[Note: This sermon continues the exposition of Luke 21:27–28, focusing on the future dimension of redemption, the distinction between spiritual and intellectual understanding, and the Holy Spirit as the guarantee of that future redemption. Delivered 6 September 1981, Montreal.]
We continue in Luke chapter 21, verse 28, where we left off last week. The Lord Jesus says: "When these things begin to take place, look up and raise your head, because your redemption is drawing near." Last week we expounded the meaning of redemption — how it means being set free from bondage through the payment of a price called a ransom, and how God set us free from slavery to sin through the blood of Christ. We also saw that the redeemed person responds with total love: loving God with all the heart, with all the soul, with all the mind, and with all the strength. And I tried to expound the progression: God first touches the heart, then through the heart works into the whole soul and personality, and then into the mind — the dianoia, with its three aspects of intelligence, disposition, and purpose — and from there into the whole strength of a person. An emotional experience alone is not enough; it must be consolidated by understanding, by pondering what God has done, by forming a plan. Otherwise the experience drifts away like a boat without anchor.
Today I need to go deeper into this matter of redemption, and I want to emphasize one thing further: the distinction between a spiritual understanding and an intellectual understanding. You can understand something at the intellectual level — for example, you can read a book on Christianity and understand what Christianity is about. That is an intellectual understanding. But you have no spiritual understanding of it until the gospel becomes a reality in your life, until you have experienced God coming in to transform you. When he has transformed you, you have a spiritual experience — but you may not yet understand what has happened. It is when you then ponder deeply what God has done in your life that you begin to gain what we call spiritual understanding. The Apostle Paul, after his experience on the Damascus Road, went three years into the wilderness — three years of pondering, praying, meditating. Lord, what did you do to me? What has happened with my life? As he meditated upon that experience in the light of the Lord's teaching, the whole matter became clear, and from that pondering was born eventually the book of Romans. Paul was able to expound to others what happens when God comes into your life, because he had both lived it and understood it. And that is why the book of Romans is so hard for many Christians to understand — because they are trying to deal with it purely at the intellectual level. If you have truly experienced what Romans describes, all you have to do is compare it with what happened in your life, and you will find it illuminating rather than obscure.
Now I must go on. We need to understand a further and very important dimension of redemption and salvation in Scripture: they are not only present realities but also future. Look at verse 28 again: "Your redemption is drawing near" — drawing near means it has not yet arrived. Even when all the signs of his coming are beginning to take place, the Lord says your redemption is still drawing near, not yet here. Now the word redemption in Greek — apolutrosis — occurs ten times in the New Testament. Apart from this one reference in Luke 21:28, Paul uses it seven times and the book of Hebrews uses it twice more, and Hebrews is a Pauline writing. In all of Paul's usage, redemption is spoken of sometimes as a present reality but its fullness is consistently future. We have a foretaste of redemption now; the fullness is yet to come.
Paul makes this unmistakably clear in Romans 8:22–23: "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons — the redemption of our bodies." We have received the first fruits of the Spirit, yes. We have experienced liberation. But we wait. Our bodies are not yet redeemed. Our bodies are still subject to death. Sin is still lodged in the flesh, as Paul says in Romans 7. Death will still overtake this body. Our redemption so far is spiritual, not yet physical, and God will redeem us physically as well. Therefore we groan inwardly, in earnest longing for that day when our bodies will be set free from sin and death, when we shall put on a body that is incorruptible and immune to death. Redemption is future; we have only the foretaste of it.
Ephesians 4:30 says: "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption." Notice: the day of redemption is future. We are sealed for that day, but the day has not yet come. Romans 5:9: "Since therefore we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God." We shall be saved — future. What we have experienced now is justification — we have been forgiven of our past sins, set free from slavery to sin. But full salvation from the wrath of God is still future, and between now and the judgment day there is a life to be lived. And 1 Peter 1:3–5: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ... to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." Salvation ready to be revealed. At the last time. And we are kept by God's power — but through faith. Not unconditionally, but through faith. We must maintain that faith consistently to the end. As the Lord says in Matthew 24: "He that endures to the end shall be saved."
