The Sealing of the Soul.
The presence of the Holy Ghost in the soul is many things. It is the life of the soul; it is the teaching of the soul; it is the comforting of the soul; it is the consecration of the soul; it is the purification of the soul; or rather all these things have in Him their central point. But it is one thing more: it is the sealing of the soul.
I. You have some valuable property, it may be gold or jewels, and you are going abroad for a season. Anxious for your precious things, you gather them carefully up, and you put on them your seal, your name to the seal. The seal marks them yours while you are away, and secures them from being lost or stolen. So long as they are under the seal, they cannot be removed or hurt; and you look to find them in this sure keeping when you come back. You are Christ's precious jewels. Your great Proprietor, who has spent so much on you, is gone away for a time; He has gone to a far country: but He is to return, and when He returns His longing desire is to find you unharmed and beautiful, and still His own. Therefore He has put His seal upon you. It is a fast seal, and a royal one; His own name and His own likeness are on it. No thief, no injury, no loss, no accident, can come near to touch you.
II. The day of redemption is plainly the day of the resurrection, that day of Christ's appearing, when the whole work of your redemption will be complete. The sealing is not for this life only, neither is it only for the soul. It is for the body; it is for the grave. But it goes on even to the resurrection, to the day of redemption. The dust of the saints is sealed; it is quite safe, loved and cared for: and the grave's casket will be opened when He comes, and you will find the gem bright and untouched. Do not grieve the Spirit of God by doubting it.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,4th series, p. 151.
I. In Divine, as in natural, truth, it remains with the soul to accept or to reject the truth proposed to it by God; to embrace it purely or to corrupt it; to deny its existence or its own power to discern it; to abandon contemptuously all search for truth, resolving all into one maze of doubt. But it can do so only on the same principles whereby men may deny the certainty of all natural knowledge, abdicating the implanted powers of the soul and denying the light, natural or supernatural, infused by God within them, and their own consciousness. These are awful words: "Grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption." All, then, on God's part, has been complete. We received the Holy Spirit as a living seal upon our living souls; to mark and to guard us, as His purchased possession and peculiar treasure; to impress, one may boldly say, His image, His likeness, His features, upon our souls.
II. But meanwhile He has left it in our power to accept or reject Himself, our only and infinite good. He appeals to us with Divine tenderness that we do it not. I fear that one of the things which will most amaze us, when we open our eyes upon eternity, will be the multitude of our own rudenesses to Divine grace, that is, to God the Holy Ghost, whose motions grace is. Grace came to us so tenderly: it never did violence to us, or it did such gentle violence; it ever came to us in a way adapted to win our individual being. Ardent natures the Spirit sets on fire for good; before active natures He sets activity in His service; easiness of disposition He hallows by the glow of His love; the cold iron of severity He tempers by His fire into the bending steel of strong devoted purpose. Let not, then, His seal upon you mark you as a deserter. "Thy Teacher is within thee"; pray to Him, listen to Him, with a hushed heart, and He in His own time will teach thee.
E. B. Pusey, University Sermons,p. 338.
Consider one or two of the consequences of a grieved Spirit.
I. Whenever you grieve the Spirit, you cause sorrow it is God's own word to Him to whom you are bound by every generous feeling to give only happiness. Few persons are sufficiently aware of the debt which they owe to the Spirit. Think you it is no sacrifice for a Being of perfect holiness and immaculate purity to come and dwell in such an abode as a sinner's heart, amidst the scenes of daily life, there, in the closest of all possible contact, to bear with all He hears and sees and feels, there to be constantly planting seeds which we root up, shedding light which we darken, drawing bands which we break, whispering voices which we drown? Surely, therefore, it should be the first spring of our hearts a sufficient motive to a holy life, even if there were no other to give, not grief, but joy, to Him who, with such pains and at such cost, invites our love and claims our gratitude.
II. Every time we grieve the Spirit we weaken the seals of our own security. As soon as a man has peace, the Holy Spirit gives him, in the strength of that peace, holiness. The peace is the consequence of the pardon, and the holiness is the consequence of the peace, and both are seals, the peace seals the pardon and the sanctification seals the peace. Break any one of these seals, and your safety is in the same proportion diminished, and every grieving of the Spirit is a defacing of an impression and a loosening of one of the seals.
III. There are four deep, downward steps in the path to death. To grieve the Spirit is the first; to resist the Spirit is the second; to quench the Spirit is the third; to blaspheme the Spirit is the fourth. No one of these is ever reached but by going through that which is previous to it; but he who grieves the Spirit by a thought or an omission may soon resist the Spirit by some more overt act of direct opposition, and he who thus resists the Spirit wilfully may soon wish to put the Spirit out altogether from his heart. Let the consummation of the tremendous series teach the true character of the first imagination which lies upon its slope, and give emphasis to the solemn word, "Grieve not the holy Spirit of God."
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,2nd series, p. 45.
References: Ephesians 4:30. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. v., No. 278; vol. xiii., No. 738; Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 326; E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation,p. 220; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,1874, p. 17; E. Cooper, Practical Sermons,vol. ii., p. 239; Homilist,3rd series, vol. iii., p. 276; E. White, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 40; S. Slater, Ibid.,vol. v., p. 100; H. W. Beecher, Ibid.,vol. vii., p. 355; G. John, Ibid.,vol. xii., p. 74; Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 234; T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. v., p. 193.Ephesians 4:31. Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons,1st series, p. 289.