Our scripture reading this morning, we turn to 1 John 4, 1 John 4. Just ask you to take note and remember as we read through this passage, great passage in scripture on the love of God, both God's love for us, our love for Him, and our calling to love one another is introduced by instruction on spirits, the spirit of the Antichrist and the spirit of God. 1 John 4, Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God. Because many false prophets are gone out into the world, hereby know ye the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. And this is that spirit of antichrist. Whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. They are of the world, therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God. He that knoweth God heareth us. He that is not of God, heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God. And everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us because that God sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him. Herein is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man have seen God at any time If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in him and he in us because he hath given us of his spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love. And he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? In this commandment have we from him that he who loveth God love his brother also. We read that fire in God's holy word. We consider the instruction of Lord's Day 20 this morning. Question and answer 53. What dost thou believe concerning the Holy Ghost? First, that he is true and co-eternal God with the Father and Son. Secondly, that he has also given me to make me, by a true faith, partaker of Christ and all his benefits. that he may comfort me and abide with me forever. Beloved in our Lord Jesus Christ, our faith in God is a faith in God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our faith is a Trinitarian faith. And we have seen before, already in a prior Lord's Day, eight with regard to the being of God, that this is essential to our faith. There is no such thing as a faith in God that does not honor God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And that means, then, that even as the Apostles' Creed makes clear Our faith is a faith that confesses something about each of the persons. And there is really no creed, no confession that can be made about simply faith in one and not the others. And we remember that even when we confess our faith in Jesus, the Christ. It may seem, when one glances at the Heidelberg Catechism, that perhaps our faith in God the Holy Spirit is minimized or something that is not all that important, seeing that we have here such a very brief Lord's Day on God the Holy Spirit. when we had so many Lord's Dates on God the Father and God the Son. It might seem here as if the Heidelberg Catechism is shorting to the dishonor and disglory of the Spirit in understanding and recognition of Him and His work. But that's really not the case. And by seeing that this is not the case, we begin to understand how the Spirit operates and how we honor and recognize the Spirit. In many ways, it's somewhat different with regard to the Spirit than it is with the Father and the Son. First of all, keep in mind here that this Lord's Day does not stand on its own, but it's introductory. Five Lord's Days are all about the Holy Spirit. That when we confess the Holy Catholic Church, we're confessing something about the Spirit. If you look at the Lord's Day, you'll see that the meaning of that is that the Son of God, Christ, from the beginning to the end of the world, gathers, defends, and preserves to Himself by His Spirit. So it's about the Spirit. And each of the next five Lord's Days that explain the Heidelberg Catechism, whether it be the resurrection of the dead, life everlasting, all of them are further explanations of the life and work of the Holy Spirit. Also, an explanation of this somewhat brief Lord's Day is that not only is it introductory, but it's transitory. It actually is serving to now highlight the Holy Spirit that we have been considering actually all along in the Heidelberg Catechism in the first 19 Lord's Days. The Spirit has been sprinkled throughout those Lord's Days. One could even look at it this way. It's impossible to even instruct regarding the truth and doctrines of the previous 19 Lord's Days without considering the Spirit. Take note, for example, we learned in Lord's Day 1 that it's the Spirit who assures us of eternal life. When Lord's Day 3 talked about regeneration, that we are totally depraved except we are born again, that that regeneration is by the Spirit. In Lord's Day 7, we learned that the Spirit works the gospel in our heart. In Lord's Day 8, that the Spirit is the Spirit that sanctifies us. Lord's Day 12, we are governed by the Spirit. Lord's Day 14, even the incarnation of Jesus Christ is by the Spirit. Lord's Day 18, we learned that the Spirit is the presence of Jesus Christ with us. And in Lord's Day 19, just the previous Lord's Day, we learned that He's the means by which Jesus Christ pours out heavenly graces upon us. And how much of that did we perhaps miss? The Holy Spirit is indeed perhaps a subject that