The Problem of Loneliness (Pt. 4)
God the Spirit Comforts Us
The Holy Spirit is the Comforter who is with us.
This means that he applies the truths of the gospel to the hearts of believers and continues with us, reminding us that God loves us and that Jesus came for us.
Even after our relationship with God the Father is repaired through faith in God the Son, we struggle to believe it. That’s ok- This is why He then sends the Spirit.
Romans 5:1–5
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (ESV)
Did you hear the end of those verses?
The beginning says that we have peace with God. We also have hope. And we can rejoice in our sufferings- including loneliness?
How?
Because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
Remember that the Holy Spirit IS God. God freely gives us himself. Again.
In Christ- bodily on the cross as the propitiation for our sin.
But also- spiritually in this Spirit of life that we have with us, even now.
We have the Spirit of God indwelling us. Now. Right here. Accessible every moment.
We may feel disconnected from God but the reality is that we are vitally connected to God by the Spirit through faith in Christ Jesus.
The Spirit actively communicates the truth to our hearts that we are not forsaken. This is why he is called the Comforter. He comforts us by showing us the love that God has for us in Christ. He is the one who reminds us of what God has done to relate to me in sending the Son and giving me the Spirit.
What does that mean for you in your relationship to God?
Let’s go back to creation to answer that.
That sinful turn from worshipping God to worshipping ourselves in Genesis 3 has made us even more bent inward on ourselves. Incurvatus in se is Latin for "turned/curved inward on oneself.”
Remember that we were made in God’s image to love outward- both God and others. But we bend inward, curling all our love inward on ourselves in an ugly, twisted, perverted mess.
What do we do? We engage with the Spirit of God-
Listen to this quote from Delighting in the Trinity by Michael Reeves.
“It is by the Spirit that the Father has eternally loved his Son. And so, by sharing their Spirit with us, the Father and the Son share with us their own life, love and fellowship. By the Spirit uniting me to Christ, the Father knows and loves me as a son; by the Spirit I begin to know and love him as my Father. By the Spirit I begin to love aright, unbending me from my self-love, he wins me to share the Fathers pleasure in the Son and the Son’s in the Father. By the Spirit I slowly begin to love as God loves with his own generous overflowing self-giving love for others.” pg 98
By the power of the Holy Spirit, we are made able to love God and love others. This is vitally important as we face loneliness in our relationship with God and in our relationships with other people.
Do you see, the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit enables us to truly love God and love others, just like we were created to do in God’s image.
This begins in salvation- when we first believe that God saves us by Christ’s atoning work on the cross. When we first believe, the Holy Spirit comes to us and give us a new heart, thus enabling us to actually love God and love others.
If you’re thinking that you can skip the salvation step and just access God on your own, you’ve got to know that’s not how it works. We can only come to God the Father through God the Son. And that means uniting yourself to Christ in faith. If you know yourself not to be a Christian, this has to be the first step for you. Let God deal with your sin in Christ, then you can freely come to the God who is love forever. (Read Eph. 2:1-10 to see this better.) Until you are in Christ, you are dead in your sin. But when you come to Jesus in faith, the Spirit will give you a new heart and you will finally be able to love God and love others.
So, the part for the Christian is two-fold. Repent and believe. This is the cycle of the Christian life, meant to fill our days. Repent and believe. Repent and believe.
We are created to be in community with God and with people. When you attempt to do that, you will sometimes fail.
There will be days that you avoid people at church because you don’t think that they can understand you. There will be times that you skip praying because your heart’s just not in it. You won’t love God and love people well. And when you don’t, do two things …
Repent and believe.
First- repent. Repentance tells the truth about our sin. It’s recognizing before God (and sometimes others) that we failed to image God rightly, in loving God and loving others.
Second- Believe. The Holy Spirit IS at work in the Christian’s heart communicating the truths of the gospel and the love of God for us in Christ. When you fail, repent, but then believe the sweetness of the gospel. Believe that God loves you and he is working for your good.
This is the cycle/pattern of the Christian life. We repent and believe each day, and so grow in love for God and others, like we were made to do.