24.3 Christ BY the Spirit
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
Everything that is Christ is BY the Holy Spirit. This “by” is the essence of how a life-giving Spirit works. Words, (and body members) by themselves, cannot form anything. Something must arrange those words and members into life forms. That something is the Spirit.
But the Spirit does not just “exude.” The Spirit operates specifically, by causing Word and Body to be what they are. Without Word, the Spirit is also unknown. In other words, spirit without Word cannot be the Holy Spirit. Yet, it is the Spirit alone who forms Christ inside of AND among us.
By
What does “by” mean? In the Greek, the word is either implied or a translation of en, which is typically “in” but can also mean “by.” Thus we must go to the English to get a better handle on “by.” There we discover that “by” is a huge word, almost as large as “in,” and yet many of the definitions are not related to the “by” of “by the Spirit,” thus we will include only that which serves.
By – preposition (Webster’s 1926): 9. Through; specifically: a. Either, through the medium of; the means of; in consequence of; – indicating that which is instrumental; as, to take by force; to win regard by kindness; to teach by example; he had a son by his first wife.
By – Through – With
b. Through the direct agency of; – used with the term designating principal agent; as, ordered by his captain; a story by Dumas. See Synonyms, below.
10. With (something that forms a setting or condition, or constitutes a manner, often with added sense of means); as, he went home by daylight; he began by encouraging us.
Synonyms: BY, THROUGH, WITH, are here compared as expressing means, instrumentality, agency. BY stresses the idea of agency; THROUGH, that of means or cause; WITH, that of instrument; as a wall built by the Romans, a house destroyed by fire; an office acquired through influence, an opportunity lost through indecision; to strike a blow with an ax, to write with a pen.
The Spirit Gives Life
All three of those concepts, agency, means, and instrumentality, by, through, and with, help define for us this quality of the Holy Spirit as the effecting of God upon any created thing.
It is the Spirit that gives life. That Spirit is signified by the breath of life and by the water of life, breathing and drinking Spirit. We never consider where our next breath will come from, for we live only inside of air, and the same is true for fish in water.
But for us, water is a bit scarcer and a necessity for life. I lived for a year and a half in the high desert where there was no water. How I longed for the supreme luxury of a garden hose watering constantly, out from which green life could grow.
Dirt and Spirit
You can have all the seeds you want, but without water, no life will grow. Conversely, you can have all the water you want, but without seed, no life will grow. And – you can have all the Christians you want, but without Spirit there is no Body.
Consider God’s metaphors of breath and air, Spirit bringing forth life. God’s first proposition was, of course, beyond all belief. God proposed taking dirt, and, by breathing His Spirit upon that dirt, turning the dirt into the image of God, God’s appearance to all creation. If that is not radical, I don’t know what is.
Dirt and Seed and Spirit
But that first bizarre action of God produced only the first man. To bring forth the second man as a life-giving Spirit, God has a second proposal, just as bizarre, but more complicated. God proposes planting His seed, His own DNA, into dirt, and then pouring the Water of Spirit upon that dirt and seed.
God has the silly idea that, if the Water and the Seed mixed together, there in the dirt, the Seed would draw from itself, from the Water, and from the dirt, to form something never before seen in creation – a plant, the church, a heavenly woman. You see, when God mixed Spirit and dirt together the first time, all He got out of it was a living soul, not yet His full image. God is after Christ as a corporate Man.
What Is Man?
So this time, God expects that mixing Spirit and dirt together again will get a different result – BECAUSE OF the Seed. This time when the Spirit interacts with the dirt it will use the Seed as its model to turn the dirt into the express image of God’s Person, the revelation of His heart.
WHY is God spending so much time and expending such effort on DIRT?!?? What is man that You are mindful of him?
Here is what I am driving at. The power of the Holy Spirit is LIFE power, not mechanical power. The Holy Spirit does not “fix.” The Holy Spirit causes us to know what is already true.
The Tortoise and the Hare
And life power is like the Tortoise running the race. Life power is always working, yet not in outwardly dramatic ways. We imagine that because we don’t “see” the outward effects of life power, then it has stopped working. We want God to be the Hare, so very badly, and we imagine that He, like the Hare, has taken a break. So we plead with Him, over and over, “Get back to work, God.” Do you see how offensive we can be to God. His only answer is the answer of the Tortoise: I AM.
Life power is always moving in the right direction.
Resurrection
But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you (Romans 8:11).
Here is where the real action of the Holy Spirit to effect the purposes of God is taking place. The resurrection of our physical bodies, the full revelation of Christ in His Body, and God securing His full purpose to be seen and known by all are all three the same thing. Yet this Holy Spirit is, right now, the very life of our physical bodies, as well as the life of the entire body of Christ. The body without the spirit is dead (James 1:26a).
