316. God’s Spirit Within
Ezekiel 36:27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.
The Lord promises to put His Spirit within us. Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit into our hearts. As a result, God (Jesus) would be within us all the time. Is it the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit who dwells within the believer’s spirit? Well, if you have one person of the Trinity you have all three, for God is One. It matters not: if Jesus lives in your heart, or if the Spirit dwells in your spirit, it is all the same. Your body is a Temple. God’s presence is to be found within the heart of every believer. We don’t have to search far to find God. He is on your lips and in your heart: with the lips one confesses and with the heart one believes. And so he is saved.
The result of this promise of indwelling is that we will obey the Law. When we obey God’s Law life is much better. The result of God’s Spirit within: we “walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them.” What we have failed to do the Spirit within begins to do. He never stops working and He never gives up. And finally, the Lord will finish what he started. Meanwhile, we are in process. The flesh cannot, repeat, cannot, be improved. We cannot make ourselves better people by the efforts of the flesh. Give up trying and striving. Give yourself to Jesus every day, and let Him do what He does. The key word in this verse is “cause.” The Lord Himself will cause you to walk and keep. When we have come to the end of ourselves the Lord takes over.
We remember the promise: “He will cause….” It hurts a little, but we remember that without Jesus we can do nothing. It hurts to say so, but we get no credit for any good work we have ever done. If we ever do a good work, it is God who does it and gets the credit (“I will cause”). If a work is not done in faith it is sin [Romans 14:23]. If it is done in faith God did it. We thank God that He used us to do something good. Our job, our work, is to believe in Jesus. [“What must we do to be doing the works of God? This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” John 6:28-29]. For this reason we spend time with God every day. We go to church to hear the gospel every week. Then the Lord within will cause us to do good works. It is unbelief that says, “But I have to do something!” No, the Spirit is the cause.