AN APOSTOLIC INJUNCTION
‘Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.’
How sad it is to grieve a friend! But to grieve the best of friends seems more than sad, more than culpable.
We may grieve the Holy Spirit of God—
I. By lack of Christian charity.—Selfishness no doubt is at the root of our want of love to the brethren. And not only selfishness, but that narrowness of spirit which prevents one seeing the good in others and from realising that Christ is leading them on perhaps quite as much as He is leading us on. Love to the brethren ought to be extended far wider than we are accustomed to allow it to extend; we are to take care that we love others no less than we believe that God loves them.
II. By wilfully indulged sin.—‘If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy.’ And can we forget that any wilfully indulged sin, any allowance of ourselves in ways that we know instinctively, intuitively, must grieve the Spirit of God, ought never to be followed for a single instant.
III. By distrust of the love of God.—He calls us his children. He bids us by the Spirit that He gives us look up to Him and call Him, ‘Abba Father’; and how it must grieve Him when after all we distrust that love of God. The same gracious Spirit brings us back to God, and therefore must there be the constant prayer from us that He would return to us if we have driven Him away, so that we by His power may return again to God.