Deepen Article: Love and Security Through God the Holy Spirit

Not only is the Holy Spirit our assurance of God’s acceptance and our “down payment”; He is also our protection. Ephesians 1:13 reads:

In whom also you yourselves, having believed the word of the truth, the good news of your deliverance, in whom also having believed, you were sealed.

In the Roman world, a seal did two things.  It declared ownership and it declared the owner’s intention to protect his property and to go after the person who attempted to break the seal.  The Romans shipped food and grain from Egypt by sea to Italy in order to feed themselves.  They had given up farming and now they relied on the Egyptian breadbasket to keep them going.  When the Egyptians shipped the millions of bushels to Italy, the food was put into burlap bags, which were then sealed with a dried clay seal.  The Roman seal said two things: this belongs to Rome, and Rome will protect it.  If pirates stole it, the Roman fleet found them and destroyed them.  They protected it.

Paul used the symbol of the seal the same way.  With the Holy Spirit as our seal, God is not going to break the seal because the Holy Spirit is His arrabon (or his “engagement ring” to us, so to speak).  If anyone else attempts to break the seal, the presence of the Spirit of God proclaims two things: this person is owned by God, belonging to the kingdom of God, and this person will be protected by God.  The Holy Spirit is the arrabon.  After we believed, we were sealed by the Holy Spirit of the promise, who is an arrabon, a “non-redeemable down payment of our inheritance.”

Notice the term inheritance.  Inheritance is the completion of everything we’re supposed to receive.  God is giving us the Holy Spirit as proof that God is true to His word, and we’re going to receive everything He intends.  He has promised: Heaven, glorification, ruling, rewards, the New Jerusalem, the presence of Jesus Christ throughout eternity, joys forevermore at His right hand, the position of exalted sonship above angels, and the recognition of our authority throughout the universe because of who we are in Christ as we’ve been joined to Christ.  All of those things are our inheritance in the kingdom of God.

The proof of that future inheritance is the person of the Spirit of God.  God has given two-thirds of the Trinity to us.  One person was given on the cross, the other in the person of the Spirit of God to win our allegiance.  After doing that, in effect, He says, “Make sense out of it; make sense of how important you are.  Make sense of how loved you are.  Look at these gifts and think it through, because this is God who is God the Father, giving these gifts.”  The cross defines our worth.  The person of the Spirit of God defines our security.  Two-thirds of the Trinity have been given to win our allegiance.