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I need first of all to apologise
to you for speaking on John Owen's teaching at this unathlete hour
in the morning. The reason is not to give me
the opportunity to tell you that Owen from his teenage years only
took four hours of sleep every night, but exclusively because
our seminary graduation is this afternoon and I feel it my duty
to be there. And doing one's duty is something
of which John Owen more than most would have greatly approved. Now, yesterday in our first study
in Owen's teaching on the Holy Spirit, I suggested to you that
there are really two elements in the way in which he expands
the ministry of the Spirit. The first is to expand the ministry
of the Spirit in the life of the head of the new creation,
our Saviour Jesus Christ. And then the second is to expound
the ministry of the Spirit, as I indicated, in the lives of
the members of the new creation in the church which Christ has
purchased with his own blood. Following Calvin in his exposition
of the 135th Psalm, Owen sees the picture of the
anointing of Aaron and the precious oil flowing down over his head,
upon his shoulders and down over his garments as being a kind
of picture of the way in which the Holy Spirit is given to the
church. It is because the Spirit is given
to the head that the Spirit is consequently given to the members. And it is, moreover, the same
Spirit who is given to the head, the same Spirit who was on the
head, who is thereafter also given to the members. Now, anyone
who has ever read Owen's writings will, I think, immediately recognize
that it's the second of these themes that statistically Owen
gives much more place to. and he expounds at quite extraordinary
length and in quite a variety of different ways the theme of
the ministry of the Spirit in the life of the believer. I want
to try and expound that or at least some elements of it in
one distinctive way. But before we do that, let me
underline for you that in Owen's teaching There are essentially
two reasons why the Spirit is given to the church and to the
believer. The Spirit is given first of
all in order to bear witness to Jesus Christ. In many different
parts of his writings, Owen sees this as in many ways the heart
of the Spirit's ministry. He certainly sees that as the
function of his own exposition of the ministry of the Spirit
in the life of Jesus himself. The Spirit in bearing Jesus and
in being born by Jesus is at the same time bearing witness
to and marking out and stamping the Lord Jesus publicly as the
Son of God and as the Messiah. But pursuing his ministry on
the life of Jesus, the ministry of the Spirit in the life of
the church, and the convicting ministry of the Spirit in the
world, has distinctively, says Owen, the function of this testimony
to the Lord Jesus. For example, Owen pictures the
disciples gathered together in the upper room as Jesus speaks
to them. about the fulfillment of the
promise of the coming of the Spirit. And Owen looks at these
twelve ordinary, indeed poor and needy men, whom Jesus is
sending out into the world and saying to them, you will be my
witnesses. And he asks the obvious question,
what is the value of the witness of these poor men? And answers
with Scripture that apart from the co-witness of their testimony
with the superior testimony of the Holy Spirit. Their witness
will fall to the ground and be of no consequence. And so he
sees this double entendre in what Jesus says to the disciples
in John, when the counselor comes whom he will send from the Father
the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify
about me. But you also must testify, because
you have been with me from the beginning." And Owen sees this
parallel between the testimony of the disciples and the testimony
of the Spirit. The disciples have been with
Jesus from the beginning and therefore are qualified to be
witness-bearers to Jesus. But the Spirit, in a far more
profound sense, has been with him from the beginning. And he
therefore bears the fundamental and authenticating witness to
the Lord Jesus. And we find this vindicated,
says Owen, in the rest of the New Testament. What Jesus says
in John 16, 8-11 is fulfilled on the day of Pentecost and the
New Testament church is conscious of the fact that the witness
it bears is a witness that is born also and fundamentally by
the Spirit. God has exalted Christ at His
right hand as a Prince and Savior, says Peter in Acts 5.32, and
both we and the Holy Spirit are witnesses. Similarly, says Owen
in Hebrews 2.4, the salvation given to us has this witness,
that God the Spirit testified to it by signs, wonders, and
various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit. distributed
according to His will. So there is, first of all, in
Owen's thinking, this chief thrust that the ministry of the Spirit
is the ministry of witnessing to the Lord Jesus. But there
is a further thrust in what he says, and it, I think, can be
summarized like this, that the presence of the Spirit among
God's people is intended to supply the absence of Christ's bodily
presence. The presence of the Spirit with
God's people is intended to supply the absence of Christ's bodily
presence. Says Owen in language that was
obviously peculiarly relevant to his own time. Jesus Christ
has only one vicar on earth. That is, the Holy Spirit whom
he has given. And again, rather picturesquely,
he says, there is only one relic of the body of Jesus Christ left
for men in this world. And the Holy Spirit is that relic. The Holy Spirit has been left
behind, as it were, in order to supply for believers in all
ages but was immediately supplied for believers in the first stage
by the bodily presence of the Lord Jesus. And for that reason,
Owen argues on the basis of Jesus' teaching in the upper room, we
are at no disadvantage whatsoever, for example, in the 17th or the
20th century for that matter, because we have not seen the
bodily presence of Jesus. we have Jesus' vicar, Jesus'
relic, who supplies for us directly at the command of the Lord Jesus,
all that Jesus himself supplies to his people. Now, in connection
with the ministry of the Spirit in the life of the church, Owen
draws attention to the fact that Jesus having born the Spirit,
Jesus having been the recipient of the Spirit's ministry in incarnation
