Inheritance of the Holy Spirit

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

At times as you’ve read the Bible I wonder if, as happens to me, certain words have lit up for you
and you’ve suddenly seen something in that verse or that phrase that you had never seen before.
And you’re aware that it’s not just your bright little mind that is enabling you to see it, and it’s
not just that you’ve read Oswald Chambers at that particular moment, but it’s as if some light comes
from somewhere outside you so that you sense that it’s God speaking to you from the Bible. And I
think at those moments we are all used to saying the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life, and
it’s the Spirit that gives life to the Bible and makes it a living word to us and so the living word
speaks out of the written word. So we’re used to that I think.

Also I think we’ve all had the experience where we’ve been walking along a road, or we’ve been
driving a car, or sitting in our own rooms, or walking in the garden, or sometimes it can happen
even struggling through the crowds of London; a shaft of light comes through to you, and you
suddenly see something in your own life that you’d never seen before, and you see a whole field of
truth that you have never seen before and you have never experienced before. And it’s a significant
moment when you realize, “This is something that is coming from outside to me.” And we’ve thought
of those moments as moments when the Holy Spirit is evidencing his presence in us and is working in
us.

Now today’s verse in Ephesians speaks of that in a certain way, and I’d like you to look at it.
We’ve reached Ephesians 1:14. And you remember how Ephesians 1:13, runs and that was what we
finished last time, “In him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your
salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which,” and I think
Lloyd Jones points out it’s “who”, “were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the
guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” So
that Holy Spirit that we talked of in those moments when God’s word lights up for you or those
moments when suddenly a shaft of light seems to come through and you seem to get revelation, that
Holy Spirit who brings that into you, he also is the guarantee of your inheritance. He’s the
guarantee of your inheritance. The Greek word is “arrhabon” and actually guarantee is not the best
translation of it.

I’m reluctant to say this, but “earnest” is the best translation of it apparently. And the reason
is that “guarantee” is what Trish might give me if she said, “I’m going to give you my husband’s
motorbike and as a guarantee that I will do that, I want to give you this Bible that is very
precious to me and I’ll forfeit it if I don’t come through with the motorbike. And because my Bible
is very precious to me it’s a proof of my good faith.” That’s a guarantee because when she gives me
the motorbike then I give her back the Bible, so that’s a guarantee. But an earnest, the earnest of
the Holy Spirit, is a different thing. It’s like earnest money that we use in buying a piece of
property which we certainly still use it in the states and I think we do still use in England. It’s
where you make an offer on a piece of property for $20,000 pounds, and you give to the other person
some earnest money with the agreement. You usually give them 10% down, so maybe you give them
$2,000 pounds, and that is earnest money in that it certainly is a guarantee to them that you are
acting in good faith. But it’s more than that, because you won’t get the $2,000 pounds back, and
then give him the $20,000,no, you’ll give another $18,000 to it. So earnest money is the same kind
of thing as you’re actually going to get. It’s the same kind of thing. He’s going to get from you
$20,000 pounds for the piece of property. He’s going to get $2,000 of it as earnest money and the

other $18,000 as the final payment, and so he’s getting some of what he will actually receive
completely and fully when the deal is done.

Now you can see that’s a little different from a guarantee, because a guarantee is just giving
something valuable that you’ll actually get back when you receive the whole thing. The earnest
money is something of the same thing that you’ll finally receive, that’s why it’s important because
the Holy Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance. It’s the first fruits of our inheritance. It’s
a guarantee that some of what the Holy Spirit is giving us now, he will give fully and completely
when we receive our inheritance. So the little lights that you receive now from the Holy Spirit are
a little taste of what you will experience fully and completely when you enter into your
inheritance. And you can look at it almost as the first fruits. The farmer plants his crops, and
he waters them and takes care of them, and then looks for the big moment when the harvest comes, and
he goes out and he picks a few of the crops. Then he takes the wheat home to his wife and gets her
to bake it up so that they can taste it, and taste what the whole crop is going to be like and
that’s what the first fruits are and that’s what the earnest of the Spirit is.

It’s not just some arbitrary miracle that God does; it’s a part of the heaven that he has planned
for us, so when you experience the Holy Spirit you’re experiencing something of what you’ll
experience fully and completely when you enter into your inheritance. So “arrhabon” is a precious
word, and has great meaning, and when you wonder when will things happen as the Bible says they
will, here is God saying “It will. It will happen, because I have given you part of that now in
your life, you experience part of it now.” When you experience some of the working of the Holy
Spirit in your own heart, you know that that’s just the first fruits; that’s just the earnest of
your inheritance.

