Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth (John 17:17).
In our continuing study of the work of the Holy Spirit in our sanctification I should like us at this point particularly to consider Ephesians 5:18. We finished our last study by emphasising the supreme importance of allowing the Holy Spirit to have his way with us, and we saw that the Scriptures are constantly exhorting us to do that. What we have in this particular verse is a very strong and graphic instance of that very teaching: ‘Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.’ Now there are some preliminary remarks which we must make before we come to a detailed examination of this verse, and the first is to draw your attention to the setting. Here is a great statement which comes in that part of the epistle which is devoted to practicalities. The Apostle has dealt with the doctrine, and has now come to its application. He is dealing with details of conduct and behaviour and it is in the midst of such details that he introduces this sentence. In other words, he introduces this idea of being filled with the Spirit, not as some great doctrine standing apart on its own, but when he is dealing with ordinary life and living. Again, it rather suggests, does it not, that we must be very careful not to isolate this doctrine and put it in a compartment on its own. It is as we are living our ordinary lives that we realise this doctrine, this truth.
We notice also here the scriptural way of dealing with sins. This verse comes in the midst of exhortations about what to drink and what not to drink, what to speak about, what is to interest and amuse us; exhortations about the duties of husbands towards their wives and wives towards their husbands – that is the context. Therefore we deduce that the scriptural way of dealing with all these problems is not so much to concentrate on the problems themselves, as to approach the whole of life in this positive way. We have been at pains to point out many times in the course of these studies on the question of sanctification that, surely, in the light of the Scriptures, any teaching must be wrong which concentrates primarily upon sins. Any holiness teaching or any doctrine of sanctification which begins by saying, ‘Now about getting rid of that particular sin of yours,’ is in itself starting in the wrong way. The scriptural method is positive; the way to deal with these things is to be filled with the Spirit.
There are many analogies which make it clear what I mean by that. For instance, there are two ways of facing the problem of physical disease or lack of health. You can deal with the infection, or whatever it is, directly, but the still better way, and the way which is increasingly used, is to concentrate on the positive concept of health. For far too long even medical science has been thinking in terms of diseases, but the better idea is to think in terms of health. Public health is rightly receiving more attention than it has ever done, for we should all be interested in being well, rather than in avoiding diseases. Now that is exactly what the Scripture does, because if you are, as Scripture enjoins, filled with the Spirit, then you will not be able to do these things, nor will you want to. The scriptural way of dealing with them is to clarify our thinking about these various sins, and it says: Can you not see that those things are incompatible with this great truth? The Apostle does exactly the same thing in his letter to the Galatians when he says, ‘Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh’ (Gal 5:16). If you want to avoid the pestilences and diseases that arise out of the swamps down in the valleys, the best thing to do is to walk to the top of the mountain. That is the way to look at it – the positive approach – being filled with the Spirit.
What, therefore, in detail and in practice, is the meaning of this exhortation, ‘Be filled with the Spirit’? Very fortunately for us, the Apostle leads us into an understanding of his own exhortation by giving us an illustration: ‘Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit.’ If we want to know what it means to be filled with the Spirit, let us make use of his own analogy. Here we would observe that this is not the only time that this analogy is used of the Spirit. On the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the believers, the people in Jerusalem looked at them and said, ‘These men are full of new wine’ (Acts 2:13). The disciples behaved in a strange and unusual manner and the people jumped to the conclusion that they were drunk. But it was an explanation that was immediately dismissed by Peter. ‘These,’ he said, ‘are not drunken, as ye suppose,’ and then he went on to explain what had happened.
There is even, I think, the same suggestion in Luke 1:15 where the angel spoke to Zacharias about John the Baptist. There is at any rate an implied contrast between wine and strong drink on the one hand, and the Holy Spirit on the other, when Zacharias is told that his child who is to be born shall not partake of wine and strong drink, but shall be filled with the Holy Spirit. Thus it is obviously a helpful comparison.