through the course of His life, in the work of the atonement,
and in the resurrection in which He says the Spirit who made His
nature holy then made His nature glorious, adds one final stage
to the mediatorial reception of the Spirit by our Lord Jesus
Christ. He expounds Peter's teaching
in Acts 2.33 when Peter tells us that Christ has been exalted
to the right hand of the Father and has received the promised
Holy Spirit. Owen understands that to mean
that on his ascension to the right hand of the Father the
Lord Jesus was anointed in a sense, anew with the Spirit. Not now
in order to fulfill the work of atonement, but in order that
now He might bestow the Spirit upon the church. One sees the
ascension of Jesus, of course, in a sense, as His coronation. He is crowned and enthroned,
and He receives gifts according to his father's promise, in order
that he might pour out these gifts upon the church. That the
church might be useful in the service of the kingdom of God
and that the church might represent Christ to the world. I think
Owen would have both been familiar with and appreciated John Cotton's
illustration of the same principle. when he describes Pentecost and
the outpouring of the gifts in the age of Pentecost as being
illustrative of the fact that Jesus has been crowned as, when
a monarch is crowned, unusual gifts are poured out upon the
people. I remember when Queen Elizabeth
II was crowned. I was, I think, four or five
years old. And all the children in my primary
school received special gifts marking the coronation. And Cochran says, and one has
indications of this also in the way in which Owen thinks about
it, that this is the significance of the extraordinary outpouring
of gifts on the day of Pentecost and in the establishing of the
Christian church. These gifts are saying, Christ
has been crowned as King. And now by His Spirit, having
led captivity captive, He is pouring Himself into the church
by the Spirit and pouring out His gifts on the church for the
service of God's kingdom. And as a consequence of this,
a direct consequence, Owen says that five things follow. Five
things follow the outpouring of the Spirit in the life of
the believer and in the life of the church. First of all,
all saving light on Scripture depends upon the gift of the
Spirit. It is only by the gift of the
Spirit that men believe these Scriptures to be the Word of
God with an infallible assurance. Second, all habitual grace is
a consequence of the gift of the Spirit. Habitual grace to
quicken the elect from their death and trespasses and sins. Thirdly, all supplies of actual
grace in the life of the believer enabling believers to walk in
universal obedience to their Lord are the consequence of the
gift of the Spirit. Fourthly, all spiritual gifts
in the church given for the nourishment of the body of Christ are the
consequence of the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
And fifthly, all comfort and encouragement and consolation
that any believer may ever know in the trials and discouragements
of his pilgrimage will depend similarly on the gift of the
Holy Spirit. Now, as Owen expounds these things,
he picks up this jewel of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and
he examines it from a series of perspectives. The most obvious
one and the one that he gives most extensive consideration
to, and I suppose the one that is best known, is the way in
which he considers the ministry of the Spirit in the work of
the application of redemption. And that particularly is expounded,
as you know, in Volume 3. But here's another way of thinking
about the ministry of the Spirit, and it's the second way that
I want to employ in our time this morning. He expands the
ministry of the Spirit in the life of the believer by drawing
attention to what he believes are the four chief characteristics
of that ministry in any believer's life. And these four characteristics,
which I'm going to reduce in one way or another to two, in
order that we may get through the material, are these. He emphasizes
the significance of the Spirit's indwelling, first of all, His
unction, secondly, His presence as the earnest of our inheritance,
thirdly, and fourthly, and finally, the significance of His presence
as the seal of God. And I want, if I can, to try
to bring together the first three of these, his indwelling, his
unction, his presence as an earnest, under the general heading of
the indwelling of the Spirit, and then to deal, secondly and
separately, with the theme of the sealing of the Spirit. First
of all, then, the indwelling of the Spirit. Owen, of course,
emphasizes that the Spirit of God indwells every Christian
believer. We do not understand, he says,
how this is so, any more than we may understand how it was
that the Spirit overshadowed the Virgin Mary and the conception
of the Lord Jesus. But mysterious though this be,
he says, It is one of the fundamentally attested teachings of the New
Testament that the Spirit of the Living God dwells in the
life of every Christian believer. And one of the things that Owen
attains to underline in this context is that the indwelling
of the Holy Spirit is a personal indwelling. It is the person
of the Spirit who indwells the believer. And of course what
he is wanting to draw out from that notion is that the identity
of the one who indwells the believer is that he is the same one who
was on the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. And
this is, of course, fundamental to his understanding of the whole
character and nature of the Christian life and the character and nature
of Jesus' experience of the Spirit as the pattern and cause of our
experience of the Spirit. The Spirit who indwells the believer
is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an anonymous spirit. He is precisely identified as
the Spirit who was on Jesus. The reason He supplies Jesus'
bodily absence from us is that He brings to us everything, as
it were, that is true of Jesus. He brings His own all the resources
of the incarnate, crucified, buried, risen, ascended, and
reigning Lord Jesus Christ. It is because of the intimacy
of fellowship between Jesus and the Holy Spirit that the personal
indwelling of the Holy Spirit is the source and cause of all
moral and spiritual transformation in the life of the believer.
