Study Christ if You Want the Spirit

If we will have the Holy Spirit, study the gospel of Christ. Why, before Christ, was there was so little of the Spirit? Because there was but little measure of the knowledge of Christ. The more Christ is revealed, the more the Spirit is given. The more the free grace and love of God in Christ alone are made known to the church, the more Spirit there is. The reverse is also true, the more Spirit then the more knowledge of Christ; for there is a reciprocal connection between these two.
Why was there little of the Spirit in the clever and able schoolmen of popery? They savoured not the gospel. They were wondrously bright, but they savoured not the matters of grace, and of Christ. The gospel was revealed to them, but they attributed salvation to human merits, to the pope, and so on. They did not know Christ; they lacked the Spirit of Christ; and so they did not teach Christ as they should. Those were dark times because Christ was veiled in idle ceremonies. Christ was hidden and wrapped in idle traditions and ceremonies of men; and that was the reason that God's truth was obscured.
When Christ, and all good things by Christ, and by Christ only, are revealed, the veil is taken off. Now the past hundred years, in the time of reformation, there has been more Spirit, more light and more comfort. Christians have lived and died more comfortably. Why? Because Christ has been more known. And as it is with the church, so it is with individual Christians: the more they study Christ, and all the comfort in him alone to be had—‘wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption' (1 Cor. 1:30)—the more they grow up in the knowledge of Christ, the more they grow spiritually. And the more spiritually they grow, the more they grow in the knowledge of Christ. Therefore, if we want to have the Spirit, let us come near to Christ, and labour to know him more, who is the fountain of all that is spiritual.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
Glorious Freedom, pp. 23-25 [27-29]
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