From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The second half of the 13th verse in the first chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians: "In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise."

Now, we are returning again to this great and vital and all-important subject. Because, regarding it as I do as being of such supreme importance, it is vital that we should be in no misunderstanding or under no misapprehension with respect to it.

We first of all considered the actual statement which is made, the words. We notice that we are told that after that ye believed or having believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise. It's not something that happens automatically. The moment we believe, it doesn't happen of necessity immediately.

It may happen almost exactly at the same time as conversion, but it may not. The two things are separate and are distinct. I am not postulating that there must be a long interval, but I am saying that they do not happen at the same time and that the two things are separate and distinct.

And we have also seen that it was that this sealing with the Spirit is the fulfillment of a great promise. We've traced the promises as they are described in the Old Testament and also by the preaching of John the Baptist and our Lord Himself. This sealing with the Spirit is the fulfillment of a promise that had been made by God the Father throughout the centuries.

It is the promise of the Father, the thing to which these children of Israel had been looking forward. The thing which John the Baptist so emphasized. He said, "I indeed baptize you with water, but he, he's somebody whose the very latchet of whose shoe I am unworthy to unloose, he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." This tremendous thing.

And yet, as we've seen, there is an interpretation of it which would reduce it to something non-experimental. Something of which we're not aware of at all, nothing that comes into the realm of experience, we are told. It doesn't affect the feelings at all. It's an act of God whereby He secures us, but we are not aware of it.

Now, we were trying to show last Sunday morning that surely that cannot be the true interpretation. You cannot read the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, in which you have an account of the baptism with the Holy Ghost. The thing which our Lord had promised, as you find it recorded in Acts 1, verses 4-6.

You can't read that and still say that it's not experimental. It's the most profound and the most moving, the most exalting thing that has ever happened in Christian experience or ever can happen. Indeed, I reminded you last Sunday morning that the great Dr. Thomas Goodwin of the 17th century didn't hesitate to say this. He said, "There is only one experience above and beyond the sealing with the Spirit and that is to be in heaven itself."

There's nothing greater. It is the greatest experience on earth. Nothing beyond it but heaven itself. So that, I say, we must emphasize with all our being this experimental aspect.

And we define the essence of the experience as being this: it is that peculiar, special, distinct assurance of salvation which is given by the Holy Spirit Himself. You've got that perfect statement of it there in the 16th verse of the 8th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, which we read at the beginning: "The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirits, that we are the children of God."

That's what the sealing with the Spirit means. It is that peculiar, unmistakable assurance. Not something that you have to reason yourself into out of the Scriptures, not something that you deduce from the new life that is in you and the new inclinations, over and above that. As Thomas Goodwin again put it, and John Wesley, you remember, I read to you quotations from them last Sunday morning at the end, they say it is something immediate, not mediate, but immediate. Something direct.

Not an audible voice, but a making sure of the promises of God, beyond any doubt or peradventure. A kind of luminosity, the bringing of the word to us in such a way that God is telling us, "Thou art My beloved Son," as He said it to His own Son. We are that in Him. It is because we are in Christ. It is in Christ that we are sealed by the Holy Spirit, with the Holy Spirit. He is the seal, and He seals us in that way.

Now, there is a sense in which I personally, at any rate, am not concerned about the terminology. To me, it's a very regrettable thing that some people seem to be so concerned about the terminology that they fail to face the real question. The real question is this: Do we know that we have been sealed by the Spirit?

The result of sealing with the Spirit is, as we've seen so clearly from again that 8th chapter of Romans and the 4th chapter of Galatians, is that God has sent into our heart the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, "Abba, Father." There is that within us which cries out unto God as Father. Now that doesn't mean that you accept a doctrine that God is your Father in Christ. It includes that, but it goes beyond that.

It is the filial spirit. God has sent forth into our hearts because we are sons, the Spirit of sonship, whereby we cry, "Abba, Father." So that, my dear friends, I would suggest to you that the question that ought to be uppermost in your minds is not a question of terminology, but the question of whether you have got the Spirit of adoption, whether you really are crying, "Abba, Father," from the depth of your hearts.