And the reason why that transformation that takes place in the life
of the believer is a progressive conforming of the believer to
Jesus Christ. Because the believer is one spirit
with Jesus Christ in the sense that he actually shares with
Jesus the presence of the Holy Spirit in his personal indwelling,
in his life and experience. But having said that, Owen goes
on to make what for him is a very fundamental and important distinction. He distinguishes between what
he calls the indwelling of the Spirit as the Spirit of holiness
and the indwelling of the Spirit as the Spirit of comfort. Now clearly he is not here saying
that we are indwelt by two different spirits. Nor is he saying that
there are two separate occasions on which a man may receive the
Spirit. We receive the Spirit once for
all, says Owen. But we receive the Spirit in
all the plenitude of his personal indwelling. And as we try to
understand the significance and the ministry of the Spirit as
he indwells us, we come to recognize that he exercises his ministry
in us in different ways, and those ministries may be identified
in different ways. And particularly, he exercises
his ministry as the spirit of holiness on the one hand and
as the spirit of comfort on the other. And the reason Owen draws
that distinction is because he wants to say this, But whereas
the Spirit is always exercising the ministry of the Spirit of
Holiness, He is not always exercising His ministry as the Spirit of
Comfort. Put in, I think, more straightforward
terms, what Owen is trying to say is this, that every activity
of the Spirit in our lives has as its goal the production of
holiness. One is able to bring within the
ambit of the Spirit every joy and sorrow, every success and
failure, every trial, every fulfilled ambition. There is no aspect
of God's providential dealings with us that are not, as it were,
caught up as an instrument of the Spirit to be used by him
to produce holiness in the life of the believer. And the believer
needs, says Owen, to be permanently conscious of the fact that the
chief function of the Spirit in him, in the moral transformation
of his life, is to create and to produce a holiness, a transformation
into the image of Jesus. But in the context of that ministry,
it is not always true that the Spirit comforts us. It is not
always true, says Owen, that, for example, we are conscious
of the presence of the Spirit as the Spirit of adoption. It
is not always true that we live at the same levels of Christian
assurance. It is not always true that we
are consistently conscious of the Father's love toward us. And so he tries in this way to
hold together the great fundamental axiom that every believer is
indwelt by the Spirit, alongside what seems to him to be true
both from Scripture and from experience. But although he is
consistently exercising the ministry of the Spirit of Holiness, there
may be ups and downs in the consciousness of the believer of the reality
of his relationship to the Father, in the Son, and by the Holy Spirit. Well now, as Owen begins to develop
the indwelling of the Spirit, He tells us that through the
indwelling of the Spirit, there are three singular blessings
that are brought to us. The first of them is that by
the indwelling Spirit, we receive, as believers, direction and guidance. And this guidance, says Owen,
can be divided into two parts. It is first of all moral and
what he calls extrinsical. That is to say, moral in the
sense that the Spirit directs us by the Word to the duties
that we are to fulfill. Extrinsical in the sense that
this is the operation of the Spirit through the testimony
of Holy Scripture. This guidance that the Spirit
gives us is first of all given to us in the Word that He has
inspired for us. And His ministry in this regard,
in enabling us to have the guidance of God, is not to provide us
with new information, but to illuminate our minds and our
understandings in order that we may grasp the principles that
God has revealed to us in Scripture and with the help of the Spirit
understand the ways in which these principles are to be applied
to our daily Christian living and to the life of the fellowship
of God's people in which we worship and with which we bear witness. So the guidance of the Spirit
for Owen is in this sense moral and extrinsical, but also, he
says, it is internal and efficient. Not only does the Spirit illuminate
the believer through the Word, but also the Spirit guides and
leads the believer in this sense, that by the Word he transforms
the affections and the wills of believers, that they may embrace
the teaching that he has illuminated their minds to understand. that
they may not only see something of the implications of divine
providence in their life as they lay providence alongside Scripture,
but that they may also have the heart gladly to embrace the will
of God as that will is unfolded by God through their application
of his teaching and Scripture to his providences in their lives. So as he indwells us, he indwells
us in order to lead us and to guide us daily in the course
of our Christian obedience. But second, as he indwells us,
he is given to us in order that he may support us. Owen draws
attention obviously to Paul's teaching in Romans chapter 8.
But the Christian life is a life of infirmity. It is a life of
weakness, not just a life of infirmities and weaknesses, but
the whole life is one infirmity, one weakness. And the glory of
the indwelling of the Spirit in the believer is that in the
essential weakness of our lives, the Spirit supports us, the Spirit
aids us, the Spirit comes and more picturesquely takes the
heavy end of the burden, as Paul seems to be saying, and enables
us to carry out those duties that without the help and ministry
of the Spirit, we would find absolutely insupportable. And then the third way in which
the Spirit ministers to us as He indwells us, says Owen, is
by exercising the restraints of His presence on our lives. One of the things the Spirit
does in men's lives, says Owen, is to drop a sense of awe on
their spirits. He drops a sense of the awe or
the fear of God on men's hearts and thus restrains them from
running into the outcrop of their own sinful hearts and running
into ruin. He restrains them by His presence
and by the influence of the awe which His presence creates in
the lives of His people. Here He uses what is I think
one of his favorite character illustrations from scripture,
the illustration of Simon Peter. Peter, he says, was broken loose
and running downhill apace, denying and forswearing his master. But
Christ restrained him. You sometimes need to read Owen
slowly to see that actually his writings are full of illustration.
But very often those illustrations are the picture illustrations
of language rather than the illustrations of personal experience. Here
is Peter broken loose and running downhill. Why? Because in dwelling
sins, basic tendency is to break loose, to run downhill, and to
deny Jesus Christ. But Christ restrains him. And just because The Holy Spirit
supplies for the church in every age the absence of the bodily
presence of Jesus Christ. Owen is able to say, and this
is obviously precisely what the Spirit does in the believer now. He restrains us when by our sinful
disposition we would break loose and run downhill. Just as through
the bodily presence of Jesus, Peter remembered the word of
the Lord, and wept bitterly, and was restored by his grace,
so by the vicar of Christ, the Holy Spirit says, oh, and similarly,
the believer remembers the word of the Lord, and weeps bitterly,
and is restored by his grace. It's interesting to notice that
here one senses in Owen, as is certainly true of the finest
flower of Reformed theology, that the perseverance of the
saints is never a matter of the Spirit regenerating the elect
and then leaving them to the influences of that regeneration. Owen emphasizes over and over
again in his monumental exposition of Perseverance in Volume 11. For perseverance there needs
to be the continuing ministry of the indwelling spirit. We
are so frail and fragile of ourselves if we only believed it and understood
it from scripture we would see that we are daily on the verge
of failure. Were it not for the fresh supplies
of the Spirit of God who indwells the believer, there is not one
of us who would be restrained from sin and indeed from apostasy. Now in the light of that, Owen
tells us, as you would expect, that the believer has certain
responsibilities. His chief responsibility, says
Owen, is to distinguish between the directions of the spirit
of grace and the delusions of the spirit of the world and of
our own sinful hearts. And he sets up one of these great
Puritan cases of conscience. How does the believer distinguish
between the directions of the spirit of grace and the delusions
of his own heart and the world? one of the most fundamental questions
of all, obviously. And Owen says, if I may briefly
summarize him, that there are four ways in which we do so.
