There are three great personalities standing out in the Book of Acts:
→ the Holy Spirit,
→ the Living Word, and
→ the Name of Jesus.
You remember that the Word and Jesus are ofttimes identical. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (). You cannot separate the Name from the Man. It is a part of Him. There is no great preacher. There is no great man overshadowing others in this wonder book. I sometimes think of the Book of Acts as the Book of the seated Christ at the Right Hand of the Father-the first twenty-three years of His ministry there. Then I think of it as the Book of the Comforter, the Paraclete, the Superintendent of the Church, the One Who took Jesus` place after He sat down at the Right Hand of the Father.
Let us look first at the promises that Jesus made in regard to the Holy Spirit before He left. “Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.”
One translator says, “From within him shall gush forth torrents of living water.”
“But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believed on him were to receive: for the Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified.” Jesus was not glorified until He took His seat at the Right Hand of the Majesty on High. His work of Redemption was not available unto man until He was glorified.
The living water spoken of was Eternal Life; and Jesus said, “I am come that ye might have life and have it abundantly” (). From one angle it would seem as though the reason for Jesus` coming was that man might receive Eternal Life; from another, that man might be redeemed. But they are all blended one into the other. So Jesus said, “They that believe on Me are to receive.” They were not to receive the Holy Spirit until they had believed on Him. What did that mean, “by believing on Him”? It was not believing that He was the Messiah, the Son of God; but it was by believing that He had died for their sins according to the scripture, and that the third day He had been raised because the sin problem had been settled.
Redemption was a fact. The New Creation was available. You understand that no one believed on Jesus in this sense until after the Day of Pentecost. No one believed that He had risen from the dead. The disciples ridiculed the testimony of the women when they told them that Jesus had risen. , “And these words appeared in their sight as idle talk, and they disbelieved them.” I suppose that there was no one in all Palestine more staggered by the Resurrection of Jesus than were those who had been with Him for three years, His chosen disciples. “I will pray the Father and He will give you another Comforter.” This is a helper, an Advocate. It is the Greek word, “Paraclete.”
Notice that Jesus is to give this Comforter, “that He may be with you forever.” “Even the Spirit of truth: whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him: ye know him: for he abideth with you, and shall be in you.” Notice that He is to be a Comforter and a Helper. He is called the “spirit of truth,” or literally, the Spirit of reality. The world cannot receive Him, for it cannot behold Him. The natural man cannot receive the Holy Spirit. The Spirit may convict him. The Spirit may operate in him and speak through him as He did the men in the Old Covenant; but He could not make His home in the bodies of men until they were recreated, until they had received Eternal Life.
“For the world beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him.”
The world knows nothing about the Holy Spirit. The world can know Jesus. That is why Jesus said in “Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth: for He shall not speak from Himself (or literally, `about Himself`).”
Notice once more, “For he abideth with you, but he shall be in you.” How was the Holy Spirit with the disciples before He could come into them? Why, He was with them in the Person of Jesus. Jesus and the Holy Spirit were working together; so Jesus could say, “He is with you in My presence.” Then “But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said unto you.”
Jesus said that He would send the Comforter. Now He says that the Father will send Him “in My name”; and He is going to be a Teacher. He is going to teach the disciples all things, and is going to bring to their remembrance all the things that Jesus had told them. You see, the disciples didn`t understand the Master any more than natural man today can understand deeply spiritual things. Spiritual things are revealed to those who have received Eternal Life. In He takes a step in advance, “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall bear witness of Me.”
He is not only going to be their Teacher, but He is going to bear witness of the Master. His primal business in the church is the office of Teacher about Jesus-the Unveiler of what Jesus actually did in His substitution, what Jesus` Nature and Life does to the believer in the New Creation, and how the Spirit can take the things of Christ and bring them into the believer`s life until the believer will live and walk as Jesus did in His earth walk. But there is a further development of the Holy Spirit in “Nevertheless I tell you the truth: It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you.” That is striking. He was there with Jesus, but He was not functioning. He was not their teacher, yet. He was not their recreator. He had not given birth to them, for they had to be born of the Spirit.
You remember that John the Baptist said, “I baptize you in water, but one standeth here with you, who will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire.” Baptism is immersion. One is put into water, and when they are raised out of the water, they are born out of the water just as a child is born of its mother. But you notice that baptism didn`t mean filling with the Holy Spirit. It simply meant that some other act was taking place. It was receiving the Nature and Life of God. That is what Jesus was going to do. He was going to baptize into His Body. That had not yet come into being. That was prophecy.
Let us go on from there. “And he, when he is come, will convict the world (the unsaved) in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world hath been judged.” Note it carefully, that there is a threefold conviction that is coming to the world. We will reverse the order.
He said that the world is going to come to judgment because Satan has been judged; and I wondered what that meant. What relation did Satan sustain toward man? And then I remembered “Ye are of your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and standeth not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father thereof.”