So that, let's get out of the atmosphere of some mere superficial intellectual excitement and concern about terms, and really face the content. Terminology is finally irrelevant. Although it's important, we should have ideas clearly in our minds, but it is the thing itself that matters.

Look again, I say, at the second chapter of Acts. Look what happened to those Samaritans in chapter 8 of the Acts. Look at what happened to Paul, having believed on the road to Damascus. For three days, he was without this. Then Ananias visits him, and then he receives this. Look what happened to Cornelius and his family. Look at those disciples in Ephesus in the 19th of Acts. Read what the Apostle says here. Listen to him asking the Galatians, "Did you receive the Holy Ghost by the hearing of faith or by the works of the law? Which is it?" Now, you know what happened to you, he seems to say. How did it happen to you? That's the question.

Very well, then. We go on therefore with our description of this in order to bring this out still more clearly. The first result of sealing with the Spirit is this immediate, direct, blessed assurance that we are the children of God, that we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. That's the thing the Apostle is concerned about. He's writing about an inheritance which Jews and Gentiles have received in Christ. We are made inheritors, partakers in the inheritance together. And this is the sealing of it to us. It means that clearly, and nothing but that.

But there are certain other results that happen at the same time, and here is one of them. In writing again to the Romans, in the 5th chapter, in the 5th verse, the Apostle puts it like this. He says, "Experience worketh hope," and then he goes on, "and hope maketh not ashamed." "Because," he says, "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us."

You notice the expression, "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts." It's comparable to that term in the second chapter of Acts, "the Holy Ghost was poured forth." It's the same idea exactly. Not something vague and indefinite, but the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts so that we are, as it were, filled to overflowing with this love of God. The sealing of the Spirit leads to that.

So, again, I say that that is the sort of question we've got to face. Do we know anything about that? Can we say that the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts? This great love of God to us in Christ, here it is, it's been poured into us by the Holy Spirit. That's a part of the sealing of the Spirit.

And of course, another result therefore which it leads to is this. Listen to the Apostle Peter writing to Christian people. He doesn't know them. He calls them strangers scattered abroad through various parts of the world. And this is what he says to them, "Whom having not seen, ye love. In whom, though now we see Him not, yet believing, you rejoice with a joy unspeakable and full of glory."

That's it. That's the relationship of these people to the Lord Jesus Christ. They love Him, and they rejoice in Him with a joy unspeakable. You can't express it, and full of glory. Peter writes that, I say, about these Christians whose names he doesn't know, scattered abroad in various countries. Now, that is, I understand it is the teaching of the New Testament with regard to this sealing of the Spirit.

That is the condition of one who has been sealed by the Spirit. He knows this. This is his reaction. This love of God is shed abroad in his heart, and he loves Christ and rejoices in Him in that way.

And then I ask a question: Is there anything else? What about gifts? What about spiritual gifts, says someone. For it is obvious from the very chapter which I'm emphasizing, the second chapter of the book of the Acts of the Apostles, that those who were there sealed by the Spirit did receive certain gifts. They spoke with other tongues, you remember we are told. And there were certain other gifts.

Now, it is perfectly clear that at the very beginning, there on the Day of Pentecost and subsequently, this sealing with the Spirit was accompanied by these gifts. Read all those cases to which I've referred, and you will find that they did speak with tongues, and that was the final proof to Peter and others that they truly had become Christian, that they had received the gift of the Holy Ghost and that therefore they must be baptized.

Very well. Someone may well ask the question, "Does it therefore follow that every time anyone is sealed with the Spirit that such a person of necessity has these particular gifts?" Well, fortunately, we are given an answer to that question in the 12th chapter of the first Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, where the teaching is to this effect: That the Holy Spirit is the Lord of these gifts, that He is a sovereign Lord with respect to them, and that He dispenses them and distributes them as He sees fit. To one, He gives one gift; to another, another gift.

