Lord's Day: August 17, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: First John Topic: Holy Spirit Scripture: 1 John 4:12–13; Psalm 119:71; John 17:17; 1 Timothy 4:7; Romans 8:28–30; James 3:2; Ephesians 5:18; 1 Peter 1:18; 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18; Romans 8:3; Colossians 1:19; 2:9–10; Mark 10:45; Hebrews 9:14; 1 John 3:24; Romans 8:16–18

By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. 1 John 4:13

• “Sanctification is a work of God's free grace whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.” (1693 Baptist Catechism, Q. 39)
• God uses some of our good works and our participation in His means of grace as well as our participation in affliction which we are called to endure with hope, as secondary means of our sanctification (1 Tim. 4:7)
• God’s love never fails us, and never gives up on us, His Spirit is always with us, abides in us, and remains in us

I. The Holy Spirit is the primary Agent by which God’s Reformative Love is applied to us

• Abraham Kuyper: “…bad habits of a certain character sometimes pass from father to child even where the early death of the former precludes propagation by education and example.”[1]
• We are in the sanctifying process of being perfected by God’s Reformative love and through the Person and work of His Holy Spirit

II. God’s Son, Christ Jesus, was the only one who was perfectly full of the Spirit

• Christ relied on the Holy Spirit perfectly to accomplish His mission, “to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45)
• Abraham Kuyper: “…what Christ needed was the gifts of the Holy Ghost to enable His weakened [human] nature, in increasing measure, to be His instrument in the working out of His holy design; and…to transform His weakened nature not by regeneration, but by resurrection into a glorious nature, divested of the last trace of weakness and prepared to unfold its highest glory.”

III. If Christ on earth needed the Holy Spirit, how much more do we?

• The Holy Spirit is frequently the most slandered Person of the Trinity, especially by religious people who call themselves Christians
• He is often abused to justify all manner of wild imbalances, blasphemies, and heresies
• Relying on the Holy Spirit primarily means to rely on His means of grace—Word, sacraments, prayer

IV. One of the precious blessings that the Holy Spirit gives us is assurance

• To grow in your understanding of the Person and work of the Holy Spirit, search the Scriptures carefully, systematically, apologetically

Join us on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: ThornCrownCovenantBChurch@gmail.com

Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com

[1] Abraham Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit (Christian Classics Ethereal Library, n.d.), p. 102 [accessed 16 August 2025].