GOD’S BIRTHDAY GIFT TO HIS CHILDREN

The Scriptures make it clear that every child of God receives a wonderful gift from the heavenly Father on his or her birthday. We realize of course that we have but one birthday, whether physical or spiritual. As for our physical birthday, we know that a 40-year-old has not had 40 birthdays, but only one birthday and 39 birthday anniversaries. So when we say Happy Birthday! we really mean Happy Birthday Anniversary! .

A person is born again, or better born from above, when he or she believes and obeys the gospel of Christ. That is his or her birthday. One could say, “I was born of the flesh in 1940, and I was born of the Spirit in 1960.” Two birthdays, one of this world and one from above.

It is nice to receive a birthday (or birthday anniversary) gift. The God of heaven saw to it that gifts were brought to the Christ child: frankincense, a gift for a priest; gold, a gift for a king; myrrh, a gift for one who is to die. Fitting gifts they were since Jesus was to be both priest and king, and yet he came into the world to die. God’s gifts are always appropriate and meaningful.

The birthday gift God has given to each of his children is the Holy Spirit. The apostolic proclamation on Pentecost attests to this: “Repent and be baptized, everyone of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). Those who heard the gospel on that glorious day and obeyed it by being baptized were born from above. They received both a promise and a gift, the remission of their sins and the Holy Spirit. The gift of the Spirit was free, an expression of God’s grace. It was the most wonderful gift anyone could ever receive. It was wonderful because the gift of the Spirit meant the continuing presence of Jesus in their hearts and lives.

It is also a precious gift because Jesus asked the Father for it in our behalf. “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever” (Jn. 14:16), says our Lord, and in verse 18 he implies that the gift of the Helper is a kind of second coming of Christ: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” This must mean that he comes to us in the presence of the Holy Spirit. This is confirmed by the force of the word “another,” for the Greek term behind “another Helper” means another of the same kind. The Holy Spirit makes a magnificent birthday gift because it is like Jesus Christ. It is indeed the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

When Jesus promised “I will not leave you as orphans,” he meant that he would not leave us alone in this world. Never alone! What a promise that is! However crowded this world, however troubled and dangerous it becomes, he will never turn loose our hand. Our birthday gift means that Jesus is always with us.

The most meaningful gifts do things for those who receive them. The gift of money can payoff nagging debts. The gift of a coat can ward off the wintry blast. The gift of an automobile may mean getting to work and making a living. There are two blessings in particular associated with the gift of the Holy Spirit, besides the glory of the continuing presence of Jesus Christ in our lives.

It means, first of all, that we have a helper. Paul states it succinctly in Rom. 8:26: the Spirit helps us in our weakness. Jesus asked the Father to send his followers a Helper. The Greek work is Paraclete, which is an untranslatable word, though Comforter is the word often used in translation. Our birthday gift is so magnanimous that there is no way to put it in a word!

If we break the Greek word down we get something like “one who is called in,” that is, called in to help in time of trouble. The one called in may be a military adviser, or he may be an advocate to plead one’s case in court, or he may be a physician called in to advise in a serious illness.

I recall back in 1953 when I returned to Harvard to write my thesis I soon came down with acute pain in my right arm. It was so severe that I had to go to the university infirmary during the night. I was hospitalized and sedated. The infirmary staff spent two or three day trying to diagnose my illness. At last they called in a specialist from Harvard Medical School. He was my parac1ete — one called in to help. It so happened that he did not have the slightest notion what ailed me, and after a week of examination he finally accepted my self-diagnosis. When he learned that Ouida was in faraway Texas and that I was trying to produce an acceptable Harvard Ph. D. thesis, he conceded that my problem might well be anticipation anxiety, and he laughed over my lofty terminology.

Whether generals, doctors, or lawyers, those called in cannot always help. But the one Jesus asked God to send in our behalf — “the one called in to help” — never fails. To think of the Spirit as Comforter is all right so long as we do not restrict his ministry to sorrow, which is what comforting usual means to us. Our Parac1ete is called in to encourage us to be brave in the midst of a moral crisis or to persevere in time of affliction or persecution. The angel of Lk. 22:43 was a parac1ete, one called in, to help Jesus as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane and turned his face toward the Cross.