we do not give full attention to enough. On the other hand, we should see that we give more attention to the Spirit than perhaps we ourselves are aware of. And that has to do with who the Spirit is and how He works and what He's doing. There's a difference in this person from the others. It has to do with his individual personal properties in the being. We said there's one that distinguishes all the others. It's related to his name. Whereas one is father and another is son, this one is spirit. Not daughter, not mother, not another son, not another father, but spirit. And indeed, he's the spirit of God. In fact, as we're going to see, will recognize more readily the Spirit when one understands that he is being the Spirit of God, the very life of God. We're going to notice, especially this morning, that he is the very love of God. He is, in fact, the very virtues of God, so that when we actually study the love of God or the life of God or any of the virtues of God, like His grace, His mercy, His peace, or any aspect of His salvation that He brings to us, we are studying the Spirit, whether we recognize it or not. And that's what we're going to do this morning as we consider the Spirit and honor God, the Holy Spirit. simply under that theme, and we're going to look first of all at His life and His work and then His benefit. And as we do that, I hope you see too that it is virtually impossible to speak about one without the other. His life is His work, and His work has benefit. So in the first place, when we consider His life, we're going to look at especially His life in the being of God, because that's going to be instructive with regard to the life that He brings, or as we're going to consider His work, and then also the benefit. I'll try to make that clear as we go through, but let's look first of all at His life. Who is this Spirit? Well, even the little children know He's the third person in the triune being of God, the Holy Spirit. But that doesn't tell us much as such. If we're observant, we will notice there's a difference in his name from the other names. It's not a personal name. It's a name that seems to be somewhat vague, seems to speak more about his qualities than anything else, holy and spirit. And if we're thinking even more so, we could say to ourselves, well, why does this particular person have those qualities attached to his name? Is not the father holy? Is not the son also spirit? Yeah, that's true. So maybe we should ask why it is in the goodness of God that when he reveals this particular person, there's such a difference. Now to answer some of these questions, and we've noticed this before, we should first of all notice the names attached to the others too, and what the Scripture has to say about God and what it reveals about God. What we in particular know, as Reformed, even Protestant Reformed Christians, about the covenant, that the covenant is a covenant of fellowship, and we root that in God, who is a God of fellowship. And then if we look back at God, we will see what kind of fellowship. And the scriptures teach us that when one comes to the triune being of God, which is mysterious, no doubt, God is one, but he's a unity. There's a unity of God in God. He's a unity of persons. three distinct individual persons that live in a oneness, in a union. And the nature of that union in God, and we note here it's an essential union, that is, it is part of who God is. There is never a time, was never a time, where God was not a union of persons. That it's a family union. That if we, for example, look at our own family units, and we look at the fellowship, we look at the union itself, if we look at it, there's a picture there of God. That God is a family God. A God of family. That's what he is, as to his essence. And God has given us families. so that we, in part, can understand these things. That's what the Scriptures make clear to us. God is not a God of family because He adopts us, so that when God adopts us, He's a God of family for the first time. That's the first time now God can be known as Father. But the Scriptures make clear God has always been Father. Long before we might say we came into the pictures. Long before even the Son became incarnate and came in our flesh, God was Father. He was Father when He created the world. And even His creation of the world shows that fatherhood of God. And you say, why is that? Well, because there is one person who is Father. Then the Bible reveals that there's another called Son. That, again, is why we point to the issue of fatherhood and family-ness, to help us understand that, that in the being of God there is a Father and a Son, a Son and a Father, And that should make our minds begin to work, and for our minds to think, and to think now about this union, this relationship. There's a relationship, isn't there? There is in a family, or there ought to be. And the one thing that we know about families, and that if we search the Scriptures, we're going to find confirmed as true with regard to God, is that families are unions and fellowships of love. That the essential character of that relationship, at its core and at its heart, is love. And it's in that light you have to see that the Scriptures