What, then, does this suggest to us? Well, to be drunk with wine means that we are under its influence or control. To be drunk with wine means that our faculties, our mind, our feelings, our wills and our actions are all under another influence. This thing that the man has been drinking is now, as it were, controlling him; at least, that is the way in which we normally think of it. That is the illustration that Scripture itself uses in order to help us understand what it means to be filled with the Spirit.
But let me give you some other analogies which will suggest the same thing. For instance, we often speak about being ‘full of life’. Or we say of certain people that at the moment they are really full of something. Someone maybe is proposing to take a holiday in the summer in some foreign land, and we say he is absolutely full of the idea. We mean by this that he is obviously possessed by it; every time you meet him he talks about it – he is full of it. Or we talk, in the same way, of being full of ideas, full of interests or even full of a person; the idea is that we are controlled by this interest or by this person, or whatever it may happen to be; we are full of it, it is the thing that absorbs and controls us.
Now the words that were used by the Apostle really do convey all that. The exact definition of the words would be something like this: anything that wholly takes possession of the mind, is said to ‘fill the mind’; or, to put it another way: to be filled with anything means that it takes possession of us. That is what the Apostle tells us should be our relationship to the Holy Spirit. To be filled with the Spirit means to be controlled by him in that sense: we are filled with him and he controls our thoughts and minds, our emotions, our feelings, our desires, our words, our actions, our everything; it follows of necessity.
As you read the Scriptures and the examples and illustrations which it gives of this very thing, you see that that is exactly what is implied. We are told, for instance, of our Lord himself after his baptism, and after the Holy Spirit had descended upon him, that he, ‘being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil’ (Lk 4:1-2). He returned from the Jordan filled with the Spirit, controlled and dominated by the Spirit for the work that lay ahead of him. There are, of course, many other examples of this. Take, for instance, what we are told of Stephen: we read that he was full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. We are told the same thing about Barnabas, that he was a good man and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. There are also instances of Peter and Paul and other apostles, where we are told that Tilled with the Spirit’ they did certain things.
The whole idea must be thought of in that way, and perhaps it is important that one should put it negatively at this point. Far too often, it seems to me, we tend to think of being filled with the Spirit in mechanical terms. The idea seems to be conjured up in our minds of an empty vessel and of something being poured into it. I think if you examine yourself and your thoughts, you will find that instinctively you tend to think of being filled with the Spirit in that way. We regard the Spirit as a kind of power that is poured into us; we are some kind of empty vessel and when we become empty, this Spirit, this power, this influence is poured into us until we are full. But clearly that must be wrong, because the Holy Spirit is not an influence, nor a power. We must not think of him in terms of electricity or of steam, for the Holy Spirit is a Person; he is described everywhere in the Scriptures in a personal manner. So when we think of being filled with the Spirit what we really mean is that the blessed Person of the Holy Spirit is controlling us, dominating and influencing us. That is why in my analogy Italked about being full of a certain person. We see that in everyday psychology. When a man becomes interested in some special person he is absolutely full of that person. It does not mean that the person is poured into him, but it does mean that the person is controlling his thoughts, his desires, and his activities, dominating the whole of his life and especially his thoughts. He is thus under the influence of and is being mastered by that person. I think you will find it is a very great advantage to have that conception clear in your mind, because most of the excesses and errors into which people have fallen with regard to this doctrine of being filled with the Spirit are almost invariably due to the fact that they think of the Spirit as some force or power that can be injected or transfused into us, instead of thinking of him in terms of this relationship to the Person who has been given to us and who dwells with us. This will become clearer as we proceed.
Let me, therefore, put a second proposition. What exactly are the results of this filling of the Spirit? For as we look at that, we shall find it will clarify our ideas. How do we know whether we are really filled with the Spirit or not? Once more, we can do nothing better than follow the examples which are provided for us in the text: ‘Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.’ We are clearly confronted here by a similarity and contrast and we must pay careful attention to both. There is, as we have seen, something comparable between the influence of wine and strong drink upon a person and the effect of being filled with the Spirit. The analogy would never have been used, it would never have entered the mind of the crowd on the Day of Pentecost at Jerusalem, unless that were so. There are certain respects in which the similarity is very striking.