They don't all have the same gifts. They don't all have any one particular gift. Paul asks the question, "Do all speak in tongues?" They don't. "Do all interpret?" They don't. "Do all work miracles?" No, they don't. The Holy Spirit gives one gift to one and one to another, and there are many gifts. He gives us illustrations of them: gift of wisdom, gift of helps, understanding, and so on. Various gifts which He enumerates.

But the point of His teaching is this: That nothing is so fatal as to be coveting certain particular gifts. There was trouble in the church of Corinth because of this. The whole church of Corinth was apparently divided up into groups and segments because they were concerned about certain particular gifts. Some of them were more spectacular than the others, and the men who had the spectacular gifts despised the others, and those with the lesser gifts envied the ones with the greater gifts.

And Paul gives his great teaching concerning the church as a body. But his point is that this question of gifts is entirely the prerogative of the Holy Ghost. He can give gifts, He can withhold gifts, as He chooses and as He pleases. And therefore, it is very interesting to observe this: That when you come down and read the history of the Christian Church, and especially in terms of this doctrine of the sealing with the Holy Ghost, you will find this interesting thing: That these gifts which were given at the beginning do not seem to have been given in subsequent ages of the Christian Church. I mean, certain of them. There are certain gifts, on the other hand, which have been repeated.

Now, let me put it like this to you. I read to you last Sunday morning the account given by a number of godly, saintly, remarkable men of God of how they received this sealing with the Spirit. I read you the case of George Whitefield. I read the case of John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, John Flavel the Puritan, D. L. Moody, and I could have read you many, many more.

Now, there is, there is an interesting question. Take all those great men of God. Not one of them ever spoke with tongues. Not one. But they had other gifts. Some of them had the gift of understanding, the gift of teaching. Whitefield had that unique gift of oratory, probably the greatest orator, apart from anything else, quite apart from his message, the greatest orator that the world has ever known, probably, apart from Demosthenes. Now, that was a gift God gave to him. And a special gift in preaching the Gospel. Different men had different gifts. Wesley with his amazing gift of lucidity and of organizing, and so on.

But not one of them had the gift of speaking with tongues, and they don't seem to have had the gift of miracles, and so on. But they had the sealing with the Spirit. God told them in this direct and immediate manner that they were His children, that He'd loved them with an everlasting love, that He'd chosen them in Christ. They were absolutely certain of it. Wesley tells us, you remember, that there in Aldersgate Street, when his heart was strangely warmed, he knew that Christ had died for *my* sins, even for *mine*. He'd believed it before, but now he knows it with this direct and immediate certainty.

So that it is important that we should differentiate between the thing itself and the gifts that may or may not accompany it. The thing about the sealing with the Spirit is that it seals the inheritance to us, that it is an assurance of sonship. It is the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, "Abba, Father." And it is tragic to notice the way in which so many have been confused about this great matter because of all that confusion about particular gifts. They're afraid even to consider it because they know people who claim to have had this sealing with the Spirit but who insist upon a particular gift.

And thus they are robbed of the blessing. Well, now, I trust that it's quite plain and clear that you must not of necessity postulate gifts, particular gifts, with the sealing itself. There may be gifts, there may not be gifts. There is always *some* gift, but the thing itself is the blessed assurance, immediate and direct, that we are the children of God. Therefore, my dear friends, I don't ask you whether you've spoken with tongues or not. What I am asking you again is this: Is the love of God shed abroad in your heart? Are you rejoicing in Jesus Christ with a joy unspeakable and full of glory? Is the Spirit of adoption in you? Are you crying out, "Abba, Father?" Have you got that direct certainty? Has that been given you that you are a child of God and an heir of eternal bliss? That's the question.

Now, it seems to me that it is in the light of this only that we understand the meaning of a phrase that was once used by our Lord, which has often perplexed people. Do you remember how just before the cross, our Lord, speaking to the disciples, said this to them: "It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you. But if I go away, I will send Him unto you." You'll find that in the 16th of John, in the 7th verse. Now, what does that mean? Listen to His words. Observe what He says.

