We've spent a significant amount of time learning about the Holy Spirit because this is His Dispensation of the ministry. When Jesus ascended to heaven, after finishing His earthly ministry, He entered into the ministry of High Priest and Lord of all. He would seat Himself at the Father's right hand and would be our Advocate in the heavens. He had settled the sin problem and the righteousness problem, as well as the whole curse of the Law and the old covenant or the Law. He had brought about the Blood and Body needed for our cleansing by His Own self as our Sacrifice.
When Jesus had been raised from the dead as the First Fruits offering, He made the new birth available to all who will believe in Him. We could now be born again by the Holy Spirit Who as sent by the Father to indwell His new family. We would no longer be dead in trespass and sin, but would be brand new creations of the Father. We have the Holy Spirit to lead us by His indwelling presence instead of the Law making us obey.
Once the Holy Spirit was introduced to the world, there would never be the need for another sacrifice for our sins and trespasses, nor would there be any need for our lack of understanding His will. The Holy Spirit would now be available to everyone who will receive Him. And, He will live inside us just like Jesus was and is living inside us.
The Father would no longer be locked into the Holy of Holies, but has now made us the Holy of Holies to live in and walk in. He would now be our God and we would be His people. Through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, God could be revealed to us as Father, like He was to Jesus. This Awesome God would be revealed by the Holy Spirit, as Abba, Father!
The new ministry (which is our new covenant) would make us no longer servants, but children who are born again in His Image and Likeness like it was in the beginning. Now the Holy Spirit works to remove the old image from our eyes and reveal what our new image is to be. We would no longer see what religion dictated, but see a new creature that the Jesus' sacrifice cleansed us and made us to be.
The Holy Spirit's ministry came to Him by the Father Himself. The Holy Spirit will not speak His Own message, but that which the Father has given Him. We now must read the Word of God in a new and different manner than before. As sinners, we heard the Holy Spirit speak to us as the unsaved and speak to bring us into the family by faith in Jesus. For those of us who believed, He had to reveal who we are now in the Father's House and Eyes.
We've made the Holy Spirit's ministry more difficult because we were slow to believe. We've remained focused more on who we once were instead of who we've been made to be in God's eyes through Jesus. It's been a long and tender work of the Holy Spirit to show us, through Jesus, that "Old things have passed away and all things have now become new, our sin and iniquity He will remember no more" and how we've been made righteous and in right standing with God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
The Holy Spirit reveals that this righteousness is not our own, but is God's Own righteousness given to us by His gift of grace. It wasn't something we could earn or deserve or could obtain on our own, but a gift of God by His love for us.
This is why the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit is so very important. Man's carnal mind cannot comprehend this. Only the Holy Spirit can reveal and convince us, through His presence within us, that this isn't based on our righteousness, but on His righteousness. Only God is righteous and it's His righteousness that has been given to us. If it's His righteousness that we have, then how can you ever hope to improve on that?
Once the Holy Spirit has shown us that we are righteous in God's eyes, His next assignment is teaching us that we have access to everything God has for us, through Jesus. We are skeptical about being worthy to be healed, blessed or that God will even hear us when we pray. The Holy Spirit will lead us into all the truth and show us who we've become through Jesus.
We've spent so many years being under the condemnation of our past, we cannot see the liberty of who we are. Being under condemnation of our past seems pious to the carnal mind, but it's really being full of self pride and exalting ourselves higher than the Sacrifice of Jesus that made us righteous.
It's through the ministry of the Holy Spirit that we can ever come to the knowledge of what Jesus has made us to be. Romans 8:1-2 (Amplified) says, "Therefore (there is) NOW no condemnation (no adjusting guilty of wrong) for those who are in Christ Jesus, who live (and) walk not after the dictates of the flesh, but after the dictates of the Spirit. For the Law of the Spirit of Life (which is) in Christ Jesus (the law of our new being) has freed me from the law of sin and of death."
Without the Holy Spirit's revealing the truth of the scriptures, we think the above truth is for some time in the future and not for now. We still believe we're not to forget for a moment that "we're still sinners who were saved by grace." Do you see? Without the Holy Spirit revealing this truth to us, we get saved by the Sacrifice of the Blood of Jesus and still see ourselves like we were instead of who He has made us to be.
It's only the Holy Spirit Who can unfold the full truth of Jesus' sacrifice on our behalf. We seem to be afraid to believe this truth. Even some of the brethren have made railing accusations against those believing this revelation. Joshua and Caleb dared believe God's call to "Take the land!" They were reproached by the rest of the Isrealites, but they were right when everyone else said they were wrong. God honored their faith and their uncompromising stand on His Word and sent them forth as captains to take the Promised Land.
The work and ministry of the Holy Spirit will continue until the coming of the Lord. He will still be challenging and teaching us new and great things about our Lord and what our Lord has done on our behalf. The place that our Father has raised us into and has delivered into our hands, is so far beyond what we can ever think or imagine and only the Holy Spirit can reveal these things in our lives. Our old man remains dead unto God and only the new creation we've been made into is alive in Him. The old, dead man cannot receive even the things written in these blogs, but if you allow the Holy Spirit to illuminate these truths to you, then He will lift you up.
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