One Calming Word

I’ve been reading Sinclair Ferguson’s Some Pastors and Teachers (Banner of Truth Trust, 2017). If you love historical theology, you’d love this book. It is a rich collection of Ferguson’s own meditations on John Calvin, John Owen, and John Murray.

John Owen (1616-1683) came to assurance of his salvation in Christ during a sermon by an unknown guest preacher at Aldermanbury Chapel. The text was Matthew 8:25-27 (Jesus’ stilling of the stormy sea). Owen, meditating later on the assurance he found in that sermon, wrote, “when the Holy Ghost by one word stills the tumults and storms that are raised in the soul, giving it an immediate calm and security, it knows his divine power, and rejoices in his presence” (Works, II:242; Ferguson quotes on pg. 260).

Speaks of the Holy Spirit’s “one word,” analogous to Jesus’ word calming the storm. While the great Puritan may have used this merely as a figure of speech to make a comparison (he never specifies a particular word in his meditation), the Scripture tells us there is a single word the Spirit speaks in us to calm our souls.

“Father.”

It is by the indwelling Holy Spirit that we are able to call upon the Father using the same Name the Son has used for all eternity.

“…all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:14-17a).

“…when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God” (Galatians 4:4-7).

When we trust Jesus alone for a right relationship with God now and forever, we are mystically united to Him by faith through the work of the Holy Spirit He gives to us. All that is the Son’s is ours through the Holy Spirit, including the right to call on the first Person of the Trinity as “Father.” We do not call Him this because we have earned it through our character or actions. This right is ours because it is the Son’s right, and we are united to Him. The right to have this relationship with the first Person of the Trinity does not change, for it is immutably and eternally the relationship between Father and Son as the one true God. The Person of the Spirit, Who dwells in us, speaks out the call upon God as Father because of Who the Son is, not because of how good we are or anything we do. In the storm of our souls, this is the one calming word.

Rest in this.