If the Victorious Life is “the life that is Christ,” lived in the power of the risen Christ dwelling in the heart, what is the work of the Holy Spirit in such a life? Are Christians who pray for, or seek, the “fullness of the Spirit,” or the “baptism of the Spirit” or the “receiving of the Spirit,” asking for something different from the life of victory in Christ? The answer to such questions reveals the beautiful unity of God’s plan of salvation, in which each Person of the Godhead has His perfect work but in which our Lord Jesus Christ has ever the pre-eminence till the work of salvation is completed. We may approach the truth from teaching concerning the Holy Spirit, but it is Christ who will be exalted. Or we may experience resurrection life through learning of the truth concerning the indwelling Christ, but it is the Holy Spirit who makes possible that experience in the life. The Holy Spirit is God. If we start with this fact, and stay with it, we shall be saved from much confusion as to the Holy Spirit’s office. If he is God, we cannot limit Him, and we cannot confine Him to this or that manifestation of His power. The Holy Spirit is not merely a manifestation of God; He _is_ God. And one Person of the trinity is never present without the others. While the Holy Spirit has a distinct work in the believer, this work is never disassociated from the other Persons in the Godhead. The Father and the Son and the Spirit all dwell with us (John 14:17, 23; 1 Cor. 6:19; 2 Cor. 13:5). The Holy Spirit is a Person. We are not to seek a quantitative appropriation of a certain amount of the Spirit of God, perhaps comparing the amount we have with that which we think others have, but rather to receive God the Holy Spirit, who is a Person. But this truth of His personality is to be kept in balance by the companion truth that He is God, and in conceiving Him as a person we must not put the limitations of human personality upon God, as though He could only indwell one person at a time, or as though one person or any number of persons could exhaustively contain Him. What is the work of God the Holy Spirit in this age? We know that we are born again by the power of the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is in every child of God (John 1:12, 13; John 3:5, 6; Rom. 8:9, last clause; 1 Cor. 6-19). If the Holy Spirit is in every child of God, what result does this have in the life? What is His work in the believer? Is it the same for each believer? In what sense did the Holy Spirit come at Pentecost, and in what sense is he here in a different way from His manifestation before Pentecost? It is in answering such questions that we are in danger of building up a doctrine from experience rather than from the Word.