The Fullness of the Spirit

To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.

Ephesians 3:19–20 (NKJV)

It is God's intent and desire that His children walk in all the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We should partake of our whole inheritance in Christ, and one heritage given to us is the blessedness of walking in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, the Seven Spirits of God in full manifestation.

One thing we can be certain of is that the Lord Jesus had this unlimited measure of the Spirit in His life, and for the most part the body of Christ has believed that this reality belonged to Jesus alone. The Word of God tells us otherwise.

For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God does not give the Spirit by measure.

John 3:34 (NKJV)

We can see clearly that God does not give the Spirit by measure. The reference is not to Jesus alone but to the one whom God sends, implying that to anyone to whom God gives the Spirit, He gives Him in measureless capacity.

No scripture clarifies this mystery better than Ephesians 3:19, where Paul, by the Spirit, prays that we may be filled and flooded with all the fullness of God. This is the direct expression of God's desire for His children.

The best of God is nothing less than His fullness in us: the Father fully in us, Jesus fully in us, and the Holy Spirit, with His sevenfold manifestation and operation, fully in us. This is a remarkable truth, one that must constantly flood our minds and thinking. It is plainly attainable, or it would not be a prayer included in the Bible.

To have all of God should be the experience of every man who has been accepted in the Beloved. Sadly, it is not the experience of most of our brethren around the world. The bulk of us are still grappling with the elementary matters of salvation, fighting off some devil or trivial matter. When we should be reigning, we are still fighting; when we should be reigning as kings by grace, we are still at loggerheads with Satan. Life should not be that way. That is not the Father's desire for His children.

The question that deserves attention is how we attain to this realm of living. Through a glass, darkly, I received some enlightenment on this one day as I was contemplating it. The key is the manifestations of the Spirit, or, more specifically, the indwelling presence of God.

This is something the Lord Jesus alluded to time and again in His preaching and in His encounters with the religious community. He constantly referred to the Father who dwelt in Him and did the works.

The manifestation of the Spirit of God is twofold. It is evident first as the fruit of the Spirit, in regeneration, and then as the gifts of the Spirit, in the infilling. These manifestations of the Spirit are necessary for all of us because the Church is to bear the image and attributes of God to creation, and the fruit and the gifts provide the perfect opportunity for us to move into that dimension. Let us look at them closely.

The fruit of the Spirit is the impartation of God's nature in the quality of His attributes: who He is, how He feels, how He thinks. The fruit reflects the very qualities of the Trinity. The man who loves his brother has God living in him, for God is love. Every time we manifest one or all of these fruits, we are displaying the very nature of God, and that is a great thing.

The gifts are manifestations of the workings of God: what He knows, how He speaks and what He does. They are individual expressions of God's mind, power and revelation, and together they manifest the omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence of God in a human vessel. The very mind of God is imparted in fragments to the one who receives the word of wisdom or of knowledge, a sharing in God's omniscience. The very power of God is expressed through gifts such as healings and the working of miracles, a sharing in the omnipotence of God. This is what we need: to walk into this dimension of living with the Spirit.

The Christian experience must resemble the promises of God, the desire of God and the will of God. We are new creations, an advantaged race. We belong to the Kingdom of the Father, and we have been called into the very glory of God to dwell there.

These truths must become our constant meditation; the process is imperative for us. We need desire, an unquenchable desire, for the manifestations of the Spirit. If we would do this, and act on the Word, we would find ourselves in an ocean of the supernatural.

The greatest mountain has been ignorance, but as we go deeper into the Word, the light shines on our hearts and we can see. Suddenly life takes on a different meaning; priorities shift, and we become expressions of God's dream. Let us pursue, without fail, the fullest measure of God's blessings.