In the Spirit

“I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” (Rev. 1:10).

What does it mean to be in the Spirit? Does it mean to be in a trance? Does it mean to be speaking in unintellible gibberish? Does it mean to handle rattlesnakes, or to walk on the back of pews or roll around on the sanctuary floor? Must I be “slain in the Spirit”? Do rattlesnakes and pew benches and rolling around and being “slain in the Spirit” mean that I’m in the Spirit, as in the Holy Spirit? Or, an unholy spirit?

Being in the Spirit will become the most prominent issue before Jesus returns. Everyone will be “in the Spirit”, but the Bible says that “everyone” will also be following after the Beast and that everyone will worship Satan.

“And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?” (Rev. 13:3,4). And who is the dragon? “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” (Rev. 12:9). The dragon represents Satan.

“Notwithstanding the widespread declension of faith and piety, there are true followers of Christ in these churches. Before the final visitation of God’s judgments upon the earth there will be among the people of the Lord such a revival of primitive godliness as has not been witnessed since apostolic times. The Spirit and power of God will be poured out upon His children. At that time many will separate themselves from those churches in which the love of this world has supplanted love for God and His word. Many, both of ministers and people, will gladly accept those great truths which God has caused to be proclaimed at this time to prepare a people for the Lord’s second coming. The enemy of souls desires to hinder this work; and before the time for such a movement shall come, he will endeavor to prevent it by introducing a counterfeit. In those churches which he can bring under his deceptive power he will make it appear that God’s special blessing is poured out; there will be manifest what is thought to be great religious interest. Multitudes will exult that God is working marvelously for them, when the work is that of another spirit. Under a religious guise, Satan will seek to extend his influence over the Christian world.

     In many of the revivals which have occurred during the last half century, the same influences have been at work, to a greater or less degree, that will be manifest in the more extensive movements of the future. There is an emotional excitement, a mingling of the true with the false, that is well adapted to mislead.” Great Controversy, p. 464.

It would behoove us to have the correct, true Holy Spirit. How can we know which is the right one? By the Bible and by self-denial we can know. If we carry our cross we will know the Spirit of God. If we want to do God’s will we will know of the doctrine (see John 7:17). True doctrine is found only in the Law and the testimony.

So, first let’s determine who the correct Spirit is.

Jesus told us, “I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you” (John 14:16,17).

His next words were, “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you…. He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him” (John 14:18,20,21).

Let’s put these two statements together. Jesus was simply reiterating what He had just told them, “If ye love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever.” (John 14:15,16).

Jesus is explaining to His disciples, the best way He can, something they have never experienced. All that they had known of Jesus was a man in the flesh. They believed that He is the Son of God, but all they had known of Him was clothed in mortality. And that was necessary for their faith in Him as a mediator before God. But, when He would leave them, they needed to know that His departure wasn’t the end of their experience with Him. His disciples knew Him, and they would continue to know Him, His love for them and power in them for goodness and righteousness and acceptance with God.

He went on further to expound how He would continue with them.

“If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him. He that loveth Me not keepeth not My sayings: and the word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father’s which sent Me. These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” (John 14:23-26).

“We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.” Everyone who loves Jesus holds onto the truth that He brought back to this world. And they have the high privilege of being a temple for Jesus and His Father to abide with them. The Father and Son are the Holy Ghost that we know of. They are the Spirit of truth, our Comforter, “which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of His glory.” (Eph. 1:14). Living in Jesus and His Father, Their actual presence as the temple will be our inheritance. Until then, Their words, housing the power of Their presence from afar, will suffice as the earnest, or promised redemption, of the temple of Their presence. 

Jesus is saying that He will continue to live with His precious children after He leaves them in the flesh. He will stay with them and make Himself known to them by His words and teachings and His commandments. The doctrines and precepts that He would leave behind would continue to be a spiritual, real representative of His presence, just as the words that He gave them in the Old Testament scriptures had been His living representative, His powerful Spirit influencing their spirit. This is the experience that Paul had in Romans 7:25, as he delighted in the Law of God with his mind.

“Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of Me. And ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life.” (John 5:39,40). How do we come to Jesus today? Back then the disciples could physically walk up to Him and enter His powerful presence, and feel the conviction of His perfect, living representation of the Law of God. But, we come to Him through the scriptures. Looking at the words of scripture alone does not give eternal life as if they are some magical amulet.  The adoration of words or superstitious numerology with scriptures has nothing to do with Christ’s science of salvation. Even forcing the letters into our character and glorying in our own superhuman effort and willpower do nothing to obtain peace with God and obedience acceptable to Him. We need to see Jesus in scripture by the faculty of faith, and respond to His influence. We need to do what He had always intended from His holy word, “Come to Me, that ye might have life.” (John 5:40). Jesus in the Bible, played out by those men, women, and children who exemplified Him, gives us the ability to see Him, and then life flows from Him, not from the letters. Jesus lived out and heard in the scriptures is the channel through which He gives us His life, like He did in person to everyone poor of spirit in Judea and Galilee.

“It is the spirit that quickeneth [It is a new spirit, a new man, that comes to life]; the flesh profiteth nothing [the old man, the fallen human nature gets nothing out of My words]: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit [My words are power from on high], and they are life.” (John 6:63). By His words, Satan’s power loses its hold, and new love and loyalty to God come to life. If we associate with Jesus, His paths drop fatness; and self and rebellion are starved to death. If anyone does not want to part with self and rebellion, then they start to back away from Jesus. Or, they leave Him at once, like the multitudes did that day.

John has much to tell us about the Spirit. He again quotes Jesus to say that we see Him and receive Him by receiving His Spirit in His words. Christ’s Law, His doctrine, His words and actions, which are spirit and life, sound amazingly similar to Paul’s new revelation of the Spirit. “The Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the Law of sin and death.” (Rom. 8:2). Paul writes of himself just coming out of a terrible struggle with the knowledge of his sin and shame, and the power that his fallen nature has over his willpower. And he finds his solution in serving the Law of God. “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” (Rom. 7:24,25).

Up until this point in Paul’s exposition on the science of salvation, the Spirit is never mentioned. All we hear from Paul in Romans 7 is about the inward man, the willpower and the will, the flesh and Paul’s carnal nature, and a Law that is so holy that it decimates his self-sufficiency and condemns him without end. But, we also hear of his access to the Bible, which he has stored in his mind. Yet, we hear nothing of the Spirit. He doesn’t seek the Spirit or even pray to the Spirit. It’s not until he is completely surrendered to the holiness of the Law, totally helpless to obey it, and can only cry for help, that God helps him to obey—“through Jesus” (Rom. 7:25). Jesus, not the Spirit, has come to his aid while he continues to “delight in the Law of God after the inward man” (Rom. 7:22) and to “serve the Law of God” (Rom. 7:25). It was Jesus in the Law. The Spirit was the natural outcome of putting and keeping Jesus’ words in Paul’s mind, and having suffendered up his own willpower to be righteous. Once Paul has burst out in desperation, he may have prayed his first real prayer to God. And God gave him the power as Paul saw Jesus.

Suddenly the Spirit appears in the next verse! Or, was the suddenness really a smooth transition from the previous verse about Jesus and the Law? Romans 7 and 8 are one subject—the problem and the solution. They are connected; they are related to each other. Paul writes of Jesus and his own love for the Law as his solution, and then in the very next verse he writes of the Law of the Spirit in Jesus Christ. God’s Law was the solution for obedience—that is, His Law’s revelation of the person of Christ was the solution! Through the presence of Christ, the Law of God was transformed. It turned into the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ! The characters of the holy people in the Old Testament and the requirements taught in the scriptures painted a picture of Jesus. Now the Law of Christ’s personal and friendly and gracious example averted the hard works of the flesh that were attempting to keep the Law. That was the solution! It sounds simple, and even ineffective because Paul’s victory over sin actually remained out of the reach of his own willpower. He just kept loving and meditating on the word of God, and Jesus delivered Paul “from the body of this death.” (Rom. 7:24). “Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.” (Rom. 3:27).

