The Sanctifying Communication of the Spirit

The work of the Holy Spirit today is perhaps only more neglected than it is misunderstood. Just recently the Mailman meditated on some truths about the Spirit, and if you followed all the PyroManiacs posts about pronosticating prophets at the beginning of the month you got a taste of the widespread discord over how and what the Spirit communicates in our day.

If you haven’t joined the ‘conversation’ I suggest starting with this review. Phil condensed his position into four points:

1. There is a monstrous potential for evil in blithely assuming that all your private imaginations are supernatural promptings that come to you as divine revelations from the Holy Spirit. 2. Those who order their lives by such an assumption are being willfully gullible and sinfully superstitious, and they have no biblical warrant for the practice. In fact, such a mindset is hostile to the biblical concept of discernment. 3. Claiming God told you something when in fact He did not is a profoundly wicked kind of presumption whose fruits are always evil. In fact, it was a capital crime under Moses’ law. 4. That kind of presumption, paired with a declining concern about biblical doctrine, has unleashed an untold amount of mischief in the visible church over the past century.

While I don’t really have anything to add about cessationism or continuationism, I have been doing some extended thinking on the communication of the Spirit thanks to Jonathan Edwards. Edwards had much to say about spiritual “impressions” in The Religious Affections. And though it is impossible to share everything from Edwards or even to provide a decent summary, I thought the following reflection on the “seal of the Spirit” was appropriate to the discussion.

…the seal of the Spirit is no revelation of any fact by immediate suggestion, but is grace itself in the soul…the earnest of the Spirit. It is very plain that the seal of the Spirit is the same thing with the earnest of the Spirit (cf. 2 Cor. 1:22 and Eph. 1:13, 14). …Now the earnest is part of the money agreed for, given in hand, as a token of the whole, to be paid in due time; a part of the promised inheritance granted now, in token of full possession of the whole hereafter. But surely that kind of communication of the Spirit of God, which is of the nature of eternal glory, is the highest and most excellent kind of communication, something that is in its own nature spiritual, holy and divine, and far from anything that is common: and therefore high above anything of the nature of inspiration, or revelation of hidden facts by suggestion of the Spirit of God, which many natural men have had. What is the earnest, and beginning of glory, but grace itself, especially in the more lively and clear exercises of it? It is not prophecy, nor tongues, nor knowledge, but that more excellent divine thing, “charity that never faileth,” which is a prelibation and beginning of the light, sweetness and blessedness of heaven, that world of love or charity. It is grace that is the seed of glory and dawning of glory in the heart, and therefore it is grace that is the earnest of the future inheritance. What is it that is the beginning or earnest of eternal life in the soul, but spiritual life; and what is that but grace? The inheritance that Christ has purchased for the elect, is the Spirit of God; not in any extraordinary gifts, but in his vital indwelling in the heart, exerting and communicating himself there, in his own proper, holy, or divine nature; and this is the sum total of the inheritance that Christ purchased for the elect. …It is through the vital communications and indwelling of the Spirit that the saints have all their light, life, holiness, beauty, and joy in heaven; and it is through the vital communications and indwelling of the same Spirit that the saints have all light, life, holiness, beauty and comfort on earth; but only communicated in less measure. And this vital indwelling of the Spirit in the saints, in this less measure and small beginning is, “the earnest of the Spirit, the earnest of the future inheritance, and the first fruits of the Spirit,” as the apostle calls it, Rom. 8:22, where, by “the first fruits of the Spirit,” the apostle undoubtedly means the same vital, gracious principle that he speaks of in all the preceding part of the chapter, which he calls Spirit, and sets in opposition to flesh or corruption. — Therefore this earnest of the Spirit, and first fruits of the Spirit, which has been shown to be the same with the seal of the Spirit, is the vital, gracious, sanctifying communication and influence of the Spirit, and not any immediate suggestion or revelation of facts by the Spirit.

[The italics are Edwards’ and the bold portions are my emphasis.]

Note that the Holy Spirit is not simply a “still, small voice” but a vigorous, sanctifying influence. If Edwards is correct, we will know that the Spirit is in us not by listening for new revelations but instead by looking for Spirit-produced holiness. So the “communication” of the Spirit today is His sanctifying imprint in our lives rather than impressions in our minds.