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From J.C. Ryle's "Having the Spirit"
You have heard, I doubt not, of a wretched class of Christians called Antinomians. They are persons who boast of having an interest in Christ and say they are pardoned and forgiven, while at the same time they live in willful sin and open breach of God’s commandments. You have been told, I dare say, that such people are miserably deceived. They are going down to hell with a lie in their right hand. The true believer in Christ is “dead to sin” (Rom 6:2). Every man that has real hope in Christ “purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (1Jo 3:3).
But I will tell you of a delusion quite as dangerous as that of the Antinomians, and far more specious.12 That delusion is to flatter yourself you have the Spirit dwelling in your heart while there are no fruits of the Spirit to be seen in your life. I firmly believe that this delusion is ruining thousands, as surely as Antinomianism. It is just as perilous to dishonor the Holy Ghost as it is to dishonor Christ. It is just as offensive to God to pretend to an interest in the work of the Spirit as it is to pretend to an interest in the work of Christ.
Once for all, I charge my readers to remember that the effects which the Spirit produces are the only trustworthy evidences of His presence. To talk of the Holy Ghost dwelling in you and yet being unseen in your life is wild work indeed. It confounds the first principles of the gospel. It confounds light and darkness, nature and grace, conversion and unconversion, faith and unbelief, the children of God and the children of the devil.
There is only one safe position in this matter. There is only one safe answer to the question, “How shall we decide who have the Spirit?” We must take our stand on the old principle laid down by our Lord Jesus Christ: “By their fruits ye shall know them” (Mat 7:20). Where the Spirit is, there will be fruit. He who has no fruit of the Spirit has not the Spirit. A work of the Spirit unfelt, unseen, inoperative, is a positive delusion. Where the Spirit really is, He will be felt, seen, and known.
Dangerous delusions
Beware of supposing that a man may have the Spirit when there is no outward evidence of His presence in the soul. It is a dangerous and unscriptural delusion to think so. We must never lose sight of the broad principles laid down for us in Scripture: “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth…In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God” (1Jo 1:6; 3:10).You have heard, I doubt not, of a wretched class of Christians called Antinomians. They are persons who boast of having an interest in Christ and say they are pardoned and forgiven, while at the same time they live in willful sin and open breach of God’s commandments. You have been told, I dare say, that such people are miserably deceived. They are going down to hell with a lie in their right hand. The true believer in Christ is “dead to sin” (Rom 6:2). Every man that has real hope in Christ “purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (1Jo 3:3).
But I will tell you of a delusion quite as dangerous as that of the Antinomians, and far more specious.12 That delusion is to flatter yourself you have the Spirit dwelling in your heart while there are no fruits of the Spirit to be seen in your life. I firmly believe that this delusion is ruining thousands, as surely as Antinomianism. It is just as perilous to dishonor the Holy Ghost as it is to dishonor Christ. It is just as offensive to God to pretend to an interest in the work of the Spirit as it is to pretend to an interest in the work of Christ.
Once for all, I charge my readers to remember that the effects which the Spirit produces are the only trustworthy evidences of His presence. To talk of the Holy Ghost dwelling in you and yet being unseen in your life is wild work indeed. It confounds the first principles of the gospel. It confounds light and darkness, nature and grace, conversion and unconversion, faith and unbelief, the children of God and the children of the devil.
There is only one safe position in this matter. There is only one safe answer to the question, “How shall we decide who have the Spirit?” We must take our stand on the old principle laid down by our Lord Jesus Christ: “By their fruits ye shall know them” (Mat 7:20). Where the Spirit is, there will be fruit. He who has no fruit of the Spirit has not the Spirit. A work of the Spirit unfelt, unseen, inoperative, is a positive delusion. Where the Spirit really is, He will be felt, seen, and known.
