If ye love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter…even the Spirit of truth.
—John 14:15-17
The Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him.
—Acts 5:32
We need the Spirit to make us obedient. We long for the Spirit’s power because we are disobedient, and we desire to be otherwise. Why then does the Savior claim obedience as the condition for the Father’s giving and our receiving the Spirit? This difficulty will be resolved if we remember that we have a twofold manifestation of the Spirit of God, corresponding to the Old and New Testament.
In the Old Testament, He worked as the Spirit of God preparing the way for the higher revelation of God as the Father of Jesus Christ. In the New Testament, He worked in Christ’s disciples as the Spirit of conversion and faith. What they were about to receive was something higher—the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, the power from on high, the experience of His full salvation.
Where there is not much knowledge of the Spirit’s work, or where His power in a church or an individual is not evident, believers will not get beyond the experience of His preparatory workings in them. Even though He is in them, they do not know Him in His power as the Spirit of the glorified Lord.
When believers obey Christ’s commandments, they will be promoted to the higher experience of the Spirit’s indwelling as the representative and revealer of Jesus in His glory. “If ye love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter.”
The church has not given this word obedience the prominence Christ gave it. While the freedom of grace and the simplicity of faith have been preached, the absolute necessity of obedience and holiness has not been equally insisted on. It has been thought that only those who had fullness of the Spirit could be obedient. It was not seen that obedience is the lower platform. The baptism of the Spirit is something higher—the Presence that the obedient should inherit. Complete allegiance to every precept of the Word is the passport to that full life in the Spirit.