It is the office of Jesus to reveal to us the Word of truth, and it is the office of the Holy Spirit to reveal in us the power of truth. Jesus is the Word of God, and hence the Revealer of all doctrine, all truth concerning the Father, or the Holy Spirit. Everything that the human race knows about God has been revealed through Jesus, for He, “coming from the bosom of the Father has declared the Father.” The Holy Spirit takes all the things which the Son has revealed of God by word, or doctrine, and applies it by a powerful inward manifestation to the human soul.  

Christ has told us more about the Holy Spirit in the Gospel by St. John than in all the balance of the Scripture beside. Among His most wonderful statements concerning the Holy Spirit are the words in John 7:37-39. In the last day of the great feast of tabernacles, which was the greatest of Jewish feasts, “Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his inner heart shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive, for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not glorified.”  

The central thought in this passage is that believers are to be so united to Jesus, that He can make them individual channels for the outflowing rivers of the Holy Spirit upon the dry, moral deserts around them. In getting a clear insight into the meaning of this wonderful truth we must analyze the passage in detail.  

1. The pre-eminent organ of the Holy Ghost is the individual man. “If any man thirst.” Note all through Scripture, the constant Divine emphasis on the individual person.  

“He that believeth,” not they. “If any man hear my voice,” not men. Personality is the highest form and crown of all existence. Federated bodies of men, or institutions, or churches, or forms of government, or doctrine are never spoken of as the highest organs of the life of God, or channels of the Holy Spirit. God honors the immortal, personal, individual soul of man above all things, or systems, or combinations. He convicts, converts, sanctifies, calls, anoints, sends forth, and utilizes the individual man and woman as His highest form of agency, working in co-operation with Himself, and through whom He pours His truth and love in their highest manifestation.  

So He calls us one by one, regardless of what others may do, to yield ourselves in our supreme singleness of being up to Him, to be purified and united to Himself, in the highest, sweetest, and most intimate union that can exist in the universe, outside of that eternal unity of the three Divine Persons.  

2. “Thirst.” To thirst for water is the capacity of life. To thirst for God is the capacity of a created spirit. There are three kinds or three degrees of the soul’s thirst for things Divine. The first is the thirst for pardon; and then the thirst for purity; and then the deep, beautiful thirst for the living God Himself.  

The thirst for pardon is not so much a direct thirst for God, as it is a sorrowful thirst of an aching heart to get relief. It is like the thirst of a sore wound, which craves for water to wash the blood away, and alleviate the fretting fever. It is the aroused conscience thirsting for innocence. It is a sad, pining, aching, hunger of soul to get right, to get rid of the past. It is more of a desire to get in harmony with God than it is to be filled with God. It is a sorrowful, plaintive cry for the smile of God, more than for His blessed nature. It is that kneeling, weeping approach to the outer hem of God’s garment, more than to the clear knowledge of His Divine Person. Nevertheless it is a thirst springing from the inner spirit of man’s deepest nature, and without which there never can come those finer and sweeter thirsts in the spiritual life.  

After our sins are pardoned and we begin to learn our hearts better— the various conflicts in the soul between grace and our natural depravity—we are led into another thirst, that of inward purity of heart. This form of thirst has its peculiar features, as distinctive as those for pardon. There is a growing disgust with ourselves, and a proportionately growing desire for heart-agreement with Jesus. There is an increasing distrust in ourselves, our wisdom, goodness, will-power and work, and a great longing to get rid of ourselves, to turn ourselves over utterly to the management of God. There is an uneasy, restless, tired spirit, that would rather die than serve God with a divided heart.  

As before we thirsted for the favor of God, so now we thirst for the likeness of God. The soul has caught a glimpse of the character of Jesus, and pines for His image; and every pure thing it sees, such as the pure stars at night, pure running water, or the white light of the sun, preaches to it of purity of heart.  

When this thirst for cleansing is strong enough to draw the soul into a state of unlimited abandonment to Jesus, and an appropriating faith for His perfect cleansing, the thirst is met and satisfied. Then after the first gushes of perfect love have subsided, and the sanctified state is being tried, the illuminated believer recognizes within him a Divinely-begotten thirst for the very essence of God, for the cloudless effulgence of the three Divine Persons, and a perfect, delicate, minute, and powerful union of the human spirit with the very nature and personalities of the Godhead. This thirst should be the normal state of every Christian. This thirst is characterized by that prayer which Moses prayed, long after his “burning bush” experience, “I beseech thee, O Lord, show me Thy glory.” The thirst is to be met by the abounding fullness of the Trinity, revealed and imparted by the Holy Ghost. We first thirst for God’s smile, and then for God’s image, and then for God’s essence and Person.  

