A Divine Letter of Commendation

“On him God the Father has set his seal.” (John 6:27)

From the moment the Holy Spirit came to earth at Pentecost, everyone who believes the gospel is redeemed by the blood of Jesus and sealed with the Holy Spirit (see Eph. 1:13). God imprints, figuratively speaking, His stamp on the person and says: This person belongs to Me—for time and eternity!

Imagine a farmer who wants to buy sheep. After he has paid the price for them, he marks them with his initials. Why does he do that? To show that they are his property, and so that he can recognize one if it gets lost. The payment of the price entitles them to be his possession and the mark identifies them as his own.

It is similar to when God seals a believer with His Spirit: The blood of Christ is the price with which God has bought you, and the Holy Spirit is the divine seal that marks you as His property.

It was different with the Son of God: He was publicly sealed with the Spirit because of His personal perfection (see John 6:27)! For 30 years He had lived blamelessly before the eyes of God. Now He received divine recognition from heaven for His perfectly consecrated life.

The Father publicly placed His seal on Him, so to speak, to make it clear that this Man was quite different from all those who were baptized by John in the Jordan. He is the only man who was sealed with the Holy Spirit before blood was shed.

If you let the Holy Spirit work freely within you, the Lord can use this as a divine letter of commendation to the people you deal with. “It is not the one who commends him- self who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends” (2 Cor. 10:18).

When the Spirit of God works in you and through you, it will become visible. Paul writes in reference to his ministry to the Corinthians, “You show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God” (2 Cor. 3:3). Faithful and dependent servants of God are characterized by the fact that the Spirit can work freely in them (see 2 Cor. 6:3, 6)!

The following example, given by HL Heijkoop from his own experience, illustrates how the Holy Spirit can guide when we make ourselves available to Him:

“Eighteen years ago, I went to America for the first time. My wife and I were on the way to a town where there was a fellowship where we knew a few brothers. But on the way, the Lord said to me, ‘You must go to such and such a town.’

This was a completely different place! I had never been there, did not know a single person, and I did not have any names or addresses. I was forced to make a detour of hundreds of kilometers to get the address of a brother in that town.

Now, we arrived there on a Saturday evening and were warmly welcomed. We stayed until the following Thursday. During that time, my host told me something about the relationships in the local fellowship. As I said, we did not know the brothers and sisters, or their circumstances. As usual, every evening there was a meeting and the Lord used me to preach the Word.

Finally, on the Wednesday evening, some of the brothers came up to me to talk to me. They said that the situation in the fellowship had become so miserable and there had been such division that they had decided this week to split up. But, they said, the Lord had sent me and the proclamation of the Word had made it clear to them that a split was not good. So because of this, they were not going to split up, but remain together. So the Lord had sent me there, even though I did not know anything about all these things.”

J.P.S.