The Holy Spirit

The Absolute Essential to True Godliness

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, The Holy Spirit 3 Comments

Charity beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. – 1Corinthians 13:7

The grace of charity, or love, of which so much is most admirably spoken in this chapter, is absolutely essential to true godliness. So essential is it that, if we have everything beside, but have not charity, it profiteth us nothing. The absence of charity is absolutely fatal to vital godliness; so saith the Holy Ghost in this chapter. When, then, you read the apostle’s high encomiums of charity, do not say, “This is a fancy virtue to which certain special saints have attained, and we are bound to admire them for it, but we need not imitate them.” Far from it. This charity is the common, everyday livery of the people of God. It is not the prerogative of a few; it must be the possession of all. Do not, therefore, however lofty the model may be, look up to it as though you could not reach it: you must reach it. It is put before you not only as a thing greatly desirable, but as absolutely needful; for if you excelled in every spiritual gift, yet if you had not this all the rest would profit you nothing whatever. One would think that such excellent gifts might benefit us a little, but no, the apostle sums them all up, and saith of the whole, “it profiteth me nothing.” I pray that this may be understood of us at the very beginning, lest we should manage to slip away from the truth taught us by the Holy Ghost in this place, and should excuse ourselves from being loving by the notion that we are so inconsiderable that such high virtue cannot be required of us, or so feeble that we cannot be expected to attain to it. You must attain it, or you cannot enter into eternal life, for if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His, and the Spirit of Christ is sure to beget the charity of our text, which “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1617.cfm

Christ’s Love to Us and Our Love to Christ

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Holy Spirit 2 Comments

We love Him, because He first loved us.- 1 John 4:19

We first learn of His love to us, and then as the result of that, we are brought to love Him. Ours is a poor little love, not worthy of His acceptance; but, such as it is, we give it all to Him; and He will not refuse it, or despise it. Oh, that we all might be joined to Christ in love now!

“I give my heart to Thee,
O Jesus, most desired!
And heart for heart the gift shall be,
For Thou my soul hast fired:
Thou hearts alone would’st move,
Thou only hearts dost love;
I would love Thee as Thou lov’st me,
O Jesus most desired!”

In this loving union, Christ’s love to us and our love to Christ flow in the same channel. Together they make a stream of love of a glorious kind. We love one another for Christ’s sake; we love sinners for Christ’s sake. We love the truth as Christ loves the truth. We love the Father in the same manner that Christ loves the Father, though not to the same degree. There is, in fact, but one love in the Head and in all the members. What the Head loves all the body loves. As one man we go with Christ. Being united to Him, His desires and longings become our desires and longings too; we grow into His likeness, and “are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2245.cfm

Love and I

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Holy Spirit 1 Comment

“…lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”  Amen. – Matthew 28:20

Jesus is ever at home where love is reigning. When love lives in His people’s hearts, Jesus lives there too. Does Jesus, then, live in the hearts of His people? Yes; wherever there is the love of the Father shed abroad in them, He must be there.

We are sure that He is where love is; for, first, where there is love there is life, and where there is life there is Christ, for He Himself says, “I am the life.” There is no true life in the believer’s soul that is divided from Christ. We are sure of that; so that where there is love there is life, and where there is life there is Christ. Again, where there is the love of God in the heart there is the Holy Spirit; but wherever the Holy Spirit is, there is Christ, for the Holy Spirit is Christ’s representative; and it is in that sense that He tells us, “Lo, I am with you alway,” namely, because the Spirit is come to be always with us. So where there is love there is the Spirit of God, and where there is the Spirit of God there is Christ. So it is always “Love and I.”

Furthermore where there is love there is faith, for faith worketh by love, and there never was true love to Christ apart from faith; but where there is faith there is always Christ, for if there is faith in Him He has been received into the soul. Jesus is ever near to that faith which has Himself for its foundation and resting place. Where there is love there is faith, where there is faith there is Christ, and so it is “love and I.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1667.cfm

The Divine Love in Us

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Father, The Holy Spirit 5 Comments

“And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” – John 17:26

God does not love us because we know Him, for He loved us before we knew Him, even as Paul speaks of “His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses and sins.” Jesus has not come to set His Father’s love upon the chosen. Oh, no; He did not even die with that object, for the Father’s love was upon the chosen from everlasting. “The Father Himself loveth you” was always true. Christ did not die to make His Father loving, but because His Father is loving: the atoning blood is the outflow of the very heart of God toward us. So do not make any mistake. Our Lord speaks not of the divine love in itself, but in us. This is not the eternal love of God towards us of which we are now reading, but that love in us. We are inwardly to feel the love which proceeds from the Father, and so to have it in us. We are to have the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. It is to be recognized by us, felt in us, made the subject of inward joy; this it is that our Lord wishes to produce, that the love of God may be in us, dwelling in our hearts, a welcome guest, the sovereign of our souls.

