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Okay, a little update. We're not going to meet next week because we don't have a teacher. I'm going camping. Now, I want you to notice something on the handouts. I don't know if any of you have read ahead, but in the chapter that we'll cover two weeks from now, it has to do with Deeper Life authors.
And most of those guys, or I'd say half of them, those books are not available. However, one of the, so I didn't give you a lot of questions. I just gave you one side of true and false and then two questions. And one of the questions is, will you see if you can find where those books are available? I went on the web this week a couple of times and I found a really cool website that's called abebooks.com. A-B-E.
And what it does is it's a place where like if I have say 25 books I want to sell, old ones, I can register with them. I get on their website and they market me. So I can go into their website, put a name in and they will give me all the people that have the books that I'm looking for.
So I I spent about 200 bucks this week trying to buy every one of these. And what I and the reason I did that is that I have a lot of these in my library already. But I'm thinking that it would be real beneficial for us to have either. If you can't get enough copies for each one of us to buy some, then what we should do is have a library where you could check them out. And these books are invaluable. These are all good ones. Yeah, they're all great ones. And everybody should have a copy of Romans verse by verse by Newell, and that's available in a lot of places.
It's about 18 bucks. Yeah. The Wealth, Walk, and Warfare of the Christian by Ruth Paxson. I only found one of those and I ordered it, so I don't know. His Side vs. Our Side, Norman Harrison. I got one of those. Galatians by William Kelly. Those are available fairly easily. The Normal Christian Life is available fairly easily by Watchman Nee.
And when you read that chapter, you're going to see that Miles recommends certain books by authors, but not all the books by that particular author. And that's very important. That's very important. Because like Watchman Nee has two good books, the rest I don't recommend. Which ones? This one, The Normal Christian Life and Sit, Walk, Stand. Those are the two that are good.
The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit. Now, I went to every website that had this and ordered it because It's going to be the book that I'm going to use in the next quarter when we talk about the person and work of the Holy Spirit. That's the primary text I'm going to use. And I don't know if I can get enough of them for everybody to have one. And the ones I ordered are all used. So we'll see.
But it's a really, really good book. And I have two books I'm going to give you for this next quarter. Born Crucified is a great one, if I can get enough of them. Bone of his bone, I ordered six of those and got them already. Abide in Christ by Andrew Murray, you can get that one.
Joshua is a tough one to get. What is man is available. You can get it. I don't know if they're new. Everyman evangelism, tough one to find. Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret is a great one. That's easily available. You should be able to get that. Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth, I have about 50 of those in my library. Is that Scofield?
The Cross of Calvary by Jesse Penn Lewis. Now here's another author that a couple of her things were terrific. Because of her influence of the Welsh Revival, which was a charismatic thing, I don't recommend anything other that she wrote. And The New Life by Reginald Wallace.
As a matter of fact, the church has copies of those upstairs. So I want you to see if you can find them. We can make a collection of these. Here's why you need them. One, everybody in this class, because we've been working on spiritual growth for over a year, needs to read every one of these, because they're really valuable. And two is, you need to have them available for your ministry, because they're terrific volumes written by quality people that will help other folks, because it will help explain things better than you and I can. That's a Christian book, eBay. Sometimes you can get them on eBay. Sometimes you can go to like Kregel Books and Kregel has a used book thing that you can find them.
Kregel? Kregel, K-R-E-G-E-L. What if you don't have an internet access? Then you're in tough luck. Well, you can go to the library. They have this public thing called the library. It doesn't cost you anything. Would you check to see if any of these are available in our library? What's that? Did you look in the library specifically? I haven't.
I just took these out of the chapter and we should be somewhat familiar. My Newell's Romans is falling apart because I've used it so much and I have two or three copies of that. It's the quintessential study in the Book of Romans. There's nothing better than that. I don't care where it came from. Could you spell that K-R-E-G-E-L? K-R-E-G-E-L. K-R-E-G-E-L. Yeah, craigobooks, I think, dot com is what it is. And the other one is abebooks.com.
That just popped up and, boy, I spent a whole bunch of time, I spent 200 bucks on that place. But I had some of their people, you know, trying to confirm the orders or that one of them came back and said, I'm sorry, I don't have the book anymore. So they even have people from England and other places logged on there. So it's the shipping's more expensive than the book.
OK, so what we'll do in two weeks is we'll go over the questions. And then the other the other thing I put in the questions is. list the titles and authors you know that you know of that would fit under the heading of Deeper Life. So if you've read anything that you think that is a really good book, write it down and share it with us. Two weeks from now we'll do this.
