Victory Blog

“They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the Word of God with boldness.” (Acts 4:31).

It is important to keep clear the difference between the redemptive work of the Holy Spirit and His revelatory works.  Heavenly redemptive activity involved God the Father.  Earthly salvific work has involved the objective, once-for-all substitutionary life and death of the divine Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ.  Application of this provision has been only by the Holy Spirit.  There has been only one perfect offering for sin.  Only one has completed the divine provision whereby lost humans have been given eternal life, the Holy Spirit.  O T Animal sacrifices were didactic, that is, for a teaching purpose.  Priests portrayed God’s work, but did not accomplish God’s work.  Water immersion never saved;  it pictured Spirit immersion.

Of the various different works of the Holy Spirit, that spoken of as the filling or an unction is not to be understood as a redemptive activity.  It was to make known the power of God by empowering individuals (even a donkey) for certain super-human tasks. Read the rest of this post »

“Thou are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.” (Rev 4:11)

In school, decades ago, we were required to memorize the poem “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer, who was killed in World War I.   “I think that I shall never see    A poem lovely as a tree    A tree that may in summer wear    A nest of robins in her hair   …  Poems are made by fools like me    But only God can make a tree.”  The pair of robins who annually have built their nest in the tree just outside my dining room window were back this week.  I assume it’s the same pair;  I can’t tell one from another.  It may be another generation.  Either way, they’re here and busy.

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“I will not leave you comfortless.”¹

Jesus indicated to His disciples that things soon would be much better.   He had warned them of troubling times about to come, which they did not fully understand.  He explained to them that God’s plan for them for the future was even better than what they had known when walking with Him.  God would send Another, One even greater.  Jesus calls this coming companion the Comforter.  This One would in many ways be superior to the instructor-leader they had followed for three years.  Information about this coming Comforter is in 14:16-31;  15:26;  and 16:5-16 [all quotations in John].

The name Jesus gives to this greater One soon to come to them in a special way, “Comforter,” is clearly an indication of a sympathetic, understanding Person, not just a force or power or an influence.   Read the rest of this post »

1. John 14:18 [↩]

“And lo a voice from heaven saying, This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”¹

John was indeed under the Old Testament economy.  Jesus lived under that economy too.  John was a prophetic forerunner of a new economy (a new way of God dealing with mankind).  Jesus announced that He was introducing that new economy.  Immersion by another had no similarity in practices of the old economy.  The immersion John introduced was designed to prepare for the changes God was about to introduce.

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1. Matt 3 17 [↩]

“That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.”¹.

Why do we call the hardships in life trials?  Our problems, burdens, heartaches and difficulties are all bundled up into one package and we identify them as trials.

First of all, these hardships are God’s way of measuring us.  Our burdens and struggles are tests that God brings into our lives.  A car dealer will tell you about the qualities of his automobile, then he will say, “Take it for a trial run.”  You can even buy ‘trial size’ soap and other commodities to show that what the label says is true.  If a man is in trouble with the law, they hold a trial to see if what he says measures up to the truth.

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1. I Peter 1:6 [↩]

“The One whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for He has given Him the Spirit without limit.”¹

Contemplating the relation of the Holy Spirit to the incarnate Son of God soon results in greater appreciation for the person and work of our Savior rather than for the person and work of the Spirit.  The presence and control, the activity of the Holy Spirit may well have been much greater in the world during that thirty some years than in any other period of history, but throughout, it is the person and work of the sinless Man fully controlled by the Spirit which gets the honor.  Not that the Holy Spirit does not deserve our full praise, for He is true God, but that His actions are never of self-display, only of greater enablement of another.

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1. John 3:34 [↩]