Beloved,
The Christian life is supernatural through and through. The apostle summarizes it beautifully: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25). The sincere disciple is one who has been born again by the Spirit of the risen Lord Jesus only to go on to live under the sway of the Spirit’s power in the path of the Spirit’s precepts. While the Spirit inhabits our hearts in regeneration, there is a need for us to be actively and continuously seeking after His expanding influence in our souls. The question is, how exactly do we do that?
This week I was particularly gripped by Paul’s rebuke of the Galatians who were being tempted to exchange the gospel of God’s free grace for the legalistic burden of the Judaizers. He points them back to their initial conversion when the Spirit came to take up residence within them, asking, “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” (3:2). It is a rhetorical question, and the obvious answer is, “Hearing with faith.”
Here is the logic: hearing + faith = receiving the Spirit
That was true at the beginning of their discipleship journey, but what Paul impresses upon them is that it is equally true every step thereafter: “Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?” (Gal. 3:5). How do we receive fresh supplies of the Spirit? In the same way we received Him initially: hearing with faith.
This is why Paul’s exhortation to be continuously filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18) reads like this in its parallel passage: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Col. 3:16). Spirit and word are inseparably connected. We will never have more of the Spirit than we have of the word, and we will never have more of the word than we have of the Spirit. For the Spirit is the worker of the faith by which we are enabled to hear the word, and a faith-filled hearing of the word is the path to the Spirit’s expanding influence in our souls.
This has been a much needed reminder for me this week. As a Christian, I need to hear with faith every day if I would be filled with the Spirit every day. As a pastor, I need to labor with all my might to set forth God’s word with clarity and zeal, praying for the Spirit to work faith in our hearing so that we might be a congregation increasingly under His sweet and sovereign sway.
Do you sense your need of the Spirit this day? Then tune your ears to His gospel word in humble, joyous, Christward faith. For the blessed man or woman thrives by the Spirit’s grace only as he or she thrills in the Spirit’s word (Ps. 1).
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Nick