And so I'm thinking that one of the things we can do over the next three or four months, if we don't have enough of these books for everybody, we can create our own little lending system, and we can all read them in three or four months. Because most of these aren't very long. New Romans is thick, but a lot of these are small books. But they're just packed with terrific spiritual food.
Okay. A Bite Above, Chapter 9. The Spirit's Goal. True or false? We are exhorted in the word neither to grieve by sinning nor quench by resisting the indwelling, sensitive Holy Spirit. True. Have you ever thought about what the difference between grieving and quenching is? It's the first place I've ever read that even distinguished between the two. So, he equates grieving by sinning and quenching by resisting.
How would you resist the Holy Spirit? By sinning? No. Circular reasoning. How would you quench the Holy Spirit? Does it ignore the teaching or the speaking of the Holy Spirit? Yeah, which I guess you could say is sinning. Whatever's not a faith is sin.
If you just say, I don't buy it, I don't believe it, or it's not true of me, you're resisting His work. Or you could be sinning and He could be convicting you, And you could say, never mind. I like what I'm doing. So, quenching is a resisting of His work in you. True or false? We cause the Holy Spirit grief by our sin. In spite of this, He carries on the work to which He was commissioned by our risen and glorified Lord. True or false?
Yeah, you mean to tell me He doesn't sulk? when you resist him? He doesn't quit? Or when he's grieved, he doesn't say, well, I'll show you. I won't do any blessing for you for 45 minutes. You're in trouble. Do you think he does that? Maybe put it this way. Can you out-sin God's grace? Can you out-sin the Holy Spirit's attitude toward you? Even if you grieve him? No, because it's on God's side. Yeah. And why?
What's the plan here? This is like salvation. You know, salvation wasn't your idea, it was God's idea. And he put it together and implemented it without checking with us to see if it was okay. Right? So it's a plan that's in place that we can avail ourselves of, but we can't change it, speed it up, slow it down, or do anything. We just avail ourselves of it. Same way with the Holy Spirit. The reason that he does what he does is because he's been commissioned to do it by the Lord Jesus. They worked it out, and he's got his agenda, and he's moving ahead. And you can't change what they've determined that they're going to do.
That's why it's so important to understand the covenant between the Father and the Son. That's why it's so important to understand what God is doing through studying the Word and also the principles, the way in which he functions, the way he does things. Now, the three chapters in the Bible that talk about what the Holy Spirit's been sent by Jesus to do is John 14, 15, and 16. You don't have to read the whole chapters, just find the part in there about the Comforter.
And it will explain clearly his entire ministry. And there are so many of us of us believers who have equated other things to the Holy Spirit that are not His ministry. And if you can't verify what you might think is a ministry of the Holy Spirit with the Word of God, then it's a false thing. It just is. So again, it's important to understand who He is, what he's been sent to do, and that's what we're going to spend three months on in July, August, and September, the personal work of the Holy Spirit.
To her thoughts, the Holy Spirit is always looking for a reason to chastise us, child train us. What do you think? I don't think he has to look very far. But I don't think he goes out on purpose for something. I think it just happens. Okay, he's got two basic ministries with a Christian.
What are they? Convict us of our sins and restore us to fellowship, right? What's the other ministry? What's that? Teach us to reveal Christ. Okay, so he's got two ministries. To reveal Christ to us. Which Christ is he revealing to us? Glorified Christ. Okay? Glorified man. And if in that work we resist Him or we grieve Him, then His ministry immediately changes to...
He turns from fruit bearing to conviction and to child training. Okay? Now, child training is designed to accomplish what purpose? What's it designed to do? If I'm chastising John, child training, then what am I trying to do? Correct his course. You're trying to wet the proverb to train up a child in the way he should go? Right. I'm trying to restore him really to fellowship with me, you know, so that he can learn what's important for him to function within the family environment, you know, what we expect of him, what his life there is like, you know, and that he has a role to play in that. Well, the Holy Spirit, in His child training and chastening us, primarily is the conviction of sin, to show us where we are in terms of our lack of fellowship with the Lord Jesus, to bring us to confession.
We've been over this before, but what is confession? Okay, anybody else? What is confession? on admitting that Christ was the right way. Agreeing with God that whatever sin is there, you agree with Him, yeah, that's sin. Confession means to say the same thing. That's what the word means. So, when the Holy Spirit convicts you of sin and you confess, what are you going to say? I agree with Him. Okay, I'm a sinner. Are you going to say that? Think carefully, it's a trick question. I wouldn't say I'm a sinner, I'd say I sinned. And now I'm going to come back into falsehood. And my sinning is totally inconsistent with who you say I am. You see that?
