Back to Home Page |  Back to Index |

The Fruits of Being Filled with the Holy Spirit

(Overcomer Wu)

"They were all filled with the Holy Spirit” --Acts 2:4

In the course of our Lord’s dealings with His disciples while He was on the earth, He spared no pains to teach, lead, train, and admonish them. In most respects, however, they remained unchanged. That was why after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ even the closest intimate followers of the Lord Jesus went back fishing (Jn 21:2-3) which was their old profession prior to their being called by the Lord. The reason was that up to this point the Lord Jesus was nothing more than an external Christ who stood outside of them and from without sought to work upon them by His Word and His leading. However, with the advent of Pentecost this condition was entirely changed.

As the Holy Spirit He came down as the inward, indwelling Christ, to become in the very innermost recesses of their being the life of their life. This is what He Himself had promised in the words: "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you…. At that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (Jn 14:18,20). Of course the impartation of the Spirit of Life could be said to have occurred in John 20:22 when the Lord Jesus breathed to His disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This was the source of all the other blessings that came with Pentecost. The Lord Jesus Christ, as the crucified and glorified Lord from heaven, first came as the Spirit (1 Cor 6:17), to impart to them His ever-abiding presence that had been promised to them. That was the most intimate, all-powerful, and wholly divine act: by His indwelling which makes Him in truth their life, their ever-present Help/Comforter/Paraclete and their life supply. The Lord Jesus whom they had known in the flesh, living with them on earth, they have now received by the Spirit in His heavenly glory within them! Instead of an outward Jesus near them, they now obtained the inward Christ dwelling within them and will never leave them.

One of the principal fruits of the indwelling Christ as the Spirit within them is the sanctification or the transformation wrought in them. For example, we know how often the Lord had to rebuke them for their pride and exhort them to humility. It was all of no avail. Even on the last night of His earthly life, at the table of the Last Supper, there was a strife among them as to which of them should be the greatest (Luke 22:24).

We have seen somewhat intimately the characters and behavior of the disciples, who prior to their being filled with the Spirit, by their fellowship for three and a half years with the Lord Jesus as recorded in the gospels. We know of their infirmities and defects, their sins and perversities, all stand open to our view. For instance, Peter who formerly shamefully denied the Lord three times, but the filling of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost wrought a complete transformation that gave him the boldness to speak in and for the Name of the Lord Jesus publicly in front of thousands of hostile Jews to his faith in Christ. Later, we also see with what boldness Peter spoke in opposition to the leaders of the people and the judge who had the authority to punish him, by saying, "We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). They became entirely new men and a new creation in Christ, so that one might say of them: "Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor 5:17).

The outward teaching of the external Jesus, whatever other influences He may have exercised, was not sufficient to redeem them or free them from the power of indwelling sin. This could be achieved only by the indwelling Christ. Only when Jesus entered into them as the Spirit did they undergo a complete transformation, because in the Life of Christ they received – they received Him in His heavenly ministry, humility with all His divine virtues and in His sacrificial love for others. Therefore from that moment onwards, they were empowered by the Spirit of the meek yet highly exalted Christ Jesus, Who had subjected all things under His feet and been given to be Head over all things to the Church (Eph 1:20-22a).

This in truth is the only way to a real sanctification, to a life that actually overcomes sin, satan, the world, and self, because the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn 14:6) now lives in us! Many preachers and many Christians are preoccupied only with the external Christ on the cross or in heaven, and wait for the blessing of His teaching and its out-working without understanding that the blessing of Pentecost brings Him into us, to work Himself in and through us. Due to this lack of spiritual understanding, they make little progress on their path of sanctification. Christ Himself is “of God, Who is made unto us... sanctification” (1 Cor 1:30). With the Sanctified One living and abiding in our hearts and operating within us, we need to learn to live, move, and have our being in Him (Act 17:28).