were speaking in 1 John 4 when it said, God is love. Now in a very real sense, that can be said of all the virtues of God. God is grace, God is mercy, God is righteous, God is holy. But when it says that about God with regard to love, and maybe you can notice that instinctually, God is love, it's referring to how God relates in himself as persons. It's saying God is a God of love in as much as God is a plurality of persons who live unified in love. That's the essence of that relationship. If you say, how does that love take form? Where does that manifest, especially? And the answer is, in the whole work, life, can't really call it work. It's a life of begetting and being begotten. A father begets a son in love, and the son is begotten by the father in love. We know that. That's, again, part of the picture that's been given to us. Begetting is and ought to be an act of love. And so even when you look at the beginning of the Son by the Father, we're shown, and God reveals to us, that this is an act of love. This is something He's doing continually. And that's what it is, is to its essence. And that uniquely. And not only that, but when you think about it further, you realize that this is a relationship. that in the being of God, this life of love isn't simply that the Father begets the Son, and that's the end of the matter, but the fact that the Son is begotten, and now remember, begotten in the very image of the Father, there is both a reflection of that in the Son, and in the Son, in the being of God, a perfect reflection, and that's manifest by that love returning Not only is the son loved by the father, but he in turn loves the father with the very love that he himself is given. And again, we can see this and understand this from our own family relationships. A husband loves his wife. And when things are functioning the way they ought to, what happens is she returns that love. She loves him in return. That follows. There's a mutuality. There's a relationship. That's a reflection of what it is in God. Father loving the Son, Son loving the Father. We can even learn and see that this love, and one reason the Bible talks about God is love and emphasizes love, why even the commandments at their heart are love, has to do with this essential aspect and part of the being of God. And in fact, one may even relate all the other virtues of God to that one virtue. Even the holiness of God is related to the love of God. Holiness is consecration and devoted to another. What explains that? And the answer is the powerful love of God, a jealous love. When you look at virtues like righteousness, Even the power of God's grace and mercy and other such things, they all can be related to that essential relationship of God. They reflect that because, of course, God is also one. We must understand this even when we talk about God's life outside of Himself. It has to do with the love of God. That when God chooses to reveal Himself outside of Himself, and God does that, God's going to do that through His Son, through His Son Jesus Christ, and God is going to do that in such a way that it reveals who and what He is. And in fact, the best way to actually think about it all is from that perspective of God, not from your perspective. We tend, because there are such great benefits and such great wonders in our salvation, to think that God does all this for our sake. Well, it's true, those things are for our sake, but God does it for his sake. God sends his son, God redeems and sanctifies us, God draws us to himself in love and all these other wonderful things in order to reveal himself, and especially his love. That's what John is getting at in the passage when he, at two places especially, emphasizes that. First, when he's defining love and he says, here's love. This is what love is. This is what love is all about. Not that you love God. And by that, the apostle is not saying that you don't love God or that it's essential and important. But that's not the heart of it. That's not the source of it. That's not where it begins. Love begins with God. Here in His love, that God loved you. And now, in the second place, the apostle, in explaining all this, goes on and says, and here's how you know. Here's where it's manifested. This is where it's revealed to everyone. The love of God for us, and the answer is in the sending of His Son. And you may expand what He means by that, especially when we look at the cross and what happens at the cross, that you see that love, but it's impossible to see that without recognizing everything else related to it. That herein is manifest the love of God in the incarnation of Christ, in His very appearance, in His work, in His labor, all of it. is the revelation of God's love. And now, don't think first of all about His love for you, which of course it is revealing, but it's a manifestation and revelation of God's own love in Himself. There's something very amazing about this, that one cannot, it is impossible to consider God's love for us and what He has done. It's not even possible to consider your love for God without considering the love of God in Himself. And that all of the other things, that proceed from that are dependent upon who God is. Without