The Indwelling Spirit: The Work of the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Believer by Andrew Murray

Author:Andrew Murray [Murray, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sermons, English, Reformed Church--Sermons, Holy Spirit--Sermons
ISBN: 9781441210418
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2006-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Newness of the Spirit

But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.

Romans 7:6

But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Galatians 5:18

The work of the indwelling Spirit is to glorify Christ and to reveal Him to us. Corresponding to Christ’s threefold office of prophet, priest, and king we find that the work of the indwelling Spirit in the believer has three aspects: enlightening, sanctifying, and strengthening. Of the enlightening, Christ particularly speaks in His farewell discourse, when He promises the Spirit as the Spirit of truth, who will bear witness of Him, will guide into all truth, and will take of Christ and declare it unto us. In the epistles to the Romans and the Galatians, His work of sanctifying is especially prominent: This was what was needed in churches so recently brought out of paganism. In the epistles to the Corinthians, where wisdom was especially prized and sought, the two aspects are combined; they are taught that the Spirit can only enlighten as He sanctifies (1 Corinthians 2, 3:1–3, 16; 2 Corinthians 3). In the Acts of the Apostles, as we might expect, His strengthening for service is in the forefront; as the promised Spirit of power, He equips for a bold testimony in the midst of persecution and difficulty.

In the epistle to the church at Rome, the capital of the world, Paul was called of God to give a full and systematic exposition of His gospel and the plan of redemption. In this the work of the Holy Spirit must have an important place. In giving his text or theme “The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17), he paves the way for what he was to expound: that through faith both righteousness and life would come. In the first part of his argument (Romans 6:11), he teaches what the righteousness of faith is. He then proceeds (vv. 12–21) to prove how this righteousness is rooted in our living connection with the second Adam and in a justification of life. In the individual (vv. 1–13) this life comes through accepting Christ’s death to sin and His life in God as ours and the willing surrender (6:14–23) to be servants of God and of righteousness. Proceeding to show that in Christ we are not only dead to sin but also to the law—the strength of sin—he comes naturally to the new law that His gospel brings to take the place of the old, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.

We know how an impression is strengthened by contrast. Just as the apostle contrasts the service of sin and righteousness (6:13–23), so in the next chapter (7:4) he emphasizes the power and work of the Spirit by contrasting the service in the oldness of the letter in bondage to the law with the service in newness of the Spirit of life.

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