That glorious passage (Rom. 8:26) not only tells us that the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness, but it informs us of a truth about prayer that we may be reluctant to accept: we do not know how to pray as we should. This is because of our finitude. Not only are we blinded to what the future holds, but we do not understand all that is involved in the problem we face. But how gracious God is! In the very place he tells us that our prayers are inadequate he assures us that the Spirit serves as our intercessor, praying for us according to the will of God. Not only does God know what we need even before we ask him, as Jesus assures us in Matt. 6:8, but he “knows what the mind of the Spirit is” and thus hears the Spirit’s “groanings” as if they were our own words. If it appears odd to us that the Parac1ete would utter “groanings” to God, or “agonizing longings” as Phillips renders it, it may help to realize that the Spirit is bearing our groanings or agonizing longings to the Father in terms that God understands since he knows the mind of the Spirit.

How helpless we feel under great stress or sorrow! Our feelings are too deep for words. Our Parac1ete, the Holy Spirit, comes in to help us in such weakness. In praying for us he somehow takes our feeble groanings and translates them into heavenly language. Sometimes we may break down in tears when we try to pray, even in public, and we may be embarrassed and feel that we failed those who asked us to pray, but if the congregation could hear how those longings of a broken heart were “translated” at the throne of God by the Holy Spirit it might well become ecstatic. As it is we could say to such a one who stumbled in his effort to pray, “Oh, yes, I heard your faltering words, but I did not hear what the Spirit said to the Father!”

How glorious it is to be a Christian! We have a birthday gift that is almost too good to be true!

Our birthday gift does something else that spells victory for the believer. The Holy Spirit is in a very important way our teacher. As Jesus prepared his disciples for his exodus from this world he left them this promise: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you” (Jn. 14:26). While this promise was particularly for the apostles, it is evident from such passages as 1 Jn. 2 that the Spirit has a teaching mission in the life of all believers. Verse 20 says, “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things,” and verse 27 says even more, “But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.”

The apostle assures the believer that he can know, as opposed to those who “went out from us but were not of us” (verse 19). They did not have the anointing and therefore did not know, and so they were not true Christians. Another apostle says this in Rom. 8:9 when he asserts that one is not a Christian if he does not have the Holy Spirit. The true believer knows that he is a true believer for two reasons: he has the assurances of the Holy Spirit and he has the presence of the Holy Spirit in his life.

When John says in verse 27, “You do not need anyone to teach you,” he refers particularly to the problem that he was addressing, the destructive work of the antichrists (verse 18) who were denying the true nature of Christ. The Spirit’s anointing or special presence gave them the discernment to know who the false teachers were. Because of their birthday gift which is for every Christian, they had the assurance.

Here we have the true sign of a Christian. It is not that he is a church member, for he can have external membership and lack internal integrity. It isn’t his baptism, for he can be baptized outwardly but not inwardly. The true sign of the believer is that he has the anointing of the Spirit. As we have observed from Rom. 8:9, Paul identifies the true Christian on this basis, that he has the Holy Spirit.

This is what 1 Jn. 3:24 is saying: “By this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.” We know! We can be sure! Because of the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit. This is not a reference to all the detailed doctrine of the Christian faith, in which we all share in teaching one another. The Spirit is our teacher in that he gives us the assurance of the presence of Christ. This is the force of Eph. 1:18 when it refers to “the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling.” How do we really know? Not by a string of Scriptures we may have memorized, nor by some list of good works. We know when the Spirit enlightens (teaches) our inner eyes. This is spiritual discernment.

The tragedy is that many Christians have this glorious birthday gift and do not realize it. And it is possible to have such a gift and not know it, just as one might have a treasure buried under his house and not know it, even as he lives in poverty. 1 Cor. 6:19 indicates that the Corinthians had received the Spirit but had not yet realized it.

It is difficult for the Spirit to teach us the assurances that are ours and to bear within us the fruit of love, joy, and peace as long as we fail to accept the gift and allow it to have its way in our lives. And so we remain a powerless, fruitless, joyless people. As we come to realize that the kingdom of God is not rule-keeping and church-keeping but “righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:7) we will behave as people who know what they know, as a people anointed by the Spirit and rejoicing in the gift — God’s birthday gift to all his children. — the Editor