Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 56:221 (Jan 1899)
Article: The Nature Of The Divine Indwelling
Author: Calvin B. Hulbert

BSac 56:221 (Jan 1899) p. 78

The Nature Of The Divine Indwelling

Rev. Calvin B. Hulbert

Andrew Murray gives us a book entitled, “The Master’s Indwelling”; John MacNeil is the author of another, “The Spirit-Filled Life”; A. J. Gordon leaves us, “The Ministry of the Spirit”; and R. A. Torrey adds a fourth, “The Indwelling God.” Other books we have, not a few, with similar titles. As to the phraseology here used, we notice, first, that there is abundant biblical authority for it. Passages abound in the Scriptures in which God is said to be in believers; many in which Christ is said to be; and more numerous still are the passages in which the same is said of the Holy Spirit. We object not to the titles of the books above-named as unbiblical, but as indiscriminate and unmodulated. God as well as Christ dwells in believers, and the Holy Spirit as really as either. We cannot say that the believer is any more “Spirit-filled” than he is God-filled and Christ-filled.

So much as to the fact of the Divine Indwelling. The believer has in him the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. The statement is startling, but it is well to have it before us in all its magnitude. A second remark is fitted to meliorate somewhat such language, and forbid our putting an irreverent construction upon it. It is to this effect, that over against the above-named passages which teach that the Persons of the Trinity are in believers, we have counter passages, equally abundant, which teach that believers are in the Father and in the Son and in the Spirit.

BSac 56:221 (Jan 1899) p. 79

A third remark is now required, to the effect that these passages, affirming the indwelling of the Persons of the Trinity in the believer, and the believer in these Persons, teach no more, no less, and no other, than do other passages which affirm the fact of union between God and the believer. St. Paul has given us the origin and ground of this union: “Now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who made both one, and brake down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; that he might create in himself of the twain one new man, so making peace; and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.” Here is the reconciliation expressed in our Anglo-Saxon term, atonement (at-one-ment), the effect giving to the instrument its name. In this work Christ is the mediator between God and man, the daysman who lays his hands upon the offended and the offending party, and brings them into harmony. This reconciliation involves regeneration, which is the ingeneration of a new life, bringing ...