encounters included in the confrontation and temptation experiences following the Born-again transition.
Now, look closely at the next diagram that depicts how the Holy Spirit moves right into the next exciting provision, designed to take care of that “conflict.”
Interestingly, it seems that the Holy Spirit utilizes the same process to help you see your need for the Spirit-filled experience as he did to lead you into the Born-again experience:
DIVINE INITIATIVE
AWARENESS OF NEED
AWARENESS OF CHOICE
YOUR RESPONSE
DIVINE INITIATIVE
God does not desire for you to live a life of debilitating conflict resulting from moral confrontations and temptations. God desires for you to experience a positive and productive life of spiritual maturation and harmonious congruity. Therefore, He continuously reaches out to deliver you from the indwelling sin problem. He is so kind, and so faithful. He is the One who reaches out and begins to make you aware of your need, even before you have been able to identify that you have the need. God is always eager to make the first move.
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:44 NIV)
And so, Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make his people holy through his own blood. (Hebrews 13:12 NIV)
God through the Atonement initiated a twofold plan of salvation to take care of the two-fold problem of sin. He set the plan into motion. God wants the believer to be rid of the divided allegiance of the double-minded condition of the inner civil war. He wants to remove all inner hindrance so that there is perfect conformity in the heart of the believer. God has already taken care of the problem of the accumulated sins of the past. All the guilt and despair brought on be those acts of willful disobedience are gone. Now, it is time to deal with the insidious principle that caused you to accumulate those acts of sine in the first place - "the sin nature".
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (II Cor. 5:21 NIV)
For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by our sinful nature, God did by sending his Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to our sinful nature but according to the Spirit. (Romans 7:24 NIV)
In divine initiative, God through the Holy Spirit continues to reach out to the believer in order to solve the problem of the inbred sin nature.
AWARENESS OF NEED
At some point, within some set of circumstances, there comes the recognition that you have a responsibility to seek deliverance from the indwelling sin problem. The Holy Spirit is so personal at that point that the recognition of the need rarely comes to any two persons in the exact, same way. That is because the uniqueness of the situational conflict will be determined by the uniqueness of the individual.
To some, the revelation of need will come through an interpersonal conflict between some relative, acquaintance or business associate. To another, the revelation may come through a moral conflict over the question of committing back to God something or someone entrusted to the individual . . . a problem of ownership. To another, the problem of selfish manipulation and control may become the reveling conflict. Surrendering an old habit, or letting go of an old ambition, or accepting a new direction through the awareness of God’s will, often will be the circumstantial setting for the awareness of the need.
Generally speaking, the point of awareness will arise where your will and God’s Will are in direct opposition. It will be your own selfish “want to” in conflict with His insistent “should do”.
The awareness of your moral conflict will lead you to a sense of your own desperate need for Divine assistance. The Apostle Paul graphically portrays such a desperate need:
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Romans 7:24 NIV)
Out of your desperation and the realization that you can no longer make your way through your situation in a “business-as-usual” manner, there comes a ray of hope and a quiet assurance that there is a “more excellent way.” It is the work of the Holy Spirit that brings you to the awareness of your need and quickens your heart with the hope that there is a solution for your conflict.
The Holy Spirit does his work of convicting and convincing through the Word of God, either written, declared or living. He works just as he did in awakening your conscience in the Born-Again experience.
You are now faced with the need to admit to yourself and to God your inner conflict with the carnal mind and its selfish double-mindedness. You began to identify with both the positive and the negative alternatives present to you. You began to realize that there is a battle for moral mastery going on inside of you.
The Holy Spirit will help you see how the condition of your divided heart has caused you to fall short of the perfect Will of God. You will realize that your influence and example have not measured up to your own expectancy -- or God’s. That will produce, under God, a great hungering and thirsting; an insatiable longing and searching for a higher spiritual level of deliverance and victorious living:
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. (Matt. 6:6 KJV)
AWARENESS OF MORAL CHOICE
Once the deeper spiritual need is recognized, then, there follows a recognition of your responsibility to seek a deliverance from the indwelling sin problem.
In the middle of your conflict the Holy Spirit reveals the quiet, steady truth to your heart so that you can clearly see the ugly nature of the inner pollution which was inherited through the fateful fall in the Garden of Eden.
