The Oberlin Evangelist
Lecture XVII.
August 26, 1840
COMMUNION WITH GOD -- 1
by the Rev. Charles G.
Finney
Modernized by Cliff
Collins
“The
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the
Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.” (2 Cor 13:14)
In discussing this subject, I will answer the
following questions.
I. What is the meaning of the word communion?
II. What is implied in the communion of the Holy
Spirit?
III. How can we know whether and when we have
communion with God?
IV. What is the value and importance of communion
with God?
V. How do we secure and perpetuate communion with
God?
I. What is the meaning of the word communion as the
Bible uses it?
In the Bible, the word communion sometimes means
friendly communication. “So the Lord
went His way as soon as He had finished speaking (communing) with Abraham; and
Abraham returned to his place.” (Gen
18:33) Sometimes communion means
counsel, advice, and instruction. “She
came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue, with camels that bore spices, very
much gold, and precious stones; and when she came to Solomon, she spoke
(communed) with him about all that was in her heart.” (1 Kings 10:2) It is the
same word in the original Greek that is rendered fellowship in Phil. 2:1: “Therefore
if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any
fellowship (communion) of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my
joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one
mind.” (Phil 2:1-2) Also: “that which we have seen and heard we
declare to you, that you also may have fellowship (communion) with us; and
truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.” (1 John 1:3) Therefore, to commune with God is to have fellowship with Him,
friendly discussion, consultation, advice, and instruction.
II. What is implied in the communion of the Holy
Spirit?
1. The communion of the Holy Spirit implies that the
Holy Spirit is a moral agent, and not a moral attribute of God.
2. The communion of the Holy Spirit implies that the Holy Spirit actually and personally lives and dwells in the heart of the person with whom He communes. He must be actually present with our spirits to make it possible for us to commune with Him.
3. The communion that is maintained between the Holy
Spirit and all His saints throughout the world implies both the omnipresence
and the omniscience of the Holy Spirit.
4. The communion of the Holy Spirit implies infinite love and condescension in Him. What infinite condescension in God, to allow
such worms as us, to consult and commune with Him, to hold frequent and lengthy
private interviews with Him, and to share with Him all that is in our
hearts! His condescension is infinitely
great.
5. Communion with the Holy Spirit implies a desire
in us to consult Him, and commune with Him, concerning our duty, His will, and
the affairs of His kingdom.
6. It implies that He wants us to consult Him. It implies that He is constantly ready to admit
us into His presence, to grant us an audience, to listen attentively to all
that we have to say, and to encourage us to lay open our entire situation
before Him.
7. It implies that we are aware of our own ignorance
and our deep dependence on Him. We only
seek communion with God in proportion to how much we abandon our dependence on
ourselves. A person who is not deeply
aware of his own ignorance will not seek communion with God to receive instruction
from Him. No one, who still has some
self-dependence, will seek to place himself in the arms of the Savior.
8. Communion with the Holy Spirit implies that the
Holy Spirit takes the deepest interest in us.
Surely His interest in us must be very great, to be willing to consult
with us so often, to commune with us so deeply, to become so involved with the
little things in our lives, and interest Himself in our slightest grievances,
trials, and difficulties. To do this
constantly, without becoming weary or impatient, certainly implies, on His
part, a most profound interest in us.
9. It implies a deep sympathy and fellowship between
the Holy Ghost and us. We feel as He
feels, and He feels as we feel. We have
a common goal. The same motives that
influence Him influence us. We are
interested in the same objects, employed in the same labors, and, in short, the
communion of the Holy Spirit implies that our fellowship and sympathy with Him
are equal to our communion, for they are in fact the same thing.
III. How can we know whether and when we have
communion with God?
1. We know we have communion with God when we become aware that the Holy Spirit is drawing us very near to Him in prayer, by His silent but powerful influence. Every true Christian knows what it is like to feel his heart secretly moving towards God; a silent, but a deeply powerful melting, drawing the Christian’s soul away from the world, from society, from business, and from everything else, into a most sacred private relationship with God.
In such situations, the Christian’s soul seeks to be alone with God. He cries after God, and then the desires of his soul flow like a stream; and when he is on his way to some quiet spot to rest, or on his knees in his prayer closet, or perhaps in bed at night, his heart and his flesh cries out for the living God. From the very bottom of his heart, his soul cries out, “Father, Father”, and he repeats and echoes, over and over, all the dear names, the titles, and relationships of God; and his soul seems to melt, flow, and gush, as the Holy Spirit draws him into the deep waters of His love.