The first of them is this. We are able to distinguish the
directions of the Spirit because the motions of the Spirit are
regular. That is, quite literally, the
motions of the Spirit are according to rule. namely the rule of God's
Holy Word. And therefore all the motions
that a believer experiences may be tried and tested by that rule. Says Owen, it is axiomatic for
the Christian life that the Spirit is not present in the believer
in order to provide him with a new rule, but to give him simply
fresh light on the constant rule of God's word and new power in
order to obey its injunctions. So one can always test the spirits
as own in this sense by bringing them to the canon or the rule
or the touchstone of the teaching of sacred scripture. But there
are other ways in which we can distinguish his presence from
the presence of a deluding spirit. We may distinguish his presence
because, says Owen, the commands of the Spirit, that is, the directions
in which he leads us by his pressures upon our lives, those commands
of the Spirit are not grievous. What Owen means by that, as he
expounds at large in Volume 3 of his writings, is that the direction
in which the Spirit leads the believer in the way of his duty
to God is a direction that will always be consistent with the
new nature that the Spirit has created in the believer. Regeneration
means, says Owen, the law of the Lord being written on the
heart. And therefore, as the law of the Lord is worked out
in the life, the commands of the Spirit, the directions in
which the Spirit prompts the believer through the Word, will
always be suited to the nature that the Spirit has given the
believer. There is therefore not grief
for the believer in his obedience, but joy and harmony for the believer
as he obeys the directives of the Spirit. Thirdly, The Spirit's
movements in our lives, His directions in our lives, are always orderly. Just as David says of the covenant
that God has made with him, says Owen, that it is ordered in all
things and secure. So one of the characteristic
marks of the Spirit's operation in the life of the believer is
that His operations will be orderly and not frenetic. He puts it
like this in volume 11 and here again you can probably recognize
the same kinds of people in your own congregations that Owen had
in his congregation. We see some poor souls to be
in such bondage as to be hurried up and down in the matter of
duties at the pleasure of Satan. They must run from one to another
and commonly neglect that which they should do. When they are
at prayer, then they should be at the work of their calling.
And when they are at their calling, they are tempted for not laying
all aside and running to prayer. Believers know that this is not
from the Spirit of God, which makes everything beautiful in
its season. The production of the orderly
life is one of the fruits, says Owen, of the leading and the
indwelling of the Spirit. And then fourthly, Owen says,
we recognize the direction of the indwelling Spirit, because
all His directions tend to a good end by glorifying God according
to His word. So the Spirit indwells us. And
precisely because He indwells us personally, He is, says Owen,
the earnest of our inheritance. the earnest of our inheritance,
he says, is nothing else than the Spirit himself dwelling in
our lives. And this inevitably is one of
the keys of his understanding of what it means to be a Christian.
And indeed one of the keys to his exposition of why the Spirit
is the comforter. The reason Owen believes there
is conflict and tension in the Christian life is because we
have received the Spirit as the earnest of our inheritance. Contrary
to the kind of thing that was said in his day and in ours,
that if we only had more of the Spirit, then all the tensions
and difficulties would begin to disappear from our lives,
Owen argues that the really foundational and fundamental tensions and
trials in the Christian life are not those which will be removed
by the Spirit, but those which are actually caused because the
Spirit is present with us. It's because the Spirit dwells
in us that the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit wars
against the flesh. Just because, as the earnest
of our inheritance, he dwells in us and therefore sets up the
tension that is characteristic exclusively of the Christian
believer, he is also the comforter, because he is the earnest of
the inheritance. And the very struggles and trials
through which the Christian goes as a Christian believer, therefore,
for Owen, are paradoxically also his comforts, because they are
the fruit of one who is in him to assure him of the fullness
of the inheritance that is to be his in the last day. So Owen emphasizes the indwelling
of the Spirit. He emphasizes in the second place,
and here we will need to be brief, that the Spirit is present in
the believer in order to seal the believer. And in order, I
think, to understand what Owen is about in his exposition of
the sealing of the Holy Spirit, we need to remember that it was
certainly true of many of his friends and those to whom he
looked for guidance and direction theologically, that they held
that the sealing of the Spirit was a distinct ministry of the
Spirit, quite distinguishable from and frequently following
the ministry of the Spirit in the work of regeneration. There
is an interesting history to that view. Let me try and summarize
it for you. When Calvin had written on the
sealing of the Spirit, He had taught that the Spirit Himself
was the seal, and he especially associated the seal of the Spirit
with the internal confirmation to the believer that Scripture
was the Word of God. His view had been shared by his
successor, Theodore Beza, who spoke of believers as being sealed
with the Spirit because the Spirit was the pledge of their election
until the full inheritance was received. But when we move from
the 16th into the 17th century discussions of the seal of the
Spirit, one of the things we discover is this, that the presence
of the Spirit and the ministry of the Spirit are in a sense
divided. And the notion of the sealing
of the Spirit is removed from the presence of the Spirit to
the ministry of the Spirit. You find at least traces of that
in William Perkins, who tells us that the seal of the Spirit
is the evident assurance that the promise of life belongs to
us. And you find that position taken,
I think, even further in the teaching of Richard Sibbes when
commenting on Ephesians 1.13, he argues rather explicitly that