Here is the Son of God standing amongst the disciples and saying to them, "Don't let not your heart be troubled. Don't, don't be upset because I'm going. It's actually a good thing for you that I should go." Is that conceivable? Here He is, the Son of God, with all knowledge, and He was teaching them. He was always there to advise them, tell them what to do and what not to do. He was able to give them power to preach and to cast out devils. And as long as He is with them, they're happy and so on. But He's going, and He says, "It's a good thing for you that I should go."

And it seems to me there's only one adequate explanation or exposition of that, and that is this sealing with the Spirit. The fact is that after Pentecost, these disciples were more certain of Him than they were when they were actually looking at Him with their naked eyes. They were more certain of Him. They knew His doctrine better. They had a fuller understanding. They were filled with His own Spirit and with His love. It was expedient for them. It was a good thing for them.

And you and I are meant to be in the same position. We are in a position in which it is better for us to be as we are than if we were actually alive when our Lord was here in the days of His flesh. And the question is, are we? Have we got that understanding? Have we got that certain knowledge? Have we got that love? That's the result of the sealing with the Spirit.

Well, now then, having put it like that, let me try to be still more explicit and clear by raising a number of questions which I know are in many people's minds and which are always raised when this doctrine is truly preached. May I say in passing, in brackets, that what I am expounding to you is no new doctrine. It's a measure of the ignorance of modern evangelicalism to regard this as new. I've been trying to show you that this is the great doctrine specially committed to the Puritans of the 17th century. John Wesley said many times that he did believe that God had really raised up the Methodists very largely to preach this very thing, this doctrine of assurance.

And you remember he believed it so intensely that at first, he tended to say that if you haven't got it, you were not even a Christian at all. He modified that later on, but it was the peculiar doctrine, this blessed assurance of sonship, which is given by the sealing of the Spirit. It is only of late since about the middle of the last century that that other conception with regard to the sealing came in which regards it as something outside the realm of consciousness and of experience. Very well then, let me raise some of the questions to try and dissipate this confusion.

The first question is, as someone might ask, "What is the relationship of the conversion experience to this sealing with the Spirit?" Because it may be argued that when a man is converted, he is given a rest of soul. "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God." Now what's the difference, someone may ask, between that and this sealing with the Spirit? Because when a man has this rest of justification, he knows that his sins are forgiven. He's given a sense of peace and of quiet. Isn't that the same thing? Well, the answer is, no. The sealing with the Spirit goes well beyond that.

The man who is justified by faith is a man who believes the word and believes the teaching of the word. And he is given, as a result of that, this kind of rest and of satisfaction. But that may often be tested, and it may often be shaken, and he will have to fly back to the word. He'll have to fly back to other arguments. Yes, and when he does so, he's again given his assurance. But he's always having to contend for it, as it were. He still has to do it by faith.

But the sealing with the Spirit is something so beyond that that there's no longer argument. You see, it is this direct assurance. It is this Spirit bearing witness *with* our spirit. The man does nothing, but it's done *to* him. It is God who seals us. And we are aware of it. I was reading the other day a very beautiful illustration to bring out this aspect of the truth, which was used by the saintly and the godly Richard Sibbes, another of those great Puritans of 300 years ago. He used to preach here in London, in Lincoln's Inn, and he was known as "The Heavenly Doctor Sibbes."

Well, the Heavenly Doctor Sibbes used a little illustration like this. He said, "The difference between those two things can be put in this form. It's like a child who has been perhaps a little mischievous and disobedient and has got a sense of guilt and is unhappy and keeps on running back to his father." And, well, the father just does receive him, but he doesn't smile much at him. He is reprimanding him, and he is punishing him in a way for his disobedience. But the child by running back, gets a certain satisfaction that he's with father after all. And this goes on for some time, and they're walking on the road together, and the child closes up to the father and touches him. And the father goes on and just looks at him. And then after a while, the father takes hold of the child and lifts him up and fondles him in his arms and showers his love upon him. That's the difference.