Then I remembered “In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil.” Then I saw that there are to be two families-the family of God and the family of Satan. Satan is not only the god of this world and the prince of this world ( and American Standard Version) but he is the father of the spiritually dead. Now I can understand what it is going to mean for Satan to be judged. His family is judged in him just as the believer was judged in Christ when God put our sin upon Him and He became our Substitute. Then if Satan is judged, every one of his children is judged with him.
Then I saw the awfulness of the judgment. The sinner is, not judged for what he has done, but he is judged because of what he is, spiritually in union with the devil. A second thing the Holy Spirit is going to convict men of is righteousness, because Jesus has made that available in His substitutionary:sacrifice; and he has gone unto the Father and sat down at the Father`s Right Hand. What does righteousness mean? It means the ability to stand in the Father`s presence without the sense of guilt, or of condemnation, or of judgment. Jesus has wrought such a perfect redemption that the unsaved man has a legal right to Eternal Life and righteousness. God so loved the world that He gave Jesus to the world; and the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ makes that gift a legal thing.
Now, what is the sin that the Holy Spirit is going to convict men of? It is the sin of the rejection of Eternal Life, of rejection of His finished work on their behalf. That is the only sin that has judgment for the sinner. He has committed other sins, but this is the sin that shuts him out of the New Heaven. He has rejected Jesus Christ as his own Lord and Saviour. In Jesus said, “I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth, for He shall not speak from Himself; but what things soever He shall hear, these shall He speak.”
He shall guide you into the reality of this substitutionary sacrifice. In other words, He is going to use Paul as an instrument to give to the New Creation, this Body of Christ, a revelation of this great substitutionary work of Christ. Now we come to some striking things. This Holy Spirit that is coming is going to be in the body of every believer. We can`t understand it. We don`t have to. It is beyond Sense Knowledge, but it is a spiritual reality. He is going to be the Teacher of everyone of us. Some of us will have the special gift of teaching, but every one of us will have Him in us to guide us in the study of the Word. “For He shall not speak from himself” or “He shall not speak of himself: but what things soever He shall hear, these shall He speak.”
He shall speak and shall declare unto you the things that are to come. This is not only prophetic knowledge, but He is speaking unto you about the work that the Father has wrought in Christ; for God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. The Spirit is going to take this hidden truth and is going to reveal it to the spirit consciousness of the New Creation. “He shall glorify me, for He shall take of mine and shall unveil it to you. All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that He taketh of mine, and shall reveal it unto you.” I like that translation. You see how deeply important it is that the Holy Spirit have an opportunity to unveil these mighty things to us.
The Book of Acts was a mystery to me for a long time. You can find almost nothing taught about the New Creation, the Indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, the Body of Christ, the headship of Jesus over the Body, or of the New Kind of Love that came through Jesus. Very little is taught about the New Creation, but they are always practicing it. A group of men and women gathered in that Upper Room that knew nothing about what was going to happen. No one knew about the New Birth. No one knew about indwelling. No one knew about speaking in tongues. No faith was demanded on the part of Jesus.
describes absolutely the men and women in that upper room: “Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged.” Can that be true about them? Yes, you see what they did. They cast lots about who should take Judas` place. Jesus had already planned that Saul of Tarsus should take his place. They asked Jesus, “Are you about to restore the kingdom to Israel?” They knew nothing about what was going to happen. Oh, the grace of our Father to take a crowd of men and women, just like the Jews of today, and perform the staggering miracle of the upper room.
These men were all in the Sense Realm. The Father came down to their level. Four mighty things happened in that upper room that morning. First, the Holy Spirit came with the sound of a mighty rushing wind () and when He filled that room He recreated that one hundred twenty, and they didn`t know what it meant. No one had had such an experience before. (). A second thing that happened was that a tongue of fire sat upon the brow of each one of them. They looked in amazement at those torches that didn`t burn or injure-a lambent flame touching them. But they didn`t understand it -that the good news was to be proclaimed with tongues of fire, that the message was to burn the very hearts of the world until men who were hating it, fighting it, thinking that the only way to get rid of it was to kill as they did Stephen, would be Born Again.
The third thing that happened was that those folks were all Born Again. The Spirit filled them now, entered into their bodies, took possession of them and spoke through them with other tongues. They spake as the Spirit gave them utterance. becomes a reality: “Wherefore if any man is in Christ there is a New Creation (or a new species).” This was something that had never been before. Then, “old things are passed away; behold, they are become new: and all these things are of God who has reconciled (those men and women) to himself” by a New Creation. Read carefully the tenth chapter.
Notice how the Holy Spirit is guiding Peter to come into a Gentile`s home where he had no right to come as a Jew. He went in and began to speak the Word: and as he did so the Spirit fell on them identically as He did in the Upper Room. The Gentiles are recreated, and the Holy Spirit indwells them.