God being a God, a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, without God being a God of love in Himself, there would be no Christ, sending of Christ, no incarnation of Christ, no death of Christ, none of that. All of it must relate back to God. Now, the question is, well, what about the Spirit? He seems to be left out of this whole business. What is He? What's His role? What's going on here? Is He not a person in this divine love life of God? And the answer is yes, of course He is. And He is God, as much God as God the Father, and as much God as God the Son. And the answer to what he is and his life in this divine love relationship in the being of God is related to his name. It's spirit. And the answer to what he is and what role he plays and what he's doing is that he is that bond of love between the Father and the Son. That what's going on in this divine relationship of family and God What's going on in this act of begetting is that the Father is breathing out, as it were, begetting with His own love, the Spirit, His own personal Spirit, perfectly and eternally a perfect image of Himself. And He does that by imparting His own Spirit to another, the Son. And then the Son, with that life and that love, breathes back an ardent love for the Father. There's, as it were, an embrace, an embrace of love. And we may say the Spirit is that unity, that union, that bond of love. This is something the church has recognized in the past. It seems to be forgotten from time to time, but we need to remember it, especially in our day. This is what church fathers of long ago called it. One called it the very unity of the Father and the Son. Called it the friendship. Called it the harmony. Called it the communion of the Father and the Son. Do you understand what that means? That's the amazing thing about the union of God. And when we say it's essential. That the union of God itself is actually a personal union. like any other kind of union that we can imagine. We can understand it. We can comprehend it to a certain point. But in God, the love between the Father and Son is a very personal love, given its own name, has its own life and work in that union. So that yes, you may call it the unity, the very friendship, the very relationship, the very harmony, the very communion in the being of God. Hermann Huxma recognized that in all his study in theology regarding the covenant, the development of the covenant as a relationship of friendship. Said this, the father and son meet one another that the connecting link in the divine love life is the spirit. That's an amazing, amazing thing. And if we think about it, that helps us understand everything else that follows. What's going on? Well, when the father loves his son, what he's been doing is imparting to that son himself, his own spirit. Oh, his own personal spirit, but his own spirit. And now what that means is everything that he is goes to the Son. Is he righteousness? Goes to the Son. Holy. His love, his life, his power, all of it goes, his wisdom, in his Son perfectly. And then it returns. Back and forth, that's the relationship. And now, You perhaps understand why all of this is taught us, because it helps us understand better this third person of the Trinity, and why when we speak about it this morning, we're honoring that third person. You do not really do justice to the third person of the Trinity unless you are able to say and to understand that He is the very life, the perfection, the virtue, the love of God. To say God is spirit is to say that God is love. To say God is love is to say that God is righteous. To say that He's that, it all goes together. And one cannot, speak wrongly about any of that perfection of God without not simply harming God Himself, but particularly God the Spirit. That's what's at stake in all this. And why now as we transist to the work of God, we ought to see that the work of the Spirit, work of God the Holy Spirit is bound up in that life. That when we look at the work of the Holy Spirit, and now what I mean is the work of the Holy Spirit outside of God, as He's revealed to us, as we see Him, as we see Him even as Spirit, that all of what He is in the being of God should be reflected in that. It should be how it's understood. implications of it, let's say. Number one, it's a spiritual work, this work of God. The Holy Spirit is Spirit. If you're going to see this Spirit, understand this Spirit, recognize this Spirit, you're going to have to look with something beside your normal eyes and ears. Spiritual work requires spiritual faculties to see it, to understand it. And you never can see Spirit. It's a fact. You can only see what it does. If you want to understand the Spirit, know the Spirit, you're going to consider what He does. Like the wind. That was one of the things that was learned when He came in Pentecost as a mighty rushing wind. You can't really see the Spirit as such. You can only know it's a fact. Then when noting its effect, you will see the Spirit only when you note those things that are actually virtues of God, aspects of God, the work of God. To recognize the work of God, to recognize the virtues of God is to recognize the Holy Spirit. It's one reason why we don't