XI. The Work and Office of the Holy Spirit in God's ROM. viii. 15. "The Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." THE HE Apostles of the Lord and Saviour not only dwelt much, as we have seen, on the liberty which Christ has procured for His people, but they introduce us to the secret of it, and show clearly on what it depends. And it was especially fitting that in this eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, which was, as we saw, a full and triumphant setting forth of the liberties enjoyed by believers from every kind of bondage, there should be a disclosure to us of the principle which lies at the root of this freedom, and makes it impossible but that thraldom and bondage should cease. That principle is "God's adoption of His people to be sons." When Moses was instructed to say to Pharaoh, "Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn; and I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me;" we see in these words the germ and first obscure intimation of that purpose of God which afterwards by slow degrees became developed and openly announced, of adopting to Himself children out of the great family of man. * Exod. iv. 22, 23. For a long time, as we know, that adoption was narrowed and restricted. "My kinsmen," said St. Paul, "unto whom pertained the adoption."* It was to Abraham's seed that this very surprising privilege pertained of being adopted to be the family of God: the only one known to Him of all the families of the earth in this high and glorious sense, of being God's children. It was a privilege, alas! for many long ages forfeited, or at least suspended and in abeyance; yet it was no less true, unalterably, eternally true, "To them pertained the adoption." But then St. Paul points out to the Galatians that there was a great mystery in this; that "the seed of Abraham" had a double and mystic sense; was not only employed afterwards in this double sense by accommodation, but was originally intended to be so. When it was said, "In thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed, He saith not of seeds, as of many, but thy seed, which is Christ."+ St. Paul does not mean to say that the word "seed" cannot in itself mean "many," for we know it can, and ordinarily does, but that in this case primarily it does not. In that sense in which it was spoken to Abraham it did not. In the purpose of God's Holy Spirit which dictated it, it did not. The promise was given to Christ as the yea and amen; it was wrapped up in Him; it was held by Him for His people, in their behalf; out of Him it belonged to none. And the Evangelist St. Matthew, taught by the Holy Spirit, shows us how much deeper that mystical relation went than we should have supposed, that binding together in one of Christ as THE Son, THE Seed, and the adopted sons or seed. In Hosea we * Rom. ix. 4. + Gal. iii. 8, 16. find it said of the literal Israel, "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt." And St. Matthew discerns Christ in that passage, and quotes it as fulfilled in Him. "He was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.”† Thus we see that when Israel was adopted to be the son of God, His first-born, according to the promise above, the Lord Jesus Christ was the root of that adoption. And when it was said by the prophet Isaiah that God's chosen people was "like an oak whose substance was in it, when it cast its leaves," and "that the holy seed was the substance thereof," that would signify, not only that the true Israel of God in the midst of the literal and nominal Israel was the substance of the Church of God, but that Christ, as the Holy Seed, was the secret of its endurance, the pledge of its undying and imperishable life. And if this is dimly and mysteriously to be traced in the case of Israel's adoption to be "the son of God," how much more unquestionably and clearly is this seen in the case of all God's spiritual children now; in the case of those to whom the Apostle says, "Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. As many as are of faith are blessed in faithful Abraham. If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise."§ And what is meant by "being Christ's is explained to us, so far as words can explain it, in very various figures: e.g., "putting on Christ;" Christ being "formed in us;" Christ "living in us;" "our abiding * Hos. xi. I. Isa. vi. 13. in Christ, and His word abiding in us,"-believers joined to the Lord so as to be "one spirit" with Him; their life "hidden with Christ in God," yet also "the life of Jesus manifest in their mortal bodies," and those bodies "the members of Christ." Believers "bear His marks," "are changed into the same image," are His " epistles, written with the Spirit of the living God;" "they grow up in all things into Him which is their Head; yea, more, out of the depths of His passion, on the very eve of it, anticipating that height of blissful fellowship to which He would bring them, He said, "All mine are Thine, and Thine are mine, and I am glorified in them. I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one. ""* All these and many like expressions may well lead us to much self-searching and self-questioning; for they bear us witness, dear brethren, what a true, inward, spiritual union this is of which the Apostle writes, "He hath predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto Himself."+ But it is rather the Holy Spirit's work and office in the matter of this adoption that we speak of to-day : "The Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." It is a subject of some difficulty, and which we cannot but approach with unwonted seriousness I will not say "misgivings;" for the Holy Spirit's work in the adoption of God's children is clearly revealed indeed, yet it is of His hidden and mysterious workings in the soul, and it needs a growing holiness and heavenliness of soul to realize it. It needs that we have the real spirit of a child, and not merely that we bear the name. It carries us + Eph. i. 5. * John xvii. 10, 23. out of the common sphere of the religious life, and therefore is cast aside and rejected by some, as belonging to a contemplative life, a life of meditation and mysticism. And yet if our hearers could but understand it aright, they would find it to be intensely practical and helpful in the great struggle of life; we should get more beneath the heaved, fretted, strife-ruffled surface of things into the underlying calm, where the life and power of God's truth is. May the Spirit of God be with us and in us, to impress on us and write on our hearts these truths, while we gather them as simply as may be from the oracles of God themselves! I. The Apostle St. Paul, and indeed the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, especially delights in contrasting this adoption to be children, with some former state of bondage; as we saw before that our Lord in speaking with the Jews of the question of slavery and freedom, said, "Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin. The slave abideth not in the house for ever; but the Son abideth ever."* The Apostle to the Galatians dwells not so much on the bondage of sin, as a bondage to the "elements of the world." We, when we were children,"† (orig. "when we were babes, infants, in the state of babbling, helpless infancy,") were like the infant, under tutors and governors, that cannot take on himself rights and be entrusted with responsibilities. The legal state and spirit he compares to that state in which the child of the family and the slave are practically one, one as regards the absence of freedom, as regards constraint and subjection; being under rules, discipline, authority; with a yoke of bondage imposed, not indeed galling in the one case + Gal. iv. 3. * John viii. 34, 35. |