This means it matters very greatly how you live between today and the day of judgment. There is no foundation whatsoever in Scripture for the teaching that Christians do not come into any form of judgment, or that it does not matter what kind of Christian life you live. Such teaching is current and popular in our day, but let me tell you plainly: it is falsehood. To you who have recently been baptized, and to you who are about to be baptized — let nobody persuade you into a spiritual sleep. Let nobody tell you that you can live any kind of life and still be saved, simply because you once made a decision in the past. That you can sin as much as you like, that you can go on being selfish, that God will save you regardless — that kind of Christianity wants salvation without God. We want to be saved and then tell God to leave us alone, to stop interfering in our life. We want eternal life and then to do our own thing. What kind of Christianity is this? In the Bible there is salvation, but only with God, only as long as you have God, only as long as you have Christ, only as long as you have faith — because we are saved by faith, and faith must continue.
God's assurance to us is given in the person of the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 1:7 tells us we were redeemed with the blood of Christ. And then Paul goes on to tell us that when we were redeemed God gave us an assurance, and that assurance is the Holy Spirit himself. Every true Christian has the Spirit of God in his life. Those of you who were baptized received the Holy Spirit — God living in your life as a pledge, as a first installment, as a foretaste of what salvation will be in its fullness on the day of salvation. Now Ephesians 1:13–14: "In him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it." The Holy Spirit is our guarantee. He is the pledge. We have not yet acquired full possession of the inheritance, but we have received a guarantee — the down payment, the first installment. And Acts 5:32 tells us the principle by which this guarantee is given: "We are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him." The present participle in Greek — those who obey — is a continuous tense: God gives the Holy Spirit to those who continually obey him, who maintain an attitude of obedience toward God. It follows that we must continue in that obedience. Can this guarantee be lost? Can it be possible to lose the Holy Spirit?
[Continues in Part B]
# Your Redemption Is Drawing Near — Luke 21:27–28 (Part B) — Holy Spirit as Pledge and Seal; Can We Lose the Holy Spirit; Saul, Samson, David; Luke 21:34–36
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Luke 21:27–28, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 6 September 1981, Montreal.]
Salvation is based on faith, as Paul says in Colossians 1:22–23: you continue in the faith, not turning back from the commitment you made to him. Salvation is based on a continuing faith — not merely on some past act of faith. If you turn from this faith, if you surrender this faith, how can you still be saved by faith when you no longer have that faith? There are people who dare to say you can be saved even when you have no faith anymore. That is incredible, and it is not the teaching of Scripture. The Holy Spirit is spoken of in two distinct ways in the Bible: as a pledge and as a seal. Ephesians 1:13–14: you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it. The guarantee — the pledge — is not yet the thing itself; it is the first installment that assures us the full inheritance is coming. That first installment is real: when you became a Christian, you received the Holy Spirit into your life, and God's life and fire began in you.
The second thing about the Holy Spirit is that he is a seal — a mark of authentication. As Chinese people know well, a seal on a document authenticates it; it says this document is genuine, this person is who they claim to be. So when you receive the Holy Spirit, that is God's mark upon you that you are a true child of God. As Paul says: he that does not have the Spirit of Christ is none of his. There are some who call themselves Christians who do not have the Holy Spirit. The mark of the Spirit is visible in the fruit of the Spirit — a quality in the life that is different. If your life is not different from a non-Christian, you are not a genuine Christian, regardless of what decision you made in the past, regardless of what form you signed at a meeting. The true Christian has the mark of the Spirit in his life; you look at him and see something different. And the real test is that he himself may not be aware of it — because if he is putting it on deliberately, it is not real. The change is real when others notice it and the person himself does not realize it. There is also a family likeness among true Christians: their temperaments and characters may differ greatly, yet each bears the seal of the Spirit, and something similar is visible in all of them.
Now someone will say: "Doesn't it say guarantee? We have a guarantee; we're safe." Let me tell you something about guarantees. I recently mislaid my guarantee document for my electric shaver, which has a three-year guarantee. When I took it in for repair, the fellow refused to fix it without the document. I said it is certainly under guarantee — but I could not produce the document. No document, no free repair. I had to pay. Now: the Holy Spirit is your guarantee. He is the pledge. He is the document. Therefore make sure you keep your guarantee. Otherwise you will be in my position: you have a guarantee, but you cannot produce evidence of it, and it does you no good. We have only one evidence of our guarantee — the Holy Spirit. If you lose the Holy Spirit, you lose everything: the guarantee, the pledge, the seal, the inheritance, the life of God within you. The Holy Spirit is God's fire in you, God's light and God's life. Can it be possible to lose the Holy Spirit?