“If ye continue in My word, then are ye My disciples indeed.” (John 8:31). The real student stays until the end of the course and graduates. Paul is finally graduating. Now, with Jesus in Paul’s sights, it would be easy to be righteous, so long as he would continue looking unto Jesus in His Law, that is, seeing Jesus throughout the Bible. If Paul would continue to enter Jesus’ strait gate of His exemplary life that excluded everything promoting self, and if he would continue to yearn to see Jesus’ glorious life as lived out in the Bible stories and teachings, then righteousness would easily be his.

“For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the Law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the Law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.” (Rom. 7:5,6). The difference was that now Paul’s focus was no more trying to appease God and man by his own boastful works of the Law. For him the congregation is no longer a country club for saints, or a museum of saints. Before this, a miserable Paul had been staring so hard at the words, and working so exhaustedly to get them into his brain and life and character, that he shoved the Spirit of God out of the process. He only saw himself—himself doing all the requirements. He was not seeing Jesus do it, like the disciples had the privilege of seeing. Seeing only himself doing the Law made the Law a Law of death because it separated him from Jesus. While he would work so hard, He would never see Jesus—or His Spirit behind the words and concepts. The Law had been a cold college text book that He had to study and practice, and then get graded on; study, practice some more, and get graded again, etc. Now, he would serve the heart and life of the Person, Jesus Christ, instead of studying a book of rules and information and instructions, even though those rules and information and instructions were holy, and just, and good.

“Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” (Matt. 11:28-30). “Watch how I keep the commandments, and watch how others have done it because they let Me do it in them. Look at David, with lightning quick reflexes, grabbing the lion by the beard and slaying him. Watch him run up to Goliath because I was in his heart; I was all that he could see and hear; and see in David My desire to work in you, and I will come in. That’s how righteousness is made doable. Learn of Me; do righteousness with Me, right next to Me. I in you and you in Me.” Yoked up together with Him is what Jesus wants from us. He doesn’t want us to live the Christian life without Him. When we see how meek and lowly He was/is, we calm right down, we abide in His presence and He influences us to do what we see and hear from Him. 

Jesus promised us that commandment keeping would be easy if we give up on our own strife to obey, and come to Him through His words, learning from Him and His example, seeing Him in His statutes, plugging His name into His instructions to us.

“Jesus suffered long, and was kind; Jesus envied not; Jesus vaunted not Himself, was not puffed up,
Jesus did not behave Himself unseemly, sought not His own, was not easily provoked, thought no evil;
Jesus rejoiced not in iniquity, but rejoiced in the truth;
Jesus bore all things, believed all things, hoped all things, endured all things.
Jesus never failed.” (1Cor. 13:4-8).
“Jesus did not hate His brother in His heart: He did in any wise rebuke His neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him. Jesus did not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of His people, but He loved His neighbour as Himself.” (Lev. 19:17).

“If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” (John 15:7). Through His words He abides in us; and through our words we abide in Him. The two-way communication of Bible study and prayer life keeps us safe from temptation and from the devil’s control, safe in the arms of Jesus, and safe from corroding care. “[Our] delight is in the Law of the LORD; and in His Law [do we] meditate day and night. And [we are] like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; [our] leaf also [does] not wither; and whatsoever [we do in the way of righteousness prospers].” (Ps. 1:2,3).

When we have spent the time seriously, desperately watching Jesus live out His life and also watching Him willingly sink down into shock and die, then we will die to self like He did in Gethsemane and on the cross, and we will live like He lived. His Spirit in the written word will take control of us and we will obey without even thinking about it, except that we will love to obey Him. Seeing His self-sacrificing love, and mimicking Him, is how we obey Him. We will be drawn to Him and to His perfect love for righteousness. Like Him we will be good at being good and bad at being bad; whereas, before, like Paul experienced, we were good at being bad and bad at being good. Like our Friend, we will live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the Law, then Christ is dead in vain.” (Gal. 2:20,21). “Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the Law; ye are fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.” (Gal. 5:4,5). Waiting with patience is one of the fruits of the Spirit. If we wait for the power of God, fervently learning of Jesus in His own life and in the lives of others who He sanctified, then the patience we learned in the process of receiving Jesus will be a ready reserve of patience toward others who are not yet sanctified, and patience with our own work-of-a-lifetime sanctification.

