The spirit of truth

With reference to John 6:63—But, how is a man's name inscribed on the memory of God for resurrection? ln answer to this, it must be remembered, that the spirit of THE INVISIBLE ONE is the remembrancer of His dominion. Whatever the Spirit remembers is written, so to speak, in the book of remembrance before God. "God is Spirit; and they who worship him must worship him in Spirit and truth " (John iv. 24). Pardon is the result of Spirit-and-truth worship. Now the relation subsisting between the Spirit and the Truth is one of intellectual and moral identity; so that he who hath the truth hath in him the mind, the thinking, and teaching of the Spirit: but he that hath not the truth, is destitute of the Spirit, and not a true worshipper. It is the Spirit-Word that quickeneth; and therefore Jesus says, "lt is the Spirit which is life making; Spirit is and life is the words which I speak to you" (John vi. 63). And again, he says, "The Spirit of the truth proceedeth from the Father" (vi. 26); and, "The Spirit of the truth shall guide you into all the truth" (xvi. 13); and bring all things to your remembrance" (xiv. 26); and John, the beloved disciple of Jesus, adds, "the Spirit is the truth" (1 John v. 6). We are considering things mental, not physical. The Spirit in its physical relations is the divine power that creates, fashions, and sustains all things; and will raise the dead, and subdue all things to God. But in opening men's eyes, and turning them from ignorance to knowledge, and from the service of the adversary to God; and in recording them in his remembrance, it is the truth believed and obeyed that is the agency employed. The Spirit is the Remembrancer; or symbolically, "the Scroll or Book."

It is by the truth, called "the word of the truth of the gospel of the kingdom" (Acts xx. 24,25; Col i. 5), believed and obeyed, that relations are established between men and God. This is the spiritual connecting medium that links them to his throne in their present state; and, though men in the general think very little of "the truth," because they are natural liars and ignorant of it; yet His eyes are ever upon it, and he has "magnified it above all his name." "Sanctify them by thy truth; thy word is truth" (John xvii. 17); and, " Ye have purified your souls in the obedience of the truth through Spirit." Hence, the truth is sanctifying and purifying; and, as the truth is God's, and precious to him, and always before his mind, the sanctified are his pepuliar treasure. Their names are therefore inscribed in his book of remembrance by their union to the truth in the obedience it enjoins.

Paul styles the baptized believers in Corinth, "an epistle of Christ written with spirit of the living God." The writing, he says, was done through him and Timothy, as the instruments. God, Paul, spirit and Corinthian hearts held a similar relation to each other in the writing of the epistle (and all similar churches collectively, made, as it were, a Book of Epistles) that head, pen, ink, and paper, do to an ordinary letter. The mentality of God was by the process stamped upon Corinthian hearts, so that they became part of His thoughts; and while He is written upon their memory, they are also written upon his, who is the way, the truth, the resurrection, and the life. Hence, to be written in the scroll of the life, is to be "in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ," and they in him by the Spirit-truth dwelling in their hearts (2 Cor. iii. 3; 1 Thess. i. 1; Eph. iii. 17; John vi. 54,56).