from "A Burning and a Shining Light" by Jeffrey Eerdman's Pg. 61 "The Gift of the Spirit"
The Gift of the Spirit
What is dearer to God the Father than his only Son? And what diviner blessing has He to bestow upon men than his Holy Spirit? Yet has He given his Son for us; and by the hands of his Son He confers his blessed Spirit on us: "Jesus having received of the Father the promise of the Spirit, shed it forth on men" (Acts 2:33).
How the wondrous doctrine of the blessed Trinity shines through the whole of our religion, and sheds a glory upon every part of it! Here is God the Father, a king of infinite riches and glory; He has constituted his beloved Son the high treasurer of heaven, and the Holy Spirit is the divine and inestimable treasure. What amazing doctrines of sacred love are written in our Bibles! What mysteries of mercy, what miracles of glory are these! Our boldest desires and most raised hopes durst never aim at such blessings; there is nothing in all nature that can lead us to a thought of such grace.
The Spirit was given by the Father to the Son for men, for rebellious and sinful men, to make favorites and saints of them; this was the noble gift the Son received when He ascended on high. "And he distributed it to grace his triumph" (Psalm 68:18).
Was it not a divine honor which Jesus our Lord displayed on that day when the tongues of fire sat on his twelve apostles? When He sent his ambassadors to every nation to address them in their own language, to notify his accession to the throne of heaven, and to demand subjection to his government? When He conferred power upon his envoys to reverse the laws of nature, and imitate creationΓÇöto give eyes to the blind, and to raise the dead? All this was done by the Spirit, which He sent down upon them in the days of Pentecost.
But is this Spirit given to none but his apostles and the prime ministers in his kingdom? Was that rich treasure exhausted in the first ages of the gospel, and none left for us? God forbid! Every one of his subjects has the same favor bestowed upon him, though not in the same degree; every humble and holy soul in our day, every true Christian is possessed of his Spirit, for "he that has not the Spirit of Christ in none of his"(Romans 8:9). And wherever this Spirit is, it works miracles too; it changes the sinner to a saint, it opens his blind eyes, it new-creates his nature; it raises the dead to a divine life, and teaches Egypt and Assyria, and the British Isles, to speak the language of Canaan. It is this gift of the Spirit which the Son sends down to us continually from the Father that is the original and spring of all these strange blessings. The Father has a heart of large bounty to the poor ruined race of Adam; the Son has a hand fit to be almsgiver to the King of Glory; and the Spirit is the rich alms. This blessed Giver had enriched ten thousand souls already, and there remains enough to enrich ten thousand worlds.
The Father, what a glorious giver! The Son, what a glorious medium of communication! And the Spirit, what a glorious gift! We blush and adore while we partake of such immense favors, and gratitude is even overwhelmed with wonder. O, let our spirits rejoice in this blessed article of our religion, and may all the temptations that we meet with from men of reason, never, never baffle so sweet a faith!