So that leads us to ask the question: what is the effect of wine or strong drink upon a person? Here again I must say something for the sake of accuracy and carefulness. When the Scriptures use an analogy and an illustration like this, they are obviously not speaking in a strict scientific sense. Rather, they are using the description in the way in which these things are commonly regarded. I emphasise all this because unless I safeguard myself at this point it could be said that my view of the effect of alcohol upon the body is not scientific.
But having said that by way of a preface, my first observation is that the effect of alcohol upon a man is to stimulate him. Now I am well aware of the fact that pharmacologically that is not true. Pharmacologically, alcohol is not a stimulant but a depressant; there is no question about that at all. But if you look at a man who takes alcohol you get the impression that it is stimulating him, and people take it in excess because they think it is a stimulant – in a very odd way alcohol does seem to stimulate a person. The immediate effects of alcohol are, secondly, an enhancement of all the faculties; thirdly, joy; fourthly, fellowship. Now you see how, in interpreting the Scriptures we do expose ourselves to misunderstanding from small pedantic minds; it sounds as if I am advocating alcohol because of its effect.1 In fact, I am simply pointing out to you that alcohol, whether we like it or not, does lead to those effects and it is for these reasons that people partake of it. The man who is nervous drinks, and he is a foolish man for doing so, but he does it because it does help him for the time being – it seems to enhance his faculties.
Furthermore, people drink when they want to be happy. They find life with its cares and problems very trying and depressing, so they take alcohol and it makes them feel happy. There is no question about it – they do, for a time, feel happy, but they fail to realise the terrible risk they are running of still more depression. They take it because it promotes an immediate sense of joy and fellowship; it is one of the most pathetic things of life at the present time that men and women are so unhappy and self-centred that the vast majority seem to find it impossible to have fellowship with others without the help of drink. They have to drink and drug themselves before they get on with one another! Drink, they say, makes them convivial, they are not convivial without it, and thereby they are attesting to the fact that one of the effects of alcohol is to give this sense of good fellowship.
Those, then, are in general the effects of wine or alcohol, and Scripture states this many times. The psalmist spoke about wine which ‘maketh glad the heart of man’ (Ps 104:15). So now we must take all this and apply it in terms of the work of the Holy Spirit upon us, when he is controlling us. Quite clearly, you cannot read the book of the Acts or the New Testament epistles without seeing that on the surface the analogy is very close. Here are some of the effects upon these disciples and apostles of being filled with the Spirit. First and foremost, they had a clearer understanding of truth. Look at it in the Gospels. There is the greatest teacher the world has ever known. He speaks the word to them, but they stumble at it, and cannot understand it. They do not know what it is all about. But then they are filled with the Spirit and they understand the Scriptures. Listen to Peter preaching on the Day of Pentecost; he expounded the Scriptures and he had a clear understanding of them. It was the Holy Spirit who enabled him to do it. His faculties had been enhanced, and he saw things clearly – the Holy Spirit always does that. Then the disciples also had great joy in the Scriptures, and, furthermore, they clearly had power to explain and preach the word of God and to deliver it. All this was the effect of the Holy Spirit, and as a result of that one sermon by Peter on the Day of Pentecost three thousand souls were converted. It was not Peter, but the Holy Spirit. The word went to the conscience of the hearers, it disturbed them and they were converted. They cried out, ‘Men and brethren, what shall we do?’ (Acts 2:37) – that is the power that the Holy Spirit gives to a man when he fills him. The man is above himself – you cannot explain him in terms of himself.
