1. He works effectively
1 Corinthians 12: 11, ‘All these are the work of one and the same Spirit’. And what He does, He does as God. His work must therefore be effective.
2. He distributes spiritual gifts to everyone just as He determines
He does so in complete freedom and with perfect wisdom. Thus Christians are kept in complete dependence on Him. He distributes as He determines (1 Cor. 12: 7-11) – then who should not be content with his or her share? What claim can anyone lay to those works which He distributes by His own decision?
3. He gives
They ‘began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them’, (Acts 2: 4). He gave the tongues to them, freely, as a gift. He can act freely because in the work of our salvation, the action of one person in the Trinity in no way interferes with the freedom of any other – so the love of the Father in sending the Son is free, and in no way does this sending prejudice the freedom and love of the Son, but He lays down His life freely. In the same way, the redemption of the Son in no way affects the freedom of the Father’s grace in forgiving and accepting us through Christ; and again, the Father and Son’s sending of the Spirit does not detract from the freedom of the Spirit in His operations, but what He gives believers He gives freely. This is because the purpose of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is essentially one and the same, so that in the work of one there is the free participation of all three.
*Excerpted from Living with the Living God by George Smeaton & John Owen (Christian Heritage, 2016).
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