3. “Let him come to me.” The Holy Spirit is given to the believer immediately from the hand, and by the authority, of Jesus.  

To come to Christ, means to come in a Scriptural way, that is come to Him just as He is offered to us in Scripture, as perfect God and perfect Man, as our Savior, Sanctifier and Lord; as our Substitute, suffering the death penalty for us, and as our final Judge. To come to Christ as a merely good man, or as only an example, or to merely come intellectually, is to dishonor Him. Such coming never receives any salvation, and hence never receives from Christ, the Holy Spirit.  

The rock that was smitten by the rod of Moses, from which the pure water gushed forth, was a type of Christ being smitten by the law, that He might pour forth the Holy Spirit. Now as every one wanting water must needs go to the rock for it, so there is no way of receiving the Holy Spirit except by going to the crucified and risen Jesus. There are all sorts of false religionists who dishonor Christ crucified, such as Unitarians, Universalists, Swedenborgians and Christian Scientists, who never receive the Holy Spirit. These deny His Divinity, and personality, and know nothing of His indwelling because they dishonor the adorable Jesus from Whom the Holy Spirit proceeds, and by Whom the Spirit is given.  

4. “Let him drink.” “He that believeth on me.” Our Savior uses these two words, “to drink,” and “to believe,” as interchangeable terms, because the physical act of drinking and the spiritual act of believing are so perfectly alike. Drinking is an act of faith on the part of the body and believing is the act of drinking on the part of the soul. As the throat swallows water, so the heart swallows the words of Jesus, and by swallowing the Word of God, the Divine Living Christ is taken down into the depths of the heart. Faith has two parts to it; first to apprehend or see something, and then to appropriate, to take in, to repose upon that which is thus apprehended.  

Thus we first see the water, and then put it to our lips and drink it. In like manner we first apprehend Jesus as a personal Savior, or Sanctifier, and then the heart, the will and the affections open, and take Him in. We thus receive Him, drink Him and rest our all in Him. It is this definite, personal, cordial, affectionate, positive taking hold of Christ and drinking of Him, by which we take the very fountain of the Holy Spirit into our hearts, that puts us in a condition where the Holy Spirit can flow out through us. This explains why it is that our faith in Christ always measures the extent to which we receive the Holy Spirit.  

Those who receive Christ as their Justifier, receive from Christ that measure of the Spirit which accompanies pardon, and bears witness to the new birth. And those who receive Jesus as their Sanctifier, receive from Christ that full measure of the Spirit which accompanies sanctification, and the assurance of the indwelling Person of the Holy Ghost as the Comforter.  

But remember that in these acts of receiving Christ, there are different degrees of intensity, boldness and largeness, in different persons. Therefore all converted persons, or all sanctified persons, do not receive exactly the same measure of the Holy Spirit, but according as they have apprehended and received unto themselves the living Jesus. And after sanctification, there are many degrees of receiving Christ in His person, character, attributes and glory, which will always measure the fuller communion and outflow of the Holy Spirit.  

5. “The Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified.” Right in this connection, as to the intimate relation between drinking in Christ and receiving the Spirit, let us notice this connection mentioned in this passage, between Christ being glorified and giving forth the Holy Spirit. By Christ’s death on the cross, He purchased salvation for us, and removed every barrier to our restoration to God. By His resurrection from the dead and ascension up to the right hand of the Father, He obtained, as God-man, the perfect kingly authority to pour forth the Holy Spirit upon the human race to convict sinners, to convert penitents, to sanctify believers and to fill, inspire and illuminate the saints.  

Before Christ’s death, the Holy Spirit made His personal abode in the bosom of Jesus, and filled Him without measure, so that Christ was a walking Fountain, with the pent-up waters of that limitless sea of the Holy Spirit within Him. Now when Christ was crucified, that Fountain was unsealed, the Rock was smitten to let out the hidden streams, the Olive-berry was crushed to let forth the precious oil. Therefore without the crucifixion of Jesus, no human soul could ever have received the Holy Spirit. Those saints in the Old Testament who received the Spirit, received Him in advance, and as it were on credit before pay-day, through the anticipated, vicarious death of Jesus.  