It is not normal behavior for a Christian to sin. It's abnormal behavior. To walk in the Spirit and abide in Christ is normal for the believer. That's normal life and behavior. It's abnormal to be sinning. So when the Spirit convicts us and we confess, it's really an understanding and an agreeing with God about who He says we are and, of course, about the fact that We've been acting or living inconsistent with who we are positionally. See that? That make sense to you?
This idea that we've had for decades in our society, primarily fostered by, I think, Catholicism and Methodism, that confession is a laundry list of the sins we've committed and we beg God for forgiveness, is nonsense. That's not what confession is. if the word means to say the same thing. God isn't sitting up there with the Holy Spirit in us, you know, with this little rubber mallet beating us over the head because of the bad stuff we've done. It's not getting at the root, it's just exposing the desire.
That's right. Hebrews 12, 11 says, Chasing may be grievous, nevertheless afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them who are exercised by it. The peaceable fruit of righteousness is intimacy with Christ. True or false? Spirit-fostered growth can be attained through meeting conditions or having experiences, and the spirit depends on such means. No way, Jose. Spirit for fostered growth can't be obtained through meeting conditions or having experiences. Do you agree with that? You would have thought otherwise. Would you not have?
I mean, isn't it just a natural viewpoint of the old man to go to God and say, just tell me what to do and I'll do it? You know, what condition, you know, it's like sitting at your computer trying to figure out, to get it to do something you want it to do, and you know that if the right combination of keys pushed, it will respond correctly. Well, we view God the same way. If I can just figure out the condition under which He wants me to respond, then He will bless me. The problem with that is that it's a legalism. Now why wouldn't there be any conditions for us to grow spiritually?
Because the work is already done. The work is already done and so he's operating and functioning from a completed work, right? And so way back when when we were talking about position and condition, that's why position is so important for us to understand. because he works from that position. And the position is a completed... something's already done. It's already true of everybody in this room. And there are no conditions for you to fulfill in order for that position that you already are in to be implemented in your condition. Do you see that? To be filled with the Spirit means that I'm growing spiritually.
True or false? This is a hard one. This is a really hard one. True or false? False. Okay. Everybody agree with false? Or do I have some trues? You've got some trues over here. It's a trick question. Truth. Actually, it's not a trick question, but it's a very subtle one.
What's the purpose of the infilling of the Spirit? He says the purpose of the infilling of the Spirit is to fill you with the Spirit of Christ, or to make you like Him. To manifest the life of the Lord Jesus in us. And if you're doing that... Is that growth? You're growing spiritually. But are you doing it? I mean, you're not doing it, but if that's happening, if He's filling you, then you're... Okay. Now, what's the difference between indwelling and filling? Come on, this isn't tough. What's the difference?
Is it like position and condition? No, Holy Spirit has come to indwell every believer, right? And He is permanently indwelling the spirit of every single believer. That's like position. That's position. And He's, you know, Christ is in you, and you're in Him. Now, that's indwelling.
What's filling? No. Why would you be filled with the Spirit? For what purpose? Yeah, so that's the trick in the question. If you're filled with the Spirit, it's primarily to manifest the life of the Lord Jesus for service. You may be manifesting the facets of the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, etc. They're characteristics of the Lord Jesus Himself. To be filled means that you're filled with Him and you're manifesting Him. Are you growing? I don't think so, because growing is done by beholding Him. So, filling is primarily for service.
Now, can you do both at the same time? Sure. No problem. Absolutely. But it was kind of tricky. But think about this. There's times when a believer, in studying the Word of God, literally beholds Christ and is taken up with Him, right? And the whole transaction is you and Christ. Now, there are other times when he's filling you for service, when you're focused on the service. And you're involved in what you're doing. Yeah, you're beholding him, but that's not the primary thing that's going on. The primary thing that's going on is whatever the service might be. True or false? The Spirit of God will never give power through faith in himself. Absolutely true. Everybody agree with that? Why? It's not his job. Yeah, what is his job?
When it's to Christ. That's right. Faith in the Spirit. I'm sorry? The Spirit of God. Yeah, that was the tricky part. Yeah, and so the faith is resonant within Christ, not in the spirit. You alright with that? Okay. True or false says the cross is applied to the old life. The awakened one finds himself more free to concentrate upon the Lord Jesus above. Absolutely true. Now, there's kind of an equation here, or a cause and effect sort of a thing. And the issue is this.