2. We have communion with God, when we have great
freedom and expansion in prayer. Sometimes
our soul feels completely burdened with conviction and distress, but we have no
words. We bow down to the earth, but we
can’t express, nor even think about our sins, our burdens, or our sorrows. We seem to fellowship with God, and yet we
feel as if we can’t approach and fully open up our heart before Him; but at
other times, our mind has great freedom.
Our thoughts and words flow like a river. Our desires not only increase, but our views of God and us also
greatly increase. We have a kind of
supernatural ability to express ourselves in a most emphatic and elevated
manner, in pleading our cause before Him.
There seems to be enough room in the unselfishly loving yearnings of our
hearts to embrace the world and the universe; and we seem as if we could
embrace the whole human race, and bring them before God, in earnest longings,
with intense crying and tears, that He would have mercy on them. We seem to see everything and feel
everything, and express everything, on an enlarged scale. We enter into such a deep sympathy with God,
that we feel our soul drawn away with unselfish and loving desires. In this state of mind, we may rest assured
we are in communion with God.
3. We have communion with God when God presents our
needs to us. Sometimes we are hard and
dark. We know that something must be
wrong, but have no clear idea of what it is.
I’m talking about those who have not yet learned to continually abide in
the light. But those who have made the
greatest attainments of anyone in this world, often feel their spiritual needs
placed open before them, in a most remarkable manner. If they are not aware of any present or recent sin, God still
shows them how far they fall short of what they should have been if they had
never sinned at all. God shows them how
much ignorance, how much weakness, how many infirmities, are open and around
them, because of their former sins and selfish habits. God often draws us into deep communion with
Him, and He has lengthy and intimate fellowship with us, sometimes for hours
and even days at a time, for the purpose of kindly calling our attention to,
and opening up before us, those details in our character and in our weaknesses
that need greater measures of His grace.
He makes us see the depth of our ignorance. He makes us see how weak we are under temptation, and how
certainly we will be overcome, without His ever-present grace. In this state of mind, we may be sure that
we are in communion with God.
4. When we can spread out our entire situation, and open up the deepest needs and secrets of our hearts before God, we are in communion with Him. We sometimes feel as if we could go to the very bottom of our whole being, and bring forth every secret thought, affection, emotion, and whatever has been deep and concealed, and spread them out in the light of His countenance.
5. When we can present our strongest reasons when we
plead with God, we are in a state of communion with Him. Sometimes we find ourselves able to plead
and reason with God, as a man would plead with his friend. We present our reasons, and array our
arguments, with a strong confidence and assurance, that they will affect God’s
mind as they affect our mind. The
reasons why we plead with God appear to be weighty and reasonable; and we feel
a kind of supernatural confidence, that they will and must influence His
mind. We press Him with our reasons and
arguments. We turn them over and
over. We spread them out before God
with all their connections and bearings, and feel as if God can’t resist
them. In fact, we insist on their
weight and force, and often urge them on God, with a kind of supernatural
vehement spirit, which refuses to be denied.
This was no doubt the state of Jacob’s mind, when he wrestled all night
with God. The state of mind I am
talking about is a state of mind that wrestles with God. In this state, our soul uses the strongest
language. We feel the utmost confidence
in the ground we take. We grab a hold
of the very strength of God, and throw ourselves on Him, and on the strong
reasons we urge, and on His unending faithfulness and promises. Only those, who have experienced this state
of mind, understand this. The stranger
does not meddle with such things as these.
And if any cold hearted professing Christian or ungodly sinner hides in
some secret place, and witness the secret interaction of such a soul in
communion with God; if that backslider could listen to his words, and behold
his streaming perspiration, the whole scene would impress him with feelings of
wonder and consternation.
6. When we feel like consulting God on almost
everything that interests us, and concerns the interests of His kingdom, we are
in communion with Him. Christians
sometimes feel, and many habitually feel a need to ask God’s opinion, His
consent, and advice at every turn. They
seem to live in that state of mind that Paul was in, when he said, “Lord, what
do You want me to do”? (Acts 9:6) With other people, less advanced in grace, this
feeling is not so habitual. Yet, the
true Christian knows what it means to feel his heart drawn into an attitude of
constant consultation with God, to flee and run to Him for advice, to
constantly call on God for counsel. A
true Christian knows what it means to consult God about the littlest things,
and mention to Him even the most trivial occurrences and circumstances of
life. In this state, the soul of the
Christian feels like a very little child consulting a most wise and affectionate
father.