Yes, without the sealing of the Spirit, you can know that your sins are forgiven, but not in *this* way. This goes beyond it. This is God, if I may so express it, endearing us and showering His love upon us, overwhelming us. You notice that that came in to all those experiences that I read to you. It was something overwhelming. Even a man who had got the powerful physique of a D. L. Moody felt that his body was cracking beneath it when God did it to him, and he cried out unto God to stop. He was afraid that it would actually kill him. That's what it means. That's the difference.

Very well, there's one question. Let me go on to another. I've already hinted at it in passing, but it's so important, I return to it. It's relationship to sanctification. Now there are many people who have become confused about the sealing of the Spirit because of this unfortunate confusion of it with sanctification. It's so often been confused with this. You are familiar with the teaching that does so.

And there are some who say, "Well, I've tended to avoid this whole doctrine of the sealing with the Spirit because I've only known people who talk about eradication mentioning it." And they say, "I don't believe in their doctrine of eradication because I could see that sin was not eradicated in them." And there they are. They say, "I've rather been afraid of it all because it's been put in connection with sanctification or eradication or a clean heart or perfection or something like that."

Now the reply to that is this: There is no direct connection between the sealing with the Spirit and sanctification. The Apostle Paul, in this section of the Epistle to the Ephesians, is not touching the doctrine of sanctification at all. He hasn't come to that. All the Apostle is doing in this whole section from verse 1 to 14 is to tell us what God has done to us in Christ. He's showing us our position. He is later going to deal with sanctification, but here, he hasn't started with it. He's not interested in it. What he's interested in at this point is our inheritance, our sonship, our relationship, the certainty of the ultimate arrival.

So that I say, to bring in sanctification here is to confuse counsel and to confuse our terms. It therefore, I say, has no direct connection with the question of sanctification. Paul says it is something that has *happened* to these people. And therefore, it is not something which is continuous, as sanctification is continuous. Now, I think that about two years ago, when I was preaching on the whole question of sanctification here on Sunday mornings, I put the relationship between this experience of sealing and sanctification in this form.

I said it is the relationship of showers of rain and sunshine to the seed that has been planted in the earth. Look at it like this. There is a farmer, he's plowed his land, he's harrowed it, and then he's put in the seed, and then he's rolled it over, and then he leaves it. And weeks go by, and you see nothing at all. And you say, "Well, is there any seed there? Was there any life in that seed because you don't see anything?" Well, nothing happens at all. Then it begins to appear beneath above the surface, just sprouting and appearing. And then it begins to grow just a little. You look at it day after day. You say, "Well, surely the life has gone. It's the crop is dead. Nothing's going to happen." But then suddenly there's a wonderful shower, and a burst of sunshine, and you can almost visibly see that grain rising up, sprouting up, and another comes still more marvelous.

I suggested something like that. From the moment that man sowed the seed, the life was there, and the process had begun. The moment a man is born again, sanctification has already started. Sanctification is not an experience to be received. Sanctification is the working out of the life of God in the soul. It starts from the moment of rebirth. It's bound to. You can't have the life of God in you without its being active. Oh yes, but it may appear to be quiescent.

But then this blessed experience is given, the shower and the sunshine. And, of course, it has an effect upon one's sanctification. It isn't sanctification, but it has an effect upon it. The rain and the shower haven't got the life, the life's in the seed. Yes, but they greatly promote it and stimulate it. So does this experience. In other words, I can put it in this form: Sealing with the Spirit. Not promotes sanctification. It doesn't guarantee it of necessity. It isn't the same thing. So that I'm going on to make this statement, which may surprise you.