The Holy Spirit, in His work in the growing believer, applies the cross to the old man. For what purpose? In the growing believer, the Holy Spirit will apply the cross, the death of Christ, to the old man within the believer. Why does he do that? To make the old man inoperable.
Okay, and if that part is accomplished, then what's the result? Yeah, the life of Christ can be manifested. So there's this dual implementation going on in the believer's life all the time. There's the application of the death of the cross by the Spirit to the old man to render him inactive, put him out of business. At the same time, revealing Christ to the believer. Now the believer, subjectively, doesn't view that he has the freedom to behold the glory of the Lord until he understands and rests in the fact that the cross has accomplished his freedom so he can do that. Does that make sense? Did I say that okay? If it doesn't, come at me, because that's really what happens.
We are so stuck in the old man. as young believers, that we think, oh, well, I can abide, and I can behold, and I can do all this cool stuff. But you can't, because you're really in bondage, conditionally in bondage to that old man. You are. It's just a way of it. So here comes the Spirit of God in you, and He begins to apply the cross to Adam. And that's not comfortable, it's not fun, but you find that through that application, you're free. And you're free to behold Christ, unimpeded.
A lot of times I find myself worried about what I'm losing rather than what I'm gaining. And that takes a lot of... Who's worried there? until the Holy Spirit reveals to the believer what he does have in Christ. Well, and it's almost like you have to go through the process to kind of figure out what's going on. Let me read this paragraph. The failing one finds that just when he depended upon the Spirit most, and just when he needed Him most, he did not seem to respond. Rather, he seemed to make him all the more miserable and needy.
The Spirit of God will never give power through faith in himself, but will ever increase the believer's realization of his need of Christ. In this, he is faithfully carrying out his mission of glorifying the Lord Jesus, all the while speaking not of himself, but remaining hidden. He has not been revealed. He has not even revealed his name.
So, lots of times we get misdirected, is a way to say it, in our Christian life, and we read something, we think, oh, the Holy Spirit's the one I ought to be Concentrating on because he's the one that's got all the power and he's the one that's going to implement everything I need to find out as much as I can about him. No No Or you can focus on the father which is okay, but without Christ you don't know the father So the Holy Spirit's job is to focus you on the Lord Jesus Christ in him alone Say well, you know, I mean how How savvy are you about that as a young, growing believer? You're not at all. And you're focused primarily on yourself. That may take decades to get over.
I've been conditioned to think that I need to basically work on myself, make myself better. Therefore, it's easy to believe that I can keep the Holy Spirit from doing His work. Let's take your example, because it's a really good one. You've been conditioned to make yourself better through prayer, reading the Bible, doing good works, writing checks, all the stuff that goes with it. So you go to the Spirit, you're praying, and you're thinking, well, I've already discovered I can't live this Christian life, it can't get any better, but the Spirit's been sent to do that.
So I solicit his help to make me better. And nothing happens. Matter of fact, it's getting worse. Right? So is that what it talks about? Faith in the Spirit? Yeah, so what you've done is you've put your faith in the Spirit to implement something that he's never been sent to do nor intended to do.
But that doesn't mean he's going to keep you in the dark forever until you get it. But he is teaching you where the focus should be. And in the process, he's going to free you from having to work on you. And once you get that part of it, then you're free to behold him. Miles used to say, when it finally dawns on you how intensely interested Christ is in you, it frees you to be interested in him.
It's like, wait a minute, if my position is really true, What have I got to be worried about, if it's true? I think that when we put faith in the Holy Spirit to give us His power to change us, then, and when He doesn't do anything, I think that's where it becomes easy to think, alright, I'm not, I'm keeping the Holy Spirit from Yeah, I missed the condition. I'm doing something wrong. Yeah. You're grieving. Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. The next question is across. Before we jump on, please.
So, the morphine part here confuses me a little bit. So the way that this is phrased, I envision a sort of formula where I've got 100% of me, right? So 40% old man and 60% new man. And here comes the spirit and he applies the cross and now I'm down to 30% old man and so now I'm more free.
I see, I see what you're saying. But moment by moment, we're walking in the spirit, we're in the flesh, which is all or nothing. Yes, it's either or. Can you talk to that a little bit? Yeah, I think so. I hope so. Maloy put together a really cool chart one time about spiritual growth and I'll try to verbally describe it.
