Be Filled with the Spirit

If you are a regular reader, you may be getting tired of the subject of spiritual things. If that is the case, I am going to make a shocking suggestion: perhaps you should find something else to read. Yes, I am actually saying you should stop reading because I am about to continue with the same subject. The spiritual health of every believer, and hence the health of Christ’s church, is directly proportional to their knowledge and practice of spiritual things. There is no such thing as a non-spiritual Christian. That is an oxymoron. Being a Christian means being in Christ and being in Christ means He lives in you alongside your spirit. If you belong to Christ, the most important thing about you is your spiritual life.

It must grieve our Heavenly Father to see how many people claim to follow His Son yet live completely oblivious to the spiritual realities around them. We have two options for how to live our lives: in the flesh or in the spirit. There is no third choice; there is no half-way, in-between possibility. A sincere believer might be in the spirit one minute in the flesh the next. One day he’s good; the next day not so much. But if he is sincere, his conscience (driven by the Holy Spirit) will chide him, goad him to get back on track. No true Christian can be comfortable for long living in the flesh.

There is good reason for this. Paul said it is impossible to please God in the flesh. The deepest desire of the true believer is to please God, to know and do His will. This is where we come to the first step in being filled with the Spirit: obedience. In his book, The Holiness of God, R.C. Sproul said that the most essential aspect of holiness is obedience to God’s Word. In this context, holiness is defined as being separated unto God. Because God is spirit, holiness is a spiritual attribute. We cannot be linked to God in our flesh; it is our spirit that connects with God. (R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God, Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1993.)

 James said the man who hears the Word but doesn’t live it (in obedience) is like the man who sees his face in a mirror, then walks away forgetting what he saw. To see oneself mirrored in the Word implies we see our sinfulness, our fleshiness. If we see that we have fallen prey to fleshly desires and pursuits but do nothing to correct our behavior, we are being disobedient.

The title of this piece is a biblical command. Paul admonished the Ephesians not to be drunk with wine but to be filled with the Spirit. The Greek in this passage is interesting. We don’t need much help understanding what being drunk means. After one drink, most people become more relaxed. After two drinks, their inhibitions begin to crumble. Three drinks has most people discarding moral norms quite easily. Four drinks will produce what we correctly call stumbling drunk. After five, most people will need an ambulance. The point is that alcohol takes over control of a person’s faculties and abilities.

The word Paul used as opposed to being drunk with wine was “filled.” The Greek literally says, “be filled in spirit.” “Filled” (πληρόω) has the sense of being made complete, fulfilled. The contrast with drunkenness is obvious. We are not to give control of our lives to fleshly pursuits (drunkenness); rather we are to bring our lives to their fullness, their completeness “in spirit.” The description I gave of being drunk is what happens in our flesh when we drink too much. According to Paul, the result of being filled in spirit is singing praise to God, giving thanks for all things, and making ourselves subject to one another.

In Galatians, Paul lists love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control as fruit of the Spirit. This list follows one he calls deeds of the flesh which reads like today’s headlines or the script of most popular dramas. This presents us with another of the many paradoxes that are found in biblical teaching. Believers are called to avoid the things of the flesh and be filled with the Spirit. This entails definite action on our part and, at the same time, passive acceptance of God’s work in us. We must take action, but we must also submit to God’s actions.

A.W. Tozer puts it like this: “The work of the Holy Spirit in the human heart is not an unconscious or automatic thing. Human will and intelligence must yield to and cooperate with the benign intentions of God. I think it is here that we go astray. Either we try to make ourselves holy and fail miserably, as we certainly must; or we seek to achieve a state of spiritual passivity and wait for God to perfect our natures in holiness as one might wait for a robin egg to hatch or a rose to burst into bloom. The New Testament knows nothing of the working of the Spirit in us apart from our own moral responses. Watchfulness, prayer, self-discipline and acquiescence in the purposes of God are indispensable to any real progress in holiness!” (A. W. Tozer and Gerald B. Smith, Evenings with Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings, Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2015, 250.)

That is the recipe for being filled with the Spirit. You can tell if a person is being filled with the Spirit by watching them. They love the unlovely. They have joy in the midst of pain and suffering. They exhibit peace even in the storms of life. They have the patience of Job, so to speak. They demonstrate kindness where it’s not expected. They display goodness like a moral compass that always points toward Heaven. Their faithfulness to their spouse, employer, friends, and God is exemplary. They show gentleness where most people would react harshly. They remain in control when all about them people are losing it.

There is only one person who ever did this perfectly: Jesus. And it is into His likeness that we are being conformed by obeying the command to deny the flesh and by submitting to the Holy Spirit in our lives. Obedience and submission are not popular concepts in our self-centered, fiercely independent culture. This gives believers another way to judge whether they are being filled with the Spirit: if they look strange and out of touch with the world around them, there’s a good chance they are getting it right.

Related Posts: Necessary Obedience; Scaredy-cat Christians; Strict Obedience