W. H. Westcott.
Extracted from Scripture Truth, Vol. 11, 1919, p. 19.
Our present enjoyment of divine things depends upon the measure in which we keep from things and ways which would grieve the heavenly Seal, the Holy Spirit. He is sensitive to all that offends holiness, in conduct, speech, or disposition of heart as detailed from Eph. 4:20 and onwards. He will never withdraw Himself from the one sealed; that would be to falsify the whole truth of redemption. But He does, when grieved, withdraw joy and power from the Christian's life until the fault is confessed, and the frame of mind which allowed the old man to act again is judged. The reason that a Christian out of communion is inwardly wretched (even if he be outwardly placid) is not that the Spirit has abandoned him, but that He will not abandon him; necessarily depriving him of happiness until he has returned to his Lord in broken confession.
The Holy Spirit who indwells the Christian secures him for God, on the one hand, on the ground of the blood of Christ in which he has trusted, and by which he has consciously been redeemed; and gives him, on the other hand, the continuous enjoyment of the fact that he belongs to God, that enjoyment being only interrupted when some working of the flesh has grieved the One by whom he is sealed.