often think we're honoring the Spirit when in fact we are. What are we really talking about? We talk about the grace of God, the righteousness of God, the justice of God, the wisdom of God. We're talking about God, the Holy Spirit, not just God, not just some abstractions in God, but abstractions that you could put capitals over, capital R for righteousness. Why? Because that's a real person in the being of God. Do you understand now why there have been great church battles over the virtues and work of God, that all of them in one way or another either promote and honor the Spirit or impugn the Spirit. That needs to be pointed out because sometimes the argument is, well, we're doing justice to the work of Christ, and a lot of things are said even wrongly and falsely in the name of Christ, and the fact that they're wrong is easily pointed out by noting that if that were true, then the Spirit isn't really what He is in the being of God. That's really what the Apostle is getting at in 1 John 4. He's noting something. There's one Spirit of God. It takes many different forms, so he can speak of spirits. The Spirit of grace and wisdom and understanding. Spirit of faith and love. But there's many spirits. But essentially one. One Spirit of God, and then there's the Spirit that's against God. The Spirit of the Antichrist. And you can tell which is which by what someone believes or confesses. So for example, Jesus is incarnate by the Spirit of God. You cannot speak about the Incarnation without speaking about the Incarnation. Even we do that in the Apostles' Creed. So that, the apostle can say, you can tell the difference between spirit of error and the spirit of truth and the spirit of the Antichrist and the spirit of God by simply what one confesses about the incarnation of Jesus Christ. And if one denies that, then they simply do not have the spirit of God or understand anything about God. They're anti-God, they're anti-Christ. That's just simply the way it is. When the church makes God's grace, for example, common, makes it a common love, and a common grace which now would be an ineffectual love and grace, a love and grace that does not actually accomplish God's desire and will, then you're saying that about God Himself. It's impossible to say otherwise. Because He is that grace. He is that love of God. When we have disagreements over theology, invariably they will be about the Spirit, not just Christ. They will be about the Spirit, because the Spirit's work is to impart that life and power and grace, that love of God. That's what he's been given to do. Now there's a lot of things that we could concentrate and focus on when we discuss the work of the Holy Spirit then. One could actually go through this Lord's Day and do that because he's given me to make me by a true faith partaker of Christ and all his benefits. So if we talked about his work, we could summarize it as simply his work, he has one job to do. His job is to make me a partaker of Christ in all his benefits. And that's done by him being given to me. Now, on the one hand, it's worth simply looking at that all by itself because it's helpful. When the Spirit makes us partakers of Christ and all His benefits, the idea is that's done when He has given to you. Or to put it another way, when He's given to you, He brings you Christ and all His benefits, and it all happens at once. This explains the nature of our salvation and its mystery and its wonder. On the one hand, the church has always recognized that salvation is of a moment. And the Scriptures look at it that way. that there is a moment, a moment in time. I may be a chosen child of God, I may belong to God in eternity as far as God's will is concerned, but there is a moment when the Spirit is actually given to me. I have to be born, I have to be alive for that to happen. And when He's given me, He doesn't bring me One thing or two things. Or He brings me a part of Christ and not another part. He brings me Christ in all His benefits. And you say, well, how can that be? Why is that? And the answer is because He is those things. He is the Spirit of Christ. So that when He is given to you, you have now the Spirit of Christ. Literally. That means you have Christ. Christ is in you. Now the amazing thing is that you are therefore also in Christ. The amazing thing we learn about the life of the Spirit in the Father and the Son is that by virtue of Him being that bond of love in the very being of God, is that the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father. There's a spiritual union. They dwell within one another in perfect bliss, delight, joy. There's a sharing of a life, a sharing of their mind and heart and will in an amazing, amazing way. And the same thing happens with us. Works the same way. And it's all of an instant. It's done. In a very real way, every single aspect of salvation, including eternal life, is given to one of God's children in a moment. when they receive the Spirit, receive everlasting life. Why? Because it's some third thing that He brings? No, when you receive the Spirit, you receive the literal everlasting life of God in Christ. And His grace, and His mercy, and His peace, and His righteousness. All these things. And