It is possible for a man who has had this amazing experience of sealing with the Spirit to become a terrible backslider. It's often happened. A man who'd been sealed with the Spirit, he falls back. He becomes a serious backslider. He still remembers what happened to him. He can't get away from that. There are men who'll tell you in their experiences that it was that alone that kept them sometimes even from suicide. They, they knew this. Though all arguments seemed to be against it, this was the thing that remained. So you see, it doesn't guarantee a continuance in a sanctified life, not at all.

The poet Cowper, I think, helps us at this point. He says, "Where is the blessedness I knew when first I saw the Lord? Where is that soul-refreshing view of Jesus and His word?" He'd had it, but it lasted, as it were. But he'd had it, and he'd never forget it, you see. It's something you can look back to. It is an experience. That's why I'm emphasizing this. It was the thing that held poor Cowper when he was on the verge of lunacy.

This sealing of the Spirit which God had given him, and which God repeated to him in His mercy and in His grace. So there is the relationship of this experience to sanctification. We mustn't confuse it with sanctification. This has nothing to do with sanctification. And my little booklet was about sanctification, not about sealing with the Spirit. "Christ Our Sanctification" doesn't deal with sealing with the Spirit. It wasn't meant to. It was meant to deal with sanctification, and its argument is still valid, and it's still true. The two things must never be confused.

Well, let me go on to another question, which is often asked, and it's this. You read out to us, says someone, the experiences of those saintly men. And you told us how John Flavel, during the best part of a day, didn't know where he was. He was so enjoying this visitation of God that he even forgot his wife and children in his ecstasy. "Are you saying," says someone, "that we have not been sealed with the Spirit until we've had some overwhelming experience like that?"

Well, of course, I'm not. The intensity of the experience may vary considerably. But, and let me emphasize the but, I am saying this, and the doctrine compels me to say it: This doctrine is, this experience is unmistakable. The intensity may vary, as the intensity of any experience may vary. Our appreciation of music varies. Many people may have an appreciation of music, but it isn't always with the same intensity. Our appreciation of beauty and of flowers isn't always the same. I may like flowers, but I may not be able to say, "To me the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." I'm not a Wordsworth, but I still appreciate beauty and flowers.

The intensity may vary. But God forbid that anybody should interpret that statement as meaning, "Oh, very well then, though I may be uncertain about this, I can still claim it." No, you can't. It is certain. It is unmistakable. There's no question about that. I have emphasized this repeatedly, and I must say it again in this connection. If you're only having to persuade yourself about this thing, you don't know it. It is of the essence of this thing that it is unmistakable, that it is given, that it is God telling us through the Spirit. The intensity may vary tremendously. But the thing itself is plain and clear and unmistakable. I do trust that that is clear.

Let me go on then to another thing that follows directly from that. What about the character of emotion? There are many people who are troubled about this. It seems to me that the modern Christian is more frightened of emotion than of anything else. And, of course, they are frightened because they do not know the distinction between emotion and emotionalism. And because they're afraid of emotionalism, they're afraid of emotion, and they equate it. And we've actually reached a stage in which people boast that in Christian experience there is no emotion. They're rather pleased today when people show no emotion at their conversion. "No tears," they say. "Marvelous, no emotion."

You see how we can be led astray by confused thinking. There is all the difference in the world between emotion and emotionalism. Is it conceivable that anybody can be told by God directly that he is God's child and feel nothing, and feel no emotion? There was never a more stolid, unemotional man than John Wesley. He was a typical logician, a man who was not emotional by temperament and who distrusted it. But after what happened to him in Aldersgate Street, when his heart was warmed, John Wesley knew what it was to have a glorious emotion.

It is impossible to believe that God can speak thus to my soul and I'm not moved to the very vitals of my being. Yes, but someone says, "What about all these excesses? What about all the fanaticism? What about all the phenomena? Are you asking for disorder? Aren't you tending to encourage disorder?" They say, "I read accounts of revivals, revivals taking place recently. I read a booklet which tells me this is that, and I see strange phenomena, and I don't like that sort of thing. I'm frightened." Wait a minute, my friend.