Now the ascension of Christ clothed Him with infinite sovereignty and authority to send forth the third Person in the Godhead, just the same as the Father, by the authority of His eternal paternity, had sent forth His Son into the world. Thus we see, the glorification of Jesus was the immediate cause of His pouring out the Holy Spirit.  

Now in a similar way we cannot receive the Holy Spirit into us until we likewise glorify Christ in us, by honoring Him with our entire consecration to Him, by our perfect reposing trust in Him, by our exalting Him to the throne of our whole heart, by our honoring of His precious Blood to cleanse us from all sin, by making our bodies His footstool, by making our human spirits the Heaven in which He is lifted up. By thus letting Christ be our absolute Lord and glorifying Him, we get in a condition where He can fill us with the Holy Spirit.  

We must always keep in mind this unbroken link between glorifying Christ and the pouring forth of the Holy Spirit. This solves the problem why people fail to receive the Holy Spirit; it is because they fail to glorify Jesus with a boundless consecration to His blessed Person and a boundless trust in the virtue of His precious Blood to cleanse from all sin. To have the eye flooded with light, look at the sun. To have the soul flooded with the Holy Spirit, fill the eye of faith with Jesus. The more we honor Christ, the more the Holy Spirit will honor us.  

6. “Out of his inner being.” This expression reveals to us that the Holy Spirit unites Himself with us in our heart—that is, in our spiritual nature. Our Creator has endowed us with body, soul and spirit, and it is pre-eminently in our spiritual nature where we are capable of being united to God through the Holy Ghost. There is such a thing in natural life—both animal and vegetable—as lives being congeners, that is, life in the same family where the two lives can be blended into one. Thus in the animal kingdom, animals of the same family can have their lives united in the production of offspring. In the vegetable kingdom, all those fruit trees which have similar seed, such as the cherry, plum, peach, etc., can be grafted the one upon the other, and their lives will blend; and another family of fruit trees—the pear, the quince, the apple—are congeners, and can be grafted the one upon the other.  

This vast and beautiful law of life runs up into the spiritual kingdom, and when God gave us an immortal spirit He created us congeners with the Holy Spirit. Hence it is, in that part of our multiform being, that we can be grafted upon the living Christ, most blessedly and wonderfully, through the operation of the Holy Ghost. We are nowhere taught in Scripture that God saves or unites to Himself the lower order of animals. They do not have a spiritual nature, and therefore they can never be congeners with the Holy Spirit.  

Thus God does not unite Himself to us through our body, or through our mental or soul-nature. But it is in our spirits that He comes to take up His abode in us. Hence Christ says, that “if we believe in Him, out of our spiritual being will flow rivers of living water, and this He spake of the Holy Spirit.”  

But we must notice that this outflow of the Holy Spirit from our hearts is conditioned on our being saved and sanctified and having the barriers to Divine union removed—all of which is implied by our believing in Christ. The human spirit of a sinner has all the natural capabilities of the spirit of a saint, but his heart cannot be united to God until his sins are washed away. His inner life of motive, affection and choice is perfectly subdued and sanctified by the cleansing Blood of Jesus. When the heart is purified through perfect faith in Christ, the hindrances to Divine grace are removed and the Holy Spirit gladly comes in to take up His abode in the purified heart, and to unite the powers, affections, motives, choices, desires and all the moral activities of that heart to Himself. The believer thus becomes the Spouse of the Holy Ghost.  

This interior union with God is of two kinds; First, the union of the powers or affections of the soul, and afterwards the union of the substance—the very being itself—with God, which corresponds in a sublime and heavenly manner with the union between the Son of God and His natural human body and human soul. John says, “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, as of the only begotten Son of God.” We cannot fathom that blessed mystery of how the substance of the Divine Word united itself to human flesh and a human soul. We know that this is the great mystery of the Incarnation and is called the Hypostatic Union, that is, the union of the Divine substance of the Word with the human substance of flesh and blood. Christ had a special body prepared for Him.  

