The Full Blessing of Pentecost: How glorious it is - continued 1

The Full Blessing of Pentecost
- The One Thing Needful
By Andrew Murray

How glorious it is
(Excerpts - continued 1)

"They were all filled with the Holy Ghost."
ACTS ii. 4.

It is just because so many preachers and so many Christians keep their minds occupied only with the external Christ on the Cross or in heaven,
and wait for the blessing of His teaching and His working without understanding that the blessing of Pentecost brings Him into us, to work Himself all in us,
that they make so little progress in sanctification.

Christ Himself is of God made unto us sanctification:
and that in no other way than by our living and being moved and existing in Him, because He lives and abides in our heart and works all there.

~

An overflowing of the heart with the love of God is also a part of the blessing of Pentecost.

Next to pride, lack of love or, as we may put it in one word,
lovelessness was the sin for which the Lord had so often to rebuke His disciples.

These two sins have in truth one and the same root:
the self-seeking I, the desire for self-pleasing.

The new commandment that He gave them, the token whereby all men should know that they were His disciples,
was love to one another.

How gloriously was it manifested on the day of Pentecost that the Spirit of the Lord shed abroad His love in the hearts of His own.

The multitude of them that believe were as one heart, one soul:
all things they possessed were held in common;
no one said that anything of that which he had was his own.
The kingdom of heaven with its life of love had come down to them.
The spirit, the disposition, the wonderful love of Jesus, filled them, because He Himself had come into them.

How closely the mighty working of the Spirit and the indwelling of the Lord Jesus are bound up with a life in love appears from the prayer of Paul in behalf of the Ephesians,
in which he asks that they might be strengthened with power by the Spirit, in order that Christ might dwell in their hearts.

Then he forthwith makes this addition:
"that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend the love which passeth knowledge."

The filling with the Spirit and the indwelling of Christ bring of themselves a life that has its root, its joy, its power, its evidence in love,
because the indwelling Christ Himself is Love.

O how would the love of God fill the Church and convince the world that she has received a heavenly element into her life,
if the filling with the Spirit and the indwelling of Christ in the heart were recognised as the blessing which the Father has promised us!




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