The Indwelling Spirit

Even the Spirit of truth …for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. JOHN 14:17

Simpson wrote more on the Holy Spirit than on any other subject except Christ Himself, and his treatment has a particular character that distinguishes it from much that has been written since.

A Person, not a power

His first insistence was elementary and constantly neglected: the Holy Spirit is a Person. The pronouns in the upper room discourse are personal — he, not it — and the activities ascribed to Him are the activities of a person. He teaches, guides, reminds, convinces, forbids, appoints, intercedes. He can be grieved, which no force can be. He can be lied to, resisted and quenched.

And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. EPHESIANS 4:30

Simpson pressed the practical consequence hard. If the Spirit is a power, the question is how to get more of Him and how to use Him. If He is a Person, those questions are impertinent. You do not use a person. The question becomes how not to grieve Him, and how much of you He has. He put it in a form that has been repeated ever since: the issue is not whether you have the Holy Spirit but whether the Holy Spirit has you.

With you, and in you

The verse at the head of this chapter contains a distinction that Simpson regarded as the hinge of the whole subject. He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. Before Pentecost the Spirit was with the disciples — accompanying, empowering, working alongside. After Pentecost He would be in them. That change is the great privilege of the present age. The Old Testament records the Spirit coming upon particular people for particular tasks and departing again. The New Testament describes something unprecedented: permanent residence in ordinary believers.

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? 1 CORINTHIANS 3:16

Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. ROMANS 8:9

Simpson was careful with that last verse, because it settles a question people still get wrong. The indwelling Spirit is not the possession of an advanced class of Christian. Every believer has Him; nobody is a believer without Him. Whatever the fullness of the Spirit means — and the next chapter takes that up — it cannot mean receiving a Spirit one previously lacked.

His work is to glorify Christ

Here is the feature that most distinguishes Simpson’s teaching, and it is the best safeguard against the excesses that have attended this doctrine.

He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. JOHN 16:14

The Holy Spirit’s stated purpose is not to draw attention to Himself. It is to make Christ real. He is, as Simpson liked to say, the executive of the Godhead in this age, whose whole business is to take what belongs to Jesus and make it actual in believers. This yields a test that can be applied to any teaching, meeting or movement claiming the Spirit’s authority. Does it leave people occupied with the Spirit and His manifestations, or occupied with Christ? A ministry genuinely full of the Holy Spirit will tend to talk about Jesus, because that is what the Spirit does. It also explains why Simpson’s Fourfold Gospel has no separate wheel for the Holy Spirit, which puzzles some readers. It is not an omission. In his thinking the Spirit is the one who administers all four — the agent by whom Christ is Saviour, Sanctifier, Healer and Coming King within us.

The Spirit and the ordinary

One further note, because Simpson’s own life illustrates it. We associate the Spirit’s work with the extraordinary, and Scripture does record extraordinary things. But the great bulk of what the New Testament attributes to Him is unspectacular: assurance that we are God’s children, help in prayer when we do not know what to ask, the slow production of character, the ability to call God Father and mean it.

The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God. ROMANS 8:16

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought. ROMANS 8:26

A believer who has never had a dramatic experience and who prays, endures, loves awkward people and grows slowly kinder is exhibiting the work of the Holy Spirit as certainly as anyone.

The question to carry out of this chapter is not how to obtain more of the Spirit. It is how much of you He has, and where you have been grieving Him — a question a Person can be asked directly.

How He leads

If the Spirit indwells the believer, how does His guidance actually arrive? Simpson’s answer was deliberately unspectacular.

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. ROMANS 8:14

He identified several ordinary means, and insisted they normally agree. The Word, which is the primary and governing means. Most of what God wants from a believer on any given day is already written, and no further guidance is required to begin obeying it. The inward witness — a settled sense of peace about a course, or an inward check against it. Simpson took this seriously without making it decisive on its own.

And let the peace of God rule in your hearts. COLOSSIANS 3:15

Circumstances, which God arranges, and counsel, which He supplies through mature believers who know us and are not impressed by us. His rule of thumb was that these ordinarily converge, and that a believer should be slow to act on one against the others. An impression that contradicts Scripture is not the Spirit, whatever it feels like. An open door that requires disobedience is not from God, however convenient. He was equally firm about the danger. Believers who elevate impressions to the level of revelation become unteachable, since any objection can be answered by appeal to a private message no one else can examine. Simpson had watched this wreck people, and he never allowed the inward sense to be treated as an authority in its own right. The Spirit who speaks within is the same Spirit who wrote the Word, and He does not contradict Himself.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Stop asking for more of the Spirit and start asking what part of you He does not yet have. 2. Identify one thing you know grieves Him. Deal with that before seeking any further experience. 3. Apply the John 16:14 test to whatever teaching you are under: does it leave you occupied with Christ? 4. Thank God for the unspectacular evidences — assurance, help in prayer, slow growth in kindness. These are His work. 5. Speak to the Spirit as a Person this week, not as a resource.

A PRAYER

Holy Spirit, I have treated You as a power to be obtained rather than a Person to be obeyed. Forgive me.

You dwell in me. I do not need to fetch You from a distance or persuade You to come. The question is how much of me You have, and I think we both know the answer.

Show me where I am grieving You, and give me no rest about it.

And do in me what You came to do: take the things of Christ and make them real, until I am occupied with Him and not with my own experience. Amen.