Scripture: "The Comforter shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you."—JOHN xvi. 14.
When our Lord spoke the words to the disciples, "Lo, I am with you alway," they did not at first understand or experience their full meaning.
It was when at Pentecost they were filled with the Holy Spirit that that Spirit from heaven brought down into their hearts the glorified Lord Jesus, they began the new life in the joy of the abiding presence.
All our attempts to claim to live that life of continuous, unbroken communion, will be in vain unless we too yield ourselves wholly to the power and the indwelling of the ever blessed Spirit.
Throughout the Church of Christ what a lack of faith is apparent, in what the Spirit is as God, and of what He can enable us to be, and of how completely He demands full and undisturbed possession of our whole being. All our faith in the fulfilment of Christ's glorious promises of the Father and Son making their abode in us, is subject to the one essential and indispensable condition—a life utterly and unceasingly yielded to the rule and leading of the Spirit of Christ.
Let no one say: "The experience of Christ's being with us every day and all the day is impossible." Christ meant His word to be a simple and eternal reality. He meant the promises to be accepted—"He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him," and "We will come unto him and make our abode with him"—as absolute divine truth. But this truth could only be experienced where the Spirit, in His power as God, was known and believed in and obeyed. What Christ speaks of in John xiv. is what Paul testifies to when he says, "Christ liveth in me," or, as John expresses it, "Hereby know we that we abide in Him and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit."
Christ came as God to make known the Father, and the Spirit came as God to make known the Son in us. We need to understand that the Spirit as God claims absolute subjection, and is willing to take possession of our whole being, and enable us to fulfil all that Christ asks of us. It is the Spirit Who can deliver us from all the power of the flesh, Who can conquer the power of the world. It is the Spirit through Whom Christ Jesus will manifest Himself to us in nothing less than His abiding presence: "Lo, I am with you alway."