When God visits the soul, it is the most overwhelming experience that one can ever have. And it is not surprising that sometimes the physical frame can't stand it. I've reminded you of Moody, who felt that even physically he was breaking down. Well, it's not surprising that sometimes when the Spirit of God enters into people in such power, that for a while they really do lose their self-control. It doesn't trouble me at all. If you're in any difficulty about that, the best advice I can give you is to read a great book by Jonathan Edwards called "The Religious Affections," on the nature of the religious affections. Unfortunately, it isn't in print, but you can get it.

Jonathan Edwards, you see, passed through that great revival in Northampton in New England in 1735 and afterwards, and there were strange phenomena, and people were troubled about it. They said, "Is this a real work of the Spirit or is it a counterfeit?" And Jonathan Edwards has answered that question in that mighty volume. I'm summarizing it to you by putting it like this. It is not at all surprising that when the Spirit of God thus enters into a man's soul in power, that unusual things should happen, that the balance of a man may be upset temporarily. I'm not justifying that; I'm simply explaining it. So I say, "Don't be afraid of that."

And remember always that at such a time the devil is present, and he's anxious to produce counterfeits. He turns people's attention to the phenomena, to the experiences, and to the excitement. And there are some poor people who simply look for ecstasy and for excitement, and they get it, and they get it from the devil. It has nothing to do with this. Well, what's the difference, says someone? Well, there are certain tests that can always be applied.

The true emotion produced by the Holy Ghost always leads to humility, always leads to reverence, always leads to a holy love of God. A man may sing, he may shout, he may dance. That doesn't persist. That's the temporary because of the weakness of the body. But what is permanent, and what proves the reality is that the man is filled with a sense of awe. He's been near the majesty of God and is humbled. There is a humility. You remember that several of them told us in their experiences that they very rarely spoke about it. They didn't stand and boast. There was no boastfulness. No, no, the thing was too sacred almost to be mentioned, they say. But there it is. It leads to humility, and it leads to that love of God and that rejoicing in Christ with a joy unspeakable and full of glory.

It must do that because it is a revelation of this. It's a seeing something of the height and the depth and the breadth and the length, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. And it's impossible for anyone to have that without at one and the same time being moved to the very vitals of one's being, and yet humbled, and having a sense of awe, and of reverence, and above all, this love of God. Well, let me summarize it in a word by putting it like this.

No man ever knew more about this kind of thing than the Apostle Paul himself. And you see how he is moved by it. Paul was moved by a grand emotion. You can't read his letters if you're a Christian at all without being moved yourself. Unless you've ever wept as you read some of them. Unless you've ever felt like praising God. Well, I say, you must be ignorant of these things. The man was moved. The very name of Jesus Christ could move him and make him forget his argument and forget his own logic for the while. He burst out into a hymn of praise and of thanksgiving. And yet, you notice his constant humility, his self-depreciation, his self-abasement. You notice his burning, passionate love. You notice his reverence. You notice the order.

There it is, in one and the same man. He was lifted up into the third heaven on one occasion, and he didn't know where he was exactly. You know, that's a part of it. These men all describe this. And yet, here is the teaching, the incomparable teaching, and the balance, and the wisdom, and the understanding. Oh, my dear friends, let us be careful lest in our fear of some excitability and emotionalism, and some strange enthusiasm and some odd phenomena, let's be very careful lest in our fear of that we may be guilty of quenching the Spirit, and thereby robbing ourselves and others of this wonderful blessing that God has for all His people. Even yet, we haven't finished with it because I still have other questions which I postpone until next Sunday, God willing. Somebody wants to ask, "Is it meant for all then?" "Did all the first Christians have it? Should I seek it?" God willing, I hope to deal with some of those questions next Sunday morning. But as I leave you, let me ask you again the same question.

Is there a spirit in you that cries out, "Abba, Father?" Is the love of God shed abroad in your heart? Do you know, beyond argument, beyond having to convince yourself, that you are a child of God and a joint heir with Jesus Christ? That is the sealing of the Spirit. Amen.