THE PRESENT PROVISION OF GOD

Harold C Anstey

         This I believe is joy and comfort by “the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ”, Phil  1: 18, 19.

         He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, that in which He lived as man down here, and if any one has not the Spirit of Christ he is not of Him.  As to the apostle, his comfort in Christ (chap 2: 1) abounded, and his joy in the Lord was always.  He wishes the Philippians to be fulfillers (that is, completers) of this his joy, by being “like-minded”.  His comfort in Christ abounded at the very moment when lawlessness had shut him up in the prison at Rome and when all the saints in Asia had deserted him!

         I think this is an unvarying principle with God.  We see the Spirit of Christ in Noah, Joseph, Moses and David.  God meets desertion and lawlessness always by the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, and thus the darkest days become the brightest.  They become days when occasion is furnished for the display of His mind!  Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.  The Lord as man proves the point.   In His joy and comfort, His people only act in His Spirit and only wait for Him “as Saviour”.

         It is by the supply and display of the Holy Spirit in that character, that in which Christ walked as man down here, that God meets the present defection and lawlessness.

         Luke presents the Lord as Son of man.  In this gospel the anointed Man is seen in Him and in the Acts Luke gives the same man in the same Spirit, seen now in men on earth.  They are the persecuted “me” of chapter 9: 4, and this is where we come in and live, if we come into the gain of the present moment.  In Luke we have reached the “time of incense”, the second Man is before God, and Luke only therefore speaks of “the days of the Son of man”.  These are present now, and the Spirit of the Son in evidence.  We know “in the land” the “days of heaven upon the earth”, Deut 11: 21. They began with Christ the anointed Man and continue to the rapture, Rev 12: 5.

From Mutual Comfort, 1916