We have sometimes heard of THE second blessing of believers, who claimed that they had got a special infilling of the Holy Ghost, sometimes calling it the baptism of the Holy Ghost. In listening to this talk we have felt a doubt, for we do not find its counterpart in the Scriptures. We stand in doubt of a system of blessing supposed to be scriptural, and yet boasting an experience and a language not according to the Bible.
We have even heard of earnest believers getting up a long while before day, climbing the mountain side, building their altar of stones, laying themselves upon it as an offering to God, and then as the sun rose, believing that something remarkable had happened to them, returning in an ecstatic mood, uplifted beyond the common ruck of mortals.
In all this we have our grave doubts. Even in this intense earnestness there may be the opening of the door for some special deceit of Satan, feeding their conceit in the feeling that they were different from other Christians and living on an elevated plane of thought and experience not given to the rank and file.
One thing is certain, a special filling of the Holy Spirit would occupy the believer with Christ, and not with a superior self, all kind of Christian, in his own estimation, claiming to work miracles and wonders.
But having said all this, we gladly acknowledge that there is room for a second blessing, for a third blessing, for many many blessings from the hand of the Lord.
A second blessing of a particular sort is indicated in Romans 12:1-2, of which we would speak. In the early part of Romans we get the truth as to the clearance that the Gospel brings to the believing sinner. He gets his sins forgiven, he learns what it is to be justified from all things, the love of God is shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Spirit given to him, he joys in God through our Lord Jesus Christ in the reconciliation that has come to him in the Gospel.
But there comes a moment in the history of the believer when he sees clearly that this wonderful mercy of God has a claim upon his very body. Romans 6-8 teaches that not only the believer’s sins are put away for ever, but that the nature that produced the sins, the fallen nature, called in the epistle the flesh, has been condemned and set aside by the cross of Christ. And further a new nature has been communicated to the believer, the power of which is the Holy Spirit alone, and consequently he is to walk “in newness of life.”
Overwhelmed with the grandeur and scope of the blessing of the believer, the inspired apostle writes, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable [intelligent] service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.”
Dear young Christian friend, has there ever come a moment in your soul’s history when you were moved by the sense of the abounding mercy of God in delivering you not only from your sins, but from the power of sin in the flesh and from the world that is so opposed to God that it slew His Ambassador, the Lord of glory? Have you answered to this exhortation, and quietly and thankfully yielded your very body to the Lord for His will and service? Then henceforth you will not live to yourself, but to Him that died for you and rose again, to whom you owe everything for time and eternity. (See Corinthians 5:14-15.)
It is not a question of giving your spare time or spare money to the Lord, but giving YOURSELF. This, the apostle tells us, is reasonable, intelligent, rational. You are only answering to the claim that God has upon you.
If you have never done this, may this short article exercise you, and lead you to your knees to offer yourself, your body, as a living sacrifice to God. Believe me it will be no ordinary second blessing you will receive if this point in your soul’s history is reached. You will be an infinite gainer in the transaction, a gainer every day of your life as you walk in the strength of this surrender, a strength that comes from the Holy Spirit alone.
It will be no longer resting in the blessings of the gospel, wonderful as that is, and growing in a deeper appreciation of them, but surrendering all that you have and are for the will of God, that you henceforth “LIVE UNTO HIM.” The daily practice of this will set life in a different angle, and will bring the soul into such an appreciation of Christ that the experience will not puff the believer up, but will humble; and in humbling lift him up spiritually. In short he will be Christ-centred and not self-centred. When a Christian is self-centred in a pious way, his condition is offensive to the Lord, and dangerous to himself, and harmful to others. When he is Christ-centred, he will have Christ before him in every way and be marked by self-forgetfulness in being occupied with Christ.