He had bar graphs in 100% spiritual or nothing. And you were either here or here at any given time. You were abiding in the spirit and 100% spiritual. Now you could be a brand new believer and 100% spiritual based on your capacity to be 100% spiritual. Because in the middle of that bar graph is a line that's moving up. And so a young believer that was just saved last week can be functioning in the Spirit to 100% of their capacity. But they're down here on the line. As you grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus and you're conformed to His image, your capacity is increased to contain Him, maybe, is a way to say it.
It makes sense? And the reason I like that chart when I first saw it, I never could get over the fact when people were talking about the beam of judgment and rewards, that we're going to get crowns and all of this kind of nonsense, I thought, well, that's just so self-focused. Who cares? If the job of the Lord Jesus, or the job of the Holy Spirit is to reveal Christ to the believer, then He's got to be the prize. You know? It isn't what he's given me, he's it. Right? So, from there, I understood about that we are chosen vessels, and vessels contain things. We contain Christ.
And so the believer for all eternity will expand in his capacity to contain Christ and never out-expand Christ. Ever. for all eternity. Well that is a cool concept if you think about it because I will and you will for all eternity be growing and containing more and more of Christ and that will never end. That's how magnificent he is. I think that's true now. I think that's what spiritual growth is now. It's a capacity to contain him. And in the way of that is the old man. And the only thing that works on the old man is the death of the cross. Nothing else.
True or false? Putting one's all on the altar is simply self-sacrifice, hence unacceptable. True or false? If it was false, then I would have given you a condition. You'd have to put your all on the altar and self-sacrifice and then you'd be able to move forward.
Trust me. This kind of thinking is in lots and lots and lots of deeper life growth books. This is what they're all about. They're going to give you the conditions. Let me give you a great example. How many of you have read the Purpose Driven Church or Purpose Driven Life? Have you ever looked at that? Do you see this kind of thing in there?
Does he give you conditions? Absolutely he does. He starts out with a lot of grace in the first chapter, but by the time you get to chapter 2 and 3 and 4 and 5, the conditions are starting to mount up in order for you to have your purpose correct and moving along. Conditions. If there aren't any conditions, then why are you telling me about some? I think it steps. It steps in what?
Just like the capacity to hold Christ, behold Christ, grow in that. It's appropriate to yield yourself to God, right? Who does the yielding? The new man. Yeah, as one who's alive from the dead. The old man is the one that comes up with the idea that I've got to put my all on the altar for me to go and grow.
True or false? Christ-centered servants, filled with the Spirit, are not conscious of power, but of weakness. What do you think? Do you think that's right? Absolutely, it's true. So, you know, we being the sentient beings that we are and always wondering about, well, if I'm filled with the Spirit and I'm serving the Lord, behind these eyeballs, what am I going to be thinking?
What am I going to be observing? Weakness. Absolutely. You recognize that the life that's to be manifested in you, you have no shot. You think about what God has done. God has filled us with himself and intends to manifest himself through us. It's totally impossible to imitate that.
And the weaker you are in yourself, the weaker you understand, you can try to make yourself weak, but the weaker you are in terms of your understanding of exactly what's going on, I think the more appropriate it is. Paul said that my speech and my preaching were not in enticing words of wisdom, but in a demonstration of the Spirit and of power. Why? So that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
It's interesting to me that Christianity is really designed of a collection of human beings who manifest God, Him. They don't imitate Him, they manifest Him. Coming out of Catholicism, we had this great book by Thomas Akempis, 450 pages, Imitation of Christ. is a wonderful book for starting fires and crap like that. It matters whether the Spirit makes of us a flaming Paul or a faithful John. What do you think? True or false? False. Why? Why is it false?
Because in the end, it's all the same. No. It's one of those things where he talks about the body and it says very specifically he puts people where he wants them. Now think about this. The question is, does he make me a flaming Paul or a faithful John? Neither. Neither. What does he make me? Like Christ. Yeah. That was a trick question. Oh, come on. That's probably just as bad as imitating Christ, imitating Paul, or imitating John. Yeah.
That imitation thing is so subtle that I feel free to talk about Catholicism because that's where I came from. that they have a litany of saints who are for specific incidences, right? You name it, they got a saint for it, and the deal is that somehow God has designated St. Christopher Columbus. as a patron saint of travel. So if you're going to go somewhere, you ask him to sort of take care of things for you, right?