7. Whenever we want to sacredly confide in God, and
tell Him all those secret things that we would tell no one else in the
universe, we are in a state of communion.
The Christian’s soul is sometimes drawn into such a state that he feels
an intense longing to treat God as the most sacred and confidential friend,
laying open before Him all those secret things that no one else has any right
to know. The Christian is united with
God, and he sustains a thousand endearing and interesting relationships with
Him, that he sustains with nobody else.
We sometimes compare marriage to our relationship with God; but our
relationship with God almost infinitely exceeds marriage in the deep and sacred
confidence we have when we rest in God.
No conjugal confidence ever even comes close to the sweet, sacred, deep,
and profound confidence of the soul in God.
No husband ever opened himself up to his wife, or wife to her husband,
the deep springs of action, the most retired and secret workings of the soul,
as one who is in communion with God will often do. Oh the unspeakable confidence that the soul feels when it
discloses to God the deepest, darkest, most profound needs of his whole being.
8. When God opens our understanding to the
scriptures, and it takes a hold of our hearts, we are in communion with
God. When we are not in communion with
God, we may find a historical interest in the Bible; but its more spiritual
parts are sealed and uninteresting. The
mind’s eye will wander over chapter after chapter, through its sacred pages,
and wander through all the glories that the Bible reveals, without being awed,
fixed, and enchanted by its glorious revelations. However, when we are in communion with God, every sentence bears
God’s fingerprint. It is full of
meaning, full of light and love. It
discloses the very secrets of God’s heart, and exposes His very being for our
inspection. Our soul pauses at every
sentence. We wonder, admire, and adore
God. We look into the profound deep. The spiritual world is open to our
view. We seem, as with a telescope, to
have welcomed eternity into our presence.
And the whole spiritual world seems to be so uncovered before us, that
we are almost in the state in which Paul was, not able to tell whether we are
in our body or out of our body. It is
easy for a person in this state to understand what Paul meant, when he said, “I
know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago whether in the body I do not know,
or whether out of the body I do not know, God knows such a one was caught up to
the third heaven. And I know such a man
whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows how he was
caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful
for a man to utter.” (2 Cor
12:2-4)
The fact is, Paul’s mind was so completely absorbed
with the glories he saw with his spiritual eye, and his attention was so
completely engrossed with them, that he was unconscious of the presence of anything
around him. Afterwards, he couldn’t
tell whether he was in the body or out of the body. I have read that Xavier’s communion with God was so intense, that
when he retired for secret devotion, he had to leave word with his servant to
call for him at a certain hour.
Sometimes, after he had remained for hours in secret communion with God,
his servant would find him on his knees.
The Bible would lay open before him.
His eyes would be fixed, and he would be lost in deep, secret communion
with God. His servant would then have
to shake him to get his attention off spiritual objects, and remember that he
was still a resident of earth. I myself
have known times when certain persons were very much in this state of mind.
Now there are many degrees of this kind of communion
with God, when the scriptures are so opened up to the mind, and so understood,
and its truths are so apprehended, and appear so glorious and ravishing to our
soul, that it completely engulfs our thoughts and attention.
9. When we become deeply sensitive to our character,
past and present, we are in communion with God. Sometimes Christ communes with our soul, and calls its attention
to so many things, that we become vastly ashamed of ourselves. Our whole soul fills with shame and
confusion. It blushes. The Holy Spirit gently but thoroughly
reveals our past and present to us. He
lifts up the veil of oblivion, quickens our memory, and causes our whole
character to stand out before our mind’s eye, like a hideous and unseemly
ghost. Our soul in this state seeks to
find the very lowest place in the whole universe. It cries out, from its deepest foundations, “Oh to get infinitely
low before God.”
Sometimes people in this state of shame,
self-abasement, and unutterable self-abhorrence, don’t seem to be aware that
this is communion with God. Being in
the habit of considering communion with God to consist only in those joys that
the saints sometimes experience, they don’t realize that these deeply
self-abasing thoughts and views are only the result of a close and searching
fellowship with God. In this state,
they sometimes feel as if God has forsaken them. They find it so completely reasonable for God to forsake them
that they can’t see that they are now, perhaps, more thoroughly in the light,
and really in a deeper state of communion with God than they have been at any
other time.