even His holiness. So that in a very real sense, there is not even an order One receives it all. Boom. It's light on or light off. Love or hate. Darkness or light. You're either alive or you're dead. And the explanation for all that is the very nature and being of the Spirit Himself. Why is it that the Church fought so hard to talk about the irresistible? grace of God that is one that's more powerful than anything else? Answer, because then it wouldn't be true that that grace could be the very Spirit of God Himself. So that's what we must understand on the one hand. On the other hand, this is a living Spirit, and we are living beings. and we live in a relationship. So there's a whole other dynamic here that we need to do justice to that God even teaches us by life. As living creatures, we grow and develop. We go from being a baby to maturity. It's the same life, it's the same person, but there is growth there. There's development there. It happens even in marriage. You have a couple, gets married, And they say to each other, I couldn't love you any more than I do now. And then talk to them 10 years later. And they're going to say, we grew in our love. We love each other now more than we ever did. That's not a contradiction. Sometimes people say it's a contradiction. People don't like talking about development in love and in hope and in faith and all these such things. Well, there has to be. We're talking about a living entity that God imparts more and more and more. We have to do justice to both sides, as it were, because this is the work of the Holy Spirit. I wanna especially focus upon the love side of this. I want to focus on that because we know the covenant is a covenant of fellowship. We also know that the essence of the law is love God, love your neighbor. The passage that we read talks about a new commandment, loving the neighbor, even says something that is quite shocking, that someone cannot love God without loving their neighbor, that it's impossible. A lot of things about love there, so I want to focus upon that just a little bit. I'm going to focus upon that in the light of the common error that often shows up in the church, which makes love and living in love a condition to God's love for us. That's really what all conditional theology does. It says if you love God enough or you have to love God first, then God will love you back in some way. You love God enough, you'll be righteous before God. That's righteousness by works. And many other such things that have to do with that error, and all of them are errors because the fact is God must love us first. The implication of that also is that anything, any love that I have subsequent to that is God's own love for me returned back to Him. It doesn't have its origins in me. It doesn't have its power and strength in me. So even the whole nature of what love is, is interpreted in that light. Do not minimize the importance of love. That's often done. Sometimes it's often done in the interest of grace. or in maintaining that we are saved by faith alone. On the one hand, love is often elevated to a place that it does not have, a love without faith, a love that precedes faith. A love that earns God's love or merits God's love. All those things are out of bounds because of the very nature of love, but neither may love be eliminated. There are often times when in theological disputes, our church just went through one, you could answer them simply by asking a single question with regard to the theology. Where is love? In all your theological formulations and in all your confessions, if love has been eliminated, you have no truth. If in your covenant formulations, and if your covenant formulation with regard even to fellowship, the covenant as fellowship, if it eliminates or minimizes love, it's wrong, it's false. Because to say that the covenant of grace is also a covenant of fellowship is to say that it's a covenant of love. And to deny that is to say that's not the essence of God's own fellowship in His being. When we say God's covenant is a covenant of fellowship, what are we saying? We're saying it's love. It's a life of love, a manifestation of love. Well, then that's the nature of the covenant with us too. So even when you define the covenant as by faith, established by faith, or it's of grace, not earned or merited, not a relationship of conditions, if you eliminate love from that fellowship, you have no covenant of fellowship. Why am I bringing that up? Because in the controversy that we just went through, our churches defended the truth that the covenant of fellowship is by faith, the means of faith, on the basis of Christ's atonement alone and in the way of obedience, which is simply another way of saying in the way of love. that was at first routinely mocked and scorned, then our opponents said that that was just a minor part of Herman Hoeksema's theology, and then it was actually damned, cursed. I can get you the quotes if you want them. To reject that is to reject the covenant. Even more importantly is to reject the Holy Spirit. There can be no fellowship with God that is not in the way of love, because fellowship is essentially love. And why is it that the Apostle says in 1 John 4 what he