The Spirit-Filled Life

And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit. EPHESIANS 5:18

Tozer belonged to the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a movement whose founder, A. B. Simpson, had taught that Christ is not only Saviour but Sanctifier, and that the Holy Spirit is given to fill and empower every believer. Tozer inherited that teaching, wrote the life of Simpson, and preached on the Holy Spirit throughout his ministry. A short booklet of his on how to be filled with the Spirit has been widely read, and the same theme runs through Keys to the Deeper Life, The Divine Conquest and a great deal of his spoken ministry. He believed that the church of his day knew the doctrine of the Spirit and knew almost nothing of His power.

The Spirit is a Person

He began, as he always did, with who God is. The Holy Spirit is not an influence, a force or an atmosphere. He is a Person — the third Person of the Trinity, fully God, with a mind, a will and affections. He may be grieved, resisted, quenched and obeyed. He is to be known, loved and worshipped.

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

Tozer believed that a great deal of confusion about the Spirit came from treating Him as a power to be used rather than a Lord to be yielded to. The question is not how I may get more of the Spirit, as though He were a substance, but how the Spirit may have more of me.

For every believer

The second thing Tozer insisted upon was that the fulness of the Spirit is not the privilege of a spiritual elite. It is the normal provision of God for all His children.

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? LUKE 11:13

In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. JOHN 7:37

He did not think the filling of the Spirit was something to be earned. It is a gift, promised by the Father and purchased by the Son. But he did think that there were conditions for receiving it, and he set them out plainly. A man must be sure that it is God’s will to fill him, and Scripture makes that clear. He must want it, not as a thrill but as God’s answer to his need. He must be willing to be possessed, to hand over the whole of himself, for the Spirit will not fill what He is not permitted to rule. He must be ready to obey. And he must ask in faith and receive the gift as a gift.

Why the church lacks power

Tozer was sure that much of the weakness of the church could be traced to a neglect of the Spirit. Churches had substituted organisation, method, publicity and talent for the power of God, and had grown so skilled at running their affairs by natural means that the absence of the Spirit could go unnoticed. He found this appalling. The church was born in a moment of divine power, and it was meant to live by that power still.

But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. ACTS 1:8

In a sermon in the Ochorus library, All with One Accord, preached on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, he made a striking observation about the order of events. The disciples were of one accord before the Spirit came, not after. People pray that God will send His Spirit to make them one, he said in effect, but in Acts the unity came first and the Spirit came upon it. Division and strife in a church do not wait for the Spirit to heal them; they grieve Him and keep Him away.

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. ACTS 2:1

In the same sermon he spoke of an inward witness of the Spirit — a confirmation in the heart that goes deeper than reasoning from texts — and he was careful to say that he did not believe any physical sign, such as speaking in tongues, was the necessary proof of it. The evidence of the Spirit’s fulness, as he taught it, is moral before it is anything else.

The fruit of the Spirit

What does the Spirit-filled life look like? Tozer answered with Scripture. It looks like Christ.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. GALATIANS 5:22–23

The Spirit-filled believer is not necessarily the most excitable member of the congregation, nor the most gifted. He is the one in whom the character of Christ is being formed, whose witness carries weight, whose prayers are answered, and whose life has about it a quality that cannot be explained by his natural gifts. Tozer liked to say that a man who can be fully explained by his temperament and training has not yet shown what the Spirit can do.

Weighing it

Tozer’s call to the Spirit-filled life is sound in its essentials, and the church needs it as much today as ever. But one feature of his teaching requires care. Following the tradition of his movement, he tended to speak of the fulness of the Spirit as a definite experience, distinct from and often later than conversion, into which a believer enters by a crisis of surrender. Many have found that pattern true to their own experience, and there is no reason to deny it. But the New Testament does not make it the rule. Every true believer has the Spirit.

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

And the command to be filled is, in Paul’s grammar, a continuing one: go on being filled. The Spirit-filled life is not so much a second stage entered once for all as a daily yielding to the One who already dwells within. Where Tozer’s teaching is read as dividing the church into the filled and the unfilled, it can breed both pride and despair. Where it is read as a summons to every Christian to yield more fully, today, to the Spirit he already has, it is pure gain.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask yourself honestly whether you have thought of the Holy Spirit as a Person or as a power. Speak to Him this week as the Lord He is.

2. Read Acts 1 and 2 at a sitting. Notice what the disciples did before the Spirit came.

3. Is there any disunity between you and another believer? Take one step this week to put it right.

4. Work through Tozer’s conditions — assurance of God’s will, desire, surrender, obedience, faith — and ask where you are holding back.

5. Read Galatians 5:16–26 and ask which fruit of the Spirit is most lacking in you. Pray specifically for it.

A PRAYER

Holy Spirit, You are God, and You dwell in me. Forgive me for treating You as a power to be used rather than a Lord to be obeyed.

Forgive me for grieving You by my divisions, my self-will and my indifference.

I give You the whole of myself — every room, every key. Fill me, not for my own sake, but that Christ may be seen in me.

Let Your fruit grow in me, and let my witness carry Your power. Amen.