The love of the Father towards Jesus springs up like a crystal fountain, and then the sparkling drops fall and overflow, as you have seen the fountains do, and we are the cups into which this overflowing love of God towards Christ Jesus flows, and flows till we, too, are full. The inward love so much desired for us by our Lord is…the Father’s love transplanted into the soil of these poor hearts, and becoming our love to Jesus. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1667.cfm

Christ’s Aim: Making Known the Father

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, The Father, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

“And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” – John 17:26

Are you growing in knowledge, my brothers and sisters? My labour is lost if you are not growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ…That little knowledge which you received by grace when you found “life in a look at the Crucified One” has saved you…A look at Christ saves; but oh, it is the look into Christ that wins the heart’s love and holds it fast and binds us to Him as with fetters of gold. We ought every day to be adding something to this inestimably precious store, that as we are known of God so we may know God, and become thereby transformed from glory unto glory through His Spirit.

Are you not thankful for this blessed word of the Lord Jesus: “I will declare it…I will make it known”? He did do so at His resurrection, when He taught His people things they knew not before; but He did so much more after He had ascended up on high when the Spirit of God was given. “He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” And now to-day in the hearts of His people He is daily teaching us something that we do not know. All our experience tends that way. When the Spirit of God blesses an affliction to us, it is one of the Saviour’s illuminated books out of which we learn something more of the Father’s name, and consequently come to love Him better: for that is the thing Christ aims at. He would so make known the Father, that the love wherewith the Father hath loved Him may be in us, and that He Himself may be in us. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1667.cfm

Being Taught of the Son of God

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Father, The Holy Spirit 8 Comments

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” – John 14:26

O beloved, it is not knowledge that you and I pick up as a matter of book learning that will ever bring out our love to the Father: it is knowledge given us by Christ through His Spirit. It is not knowledge communicated by the preacher alone which will bless you; for however much he may be taught of God Himself, he cannot preach to the heart unless the blessed Spirit of God comes and takes of the things that are spoken, and reveals them and makes them manifest to each individual heart, so that in consequence it knows the Lord. Jesus said, “O righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee,” and you and I would have been in the same condition, strangers to God, without God and without hope in the world, if the Spirit of God had not taken of divine things and applied them to our souls so that we are made to know them. Every living word of knowledge is the work of the living God. If you only know what you have found out for yourself, or picked up by your own industry apart from Jesus, you know nothing aright: it must be by the direct and distinct teaching of God the Holy Ghost that you must learn to profit. Jesus Christ alone can reveal the Father. He Himself said, “No man cometh unto the Father but by Me.” He that knows not Christ knows not the Father; but when Jesus Christ reveals Him, ah! then we do know Him after a special, personal, peculiar, inward knowledge. This knowledge brings with it a life and a love with which the soul is not puffed up, but built up. By such knowledge we grow up into Him in all things who is our Head, being taught of the Son of God.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1667.cfm

Our Lord’s Last Prayer

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, The Father, The Holy Spirit 4 Comments

“I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”- John 17:26

This text is taken out of our Lord’s last prayer with His disciples. He did as good as say, “I am about to leave you, I am about to die for you; and for a while you will not see Me; but now, before we separate, let us pray.” …Now, a prayer from such a one as Jesus, our Lord and Master; a prayer in such a company, with the eleven whom He had chosen, and who had consorted with Him from the beginning; a prayer under such circumstances, when He was just on the brink of the brook of Cedron, and was about to cross that gloomy stream and go up to Calvary, and there lay down His life-such a prayer as this, so living, earnest, loving and divine, deserves the most studious meditations of all believers.

You will observe that the last word of our Lord’s prayer is concerning love. This is the last petition which He offers, “That the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” He reaches no greater height than this, namely, that His people be filled with the Father’s love. How could He rise higher? For this is to be filled with all the fulness of God, since God is love, and He that loveth dwelleth in God and God in him. What importance ought you and I to attach to the grace of love! How highly we should esteem that which Jesus makes the crown jewel of all. If we have faith, let us not be satisfied unless our faith worketh by love and purifieth the soul. Let us not be content indeed until the love of Christ is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1667.cfm