The Holy Spirit is the power of God.  Everyone needs God’s power within them in order to overcome Satan’s temptations–“fiery darts”–to sin.  This included Jesus of Nazareth.  In I Peter 2:21,22 we are told that Jesus kept God’s Laws–the Ten Commandments–perfectly.  He tells us that He did so only through the power of the Holy Spirit.  The man Jesus possessed incredible power.  However, He confessed that: “I can of My own self (by My own power) do nothing” (Jn. 5:30).  He also said: “The Father Who dwells in Me, He does the works” (Jn 14:10).  God inhabited Him in the form of His Holy Spirit.  Like all other obedient people, Jesus had to RECEIVE the Holy Spirit from God the Father in order to have His power.  It is through that same power that true believers can receive Christ’s promise as recorded in John 14:12: “Verily, verily I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also, and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father.”  When He left the earth He left the Holy Spirit behind for those who would use it for God’s glory.  To His saints He said: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon (comes to abide within) you.”  Power for what?  God has a purpose for all that He does.  Why does He want man to have Holy Spirit power?

We must realize that the Holy Spirit is a gift from God given to those who ask Him with the intent of using it to obey Him by warding off Satan’s continuous temptations and to do the works of God.  The Holy Spirit is the source of tremendous power from on high.  It is the very essence of God Himself, His life, His nature and the knowledge of His will.  IT IS THE POWER WE MUST HAVE WITHIN US IN ORDER TO BECOME HIS SONS.  IT IS THE POWER NEEDED TO “COME TO THE MEASURE OF THE STATURE OF THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST” (Eph. 4:13).  Only those who obey God’s Law and thereby achieve the Ephesians 4:13 standard will rise to meet Christ in the first resurrection.  Read The Three Resurrections.  Key word–Resurrections.

The purpose of the Spirit is to enable man to obey God’s Law and thereby qualify to inherit what God has in store for those who, like Jesus before them, qualify for His inheritance.  Overcomers, not church members, are “heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ.”  In God’s Very Elect: Future Caretakers of the Universe I prove Scripturally that Christ and His joint-heirs will inherit, not only the earth, but the entire universe.  Key word–Caretakers.

Contrary to universal church opinion, Jesus did not do away with God’s Law.  To the contrary, His Scriptures tell us that He established and magnified that Law (Isa. 42:21) to its highest fulfillment by showing mankind how to fulfill it to its perfect spiritual intent by obeying it both body and spirit.  A mind filled with God’s Word will hunger and thirst for holiness.  The Holy Spirit provides the power to receive holiness from on high through obedience to His Word.  Everything, whether holy or evil, begins in the mind, which is Biblically called the heart.  Obedience toward the Law clears the heart of sin, “by the washing by the water by the Word (Eph. 5:26).  The body then follows in the heart’s spiritual footsteps.  Unconverted church people, lacking the Holy Spirit’s power, declare that it is impossible to obey God’s Law.  And they are right.  It is impossible for man to obey God using only his own strength.  Without the Spirit, man is low-hanging fruit for Satan and his fallen angels.  Two and one-half billion people on earth today prove it.

The ancient Israelites lived under the Old Covenant and, with the exception of a minutely few people, did not have the Holy Spirit within them.  They had to resist Satan using their only their own power.  Few were able to maintain a state of holiness.  For this reason God (the Word–Jesus) said that He would establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah (all 12 tribes).  Under this covenant He would WRITE HIS LAW IN THE HEARTS of those who wanted to live in obedience to Him (Jer. 31:31-33/ Heb. 8:8-12).  At the same time He would fill their hearts with the Holy Spirit that would empower them to obey the Law and thereby achieve the holiness needed to receive the promised inheritance.

We must understand the relationship between Christ’s death on the cross and the keeping of the Law of God.  One must keep the Law in order to be saved at the return of Jesus Christ to earth.  His beating resulted in the healing of the saint’s bodies.  His death resulted in the forgiveness of their sins.  His resurrection resulted in the salvation of their souls.  All three of these things are promised to take place IF we obey God’s Ten Commandment Law.  God gave man His Holy Spirit to empower him to do exactly that.  But religious man does not believe any of the above.  Rather, he believes that Jesus died so that he could break God’s Law and get away with it.  In other words, for him the wages of sin is not death as God proclaimed in Romans 6:23.  Rather, the wages of his sins is eternal life.  This theology has a long history.  Adam and Eve made the same mistake, as have 99.99% of their descendants throughout the history of man.  The serpent convinced Eve, who convinced Adam, that they could sin and, contrary to God’s Words,  “… not surely die.”  The end result of their sins would be eternal life in paradise.  Hearing words that scratched their itching ears, they believed them and acted on them.

The Holy Spirit not only gives us power to overcome Satan, it empowers us to know when Satan is trying to deceive us into rebelling against God.  Satan is called “wiley.”  Wiley is a nice word that, when applied to the god of this earth, carries a devastating meaning.  Like a piece of meat in a trap,  the devil entices God seekers into his church system through deception.  He promises eternal life for sinning.  Sound familiar?  Watching Satan’s people by the billions file into his citadels of sin each sun god day tells us that masses of God seekers have been deceived (Rev. 12:9) by the “wiles of the devil” (Eph. 6:11).    L.J.