The one I love is St. Jude. He's the patron saint of hopeless cases. And a buddy of mine, I like to hunt, so this buddy of mine who came out of Cathars sent me an email the other day. He said, St. Bernard of something or other is the patron saint of bird hunting. No wonder we're not getting any. You see the mindset? Do you see the mindset? It's, I've got to be like Mike. I've got to be like John. I've got to be like Paul. No, no. The issue is the manifestation of Christ through you. Isn't that kind of like all the Roman gods they had?
Well, I mean, yeah. What's the difference? There isn't any difference. Sure. That's exactly right. Okay. Match them up. That no flesh should glory in his presence. What did I do? I got a B. What is it? Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. That I may know him. For I am meek and lowly of heart. Matthew. Okay, let's see how we're doing here. I haven't got a lot of time. Let's go back to the essay questions, which is 20.
Explain what the term Spirit of Christ is. Okay. What is the Spirit of Christ? Do we have two people here, or one? Well, I was trying to figure this one out. Because you have the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit, and the of. I thought, well, the Spirit of Christ, Christ in him. But then I thought, no, the Holy Spirit is not a possession of Christ. I mean, I got very confused. But Christ of the Spirit. in the sense that he manifests the life of Christ through us. But he's a different person than the man of Christ. It's interesting that in the Lord Jesus' ministry on the earth was dependent upon the Holy Spirit, wasn't he? He said, I don't ever do anything of myself. I only do so...
The Holy Spirit was in fact the power of even His life here. Now, I think what this term means is that when the Holy Spirit, through His power, manifests a life through you, it's going to be the life of Christ only. So you can say he's the spirit of Christ only in terms of his work in manifesting the life that is the new life that you have through you. It's not the life of the spirit of the spirit, it's characteristic of who Christ is because Christ is the one who manifests who God is. You see that? Did you connect those dots? In John chapter 1, Christ is said to be the Word of God. He's the one person of the Trinity by which men, sentient beings, can know who God is, because the Father's a spirit and the Holy Spirit's a spirit.
We're not. We have a spirit, but that isn't essentially who we are. We can know God through Christ, because He's the one that manifests the character and characteristics of God, right? So, when the Lord Jesus goes to heaven and becomes a glorified man, He's 100% God and 100% man, the job of the Holy Spirit is to reveal the glorified God-man to us as believers. That demonstrates to us or shows us what and who the life is. It's Him. 100% God, 100% man.
The fruit of the Spirit, those characteristics, are exactly who Jesus is. Well, it's exactly the characteristics of your life, too. And those characteristics, maybe say it this way, the power of that life is the Spirit of life, the Holy Spirit of the life of Christ. Romans 8, 2 says, The principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. That's how it's termed. So the life is powered by the Holy Spirit, maybe is another way to say it.
See that? And he did the same thing in Christ himself. See that? I know, we're sitting here trying to explain the Trinity and how it works. It's like this ladder in a way, the Holy Spirit is the only one able in this time to reveal Christ. Christ is the only one able to manifest God. Right, right.
I'm overwhelmed by the fact that the three persons of the Godhead have taken upon themselves specific jobs with their creation. All three of them are God. All three of them share exactly the same life and power and all of that, but they're different persons. And they have designated to themselves things that they're going to do, and they're not going to overlap. And all three of them are engaged in our spiritual growth all the time. And we frustrate that by thinking they need help. Hello? They don't need any help. The only requirement they have from us is to believe them. That's it. Trust them.
So what's the essence of the Spirit of Christ? It's the Holy Spirit, see if I can say this in a short sentence. The purpose of the infilling of the Holy Spirit is to manifest the characteristics or enumerate the facets of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one that does it. So when He is implementing or manifesting the characteristics of God in us, or through us, they are the characteristics of Christ alone. And it's He's the one who does it. That's what I was after.
So, could we say that when people see Christ in us, that that's what they're seeing, the Spirit of Christ? No, they're seeing Christ. But the power to generate that is the Spirit Himself. Well, the only person of the Godhead that has observable godly characteristics is Christ. But to manifest them takes the power of the Holy Spirit. So you don't see the Spirit, you see Christ. That's not the characteristics of Christ? That's the Holy Spirit?
Yeah, that's what I'm after. I think I'm as far as I can go with that. I really am. You know what? In the three months we're going to spend on the Holy Spirit, we can exhaust this question and be great. All right. Let's close. Our dear Father, how we thank You and how dependent we are on Your Spirit for beholding the glory of Your Son. But having said that, we are excited to know that You're about Your business of revealing Him to us, which is such an exciting prospect that it's overwhelming. Like the hymn says, we can barely take it in. And we thank You, Father. We thank You for Your Son and pray in His precious name. Amen.