the seal of the Spirit is what he calls a super added work. It is a super added work. In John Cotton, both in Old England
and in New England, you find him wrestling again with what
the sealing of the Spirit might be and being unusually sensitive
to the potential antinomian consequences of saying that the seal of the
Spirit is simply assurance. And saying that although he recognizes
there are good divines who understand it in that way, he himself would
rather describe that as the witness of the Spirit than as the seal
of the Spirit. But what Cotton felt reluctant
to state, John Preston, one of his converts, stated without
any hesitation. The seal of the Spirit, said
Preston, is a second work of the Spirit given exclusively
to those who overcome. Preston writes, you will say,
what is the seal of the Spirit? My beloved, It is a thing that
we cannot express. It is a certain divine expression
of light, a certain unexpressible assurance that we are the sons
of God, a certain secret manifestation that God has received us and
put away our sins. I say it is such a thing that
no man knows, but they that have it. Indeed, Preston is so impressed
by this experience, which he describes as the sealing of the
Spirit, that he says, if there were not a generation of men
alive who had experienced this, nobody would believe that it
was possible to experience it. And of course, that was more
or less the view that was adopted and expounded by Owen's great
colleague, Thomas Goodwin. particularly in his exposition
of the epistle to the Ephesians. Now it's one of the more interesting
sidelights on Owen's development of his doctrine of the Spirit
that certainly through the latter part of his life he was struggling
with the significance of this statement that we are sealed
with the Spirit. In 1667 he writes, I am not very clear on the certain
particular intendment of this metaphor. That's encouraging
since by that time he was, I suppose, about 54 years old and still
was not altogether sure what the seal of the Spirit was. But,
he reasons, on this he is clear that what is sealed according
to the teaching of Scripture is not promises, but persons. It is not the sealing of the
promise to the believer that is being described in Scripture,
but explicitly the believer who is sealed. And he concludes that
we are sealed when we have a fresh sense of the love of God within
us and a comfortable persuasion of our acceptance with God but
further identification of the seal of the Spirit, in his fifties
at least, he is not prepared to make. Now you see what he's
wrestling with. He is wrestling with the fact
that he and his fellow believers, especially those who were his
dear friends and colleagues, knew a measure of assurance that
was apparently extraordinary. And yet you notice his reluctance
to follow along with his colleagues and to suggest that that measure
of assurance they enjoy is to be identified with the seal of
the Spirit. Now, whether accidentally or
on purpose, it was ten years after Owen died that his final
view on the sealing of the Spirit was given to the public. in 1693
when his work on the Holy Spirit as Comforter was posthumously
published. And by this time we find that
he has clear and self-conscious views of the sealing of the Spirit. He had recognized earlier on
that it's not persons but promises which are sealed. But then he
goes on to say this, it is no especial act He means by that
a distinct act, but a special effect of his communication unto
us. That is to say, the sealing of
the Spirit is not an activity in which he engages, but rather
it is an effect of his presence indwelling the believer. Again,
he puts it like this. The effects of this sealing are
gracious operations of the Holy Spirit in and upon believers,
but the sealing itself is the communication of the Spirit unto
them. And so he writes in conclusion,
and this is a very striking and illuminating statement, it hath
been generally conceived and there is no doubt who he means
by saying it hath been generally conceived, that this sealing
with the Spirit is that which gives assurance unto believers,
and so indeed it doth, although the way whereby it doth hath
not been rightly apprehended, and therefore none has been able
to declare the especial nature of that act of the Spirit whereby
he seals us when such assurance should ensue. You would almost
think that he'd been reading Preston there. But it is indeed
not any act of the Spirit in us that is the ground of our
assurance, but the communication of the Spirit unto us. The seal,
in other words, is not the action of the Spirit bringing us assurance,
but the presence of the Spirit indwelling us, says Owen, as
one of the grounds of our assurance. And in that sense, he wants to
argue, every believer is sealed with the Holy Spirit. Now, of
course, Owen is not denying in saying that, that we may have
specially blessed influences of the Holy Spirit. He has this
marvelous picture in volume 2 where he describes the believer like
a man coming into court pleading his cause and discovering there
are all kinds of prosecution witnesses against him. There
are all kinds of reasons why his plea that he is a true Christian
should be disregarded. But he says The work of the Spirit
as he testifies to us that we are the children of God is as
though some person whose testimony was beyond reproach came into
the court on our behalf and when he spoke on the matter, the case
against us was totally dismissed. So it's possible to know, says
Owen, by the ministry of the Word, by the ministry of the
Spirit, by the gracious operations of God, what it means for the
Spirit to bear witness with our spirits that we are indeed the
children of God. But that, he says, is not to
be categorized as the testimony of the Spirit as the seal. The seal is the Spirit Himself. And the reason, interestingly,
he argues like that, is because he adopts as his fundamental
hermeneutical principle that since the Spirit we receive is
the Spirit who was on the Lord Jesus Christ, since Scripture
speaks about Jesus being sealed by the Father, the sealing of
the believer will be parallel to the sealing of Jesus the Son,
and the sealing of Jesus as Son was not a sealing that took place
by distinctive acts and operations of the Spirit in his life, but
by the pouring out of the Spirit upon his life and the gift of
the Spirit to him. What then, may we say in conclusion,
are the responsibilities that the believer has as he receives
