October 30

Read: II Timothy 3:14-17

All scripture… is profitable… for instruction in righteousness (II Timothy 3:16).

The Holy Spirit In The New Testament

We are grateful for all the foregleams of truth that shine from the pages of the Old Testament, but it is to the New that we must turn for clear teaching on the whole will of God.

Jesse F. Lady writes: “With the exception of the Second and Third Epistles of John, each book in the New Testament makes some reference to the Holy Spirit. Jesus claimed the possession of the Spirit as the power and inspiration of His ministry. ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel’ (Luke 4:18)… In looking forward to Pentecost, Jesus predicts that the Holy Spirit will flow out from the believers as rivers of living water (John 4:14; 7:37-39).

“While the Holy Spirit has always been present in the world in some form, yet in a very real way Pentecost marks a new dispensation of the economy of the Spirit. To the Christian Church Pentecost was the inauguration day of the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Book of Acts is a record of the things which Jesus continued to do and to teach through the power of the Spirit working through the apostles after Pentecost. Consequently, the emphasis one is apt to find in the Acts concerning the Holy Spirit is not Christian doctrine but Christian experience. ‘To the men who wrote the New Testament, and for those to whom they wrote, the Spirit was not a doctrine but an experience. Their watchword was not, believe in the Holy Ghost, but receive ye the Holy Ghost’ (James Denny). They went out transformed personalities. Their lives were marked by boldness, power, unity, spiritual discernment, joy, and liberality. A new power for victorious living was the first result of Pentecost. The second result of the outpouring of the Spirit was a new power for effective service” (Insights into Holiness, pp. 176-82). (More tomorrow)