Now inheritance is “kleronomia” and it’s quite a deep word if you look at Ephesians 1:18, which is
part of that great prayer that Paul expresses. He prays that you may have a spirit of revelation and
then verse 18, “Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to
which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.” And I
don’t know if you’ve thought what that means, “what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in
the saints”? I’ve often wondered what that means. Is it that he’s inheriting the saints, and that’s
his glorious inheritance? Or is it that he has delivered a glorious inheritance to the saints, and
enabled them to experience it? And the truth seems to be both of those things for this reason, and
maybe you’d look at this verse that we so often look at, it’s Colossians 1:15-19, “He is the image
of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven
and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or
authorities—all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him
all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the
first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fullness
of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or
in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”

And you would not be far wrong if you said, “What? He’s everything?” That’s right. That’s really
what those verses are saying, Christ is everything. And what we’ve shared before is true, that way
before there was any earth, way before presumably there was any universe such as we can see or can
touch at all with our telescopes, long before that God himself, in absolute freedom, not because he
had to, but in absolute freedom determined that his dear son, who was part of himself, would be the
first man. Would be the first human being and that all human beings would be created in him and
would derive their own humanity from him. God didn’t have to do it that was just grace. He didn’t

have to decide that. He could have continued to exist on his own without any idea of having other
people like his son, but he determined freely to become, you might say himself.

I know it baffles all our understanding of the distinction between divine and human, but you might
say he determined himself, because he was innocent, that he would actually become a human being. He
would become humanity, and inside him would be born all kinds of little human beings, including us.
And he would stick with them through thick and thin and he would face whatever they and they’re free
wills did. He would bear it in himself, he would put up with it, he would endure it, he would even
submit as a man to what they could do to him as men. And that’s part of the meaning of Calvary,
that’s part of it; that this dear person hanging on the cross was actually our God allowing himself
to be destroyed in his human existence, to be destroyed by people like us, and he determined that he
would bear that. And then on top of all that he determined that he would not turn around and wipe
us out. Why? Because his own son had also become a man, a human being, and he would be wiping out
his very own inner heart. And that’s the grace and if you and I miss that, we miss what our
inheritance is; we miss what his inheritance is. What is his inheritance? His inheritance is that
all these beings that were created inside his son and that rebelled and destroyed his son, would in
fact be raised up by him when he raised his son up, and he would inherit them as his children.

And so in a real way you are his inheritance, you are God our dear Father’s inheritance. You might
say, “Us? What an inheritance are we? We’ve been nothing but a bane to him, we’ve been nothing but
his enemy, and we’ve been nothing but rebels against him.” Yes, but in his son he has turned all
that around and he has made you his inheritance and he has given us the earnest of the Spirit, to
give us assurance and to encourage us that he is acting in good faith, and that what he has shown us
in his Spirit so far in our own lives, he will give us completely because we are his dear
inheritance. And he will inherit us in his son back to life after being crucified in his son. He
made us alive together with Christ, and raised us up and made us sit with him in the heavenly
places, and we are his inheritance. We are the inheritance that his son presents to him, and that
is something that he has already done, and it’s all finished with and completed and that’s why we
receive this earnest of the Spirit. That’s why we can experience anything of this, because all that
has been done and we are at this moment at his right hand, so in a real sense we are his
inheritance. And of course, you can see in another sense, we actually inherit what only one ought
to have received, and that one was our Savior. He alone is justified in receiving heaven. He alone
is justified in expecting to get into heaven. He alone has the right to inherit heaven. He only
has obeyed his Father perfectly and loved his Father completely, and so in a way we inherit also.

Karl Barth puts it in his own way. He says, “In the beginning of all things with God, we find the
decree that he himself in person, in the person of his eternal Son, should give himself to the Son
of man, the lost Son of man. Indeed that he himself in the person of the eternal son should be the
lost Son of man.” I mean it’s unbelievable. “He himself in person, in the person of his eternal
son, should give himself to the Son of man, the lost Son of man. Indeed, that he himself in the
person of the eternal son should be the lost Son of man.” And that’s what happened; Jesus himself
became the lost and fallen humanity, and that was each one of us.

So we’re the inheritors of a holy, undeserved, guaranteed place at God’s right hand. That’s the
truth of it and I think you’ll agree that we have often fallen into Satan’s trap of not looking at
those facts and instead looking at what we call our faith. And so often, I think you’ll agree,
we’ve confused our faith at times with our feelings, or we’ve confused our faith at times with the
particular sense of victory or defeat we’ve had in our lives. And of course you can see that our
inheritance has nothing to do with the way we feel and actually is not caused by our faith. Our

faith simply is seeing the facts, but it’s the facts that give us our inheritance, and the facts are
what God has presented to us clearly in Colossians, that God, out of the great love with which he
has loved us, even when we were dead in our sins, made us alive together with Christ, and raised us
up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places. And he has given us the earnest of
his Spirit. He has given us the Holy Spirit as an expression of his good faith that he will give us
the fullness of what the Holy Spirit can be in us when we enter into the inheritance. Let us pray.

Dear Father, we thank you that all our ideas of salvation pale before the stability and the
certainty of the reality that we were created in Jesus, that we are part of him, that he has taken
us through death, and brought us into life again in his resurrection and now has given us the Holy
Spirit. You dear Father, have sent the Spirit of your son into our hearts, whereby we cry Abba
Father so that we might have within us the “arrhabon” of the Holy Spirit. The guarantee, the
earnest, the sure pledge, of the Holy Spirit that you have reserved for us in heaven; the fullness
of the light, and the love, and the joy, and the peace of which we have tasted a little here on
earth. Lord, we thank you, thank you for your great kindness to us and your mighty grace and for
this guarantee of our inheritance that we have here on earth in Jesus, amen.