The incredible Christian
There are visitations of the Holy Spirit and in our barren day the news of such awakenings brings us great joy, but that does not compare to those fresh realisations of the incredible status of the mere believer in the Lord Jesus. Each of them has been blessed in the heavenly realms with every blessing of the Holy Spirit in Christ (Ephesians 1:3). That is the undeniable privilege of every mere believer, from the youngest lamb in the flock to the oldest ram.
All alike are blessed with every blessing of the Holy Spirit. Every Christian is chosen in love by God from before the foundation of the world. The sins of every Christian are atoned for by the Lamb of God so that all is well between us and the God who is light. Every Christian knows a reconciled smiling Father. Every Christian is given a new heart with the old stony heart removed. Every Christian is made a new creation, the old things passed away. Every Christian receives a birth from above. Every Christian is indwelt by the Holy Spirit so that heart and mind and affections and body are touched by him.
Every Christian is justified freely by the grace of God. Every Christian has been adopted into the family of God. Every Christian has been united to Jesus Christ, put 'in him.' No Christian is any longer under the dominion of sin. Every Christian is seated in the heavenlies in Christ and effectively glorified. For every Christian Christ intercedes at the right hand of God, and the Father receives his intercession, so that each one is saved to the uttermost. For each one on Golgotha Christ purchased persevering grace and this is sealed to every Christian by the Holy Spirit so that no one can take a single Christian out from the Father's hand. God supplies all their need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. These are not blessing which the super-Christian - the 'Spirit-baptized Christian' - alone knows.
That is the status of every Christian. That is what God does for every believer from regeneration. None realises all that has happened to him at the time. They made a simple confession of faith, a humble confused prayer - ‘God help me never to sin again’ - and God dealt with them so graciously, more than they could ask or even think. They felt some need of Jesus. They didn't know that they actually needed regeneration, justification, imputed righteousness, adoption into God's family, union with Christ, the terminating of the reign of sin and glorification. God didn't wait for them to realise all of this, and then wait while they spelled it out back to God, agonising in their desire for these things, one by one until eventually God gave each of these blessings to them - sometimes delaying the bestowal for years! It was not like that at all. They bowed before Christ, and mumbled their need for him, and in response they were flooded with this grace.
Any doctrine of the comings of the Spirit upon the Christian must begin by a growing wonder at the untold glories of what God has already done for us by the Spirit through Christ. Who would hesitate at this knowledge and say, ‘Yes, but . . .’? Who would dare? Rather let us take Paul's doxology and make it our own: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ephesians 1:9). He knew all about us; he knew the secret sins; the prayerlessness; the grudges and bitterness in our hearts; he knew how prone we were to wander and leave the God we loved. He still blessed us in all those ways.
Whatever our uselessness and failure it is not because of any inadequacy on God's part. We cannot say our status was second class, or our provision was limited, or that we had some cause for living at a sub-Christian standard. No such Christian exists or ever shall. Any doctrine of the baptism of the Spirit must honour what the word of God teaches as to the glorious redemptive achievements of Christ and the glorious redemptive applications of the Holy Spirit.All the people of God are blessed with every spiritual blessing. There are not two classes of Christian, those who have such blessings and those who do not. Nothing that happens subsequent to regeneration, no further future experiences of the Spirit, can compare in their life-transforming wonder to what happens to every Christian at the new birth.
Of course, the marvel of God's blessing is this, that for some Christians the working of regeneration is so secret that they are not aware of even the year in which the Spirit gave them new life. They were passing through this enormous and eternal change of status. They were being blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ, and yet they were not aware that that was happening to them. Certainly every future experience of God was bound to be more memorable for they had no memory of when regeneration occurred, but though future experiences were more stirring yet their significance pales compared to being put in Christ. Not even being put in glory is as great a change as being put in Christ.
Sadly, many Christians have never sat under ministry that explains the glories of the blessings of the new life. Even sadder is the fact that some Christians live on their pulpit's refrain of what they don't possess, and what they should agonise to get one day - if they agonise enough. If they haven't got these blessings then it's wholly because they are not in real earnest. That is their sanctification diet. How different from that grace which God bestows on every believer.
We do not serve the cause of revival, or the spiritual quickening of the church by failing to believe this, and omitting to declare such great realities. Rather we will put off the day of an awakening because such a slighting of the work of the Spirit grieves him. When we begin to speak of that needed assistance of the unction and empowering of the Holy Spirit - as we must - we always begin by reminding ourselves of the marvels of all that God has accomplished by his Son Jesus Christ for every single Christian, and applied to them by the Holy Spirit that is in them all. We continually thank God for the privileges of being a forgiven sinner. We honour and glorify Jesus Christ in this way and then we know that we are co-operating with the work of the Spirit.