says? When he mentions this new commandment, when he mentions the importance of loving your neighbor, even loving God, is he now making those things conditions? Nope. Nope, read them that way. May read the statements that he makes that way. And there are statements that I suppose you could take that way, but they may be because the love of God he makes clear comes first. But don't misunderstand either. If you have covenant fellowship with God, then it's impossible not to love him. Anybody that thinks that they can have fellowship with God either without praying to God or without loving God, that would be the first table of the law, is a liar. That's what John would say. He says it with regard to the second table. Why must a man who lives in covenant fellowship with God, why must a man who has God dwelling in him and he dwell in God love his neighbor? And the answer is because he has the love of God in him. That's the answer. And when we hate our neighbor or we hate God, then we're not living in fellowship. It's impossible. Don't you see? Do you see that? I hope you see that. You say, why is that? It's essentially because of who the Spirit is, what He is, what's given us when we have Him. We have the very love of God in our hearts. Not just God dwells in us, but the love of God dwells in us. And if the love of God dwells in you, then you will love God and you will love your neighbor. And that's why a man, for example, who violates his neighbor, who sins against his neighbor, and oftentimes if you go to that man, he's a Christian, he confesses the same faith you do. He's in the church. You say to him, do you believe that your sins are forgiven? He goes, oh yes, oh yes, I believe that all my sins are forgiven in the cross of Jesus Christ. But why do you hate your neighbor? I don't hate my neighbor. I love my neighbor. Doesn't recognize that what he's doing is even sin. The man's a liar. He doesn't even recognize that the sin that he claims is forgiven at the cross of Christ is actually a sin. And doesn't understand even fundamentally that the sin against the neighbor is sin against God, because it's the same love. See how it all ties together? And now what's the benefit of all this? I hope you see, number one, if one has the Spirit, One has God Himself. And one has all the virtues of God. Not just one or more, but all of them. And essentially has love. Any theology that has no place for love, any theology that says that salvation by faith alone means that love is dispensable, or minimal, or may not be talked about, and that can happen. It can happen in the Protestant Reformed churches, easily. Look at passages like 1 John 4 and say, well, that's just making a mountain out of a molehill. You start believing those things, pretty soon you're going to start believing conditional theology. Oh, not so. It's the end and goal of it all. It's the end and goal of it all, to understand the true depths of God's love by actually living in that love. So that's first of all. Secondly, so we recognize these benefits. So we recognize even how theology works and what theology is doing when it's explaining them. These aren't abstractions. These aren't just nice theological discussions. We're talking here about the very work and life of God. But also remember, all of that's for our Comforter. One of the other things we could have studied this morning is the name of the Spirit as the Comforter. You say, why the Comforter? And the answer is because once you start to recognize how these things all fit together, don't you understand the comfort of that? There's no comfort in a love of God that's fickle, in a love of God that's universal, but doesn't really do anything. A grace of God without power? There's no comfort in that. But when one understands truly who and what the Spirit is, there's all kinds of comfort. Comfort that transcends life and death. The only comfort in life and death. I spoke last Sunday about a plague in our churches. Oh, theologically, I believe we are dead on when it comes to explaining the covenant and fellowship. But practically, we can forfeit that comfort because we don't live according to this spirit. We live according to our own spirit. And the plague is fear. Perfect love casteth out fear. The plague is anxiety, the plague is depression, the plague is all sorts of spiritual problems. And there's one solution for it. You say you believe in Jesus Christ, well, believe in his Spirit. And there's no fear in that Spirit. There's no weakness in that Spirit. There's no hatred in that Spirit. There's no doubt in that Spirit. only life, and perfect love, and hope, and courage. Believe, beloved, in that Spirit. Amen, let us pray. Our Father, which art in heaven, O Lord, we thank Thee for Thy Holy Spirit, the great gift of that Spirit, given freely to us in Thy grace, so that we truly have Thee, that Thou art the God who lives in us, and we in Thee. What a great gift and blessing we have been given. And so help our unbelief, forgive our sins, O Lord, and help us to walk that life, that spiritual life of love and fellowship and friendship with thee, our God. Thanking thee for the great love shown to us in our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen.