Romans 15:13 says, “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope in the power of the Holy Spirit.” The Spirit not only brings us joy but also empowers us that we may abound in hope. Our hope is to be brought into the glory of God, His expression. This will be fully fulfilled in the coming millennial kingdom, where Christ will be manifested as our glory. If we experience and enjoy the Holy Spirit in His power, we will be in the hope in the coming glory.
Romans 15:30 speaks of the love of the Spirit; Colossians 1:4 refers to the love which the saints in Colossae had unto all the saints, and verse 8 tells us that their love to all the saints was the love in the Spirit. These verses show that because of the indwelling Spirit, we have love toward all the saints in Christ, and that the Spirit is the source, the element, and the sphere of such love. As we live by the Spirit, He gives us a love for all the different members of the Lord’s Body so that we can love the brothers in the Lord from all cultures, races, and countries. This is not possible by our natural love.
Romans 5:5 says, “The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” The love of God is God Himself (1 John 4:8, 16). God has poured out this love in our hearts with the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us, as the motivating power within us, that we may more than conquer in all our tribulations. Therefore, when we endure any kind of tribulation, we are not put to shame.
From the day we first called on the Lord Jesus, the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. This means that the Spirit confirms and assures us with the love of God. The indwelling Spirit assures us that God loves us. Although we may be afflicted, we cannot deny the presence of God’s love within us. Christ died for ungodly sinners such as we and shed His blood on the cross to redeem us and reconcile us to God. What love is this! Whenever we are in the fellowship of the Triune God, by participating in and enjoying the Spirit, we can realize afresh that God loves us and that His love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
Second Corinthians 4:13 says, “And having the same spirit of faith according to that which is written, ‘I believed, therefore I spoke,’ we also believe, therefore we also speak.” The same spirit refers to the same spirit as set forth in the quotation in this verse from Psalm 116:10. We must exercise such a spirit to believe and to speak, like the psalmist, the things we have experienced of the Lord, especially His death and resurrection. Faith is in our spirit, which is mingled with the Holy Spirit, not in our mind. Doubts are in our mind. Here spirit indicates that it is by the mingled spirit that the apostles lived a crucified life in resurrection for the carrying out of their ministry.
If we would have the boldness to speak concerning Christ and of our experience of Christ in His death and resurrection, we need the spirit of faith. This spirit is the mingling of the Holy Spirit and the human spirit. As long as we have this mingled spirit, we will have faith and the boldness to speak to others about our experience of Christ. Whenever we are in our spirit, practicing to be one spirit with Him, we will have the spirit of faith, for the indwelling Spirit will be mingled with our spirit in our faith.
The indwelling Spirit is the means for God the Father to strengthen us into the inner man that Christ may make His home in our hearts. In Ephesians 3:16-17 Paul prayed that the Father would “grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man, that Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith.” This shows that it is through the Spirit that the Father strengthens us. When the Father works in us, He works through the Spirit, and the Spirit’s working in us is the Father’s working, for the Spirit comes from and with the Father (John 15:26) and He is the consummation of the Divine Trinity (2 Cor. 13:14). By the Spirit the Father is continually strengthening us into the inner man.
The inner man is our regenerated spirit, which has God’s life as its life. It is our spirit regenerated by the Spirit of God (John 3:6), indwelt by the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:11, 16), and mingled with the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 6:17). In order to experience Christ unto all the fullness of God, we need to be strengthened by God the Father into our inner man through the Holy Spirit. In this way, Christ will be able to make His home in our hearts, control our entire inward being, and supply and strengthen every inward part with Himself. This is the supreme result of our allowing the Spirit to work in us and for us as we experience and enjoy the Spirit in the fellowship of the Triune God.
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