Love for God and our fellow man, especially our fellow Christians, is another poignant fruits of Pentecost. Love of course is an inevitable outcome of our living and being filled with the Spirit, for we are told that Love is the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22. Next to pride, the lack of love was the sin for which the Lord had so often rebuked His disciples. In fact, these two sins have one and the same root: the self-seeking, self-exaltation, and the desire for self-aggrandizement. The new commandment that the Lord gave us, the token hallmark by which all men should know that we are His disciples, was love for one another (Jn 13:35).

The out-flowing of God's love was wonderfully manifested on the day of Pentecost that the Spirit of the Lord shed abroad His love in the hearts of His own. The multitude of them that believed were in one accord of one heart and one soul. Firstly, their love for the unsaved were so strong that its effect was the saving of 5000 men in one day. Secondly, the proof of their love among the brethren or the saints is shown in that all things they possessed were held in common. No one said that anything that he possessed was his own; rather, they sold what they had and distributed to the needy ones among them (Act 2:44-45). This is the true experience of the kingdom of heaven with its life of love in their midst. And this is the true experience of the Church life or the Body life. Just as in our physical body, when a member, say a tooth is infected, the rest of the body will not only suffer with it, but will also bring the supply of white blood cells and antibodies to fight the germs that cause the infection, the endocrine system will secrete the necessary hormone to help numb the pain a bit, and the hands and the mouth will coordinate to take some anti-biotic or pain pills to help alleviate the condition. Yet sadly, we see very little of such true Church life or Body life even among those who preach so much about it. In the true healthy Church life, the wonderful agape love of Christ will fill us through the Spirit and the evidence will be undeniable.

How closely the mighty works of the Spirit and the indwelling Christ are bound up with a life in love appears from the prayer of Paul in behalf of the Ephesians. He asks that they might be strengthened with power by the Spirit, in order that Christ might dwell in their hearts. Then he forthwith makes this addition: "that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:17-19). The filling of the Holy Spirit and their living by the indwelling Christ brought them a life that has its root, its joy, its power, its evidence in love, because God Himself is Love (1 Jn 4:8,16). How could the Church convince the world that she has received a sublime, heavenly life of God into her if she is devoid of the love of God?

Lastly, I just wanted to point out one more fruits of being filled with the Spirit, that is, the enlightenment of the Word of God. Previously, we saw in the gospels how blinded the disciples were to the speaking of the Lord in the Scriptures. For instance, the Lord Jesus repeatedly pointed out to them that the Messiah must suffer and die and be raised again. Yet they were totally without understanding and remained clueless as to what the Lord Jesus was alluding to. As with all the Jews of that age, their ideas of the Messiah and the kingdom of God were utterly external and carnal. All the instruction of the Lord Jesus throughout three and a half long years could not detach their minds from a Messiah who would march into Jerusalem on a white horse and deliver them from the conquering Romans to establish the kingdom of God externally. They were utterly unable to comprehend the doctrine of a suffering and dying Messiah or the hope of His resurrection and the regeneration of His life that ushers us into His kingdom. It was in resurrection that the two disciples on the way to Emmaus had their eyes opened by the Lord to see what the Scriptures had prophesied and fulfilled by the crucified, resurrected, and ascended Lord.

On the day of Pentecost an entire change in the understanding of the Scriptures is seen among the disciples. The whole of their all-familiar Scriptures opened up before them. The Holy Spirit illumined the Word, because they now have the Spirit of Truth in them to guide them into all the truths in God's Word (Jn 16:13). In the preaching of Peter and Stephen, in the addresses of Paul and James, we see how the divine light had shone upon the God's Word and gave them utterances that was beyond the earthly realm. The Holy Spirit Who abode in them teaches them and enabled them to see the things of the Spirit that the natural eyes and mind cannot comprehend (1 Cor 2:11-13). Inherent in the Spirit we have received is also the Spirit of wisdom and revelation (Eph 1:17). Praise the Lord that we have the same Spirit of Truth abiding in us and Who yearns to guide us into all truths if we are willing to yield our ears to hear His speaking! (Incidentally, the above 3 areas we have covered confirms that the Spirit who now indwells us is indeed the Spirit of power, of love, and of a sober mind (2 Tim 1:7)!)