Religious Reality: A Book for MenRawlinson, A. E. J. (Alfred Edward John)
Religion
Religious Reality: A Book for Men
Rawlinson, A. E. J. (Alfred Edward John)
Theology, Doctrinal -- Popular works
books of the New Testament, in which their wonderful experience of GOD
at work in them remains enshrined, the norm and standard of Christian
faith and practice for all time. The Power which enabled them to do
all this they called the Holy Spirit." [Footnote: _The Holy Spirit,_
by R. G. Parsons, in _The Meaning of the Creed_. (S.P.C.K., 1917)]
To be "filled with the Spirit," to be "endued with power from on
high," to be made free by the Spirit, so as to be free indeed--
released from the tyranny of a dead past, from bondage to law and
literalism, from the power of sin and of evil habit--and to be brought
forth into the glorious liberty of the sons of GOD: this was a very
vital and essential part of what Christianity meant in the experience
of those first disciples. The new morality of the Gospel, the new
righteousness which was to exceed the righteousness of Pharisees and
Scribes, was a thing as widely removed as possible from painful
conformity to the letter of an external code: it was a fruit--a
spontaneous outcome--of the Spirit. S. Paul has described for us the
fruits of the Spirit as he had seen them manifested in the lives of
men--"love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, meekness, self-control": they are the essential
lineaments of the character of Christ: they are summed up in the
thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians in S. Paul's great hymn to Charity
or Love, which itself reads like yet another portrait of the Christ. A
Christianity which through the Spirit brought forth such fruits was
true to type. The Spirit, in short, reproduced in men the life of
filial relationship towards GOD: He is described as the Spirit of
adoption, whereby men are enabled to cry Abba, Father.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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