Commentary
Earlier this year I attended a popular Pastors Conference where I listened to a well-known speaker preach on the power of God’s Word. Perhaps it’s because my heart was overly sensitized as I was in the middle of reading John Owen’s Holy Spirit, but I walked away from that message feeling grieved. In the entirety of the 45-60 minute message, the speaker never once mentioned the Holy Spirit. As one who spent much of my childhood visiting my grandmother in Scotland, such neglect would be like listening to the tour guide at Sterling Castle speak exclusively about the massive two-handed sword of “the Patriot” without ever once mentioning the name “William Wallace.” Ironically, if you had replaced “Word of God” with “Holy Spirit”, that conference message would have been completely different. I think my heart may have left rejoicing and praising the Triune God.
Sadly, this neglect of the Holy Spirit is quite common in our expositionally sound, bible-teaching communities. Even worse, this neglect is often justified as an “acceptable sin” for many who see “sola scriptura” as well worth any collateral damage to the glory due the Third Person of the Trinity. In The Spirit and the Church, John Owen calls this neglect what it truly is: sin, tantamount to grieving the Holy Spirit (Eph 4:30).
Owen’s premise is that “all evangelical privileges which believers have in this world center in the Holy Spirit.” Therefore, we grieve Him not only when we fall into those well-known acts of disobedience (1 Cor. 6:15-20; Eph. 4:29,30), but when we “lose and forget” the great mercies we receive from Him. Forgetting the Holy Spirit, the greatest gift Christ gave His bride, is perhaps one of the greatest respectable blasphemies in the modern church.
It’s most prevalent in two areas: 1. Preaching and 2. Apologetics.
Preaching:
AW Tozer famously wrote: “The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of His World; we Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His Word.” I agree with Tozer, but I think we need to be more specific. Much of today’s preaching has specifically lost God-The Holy Spirit, by replacing Him with the Holy Word. Instead of using the Word of God to lift up the Trinity, we’ve become bilateral in our approach; fixating on the Father and the Son whilst the Holy Spirit remains on the side lines, only brought up when we’re forced to clarify His role on the team to our charismatic critics. This sin, which one author describes as “Trinity Drift” would have been completely foreign in the church up until about the 20th Century. Listen to what Owen writes: “It is the work of the Holy spirit to enable us to believe Scripture to be the word of God, and infallibly to evidence it to be so to our minds, so that we spiritually and savingly rest in it.” He goes on to say that the entire basis of our believing, from justification to sanctification, is exclusively the work of the Holy Spirit. Hence, why it is said Charles Spurgeon famously muttered to himself “I believe in the Holy Spirit, I believe in the Holy Spirit…” as he ascended the steps of his pulpit to preach.
Without the supernatural illumination of the Holy Spirit there is no supernatural transformation in the souls of the listeners. No amount of light, even that refreshing literal Hebrew and Greek sunshine, can help the blind see; they need new eyes. The Holy Spirit is the one who enables the soul by illuminating the mind. Owen compellingly compares our ability to wield the Word of God by ourselves to a young child attempting to use his father’s sword. He cannot even lift it properly let alone bring it to bear on the hearts of those at enmity with God. He needs his Father to stretch His loving arms around him, helping him grasp that massive hilt and guide the sword to its intended target. That is the role of the Holy Spirit.
Apologetics:
Secondly, we sin against the Holy Spirit in the realm of apologetics. Owen writes that “all our believing is based on the authority of God who reveals it.” In other words, supernatural belief requires a supernatural cause. No amount of reason can make a blind man see. Unfortunately, while we may acknowledge this in our theology, we often look to natural causes as the basis for why we believe. Look no further than most of the popular Christian apologetics book titles: Why Believe, Why I still Believe, Why We Believe What We Believe, Reasons we Believe. While there’s nothing wrong with any of these books themselves (I’ve actually read and been encouraged by many of them), there’s a subtle supposition which implies that our faith is founded on natural causes, whether that be history, science, experience, etc. Owen warns that “on this supposition the whole work of believing would be a work of reason. And this would then exclude the work of the Holy Spirit.” While this may align with Arminian logic, we know that human reason is not only weak and limited, but desperately depraved. We cannot even understand our own minds much less the mind of God. Therefore, Owen writes it is the work of the Holy Spirit to “create in us that divine supernatural faith without which we cannot believe anything that is divine and supernatural.”
Owen is certainly not saying there’s no place for external arguments to “demolish” every false argument and lofty opinion raised against the faith (2 Cor. 10:5). He writes that the decisive work of the Holy Spirit does not “deny the need for other arguments to silence atheists and further establish believers.” He even lists many external evidence that support the veracity and reasonableness of the faith. However, the key point is that the ultimate ground of our belief is the word of God itself, as revealed through the ministry of the Holy Spirit: “We believe Scripture to be God’s word with divine faith for its own sake only … we do not believe Scripture to be God’s word on rational or scientific principles, because divine revelation cannot be proved by such means (1 Cor. 2:9).”
Put simply, the answer to every apologetic book title should be: “Why I believe, why I still believe, and why I’ll always believe is because ‘Thus saith the Lord’ as the Holy Spirit brings the word of God to bear on my heart.” Perhaps instead of “Reasons Why I Believe,” a more accurate Christian apologetics book might be titled “Why My Belief is Reasonable.” The Holy Spirit through the Word of God is and will always ever be the exclusive reason why you believe anything right about God; external evidence only affirms that belief.
May we mortify the respectable sin of grieving the Holy Spirit and give Him the glory due His name!
Structure of the Book
This article was inspired by part 1 of John Owen’s “The Spirit and the Church” which is divided into 7 chapters:
Illumination Based on Revelation
The Faith by Which We Believe Scripture to be God’s Word
External Arguments for Divine Revelation
Moral Certainty, the Result of External Arguments, Insufficient
Divine Revelation Itself the Only Foundation and Reason for Faith
The Self-evidencing Power of Scripture
The Kind of Assurance Scripture Brings
Five Key Quotes
“Scripture is now the only external means of divine spiritual illumination, because it is the only repository of all divine supernatural revelation (Psa. 19:7,8; Isa. 8:20, 2 Tim. 3:15-17).”
“Where the things to be believed are divine and supernatural, so must the faith be by which we believe them or give assent to them.”
“Neither the light of the sun, nor any persuasive arguments given to men to look up and see the sun, will enable them to discern it unless they have eyes to see it.”
“Only those who love us can be grieved by us” (Eph. 4:30).
“God cannot give a greater testimony of His approval of a person than the great seal of His Spirit.”
Recommended Complementary Reading
Communion With God by John Owen
The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience by Geoffrey F. Nuttall
The Holy Spirit by John Owen
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