the indwelling Spirit and the Spirit as seal. While Owen says there are three,
the first of them is this, and we regarded it yesterday. That
because the Spirit who indwells us is Himself divine, He is to
be worshipped. Second, with respect to His influence
in our lives, He is not to be quenched, but to be obeyed. And thirdly and especially with
respect to his personal indwelling as God's seal of our lives, says
Owen, he is not to be grieved. To grieve someone, says Owen,
is to show them the unkindness of unrequited love. It is the
defect of an answerable love unto the fruits and testimonies
of His love which we have received. He comes, says Owen, seeking
fruit. And if in our unrequited love
we grieve Him and fail Him, then, says Owen, we discover that we
have not only quenched the Spirit, but grieve the One who loves
us. He comes seeking grace, and when
He finds wild grace, He is grieved. And should we, says Owen, who
have received such signal mercies from the indwelling Spirit, grieve
Him who has loved us. And this is heightened and pointed
for Owen, precisely because of the intimacy between the Spirit
and the believer. Those who are most grieved by
us, he says, are those who are most intimate to us. And there
is none more intimate to us than the Spirit who was intimate with
Jesus. Therefore, there is no greater
crime for the believer than to grieve Him who has come to make
us holy, to grieve Him who has come to comfort us, to grieve
Him who has loved us with the everlasting love of God. Since then, he says, we have
been sealed by the Spirit, with the Spirit, for the day of redemption. Let us live lives that rather
than grieve Him, submit to Him, and bring our Lord Jesus Christ
through the ministry of the Spirit, the praise and honor that He
deserves. Let us pray. O our Heavenly Father, when we contemplate the power
and the majesty of the writings of a mere man and recognize that
we have here but a glimpse at the edges of your ways. We bow
in humility and awe and ask that more and more you will teach
us out of your most sacred word what it means to be men who are
indwelt by all the fullness of God. Oh, our Father, we confess
our gross unbelief of what you have told us in your Word. And
we confess at what low levels we have lived because we have
limped so many days doubting, unbelieving, the sheer majesty
and power of what you have done for us and given to us in Jesus
Christ. We have not thought what Spirit
dwells within us. We pray that in these days more
and more as we see our need for Him and as we see His glorious
testimony to our Lord Jesus and his operations within us as the
spirit of adoption, enabling us in our darkest hours to cry
out, Abba, our Father. We pray that learning to love
him and appreciating all that he has done for us, we will live
henceforth as those who please him. and not as those who grieve
him. We ask, gracious God, that in
the rest of this day you will pour out your Spirit upon us,
that we may be conscious of that restraining awe in your presence
that preserves us and protects us from sin. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I'm just sorry that Sinclair
had to go, very sorry indeed. But I personally thought that
one of the most helpful things that he said, of the many, many
things that I found very helpful, was his emphasis on the mystery
of the Spirit's work. We do not know how the Spirit
of God worked in the incarnation of Christ in the virgin birth.
We do not know the manner of His indwelling in the believer.
And it does seem to me that it is in those areas where we do
not have definitive scriptural statement, that it's in those
areas that there's a real potential for needless division and controversy
between believers. And it's my general reading of
the present situation that there has been a great revival of the
truth in many, many parts of the earth. and the word is being
preached as it has not been preached I think for many years. And suddenly
in the midst of this encouragement we find a number of controversies
springing up between men who are essentially preaching the
same things. And it seems to me that this
is far too much like what has happened in history before. for
us to suppose it's purely accidental. I think we do face at the moment
some sort of real counter-attack that is of spiritual origin and
that it behoves us as pastors and ministers to be exceedingly
cautious with regard to controversies that may seem to us to be very
important. But it is a passed out of the devil to distract
preachers of the Gospel into controversies that will take
us off what is the main need of the moment. And the main need
of the moment, as we all know, is simply a restoration of the
central doctrines of the Christian faith, the doctrines of rebirth
and justification, God's redeeming grace and power, and so on. So
it's in that light that I tend to view the controversy between
some reformed men On the work of the Holy Spirit and what Ferguson
has been speaking of more this morning, it's very similar to
the point that he brought out so helpfully of the difference
between Perkins and Cotton and Preston and the some of the more
mature judgments of John Owen, they were differences within
a common Puritan tradition. They were not differences which
warranted men to stand in opposition or hostility to one another.
And I think that is the same today. And in Britain, for example,
some people have started to call those who say, for example, Hal
Preston's view reformed sealers. And I think as soon as we start
giving labels, we are immediately in danger of running into parties. I do believe that the controversy
between reformed men in Britain is related to the fact that both
sides are anxious to preserve what are fundamental biblical
truths. On the one hand, the truth that
the Holy Spirit indwells all believers, that if we are regenerate,
we are possessed of the Spirit of God. And that the Holy Spirit,
as Christ promised in John 14, shall be with you forever. That we are in the age of the
Spirit, that we are not living in times when the Spirit comes
and goes. So those are great biblical truths,
and they're truths which some men, indeed all of us, all of
us should be very concerned to emphasize. But then on the other
side, There are those who, among whom Dr. Lloyd-Jones is a great
leader, who were at pains to emphasize that it is possible
to be a Christian and live with a very low sense of that awe
that Sinclair was talking about, with a low sense of assurance.
