THE FULLNESS OF FAITH: ITS ATTAINMENT Acts 11:24: Full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.

The fullness of faith is a work of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, when the apostle Paul sets forth the fruit of the Spirit he puts into the precious cluster faith. Now, since the Spirit himself, in fullness, is only given to believers, after they have exercised saving faith (that is, it is a Post-conversion experience), therefore, the faith which flows from his indwelling must be some enlargement and enrichment of faith which does not belong to it in its initial character. Faith, in its saving measure, is faith with hands and feet unloosed, yet with eyes that are darkened and wings that are bound: it is a clinging chrysalis it neither sees nor soars. But faith in its fullness is faith with eyes wide open, and wings unbound. Faith never reaches its fullness until it transmigrates from an exercise into a state of soul, until it can apprehend, as well as appropriate, the things which are freely given it of God. When faith, without losing any of its saving virtue, by the power of the Holy Ghost in us becomes the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen, it has reached its majority, it is full grown. The process for the attainment of the fullness of faith differs from that for the attainment of faith in its saving efficacy, because they differ in experience.

Saving faith is a thing done by us, a conscious, voluntary act by which the soul accepts salvation; the fullness of faith is a state wrought in us by the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Being a grace wrought in us, it must be definitely sought and received as any other grace is obtained. Two things are very essential to the souls attainment of the fullness of faith, it must know the source and the antecedents of this experience.

I. Its source.

The baptism of the Holy Ghost is the cause, and fullness of faith the effect.

The fullness of the Holy Spirit implanted in the soul is the perennial fountain whence proceeds the ceaseless stream of fullness of faith.

Barnabas was full of the Holy Ghost and consequently full of faith. When the Pentecostal grace is come, faith in its fullness has come. All lack of faith in true believers is the result of not having the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

The gift of the Holy Ghost is to be distinguished from the ordinary operations of the Holy Spirit in awakening, regeneration, and adoption; it is His personal indwelling in the soul. When he has thus possessed the soul as a refiner, he purges away the dross of native unbelief from the heart; as an illuminator, he reveals Jesus as the author and finisher of faith; and as an empowerer, he spiritually energizes the soul to apprehend all the fullness of God in the promises of his Word. The fullness of the Holy Spirit himself received in to the soul is the source of all fullness; not a grace of the Spirit can exist there in its fullness without his indwelling presence. Fullness of joy, fullness of love, fullness of faith, all inhere in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Faith can not be trained into the stature of fullness. The fullness of faith is a product of the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Hence the early Church gave great attention, as a desideratum to the new converts, that they should be filled with the Holy Ghost. Therefore we have in the Acts of the Apostles numerous records of individuals and of multitudes who received the anointing. Philip, the evangelist, had no sooner secured the conversion of hundreds in Samaria than the apostles hastened thither to impart the gift of the Holy Ghost. So that the fullness of faith became then a common, instead of an unusual, experience. Stephen was full of faith and the Holy Ghost. Saul of Tarsus, after his conversion to God on the Damascus road, under the instruction of a humble disciple, Ananias, was filled with the Holy Ghost; and there began his wonderful career of faith, of which, as life went on, he could say: The life I now live I live by the faith of the Son of God; and when it was closing could triumphantly exclaim: I have kept the faith. Now men and women get converted, live in Church for years, and do not so much as know whether there be any Holy Ghost as a source of a fullness of faith, This grace of faith, being a work of the Holy Spirit, bears his divine imprint. It is a spirit of faith; the soul is pervaded by its inspirations; it enters into all its states, experiences, and activities. The whole life has an air of faith; it is repose to the manner, confidence in the tone, steadiness in the demeanor. It is a spontaneous activity of the heart.

Faith is no longer self-operated, but divinely operated. What is written comes to pass: I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes. The causative power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us enables the soul to trust without effort or dint of will. The volitional becomes absorbed in the affectional emotions of the heart. Faith now works by love; believing becomes automatic it believes itself.

Faith is no more a task or wonder. To some it seems marvelous to have faith, but he who has operative in him the power of the Holy Ghost thinks it marvelous not to believe. The strain of faith is removed, and it is so easy to believe. More still, faith becomes, under the power of the Spirit, a sustained movement of soul. The Holy Spirit dwelling in the soul is a tremendous mainspring of feeling, thinking, and willing, coiled up in the center of spiritual life, to which every wheel of grace is attached, keeping it in continuous motion. This mainspring cant run down; its energies are eternal.

