The Great Need of the Church

' Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying " Abba, Father."' — Gal 4:6

WHEN God had revealed His love in the gift of His Son, His great work was completed. When Christ had died upon the cross, with His 'It is finished,' and had been raised up again, and seated upon the throne of God, His work was completed. Then began the dispensation of the Spirit, Whose office it was to reveal and impart all that the work of God and of Christ had prepared. This work of the Holy Spirit has not yet been accomplished ; it is for this that Christ sits upon the throne, henceforth expecting till all His enemies be made His footstool.

The great difference between the work of the Father and the Son, and the work of the Holy Spirit, is that while the former wrought out their work for and on behalf of men, as a salvation prepared for their acceptance, the office of the Holy Spirit is to impart to them that grace which enables them to accept and to live out what the Father and the Son have provided. The great mark of the operation of the Spirit is, that in this dispensation His work and man's work are inextricably linked together, so that whatever the Spirit does He does through man, and whatever is to be done in the Kingdom of God it is man who does it. In the world of men the Holy Spirit can manifest Himself in no other way than in, and as, the spirit of man. It is the dispensation in which we are to prove what man's part is in the carrying out of God's plan.

When Paul had spoken of God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, he immediately adds, ' He hath committed unto us the Word of reconciliation.' The carrying out and making known of the reconciliation was entrusted to the Church. On its faithfulness or its failure the spread and the power with which that reconciliation would work in the world was to depend.

These thoughts suggest to us the wonderful glory of the ministration of the Spirit, the terrible failure on the part of the Church, and the only path to restoration.

God's great object in sending the Spirit of Christ to take possession of the hearts of men, was to restore the fellowship with Himself for which man had been created. All the work of God and of Christ in redemption culminated in this one thing— the Holy Spirit was to communicate the salvation that had been provided, and to maintain it in unbroken efficacy, moment by moment, in the heart of God's children. He was to be the Spirit of life, leading them in the path of holiness and perfect conformity to Jesus Christ. He was to be the Spirit of power, fitting them for service, as Christ's witnesses, to the ends of the earth. We are to be the living testimony of God to the ends of the earth.  The Holy Spirit was to be the perfect bond of union between the Father in heaven and the child on earth. The bond of union, too, between Christ and the perishing world. Every believer would, in the power of the Spirit, be able to give his testimony to the love that had come to him. God's great purpose was that man should be saved by man, not only Christ His Son, but in the men in whom He lived. The gift of the Spirit renders this possible to all who yield themselves absolutely to be possessed by Him.

How terribly the Church has failed in its high calling. How few there have been who with Paul, and those like-minded, have proved that absolute dependence upon the Spirit does secure the continual presence and working of God in the life. Is not the great mark of much the larger part of the Church, the very feeble workings of the Spirit of God! And is not the reason that there is so much prayer for the power of the Holy Spirit, with but little of an answer, because so few are ready to yield them- selves absolutely to His control? They do not even know that this is the one secret of coming under His full power — the faith that in unceasing dependence upon His operation dies to self and counts upon Him to do His perfect work. It is when the Church, when the believer, begins to understand this, that there will be a hope for the true revival of the Spirit in divine power.

Thank God for the assurance that the Spirit has been given, that He is yearning over us, that He is ready and able to take possession of His Church. Let us but be ready to confess honestly the state in which the Church is, and the share we have in it. Let all who believe in God, in His love and His almighty power, bear their testimony to what is the one thing needful, and the one thing above everything most certain, that God is longing to enter in the power of the Spirit into possession of His redeemed people, And let us lift the voice heavenward, to plead in unceasing intercession that God would manifest Himself to all who are longing to be temples of the Holy Ghost filled with His power, yielded up to be made meet for the dwelling, the worship, the service, of the living God.

And what now is the connection between this message and the devotion of daily life? Nothing less than this, that our aim in our secret devotions must ever be to cast aside the ordinary standard of religion and to make God's standard the object of our unceasing desire. God's Standard is Christ - He must be our first love.  God's Spirit has been given us to reveal Christ and His life in us. No true progress can be made until with purpose of heart we consent that in everything we shall live in immediate and unceasing dependence on the power of the Spirit, I have already suggested what will be some of the great hindrances. No due sense of His claim to have absolute and entire control. A lack of faith in His gracious and tender love to meet us and work His work of power in our hearts. Ignorance of what is meant by the power of the world as the great enemy of the blessed Spirit, Unwillingness to take up the cross of Christ, to die with Him in His death as the Spirit alone can reveal it. Or, to sum up all in one, the absence of that deep conviction of what a holy, divine, and almighty work it is for God the Spirit to take possession of our life and carry out His one desire to make Christ live within us.

God help us to remember that it is in our daily devotions that this great work is to be carried on and accomplished. God help us to be strong in faith, giving glory to God, trusting in Him Who quickeneth the dead, and calleth the things that are not as though they were, to carry out His own work in us. We never can sufficiently insist upon the thought that the one great object of God in the gift of the Holy Spirit, was to fit His people for being and doing what they could not be and do in the Old Testament. God does not expect from us, however earnest our efforts and our prayers may he, that we should strengthen and maintain our spiritual life. That is the work for which His Holy Spirit was promised. It is only the soul who lives in entire surrender to and dependence on the blessed Spirit, in whom God can effectually carry on His mighty work and accomplish all His blessed purposes.