But did you notice, too, the boldness that it gave them? Alcohol seems to do that also, which is why it is wrong for a man who has been drinking to drive a car. He seems to have a daring and a boldness. This, again, is all wrong pharmacologically, but we are looking at it generally, and we can understand it, because a man under the influence of alcohol loses his nervousness. And we see the parallel in the New Testament. In Acts we see Peter, who a few days before had denied his Lord three times because he was afraid, now standing before a huge crowd in Jerusalem, and even when confronted by the Sanhedrin saying boldly, ‘Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard’ (Acts 4:19-20). He had boldness in witness and in testimony, and was ready to suffer anything for the sake of his blessed Lord. Indeed, all the disciples had a boldness which they had never known before, desiring to witness and then witnessing. And then there was the remarkable joy that came into their lives, a joy that nothing could hinder or control. You see the closeness of the analogy? These men were rendered immune to circumstances. They were quite impervious to the things that were said of them, and done to them. There is that glorious example of Paul and Silas in the prison at Philippi, praying and singing praises to God, even though their feet were held fast in the stocks and their poor backs were sore from being scourged and lashed by the jailers. Later, Paul wrote to the Philippian converts, ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway’ (Phil 4:4). And this they did, even when they were thrown to the lions in the arena; they thanked God they had been counted worthy to suffer shame for his name’s sake. It was a joy which was irrepressible, that nothing could quench, and it was all the result of being filled with the Spirit.
Then there was the fruit of the Spirit in their lives: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, meekness, and so on: as you look at these men and women and read about them, you can see those characteristics exemplified in their lives. For when people are filled with the Spirit they do show these things – they cannot help it. The Spirit is controlling them is the Spirit of love; they become like Christ himself, who was filled with the Spirit.
And then another great characteristic was a wonderful sense of thankfulness to the Lord, and a love of the Lord. Having received the enlightenment of the Spirit, they loved the Lord and were grateful to him. They could not do too much for him. The first thing Paul said to the Lord when he saw him on the road to Damascus was, ‘Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?’ because he knew this sense of thankfulness and of gratitude.
And the last thing I would note is their sense of true fellowship together, their love for one another, and the way in which they felt they belonged to one another. There was no stiffness among them. They did not stand on ceremony, neither did they hold themselves at a distance from one another lest they give themselves away. There was freedom and they mixed with one another, they sang together, they prayed together and they enjoyed one another’s fellowship and society. There was no distinction of class or order, nor of wealth or poverty; in all these things they all became one. This amazing unity was present because they had come to see that they were all sinners; they were all equally failures in the sight of God, and all other distinctions were irrelevant and unimportant. They were all filled with the same Spirit; Jew and Gentile no longer existed since they were, now, all one in Christ, having access by one Spirit unto the Father.
Those, then, are some of the results of being filled with the Spirit, and you see how similar they are to the effects of alcohol, and the closeness of the analogy . But let me hurry to point out the contrast between the two. It is that the way of alcohol leads ultimately to an excess, which you can translate by the word riot, or lack of control, and finally to a moral wreckage. Paul’s injunction is, ‘Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess’ – this disorder and confusion – but, rather, ‘be filled with the Spirit.’ ‘At first,’ says the Apostle in effect, ‘they seem alike, and yet how different they are!’ When it is the work of the Holy Spirit, all these things that I have just been enumerating are under perfect control.
The Scripture is full of this. Did you notice how Paul immediately illustrates what he means by this difference? ‘Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit...’ Then, still the same sentence, ‘speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ That is the happiness produced by the Spirit. It is a holy happiness which expresses itself in that way. But then he goes on in verse 21 to put it like this: ‘Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God’ – there is no lack of control there. Wine produces lack of control, and some people’s conception of being filled with the Spirit obviously suggests the same thing, but here there is control: submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of the Lord. You realise you are in the presence of God. Certainly, you are filled with joy, you are filled with the Spirit, but everything you do is in the fear of the Lord. Your joy is immense, and some people think that that means riot and confusion. Not at all! We are still in the presence of God, whom we must always approach with reverence and godly fear.