I want to answer only from Scripture — not from dogma, not from theology, not from my own opinion. I have been brought up in the teaching that it is impossible for a Christian to lose the Holy Spirit, and I searched the Scripture for that teaching. I look for it in vain. I have waited for years for anyone to show me one verse that teaches this, and I am still waiting. What the Scripture teaches instead, both in the Old and in the New Testament, is that the Holy Spirit is given to those who obey God, and that through persistent disobedience the Holy Spirit can be removed. In the Old Testament, time and again, the Holy Spirit was taken away from people. First Samuel 16:14: "The Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him." Saul was not just any man — he was the first king of Israel, chosen by God himself, anointed by God to lead his people. But when Saul disobeyed the Lord and did not fully repent, the Lord removed his Holy Spirit from him. That is the tragic history of Saul.
Consider Samson. His strength was not natural strength — nothing from martial arts, nothing from weight-lifting. His strength came solely from the Holy Spirit of God. Judges 14:6: "The Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon Samson, and he tore the lion asunder as one tears a kid, and he had nothing in his hands." With his bare hands. Judges 14:19 and 15:14 record the same: the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him. He defeated the Philistines, killed a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass, burst ropes like threads. Without the Holy Spirit he was no stronger than any ordinary man. The Philistines could not defeat Israel so long as Samson stood under the power of God, and so their strategy was to knock out Samson — exactly as the IRA yesterday used two Irish women as bait to lure two British soldiers to their deaths. Delilah served as intelligence for the Philistines: find the secret of Samson's power. The secret was his Nazarite vow, his total commitment to the Lord. The outward mark of that vow was his uncut hair. When through persistent compromise he allowed Delilah to breach his vow — when he told her the secret knowing what would happen — in chapter 16:20 we read that when the Philistines attacked he found his strength was no more. The Spirit of God had gone. David knew this danger also. Psalm 51:11: "Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me." That psalm came from the crisis of his sin with Bathsheba — David pleading that God would not remove the Holy Spirit from him in view of his repentance.
The principle is the same in both Old and New Testaments: the Holy Spirit is given to those who obey God. Obedience is the concrete expression of faith. Acts 5:32: "We are witnesses, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him" — present participle, continuous tense, a continuing obedience. This principle does not change from Old to New. Therefore what Paul says in Ephesians 4:30 — "do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God" — is a real and serious warning. Paul has the Old Testament in mind: the Israelites in the wilderness grieved the Spirit of God, Psalm 78:40: "How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert." And Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:1ff that those things were written for our instruction — the Israelites fell in the wilderness because they grieved and rebelled against God, and the warning is that the same can happen to us. And in 1 Thessalonians 5:19: "Do not quench the Spirit." The Greek word for quench is the word for extinguishing a fire — putting it out. That is what the standard Greek dictionary of Arndt and Gingrich gives as the definition: extinguish, put out. Do not put out the fire of the Holy Spirit in your life. These warnings in the New Testament are real warnings, not decorative ones.
Redemption, then — and here we close — redemption is future. Salvation in its fullness is still to come. God has given to those who trust in him the first fruit of the Holy Spirit, the pledge of the Holy Spirit, the seal of the Holy Spirit. He is our guarantee. We must hold on, by God's grace, to this guarantee. We must not grieve the Holy Spirit; we must not quench the Holy Spirit. We must treasure the gift that God has given us, not through any merit of our own but through his grace and mercy. And we must keep the Holy Spirit in our lives through obeying him day by day. If we grieve him persistently, we may quench him. And if we do that, we will have lost our guarantee, our pledge, and our inheritance. Like Esau, who lost his inheritance; and when he sought it afterward with tears, he could not recover it. Let us be exceedingly careful, by God's grace, to continue in his mercy. Let us be quiet before God in prayer.