It has been often stated that the outstanding features of Christianity are that a Man has entered heaven and a Divine Person is present on earth. How true this is! Faith perceives the Lord Jesus on the throne of God, and recognises the presence of the Holy Spirit to carry out God's will in and through His people. When the Spirit of God came at Pentecost, His presence was manifested in acts of divine power of which all could take account. The apostles spoke with tongues, and notable miracles were performed. Since the promulgation of the testimony of God in Christianity, through the apostles, there have not been the same marks of outward power to witness to the Spirit's presence, but He has been here down the ages, and shall be, until the Lord Jesus comes to take His church to heaven.
Shortly before leaving the world, the Lord Jesus said to His disciples concerning the Holy Spirit: "He abides with you, and shall be in you" (John 14:17). Here was the announcement that the Holy Spirit would not only indwell the disciples, but would also be with them in relation to His affairs. From the writings of the New Testament we learn that these things were not only for the twelve apostles, but for all the saints of God in this dispensation.
Every true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has received the gift of the Holy Spirit, having been sealed for God on believing the Gospel of our salvation, which presents Christ to us as having died for our sins, and as having been raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. God's love has been shed abroad in the heart of the true Christian by the Holy Spirit, and He is also the Unction, and the Earnest of our inheritance and of every promise of God. It is by the Spirit that Christ is written on the hearts of believers, and it is by Him that we worship God and are brought into moral conformity to Christ. The New Testament abounds with references to the Spirit's work and function as indwelling the Christian.
Moreover, the servants of the Lord have the help of the Holy Spirit in their testimony to Christ. The Lord forewarned His disciples of the opposition they would meet in their witness for Him. They would be brought before magistrates and kings, and all kinds of tribunals; but there was no need for them to premeditate their defence; the Holy Spirit would give them the words to speak in the needed hour. So also in regard to their ministry; they could rely on the help of the Spirit of God, whether to make known the Gospel of the grace of God, or in unfolding and applying the truth to the saints of God.
When the saints of God gather together in assembly, they are to rely on the presence of the Spirit of God. In the assembly they are independent of all human direction and resource, for there the Spirit of God orders all according to what is pleasing to God, being too the power for praise and worship, and for ministry that will edify, encourage and comfort the saints. Human arrangements that are made ostensibly to have order in the assembly, are but the intrusion of the human will in the realm where God's will, which has been made known, is to prevail. It is noticeable that the chapters pertaining to God's order in the assembly, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, were expressly given to set aside the confusion that the flesh had brought in. There is therefore no excuse for setting aside the divine order for God's assembly, as given in 1 Corinthians 11-14, which bring out so blessedly the manifestations of the Spirit for the pleasure of God.