How often amongst Christians we hear people talking as though
death were a terrible calamity and one of our members has only
been given six months to live and maybe the whole church views
it as a terrible calamity. Well I know in a natural sense
we do mourn over death but it seems to me that generally there's
a very low sense of assurance and then the whole concept of
revival Is a revival simply coming to believe something that's always
been true? That is to say that we are presently
filled with the Holy Spirit. The only trouble is we don't
know it. Now of course Dr. Lloyd-Jones was concerned to
say that that is not the case. It's not simply a question that
we are all now filled with the Holy Spirit if only we would
recognize it. He would say well that's not
what we find in Acts 4 and so on. So he was concerned, without
negating those other truths, to bring in that further dimension
that there are manifestations of the Spirit of God which are
sorely needed by the Church at the present time. And he particularly
focused attention on the Holy Spirit's work in assurance, and
it was his understanding that the weakness of our preaching
and our praying and the weakness of our church life is very much
related to low standards of assurance. We do not have the anticipation
of glory sufficiently brightly upon us. Well, those two things, both those
truths are surely well contained together. They're both New Testament
truths. If a person is a Christian, he
is indwelt by the Spirit of God. But even the Apostle Paul in
Philippians 1 speaks of the need of the supply of the Spirit of
Jesus Christ. And mysterious though it is,
I think there is no question myself, personally, that the
manifestations of the Spirit may be very greatly restrained
and sometimes restrained over considerable periods of time
from the Church. Now how we set that out exegetically
is probably the area of debate and difficulty. Some men say that this text means
precisely that and it means no more than that. Some men say
that the only baptism of the Spirit is what we read in 1 Corinthians
12 and there is no other baptizing work of the Spirit at all. Others
say you're misunderstanding the word baptism and there is another
sense in which large plenitudes of the Spirit are given. So I
think in those areas of exegesis we need to move, as I'm sure
all the speakers are emphasizing, with much caution and with understanding
of each other's concerns. Within all this controversy of
course in Britain, and I mustn't exaggerate, it's not a great
controversy, but what makes the controversy serious of course
is the charismatic movement. And perhaps the first question
people ask is where does Sun Tzu stand in relation to the
charismatic movement? And maybe that shouldn't be the
first question we ask because if we make that the first question
we are really reacting to something else instead of actually leading
ourselves with what ought to be the major truths. And of course, Dr. Lloyd-Jones's
view, Dr. Lloyd-Jones's sense of history
was such that he knew that true revivals sometimes began amongst
people who had very low understanding, except with very few truths.
Now that was the case in the 18th century when Whitfield began
to preach and Wesley and others, their actual theological perception
was quite low. It was true in Dr. Lloyd-Jones'
own ministry in the first few years of his ministry. So when
we therefore see young Christians who have much enthusiasm, it
may not be possible to tell initially whether this perhaps is another
great movement of the Spirit beginning And we should not rush to condemn
people just because their understanding is small. So Dr. Lloyd-Jones's
attitude to the charismatic movement was to handle it with great gentleness
and to give all the help he could to increase the understanding
of men who were enthusiastic about it. As time went on of
course he saw quite clearly that what the charismatic movement
in general was doing was not something biblical at all. It
was diminishing the importance of the truth of Christian doctrine
which is fundamental to everything. And he said that and all that
is available and it's a great and extraordinary distortion
of his teaching to suppose that Dr. Lloyd-Jones was a supporter
of the charismatic movement. It's a complete misunderstanding
and I think that again that that has occurred. You will think
that I'm speaking too much of the powers of darkness, but it
does seem to me that if you can identify anyone with the charismatic
movement, there's no question that given a certain number of
years, that person is going to be discredited, because the charismatic
movement will not last. It will run on for a certain
period, and it will collapse. And when it does collapse, those
who were its leaders will not stand on the pages of church
history as men of discernment and leadership. And therefore,
if you can identify Dr. Lloyd-Jones with that, come a
few years, it will be the hope of the devil that Dr. Lloyd-Jones'
books will be shut up and people won't study him. So I think the
thing is quite subtle. Now, I'm really saying far too
much. Where is Mr. Chantry? I'm not
about to speak, I was about to take questions. Yes, well this is, you see, where
we get into areas of controversy. I mean, we all speak English
of different kinds. We have a richness of vocabulary,
and Sinclair was using it, which enables us to make fine distinctions. And these distinctions can be
important. But sometimes, you know, major controversies can
just hang on one word in English. And the difference between immediate
and immediate is one of those points. When Dr. Lloyd-Jones used the
word immediate, he meant that in assurance we do not simply
examine ourselves and in the light of Scripture draw certain
conclusions. We love the brethren, therefore
we are the children of God. But he would call that immediate
assurance, that is comes to us through the media of the written
word that we self-consciously judge and apply. He would say,
like the quotation you heard from Preston, that sometimes
the Holy Spirit works so directly that it's immediate, that it's
not our reasoning from Scripture, but immediately, as sometimes
a light surprises a Christian as he sings. Maybe that is a helpful distinction,
but if you build a theological position on it as the antinomians
did, then you're in great trouble. The antinomians of the 17th century
and later built their whole theology of assurance on the idea of immediate
and therefore they looked upon it as a rather carnal thing to
be looking for marks of grace. We don't need any marks of grace,
we don't need to say do we love the brethren, we don't need to
examine ourselves because the spirit witnesses immediately
to us. Well once you start saying that
you are already a long way from the New Testament. So, I think
we need to be careful about the use of immediate and immediate,
but I do think there is a sense in which it is justified to speak
of immediate if we are careful. But it isn't a scriptural distinction
and therefore it's certainly not something to be made a battleground. What do you say Mr. Chancellor? What do I say? Obviously, there is an immediate
operation of the Holy Spirit within the believer. And if that's
what you're referring to, you can use the term. But if you're
using immediate to indicate that there is some objective revelation
that has come to you without any means, then you want to avoid
that. Say, no, I don't believe in the
immediate witness of the Spirit. There certainly are evidences
of the immediate presence of the Spirit with the believer.