Let me give you some other examples and demonstrations of this truth. The classic passage on this subject is 1 Corinthians 14. It is there that Paul shows us clearly that to be filled with the Spirit means control. Take, for example, verse 14, where he is talking of speaking with tongues: ‘For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful’; and then in verse 15 he says, ‘What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.’ Verses 18 and 19 add: ‘I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all: yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.’ He preferred to speak five words with his understanding than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue, in order that he might teach others also.
Then there is the famous exhortation, ‘in understanding be men’ (1 Cor 14:20), not children but adults, grown up, so that you have a true understanding. Next, Paul says quite categorically in verse 32, ‘The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.’ I once met a man who could not control himself, he could not restrain himself from calling out in meetings. He was ruining services by his interjections, and of course he thought he was filled with the Spirit, and was appreciating truth. On my speaking and appealing to him he said, ‘I cannot help it, I am filled with the Spirit. I am a prophet.’ But then I pointed out to him that the Scripture says that the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. Paul says that you must only speak one at a time, and if you see somebody else is giving a message you sit down, and, again, you do not speak in tongues unless there is someone to interpret. The Scriptures teach order. Indeed, Paul sums it up in verse 33 by saying, ‘For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.’ He is always the author of peace and not of confusion.
Finally, he says in verse 40, ‘Let all things be done decently and in order.’ He is talking about public services and he visualises a stranger coming in and wanting to know what it is all about. The stranger will think you are all mad, says Paul, unless there is control and discipline. Certainly, be filled with the Spirit, but that does not mean you have lost control of yourselves. Rather, it means having a good understanding, this amazing control of the Spirit. As Paul again puts it in 2 Timothy 1:7, ‘For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.’ The Spirit is the Spirit of power and love and, at the same time, of control and discipline.
There, then, is what is meant in the Scriptures by being filled with the Spirit. I have tried to put the two sides, the positive and the negative. I have no doubt at all but that for many of us it is hardly necessary that I should emphasise the similarities and the contrasts, for there is not much danger of our giving way to excess and riot! Indeed, I fear our tendency is the exact opposite. Are we filled with the Spirit? Have we got this clear understanding? Do we know anything about this joy? Do we know anything about a holy boldness? Do we really know the fellowship? That is the question! These are always the results of being filled with the Spirit. Is there a deep sense of thankfulness to God and Christ in our hearts? These are the manifestations of the Spirit, and the proofs of our being filled with the Spirit.
Let us examine ourselves, my friends. Merely to be decent and controlled, does not mean being filled with the Spirit – all these aspects of the Spirit have to be taken together, for there is a kind of polarity about them. The Christian is the man who seems to be always walking on a knife edge: there is ever the danger of excess, yet he does not give way to it, because he is controlled. It is this perfect balance. He is controlled by the Holy Spirit. It was the Spirit who brought order into chaos in the world at the beginning and he has always been the Spirit of order, but the two things must go together. There is a difference between order and lack of life; there is no disorder among the dead. But the truth before us is the order of the living. It is control of power, fear of God and a sound mind.
So I trust that we shall start examining ourselves and asking if there is something about us that at first might lead men to think that perhaps we are under the influence of wine. Is there something exalted and free; is there a sense of power; is there a sense of knowledge; is there a sense of almost being possessed; is there something about us that makes people feel we are not ordinary people? That is always true of those who are filled with the Spirit. They do not have to drag themselves wearily to God’s house, nor do they have to force themselves to try to be Christian, and to behave as such. No, they are controlled by the Holy Spirit.
Those are the characteristics, the manifestations, and the results of being filled with the Spirit. Oh that we were all such people! Oh that the first reaction of anybody meeting us, the first thing they sensed, was something unusual, some strange power, some strange peace and joy and equanimity, the fruit of the Spirit, something suggesting the Lord Jesus Christ himself] ‘Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.’
1 Dr Lloyd-Jones did not himself drink alcohol.