Now the Holy Ghost has never been incarnated in the same way as the Eternal Son of God. Yet when the Holy Spirit comes forth from the Father and the Son, converts, sanctifies the believer in Jesus and unites Himself to the inner life and substance of that believer, it corresponds in a remarkable way with the Incarnation of the Son of God, by which the Church of Christ, the true, regenerated, living Church of Christ, becomes the visible body of the Holy Ghost, as the man Jesus was the visible body of the second Person of the Godhead.  

We shall never know what all this means in its vastness and splendor until the sons of God are manifested in the first resurrection, and “shine forth” as Jesus promises, “as the brightness of the sun.” It is because our human spirit is a congener with the Holy Ghost, and can be united with Him in one life, that we can bring forth fruit unto God, and yield those fragrant, heavenly blossoms, and delicious fruits, that gladden Paradise with the tempers and dispositions, the graces and energies, the praises and multiplied activities of the blessed life of the Son of God.  

7. “Shall flow rivers of living water.” This expression shows us the outcome and blessed results of being filled in the inner heart with the Holy Ghost. The blessed Comforter is one, but His outflow from the heart is manifold, characterized by our Savior as “rivers.” In understanding this great truth, let us keep in mind, that while the Holy Spirit flows through us, and out of the heart, yet He does not flow from our human nature as His fountain. We must receive Jesus by pure faith into the depths of our hearts, and the living Christ Who is at the bottom of our hearts, is the Divine Fountain from which the Holy Ghost is forever proceeding.  

An illustration of this was vividly presented to my mind some years ago at a camp-meeting. I was about to preach and as I bowed in a season of silent prayer, a beautiful picture was flashed like a beam of light into my mind. I seemed to see a large spring of water, clear as glass, about two feet deep. The bottom of the spring was pure white sand, and up through the sand, I saw the clear, beautiful water boiling up from some hidden fountain away back in the earth. It occurred to me instantly that that was an illustration of the outflow of the Holy Spirit through the believer.  

The white sand represented the purified nature of a believing heart. Though it be weak and feeble, and of the earth, it can nevertheless be washed by the fountain, and cleansed from earthly stains. The secret fountain hid away back in the earth, represented the blessed Jesus hid in the depths of the believer’s heart. The clear, beautiful water, flowing out from the unseen fountain, and up through the sand, represented the blessed Holy Ghost flowing out from Christ, through the sanctified nature of the Savior, to run forth in various directions, water the earth and replenish the fruits and flowers.  

Keeping this thought in mind will constantly remind us of our utter weakness, helplessness, and nothingness in and of ourselves. It will also remind us that all the purity and goodness and all the outflow of the Holy Spirit from us comes from the blessed Jesus, Who has been received into the unseen depths of our hearts. It is in this way that God constitutes believers the conductors of the living streams of the Holy Spirit.  

We can understand this very clearly from the laws of electricity, and from the various substances that are used as conductors of electric currents. Perhaps there is nothing in nature which is an absolute non-conductor of electricity, but there are many substances which conduct the electric motion so feebly that they are called nonconductors—such as glass, feathers, and perfectly dry wood. Beginning with those things which are feeble conductors of electricity—such as paper, a cotton string, damp wood—and going up to those things which are the best conductors, we come to iron, copper, and silver, of which the last is the best known conductor yet discovered. Silver is too costly to be used to a great extent, and so iron and copper are mostly employed as conductors of this strange and immense energy.  

Now in the spiritual world there are conductors of the Holy Spirit just as really as physical conductors of electricity. There are certain moral conditions which render a human soul a nonconductor of the grace or Spirit of God. Little children who are yet in childhood innocence and in touch with God, are often used as conductors of the Holy Spirit in convicting older people and touching hard hearts. Young converts, who are in the glow of their first love, are conductors of spiritual force, light and conviction, in a much larger degree.  

The sanctified believer, whose heart is full of humility and unselfish zeal, is a much more powerful conductor of the currents of the Holy Ghost than the young convert. But this capacity of transmitting Divine truth, light, love, conviction, encouragement and spiritual knowledge may be increased in degrees which we have not yet measured. All Christians are not equal conductors of the Holy Spirit.  

The more we are conformed to Christ crucified, the more truly will the Holy Spirit flow through us as rivers of water.