As you see the problem of inner conflict and the possibility of its solution through the experience of hearty purity, you are brought face to face with the necessity of moral choice.
Oh, that you would choose life; that you and your children might live! Choose to love the Lord your God and to obey him and to cling to him, for he is your life and the length of your days. (Deut. 30:19-20 TLB)
The power of choice - the exercise of free moral agency - is one of the most awesome factors ever designed by God! As we discussed earlier, it was totally God's design and option to give to human beings the ability and opportunity to choose whether the human individual would totally obey, follow, and worship God - or not! There would absolutely be no such thing as true worship of God without the factor of free choice. Otherwise, mankind would be a robot. True worship would be impossible, obedience would be a hoax, eternal fellowship would be a hollow partnership.
The exercise of free moral agency is an awesome and risky enterprise. The stakes are high. The consequences are eternal. It is almost unfathomable that God would, once again, extend the phenomenon of free choice when designing his experiment with human beings.
When Lucifer and the heavenly angels had been given the privilege and opportunity of free moral agency. . . they messed up; and Satan and one third of the angles, who thought they were going to manipulate God out of his position on the heavenly throne by their choice, were condemned and thrown out of heaven to a place called earth . . . from where they will eventually be thrown into a lake of fire to burn forever.
Here, once again, God patiently and kindly shows individual human beings the options and allows the implementation of free choice. Your life can be controlled by the carnal self, or by the Holy Spirit of God. You can choose your own selfish way or you can choose the “Holy Highway”.
And a main road will go through that once-deserted land; it will be named “The Holy Highway.” No evil-hearted men may walk upon it. God will walk there with you, even the most stupid cannot miss the way. (Isa. 35:8 TLB)
The Apostle Paul likens the experience to the “crucifixion” of the principle of lawlessness within the heart:
I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal. 2:20 NIV)
There must be a sense of “dying out” to the self-centeredness of the old nature of original sin. Yet, through the dying out process, as we will later discuss, it does not mean the elimination of you as an individual. But rather, you become more alive than ever, through a wonderful miracle whereby Christ now, uncontested, can live his life out through you to the glory of the Father; (more about that later).
The choice may be more difficult for some than for others. The sooner you let go, however, of all perverted selfishness, the sooner you will receive complete deliverance. Choosing the Spirit-Filled life is not an option – it is a mandate:
But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” (I Peter 1:15-16 NIV)
YOUR RESPONSE
After you have become aware of your deeper spiritual need and you have recognized that you must choose to seek deliverance from the indwelling sin problem, you are faced with the opportunity of rejecting or accepting the provisions offered to you within the experience of the Spirit-Filled life. Acceptance is the most wonderful opportunity ever afforded God’s creation.
Accepting the Holy Spirit’s provision will include some very logical steps:
Acknowledge through the help of the Holy Spirit, the extent of your need as it is shown to you, remembering that the basic cause of your moral conflict was the inherited, depraved nature.
Confess your need to God. You are not responsible for having inherited this plague of moral infection, but you are responsible to avail yourself to God’s cleansing cure. As the Holy Spirit helps you realize the importance of this new insight, you will be tutored by the Holy Spirit to the point of obedience where you eagerly pursue all that you are being shown regarding the Will of God for your life.
Commit all you are, all you have, and all you ever expect to be, to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. At this point, you lay down your arms of inner rebellion and self-serving as you, on purpose, make a complete commitment and full consecration of all of who you are, or ever will be, to God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and to the Blessed Holy Spirit:
I beseech you therefore, brethren by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. (Romans 12:1 KJV)
Believe and Accept God’s provision of the cleansing and infilling of the Holy Spirit to take care of the problem of original sin. At this time, you come to the point of total commitment and full consecration where you trust the Holy Spirit with all of your life, both here and now -- and forever. Just as we received the Born-Again life through faith, so it is in the Spirit-Filled experience, or Sanctification, we are made holy by faith.
It is as uncomplicated as that – through divine initiative you are made aware of your need for the Spirit-Filled experience, and you become aware of the fact that you must make a choice in the matter, and you must decide to:
Acknowledge
Confess
Commit
Believe and Accept
Based on that response -- God does the transforming miracle just as He promised He would!
Next Week: Spirit-Filled Life: Part 2: The Experience Delivers Divine Results