A Plant of Dirt and Air
As a plant grows, it takes material from the air and material from the dirt, and mixes the two together following the pattern found in the seed. Now, I said, “it takes,” but that quality that works in the plant combining air and dirt, Spirit and flesh, members of one another, to bring forth, first the plant and then, through the plant, many new seeds, just like the first, that quality is the “by” of the Holy Spirit.
All the qualities of life in the physical body operate in an alive way because those parts exist IN the human spirit. A blood cell moving through an artery is an independent, but living cell. But you take that single blood cell and place it by itself, apart from the spirit and soon there is no life left in it.
Breath and Water of Life
What I am reaching for is this. God does not give us the Holy Spirit as a fog, an ether, a “force,” that then, “anoints” us to be powerful, that is, to have the ability to effect other people and things. And yes, out from that statement, I can go directly to how most of our brethren envision the Spirit – or, I can go directly to the “force” of Star Wars.
In complete contrast, God gives us two powerful metaphors that show us His Spirit by which all things God purposes are accomplished – the breath of life and the water of life. And in both metaphors, the forming of God’s image, God seen and known, God’s appearance, is what the Spirit does.
What the Holy Spirit Needs
And that purpose of God is accomplished in full, God seen and known, in the resurrection of our bodies. The Spirit makes God’s appearance out of dirt.
Then the question we must ask is this. What does the Holy Spirit need from us to accomplish His job of turning us, us as members, and us together, into God’s appearance? First, the negative. Do not quench the Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19). – And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God (Ephesians 4:30).
Do not suppress the Spirit and do not give Him pain.
Willingness of Heart
But the negative is nothing more than the actions coming out of the absence of the positive. Hardness of heart grieves the Holy Spirit and unbelief quenches His work in the life of a believer.
The Holy Spirit, then, is looking for two things in us. It is our willingness of heart that blesses the Holy Spirit – Let it be to me (and to us together) according to Your Word. And it is our faith that Christ speaks true, Christ in our mouths, Christ as the only life we are together, that the Holy Spirit then uses to form Christ in and among us. This forming of Christ is real power, life-power, God-power – that we together might be the second witness of Christ.
Prayer
Let’s make by the Spirit practical. – Pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
I cannot pray “to” God, for God walks together as one Pperson with me. Rather, God and I pray together. The Holy Spirit is that sending forth of God out from God and me praying together. (When I say “me” or “I,” you say it as yourself.) As God and I pray together, the Holy Spirit goes forth to accomplish what we have purposed. As God and I pray together, it is I, as a member of the body of Christ, as God revealed in the earth, who goes forth to touch things in the earth. But it is also I, as one Spirit with God's Spirit, who goes forth to touch things in the heavens.
Praying WITH God
All things God and I do together are accomplished by faith, by speaking our prayer into the darkness, calling all things good, and waiting with full expectation for the full measurement of our faith to come back to us by love. Isn't that how it works?
Praying “to” God is unbelief. Praying with God, and then, with God expecting all that we have spoken to come back to us by love is faith. Faith works by love. Prayer is the going forth of God (Spirit). But this God is never alone, for I am always inside of Him. This is a big deal.
Pray without ceasing. The Holy Spirit is continually flowing among us out from the Blood sprinkled upon our hearts.
Faith Works by Love
God is in us as much as we are in God. There is no place inside of God that one could go without finding us there as well. The Holy Spirit is the down payment; all of God is our inheritance. Yet this same God fills us with ALL that He is. If prayer is us with God, then prayer is also God with us.
God places His supreme confidence in His Spirit sent forth into creation to accomplish all He has purposed. The expectation of God is pure rest; the expectation of God is ceaseless activity. – Faith WORKS by Love.
However – the Holy Spirit never ever forces anyone. Nothing that the Holy Spirit accomplishes can be done “to” anyone or anything. All things must come to God from love.
Supreme Confidence
Thus the Holy Spirit is that part of God that goes out from our hearts to accomplish God and our purposes in the heavens. As God and we pray together, we place our supreme confidence in the Holy Spirit to accomplish in the heavenly realms all that we speak. Yet we and God never push anyone around. The only reality we accept coming back to us is that which comes by love out from hearts moved by love.
Unbelief is treating the Holy Spirit very badly. That is, though He is sent out, unbelief is “confident” that He will fail. We must wait upon the Spirit to do His work BECAUSE He wins hearts only by the wooing of love.
Our Precious Holy Spirit
What the Holy Spirit needs from you and me is our supreme confidence that He is accomplishing all things that God and us intend together. The Holy Spirit flows forth from me, yet I always with Him, for we are one spirit and I am found in all places that same Spirit is found.
The Father and I pray together, and then wait in the full rest of expectation, knowing that our Spirit wins every heart in the universe, that He accomplishes all things by love. Our Spirit, our precious Holy Spirit, flows out of our innermost being, connecting us together as the one revelation of Christ, bringing life and joy, healing and blessing to all.