Do you want to pursue that? Yeah, I came to see the difference
between the sense of atmosphere and the mood of the atmosphere
and the mediation of it in the day. The question is, which one
of those do you think is the most prominent? Which is? You're
asking me for all of the Puritans? What's that? Well, I think the sun and the
moon distinction was an illustration. And I think everyone who struggles with the
scriptural view of assurance will admit that there are varying
degrees of assurance. And it would certainly be, I'm
sure that what they're saying is that the immediate rays of
the sun would illustrate a stronger assurance than the reflection
of the moon and a mere logical exercise of the mind when there
comes that immediate witness of the spirit with our spirit. There was someone else who wanted
to pursue something here. Yes. To what extent is the doctrine
of being convinced in the charismatic movement today? Oh, well, that's
right, he is. That's a very good point. I mean,
if a charismatic can find a sentence in his books or something that
bears any resemblance to what they're saying, it would be extracted
and put on the cover. That is so. And even the way
charismatics talk about him as an apostle and prophet, you know,
that is very misleading too. He would have been aghast to
have heard that sort of title given to him. Could I just say a brief word
on the point? I think that we distinguish these
types of assurance. When we first are converted,
he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. Well, there's
a promise of God and when we receive the promise, We have
a type of assurance and a believer has assurance in resting on the
promises of God without anything else. We don't say before you
can have any assurance you've got to read your own heart and
make sure you love the brethren and you keep the commandments
of God. Now some Christian groups have said that and that leads
to great trouble. There is an assurance that may
be given to the believer at once on his conversion and it's based
on the promises of God. That doesn't mean, however, in
the second place that we neglect the assurance that comes from
the evidence of Christian holiness. That must be handled carefully.
but very clearly from 1 John and other parts of scripture,
it's an important part of assurance. And then, as others would distinguish,
a third kind of assurance which is more immediate and direct,
when the Holy Spirit comforts us, maybe when we're at low ebb,
maybe when we see no signs of grace in us at all. Sometimes
even C.H. Virgin was brought virtually
to a condition of despair And in those dark hours, it may not
be that we have any ability to distinguish grace, but the Spirit
shines upon us and comforts us. Now I think the important thing
to say is that all those three forms of assurance need to be
twined together, and the danger comes when people isolate one
and say that this is the assurance of the New Testament. I think
they all overlap, and that we need to teach all three, and
that Personally, I think it's dangerous to say that any one
of them is the assurance of the New Testament. I think they fit
together. I think your suggestions were
very helpful. Thank you, and we do want to
end because our next session will begin in five moments. Let
me just mention that one of the aspects of this whole discussion
that is frustrating If you hear Dr. Lloyd-Jones believe this
or believe that, and you go and read all of the books that he
read, and then somebody said, but I heard him say, in person. Well, that's, you know, if in
years to come, you've read all of the works of John Murray,
and then someone wants to say, but I heard him say in person,
and therefore he believes something contrary to everything he's put
in print. That's tragic, and that's a tragic part of the whole
controversy right now. There's no question when you
read Dr. Roy Jones' books that he was
not promoting a charismatic view. Well, thank you. This lecture,
A Message, is made available to you by the Banner of Truth
Trust in America and in Edinburgh, Scotland, in cooperation with
the Trinity Pulpit in Essexville, New Jersey. These conferences
are held each year in America, And information regarding future
conferences may be obtained by writing to the office of the
Banner of Truth Trust in America at the following address, Banner
of Truth Trust, Post Office Box 621, Carlisle, Pennsylvania,
17013. Also, a list of the reprinted
works of great theologians and many outstanding scholars of
today may be sent to you on request. by writing to the Banner of Truth
Trust. Now let Ernie Resinger, pastor
of the Pompano Beach Baptist Church in Pompano Beach, Florida,
tell you something of these conferences. This is our sixth Ministers and
Elders Conference in the United States. However, in England,
the Banner of Truth has had this type of conference for over 25
years. I think my first conference was
1962. I believe that would be about 22 years ago. To my knowledge,
they have all been used in a great measure, used of God to instruct,
and at times to search us, and always to encourage those in
the ministry. And I pray that this will be
no exception. I have every reason to believe
that the men attending such a conference are here not looking for frothy
religious excitement, but rather biblical and experimental substance. Of course, that can only be received
from the Bible. Men who desire I believe the
men who come to these conferences are men who desire to be instructed
and desire to be searched, like David. Men who desire to be used. And certainly, as already has
been indicated, we all come because we need encouragement. And age
doesn't change those things. You'll still need it when you're
older, those three things. We have a hymn in our hymnal
back in our churches. It's, the name of the hymn is,
Brother and We Are Met to Worship. And one of the lines, I think
the line is, Brother and We Are Met to Worship and Adore the
God We Love. But there's a line that says
this, All is vain, except all is vain on them that spirit of
the Holy One come down. And it doesn't matter about the
conference or the speakers, for our spiritual good, that same
thing is true here, unless the Spirit of the Holy One come down. And I pray that that would be
our portion this week.
John Owen on the Holy Spirit #2
Series John Owen on the Holy Spirit
| Sermon ID | 12303211729 |
| Duration | 1:21:20 |
| Date | |
| Category | Special Meeting |
| Language | English |
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