Now for the Spirit. Remember that we read:

“I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.” (John 14:16,17). The world doesn’t see the Spirit of Christ or know Christ. And Jesus told His disciples previously, “This is the will of Him that sent Me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life” (John 6:40). But, how can I see the Son, here 2,000 years after His ascension? How can I know Him when He is light-years away in the heavenly sanctuary? How can I be transformed like those people were transformed so long ago who got to walk with Him, touch Him, and hear Him? How can I know the Lord of glory like they had the privilege?

“As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God.” (John 1:12). “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Heb. 12:2). How can I look unto Jesus and receive Him so that I can become a son of God?

He told us how previously,

“Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of Me.” (John 5:39). We receive Him through the words that He inspired, from Genesis to Revelation. Prophets and kings and apostles, regular people, even outcasts and untouchables, prostitutes and thieves, dictators and assassins, all showed us Jesus. We know Him through them, yes even the ugliest of characters: Belshazzar, Caiaphas, Judas, Cain, Nimrod, et al. All the beautiful characters show us Jesus’ life; and all the ugly characters show us His death because God made Jesus to be the ugliest, most detestable sin, treating His beloved Son with the hatred He has toward our sins, in all of their malignancy. We receive Christ’s Spirit from the Bible characters’ written biographies and words. As we love them we are counted as loving Jesus. Jesus is shining forth from them. The people have passed on from this life, but their record remains in the Book of life, and Jesus lives on forever through the written page.

So let’s lay scripture over scripture. John 14:6 over John 14:17. “He [the Spirit of truth] dwelleth with you” (John 14:17). Jesus said that He was the only source of truth, and life, and the only way to God. Can we come to God through another Spirit beside Jesus? No, Jesus was right there in the upper room, dwelling among them. Jesus would be the Spirit of truth. And He “shall be in you”. Again, as we read before: “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you…. He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him” (John 14:18,20,21). “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you…” (John 15:7). After the crisis of Calvary, His words would abide in them permanently. Through the permanent residence of His words in their hearts and minds, Jesus would forever abide in their faith and hopes. Their love for Him at a distance would be accepted by God while they must continue to be quarantined on a fallen planet because of sin. “Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.” (John 14:23). His Spirit lived in the written word. His Spirit lay hidden in the ancient written concepts that only a new heart and mind and spirit would grasp and hold fast.

In the final analysis, if we take these spiritual lessons of Christ, as He tried to explain them, we must conclude that when speaking of the Spirit Jesus was speaking of Himself after His ascension, or of His Father through Himself, because They were so perfectly united.

“For the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the Law of sin and death.” (Rom. 8:2). So long as we are seeing Jesus in the Law and we plead back to Him, “I beseech Thee, shew me Thy glory” (Ex. 33:18), then we will remain under God’s grace and we will walk in the Spirit, “the Spirit of His Son” (Gal. 4:6), “the Spirit of Christ” (Rom. 8:9).

Whoever doesn’t have the Son’s Spirit, “is none of His.” (Rom. 8:9). “But ye are…in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” (Rom. 8:9).

Those who persist in depending on their own resources to please God and man, don’t keep His words or walk in His way. They live after the flesh and keep a standard that they tailor to their faulty character. They have need of nothing; they need no intercessor through Christ in the Law. They love self, and they love the service of Satan and the benefits of boasting self with which he rewards his servants. They don’t love Jesus; they don’t need Jesus’ help. They are none of His. But, if they turn again to Him in complete helplessness, He receives them immediately.