Neither can the faith which it operates run down. So that faith in its fullness is not a fitful, wavering, and evanescent, but a prolonged, unabated, ceaseless experience of soul. The manifoldness of faith under the power of the Spirit is glorious; it is adequate to such a variety of wants, and compasses such a wide range of blessings; all things are possible to it, strength, consolation, wisdom. God withholds from it no good thing.

Moreover, it is available. We have it. Let emergencies, crises, unexpected trials, providences, or duties arise, and it is on hand. So many of Gods children have to work up faith for every new demand. If sorrow comes, they have to tug and toil for faith to bear it; if some new responsibility or service is thrust upon them, they have a severe struggle to get faith for it.

So ministers and Churches squander a large part of the time given to special revival effort in getting faith for it.

But when the fullness of faith is had, we have faith for every occasion, duty, and work; when the service or sorrow comes, the faith for it is at hand. The baptism of the Holy Spirit imparts to the soul full salvation; this removes the inherent unbelief, unspiritualness, and moral darkness of the soul, out of which arise the doubts, the fears, and the unrest which attend an immature faith, and which constitute the disabilities that render faith feeble and fitful.

There are those who desire faith great faith but who do not desire as well heart-purity, the only soil that can yield a fullness of faith. The kingdom of God in full salvation is a spiritual unit; it is indivisible. He who wants, its joy or its faith must take the entire kingdom. Receiving it, the soul becomes rich toward God; rich in faith, rich in love, rich in all goodness.

The grace of full salvation is not merely one of many manifestations of the Holy Spirit; it is not a blessing from the Holy Spirit, but the baptism of the Holy Spirit, comprehending his personal, conscious incoming into the soul, cleansing it from its sinward tendency, filling it with all the fullness of God, and imparting to it a fullness of faith, of love, and of power. It is more than a blessing. Said an excellent woman not long since who had found full salvation: I have been getting blessings for years from the Lord; but this is more and better than they all. The fullness of faith and the fullness of love are not seriatim ingraftings upon the souls experience, but are scions of the one implanted tree of life, the Holy Spirit indwelling in the soul. Hence to seek a fullness of faith, exclusive of the sanctifying and enduing baptism of the Holy Ghost, is to limit the Holy One of Israel. He never imparts his graces without imparting himself. The soul that cries, Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove, With all thy quickening powers, will get the Holy Spirit himself, and in him will find all the fullness of faith.

II. Its Antecedents. 1 . An unequivocal experience of saving faith.

There are no possibilities of faith in its higher degrees without saving faith attained and maintained. To renounce or undervalue saving faith, renders the fullness of faith impossible: For we are partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end. Fullness of faith is saving faith expanded by the power of the Holy Ghost until it sweeps vast areas of divine blessing beyond the range of saving grace. George Muller, the founder of the Bristol orphanages, says he finds no difference in kind between the faith by which he trusts Christ to save his soul, and that by which he trusts God to feed, clothe, and shelter two thousand orphans. It is only saving faith given a wider range. Faith in its saving virtue is the germ faith in its fullness is the fruit. There must be first the blade of saving faith, then the ear of fullness of faith. The believer who would attain the grace of faith in its fullness must cry out: Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. 2 . The consecration of saving faith to God An indispensable antecedent to the attainment of a fullness of faith is to put the talent of saving faith on the altar of God, as one of the powers of the soul made alive to him, to be transformed by the renewing of the Holy Ghost into a stature of fullness.

That faith by which the convert, or babe in Christ, feebly clings to the cross a faith so weak that it barely brings the peace of pardon, consecrated to God may transmigrate suddenly from a faith that saves into a faith which brings full assurance and a glorious apprehension of things not seen. Saving faith given to God unfolds into a fullness of faith. 3 . The exercise of saving faith.

Saving faith is the only spiritual capability whose exercise can bring the fullness of faith. The faith which claims Christ as a Savior has only to receive him as the Baptizer with the Holy Ghost, and, lo! the promise of the Father descends; faith bursts into unclouded vision; its perfectness is come.

There are many who sigh over their infantile, weak, wavering faith, who, would they but use it in laying hold of some such promise as How much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him, would find it lifted into power and glory. By faith, faiths increase we claim. Dear reader, may the Lord perfect that which is lacking in your faith Spirit of Faith, come down: