The motivation to be filled with the Spirit.

Thursday February 16,2023

Can you imagine being full and remaining full all the time without having to ever eat again? You would die of malnutrition. It would be the ultimate appetite suppression pill, bariatric surgery (make your stomach smaller), diet regimen. Now imagine this in your soul. The soul content or full all the time. Sounds like heaven. It is heaven. In time people might have moments that feel like it, maybe longer, and often they will long for it but it is probably the most elusive thing there is. True contentment, truly being full in the soul for long stretches of time. This is actually offered by God and it is free – well, it comes to those who have faith. God speaks of it in one of the most astounding sentences in the Bible.

Col 2:9-10

“Complete” is perfect passive which means that it is a gift forever. We receive it (passive voice) and will always be it (perfect tense).

This is the promise to every believer. We receive Christ and He makes us complete. There is nothing more that can be added. Christ fills us. “Complete” is the same verb “be filled” (pleroo).

Mat 5:6

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

Eph 5:18

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit,

“Thus, by means of his strange comparison, the Apostle has opened a vista before us, and given us a sight of some of the essential glories of the Christian life. No, it is not merely, and not only, a life of not getting drunk, or not going to a cinema, not smoking, not doing this, that or the other. You can be clear on all those matters and still not be a Christian. The Christian is a man who is stimulated by the Holy Spirit. His personality is expanded; his is happy, he is joyful, he is convivial (friendly and enjoyable), he is useful. He is living the most thrilling, exciting life that a man can ever know, and it has all been produced by the Holy Spirit. Nothing else, no-one else, can produce all these things, and produce them all at the same time. A man with great will power, or a highly moral man can control himself. Yes, but he cannot make himself happy. That is why I have denounced the type of many who is merely moral, the man who gives the impression that Christianity is something depressing and sad.

But let me also say this, to be fair – I denounce equally the type of Christian who tries to produce a false, counterfeit, fictitious cheeriness and breeziness. That is not the Holy Spirit’s work. I am referring to those people who put on a kind of glib cheeriness and say, ‘I always show that I am a happy man because I am a Christian’. The effect they always have upon me is to make me feel extremely miserable as I see the display of their carnality, and their failure to understand the doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit! They try to create it and wear it like a cloak. Then they try to make their meetings bright and cheerful. They are even talking about ‘bright and cheery buildings’ now (1974 in UK). [What would he think of some of our mega churches?] Some even argue that that is essential to evangelistic work! That is drunkenness, that is excess, that is like the effect of alcohol; that is man trying to produce an appearance of happiness.” [Lloyd-Jones, Life in the Spirit, p. 24]

I don’t agree with everything Lloyd-Jones writes but I do agree with this and I let him say it so that you can decide for yourself. The filling of the Holy Spirit is a real manifestation of God in our thinking, our speech, and our actions. It is not something we fake, nor is it only the avoidance of things we shouldn’t do.

After writing this phrase, unique in the entire Bible, Paul then goes on to write of relationships. First, brothers and sisters in the church relating to one another and simultaneously to God.

Eph 5:15-21

Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, 16 making the most of your time, because the days are evil. 17 So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; 20 always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; 21 and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.

Then Paul writes of wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters. In every case, even with the believer and God, there is the possibility of conflict.

The conflict between people is the cause of most of the misery on earth.

Sin causes all misery, and when we sin against ourselves, against our own bodies and minds, we might possibly suffer the results alone, but when these sins and others cause conflict in people great damage is done, to the scale of actual war.

If these had worked: divorce would be rare, as would rebellious children, abusive parents, abusive masters and rebellious slaves.

But one of the main tenets of Christianity is that believers in Christ are made new, and for these who are new in Christ, far different solutions are available to them. Paul presents here what is manner of life for the Christian who fills him or herself with all divine things, the filling of the Spirit of God.

Filled with truth (what you know so far), humility, trust, and obedience; the believer will be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Where is confession? When any one of these is not in your soul, which will void the rest, you are sinning or have sinned. Confess the sin or sins and restore the things you must choose. Confession without restoration of the things we must always choose is simply willful sin and evil.

And … we need a reason.

We need a real desire.

There has to be a reason for the Christian to do the will of God in a way that is not just doing this or that because we ought. And there is a very good and perfect reason.

God does everything for a reason. “I will accomplish all My good pleasure.”

Doing for no reason is just robotic, just noise. To do what eternal life bids us to do, we have to have a good reason, and we have the best reason, one that the world does not know. It is a reason they have heard but rejected, and so they do not understand. This is why the world, swimming in Christian waters made up of the morals of Christianity, can use these morals to a certain extent, but they cannot make true love, joy, and peace. Divorce is high, Washington D.C. is never at peace, wars and rumors of war continue daily, children rebel and turn to drugs, alcohol, and suicide; parents are unhappy and families are dysfunctional, bosses and workers distrust one another – peace and goodwill are bywords and rare.

The Christian has been made new and his or her solutions are new, from heaven itself, and every Christian has a heavenly reason to put these solutions into practice.

The reason is the gospel.

Does this sound too simple? If you think so, you need to know more about the gospel; the good news.

In the first three chapters of Ephesians, Paul lays down the good news of the gospel. The first half of the letter is nothing but the doctrines concerning the believer’s new position in Christ – blessed, elected, predestined, adopted, forgiven, sealed, risen, inducted into the mystery. These are the reasons for living eternal life but the world has rejected them. Included in it is the fear of the Lord (Eph 5:21).

The world says, “To heck with those chapters and their doctrines. Give us, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do to you,’ give us, ‘Blessed are the poor,’ and we’ll make the world perfect.”

They have looked upon some artistic adornments on the eaves of a house and ripped out the foundation and the first few floors and abandoned them while gathering the little statues and frescos.

The gospel teaches us that all believers in the gospel are new creatures in Christ. The gospel teaches us that God is our Father and we are His children. The gospel is life to the believer and that life is very personal, meaning, that it is lived in Christ, in relationship with the Father, loving the Father and the Son as Father and brother, living priests who serve the high priest.

Then the Son, our brother the King, tells us that He gave us the Holy Spirit to fill us so as to live like Him, in the same manner, the manner of our election from the Father – holy and blameless.

But He doesn’t tell us to be filled with the Spirit alone. He tells us to be filled with the knowledge of Him. He tells us that we have to have faith, humility, and obedience. These are addressed by Paul in the final three chapters of Ephesians and they surround the command to be filled with the Spirit.

Christ also tells us that we are forgiven of all sin through His death. So that, when we don’t fill our lives and our thoughts with what He told us to, we can openly confess to God our wrong, and restore what is right and know we are again filled to do His will.

The reason to be filled with the Spirit is not only to do something. That actually was the only reason in the OT. Things are different now. We’re not always working; we’re not always fellowshipping in the church or in marriage or in our families. We wouldn’t conclude that when we’re not serving or doing, that there was no need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. One reason we can know this is that Paul puts the command “be filled” in the present tense. That would mean, “be filled now … and now … and now.” [look up in Wallace?]

So, if the reason is not always doing something, the reason is found in who we are, and who we are is found in the gospel.

Rom 7:24-8:4

Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

8:1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Rom 8:4 is not a condition but a statement. We are those who are made to walk according to the Spirit.