“But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.” (Rom. 8:11). The Father raised Jesus to life (see Acts 2:24,32; 3:15,26 ;4:10; 5:30 ;10:40; 13:30,33,34; 17:30,31) and the Spirit of, the glory of, the life of, the soul of the Father will dwell in us and raise us from death to life (see Rom. 4:24,25; 6:4; 7:4; 10:9; 1Cor. 6:14; 15:15; 2Cor. 4:14; Gal. 1:1; Eph. 1:20; 2:6; Col. 2:12; 1Thess. 1:10; 1Pet. 1:21). “...His Spirit that dwelleth in you.” (Rom. 8:11). We are quickened to obedience by the Father’s personal life-giving Spirit. It raised up Jesus and will quicken us to new life also. The quickening Spirit in Jesus comes through seeing Him in the Law—the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, the Spirit of Jesus in the Law.

We cannot see Christ unless we look into the Law of God and the scriptures to find His Spirit in the people there. Christ is the Word because His Spirit wrote the word of God. When we see Jesus our Saviour and Lord there, then the living principles of the Word come into our minds, and we see Him and know Him. His words then are Spirit and power to change our life. “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” (John 6:63). There was no Law that could give us life; but there is Jesus in the Law who can give us life abundantly.

The sudden appearance of the Spirit in Romans 8 came from Paul’s total surrender after realizing his impossibility of obeying the holy and just and good Law of God. That’s when God revealed Jesus to him in the Law, the Law which testified of Jesus. And that’s when Paul received a new heart and mind, new interests and tastes. He had a personal experience with the living God, which he sought to give people from that day onward, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Col. 1:27). After all of his wrestling with his exceeding sinfulness, Paul desired to look away from his filthy self and his life of failure and frustration. He desired to see excellence, and Jesus was just that: the Lamb of God without spot and without blemish, who had “an excellent Spirit”, “the Spirit of [God]” with “light and understanding and excellent wisdom” (Dan. 5:12,14) .

Jesus was the perfect representation of God’s Law, and the sight of the person of Jesus in the Law gave Paul power to obey; the sight gave him a whole new nature. He was seeing Jesus and having eternal life, as Jesus promised in John 6:40. The power of the Holy Ghost didn’t fall from heaven upon Paul like it did upon the church at Pentecost. There was no “mighty rushing wind” (Acts 2:2) jolting him into stiffened vision and breathlessness, as with Daniel, or speaking in unknown languages, as with the 12 apostles. But, the Law full of Jesus and His life was the Law of Jesus’ Spirit of life (see Romans 8:2, 9).

Jesus gave Paul the desires of his new conviction—obedience to God’s Law. Paul was in Christ (beseeching God with all his heart), and Christ was in Paul (God’s words were beseeching Paul through his delight in the Law). Therefore, he could ask what he would, and it was done to him. “And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth us: and if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.” (1Jn. 5:14,15). “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be My disciples.” (John 15:7,8). “If ye then, being evil, now how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” (Luke 11:13).

“God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 7:25). “I am in the Father, and the Father in Me.” (John 14:10). “I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou has loved Me.” (John 17:23). “At that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you.” (John 14:20). When the children of Adam are restored to the original union that Adam had with the Father and Son Godhead, then they are “in the Spirit”, “even the first dominion.” (Mic. 4:8).

SPIRIT+Spirit+spirit= the Spirit. God’s Spirit in His Law united with Christ’s Spirit in His scriptures united with our newly created spirit that has a love for the truth in the Law and scriptures is the Spirit that we receive through surrender to the power of Christ and from the commandments of God and the Testimony of Jesus Christ. SPIRIT+Spirit+spirit= the Spirit is the biblical Spirit. This is the biblical three in one.

The truth about the Spirit is founded upon the Law of God and our faith in Jesus. Three in one. “I in them, and Thou in Me.” There is no trinity, but there are three in one. Fellowship! Sabbath fellowship. Amen!

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” (1Jn. 1:1-3).

“And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.” (1Jn. 1:4).