10. We are in communion with God, when we have great
confidence in Christ. God sometimes
fills us with adoring views of the fullness there is in Christ as our Wisdom,
Righteousness, Sanctification, and Redemption.
Often, when God draws us into this form of communion with the Holy
Spirit, His business is to take the things of Christ and show them to us. We see in Christ such infinite fullness and
security, such a world of promises, so vast in their meaning, so true, and so
infinitely certain is their fulfillment that they are all yea and amen in
Christ Jesus. During such times, our
soul feels that it is complete in Him; that He is a perfect Righteousness, a
perfect Sanctification, and a perfect Redemption. We feel that His grace and fullness are large enough to swallow
up all our thoughts and all our finite conceptions. We feel that the sins of the whole human race could be merged in
the ocean of His grace; that all the temptations, needs, and woes of man, might
all be swallowed up in the boundless ocean of His love and grace, and would all
be only a pebble in the midst of the great Pacific Ocean. At such times, we can see that in Christ
dwells the fullness of the Godhead. We
feel like God set us on an everlasting rock, in a large place, and our goings
are established. We feel such a
tremendous rest in Christ that “As the mountains surround Jerusalem, So the
Lord surrounds His people from this time forth and forever”. (Psalm 125:2)
11. When we are spiritually minded, we are in
communion with God.
All those states of mind that I have mentioned are
forms of spiritual mindedness; but right now, I am talking about a general
state of spiritual mindedness on every subject; a habitual minding of spiritual
things, as opposed to minding earthly things.
In this state, a person, even though he lives in the flesh, has more fellowship
with the spiritual and heavenly world, than with the men and things of this
world. Yes, he walks on the earth; but
his fellowship is in heaven. Physical
objects surround him; but he has so little interest in them, that he hardly
notices them. His soul has come into
the light, as God is in the light. He
walks and lives in light. The very
sunlight of heaven bathes him.
Spiritual objects are stronger and more impressive realities than
physical objects. Only this kind of
person can understand the full importance of Paul’s words, when he said, “I
have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives
in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of
God, who loved me and gave Himself for me”.
(Gal 2:20) The person in this
state has a marvelous attitude. He is
in his body, and, of course, he is able to fellowship with those around him,
and yet he is so in the Spirit that he is able to hold sweet, intimate, and
continuous communion with the Holy Spirit.
He can rest his head on the very chest of Christ, while his feet are
standing on earth.
12. When we have victory over our spiritual enemies,
we have communion with the Holy Spirit.
Our soul in communion with God can easily bid Satan to depart, and he
flees. Our faith seems to have the
strength of omnipotence. We seem to
vanquish all our spiritual foes with the utmost ease. We rise above spiritual enemies and above the power of temptation. The waves of temptation that would normally
overwhelm us seem, when we are in communion with God, to break harmless at our
feet. We stand on that solid rock that
rises high above us. Temptation can’t
reach us, but wastes its strength beating against the everlasting rock on which
we stand. We feel that Christ fights
all our battles for us. All we have to
do is hide in Christ, as in the cleft of a great rock, and Christ says to the
winds and waves of temptation, ‘Peace, be still’, and ‘there is a great
calm’. Now, beloved, do you know
anything about these states of mind. If
you do, you know what it means to have fellowship with the Father and the Son
through the Holy Ghost.
13. I will mention one more form of communion, which is, when we are swallowed up, and our whole will and desire is lost and merged God’s will. In this state, we feel that we don’t have any will of our own, any wish or desire that anything in the universe should be any different from what God would have it. We feel like we have no interest of our own, aside from the interest and will of God. His interest, His kingdom, and His will are our desire. If, in any situation, we are uncertain what God’s will is, we feel as if we can’t say anything other than “Lord, Your will be done”. We feel such an attachment to God’s will, such confidence in it, that His will is infinitely right, unselfish, and loving, that we feel like we can never have a wish, a desire, or a thought that is inconsistent with the will of God. And we feel as if the least risings of opposition against God’s will, and the least lack of complete resignation and acceptance in His will would be more dreaded and more terrible than hell itself.
I must omit the remaining points of this discussion
until our next meeting.