April 7
“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” (Ephesians 4:30)
Yesterday we began looking at what it means to grieve the Holy Spirit, especially from the perspective of the Holy Spirit. We saw how this word denotes that the Spirit has feelings and is upset by our sin. I had always assumed He might be angry or distant as a result of my sin, but I hadn’t really thought about it affecting Him emotionally or causing Him distress and sorrow. I think of God as being impervious and immune to such things, but that is not what the scripture seems to be telling us. How He feels about our sin and what it does to Him personally is something that quite frankly I have been very insensitive to. Have you ever thought that your sin might make God distressed?
Am I making sense here? Do you see my point? I don’t want to grieve another person, and I don’t want to hurt them or cause distress and emotional pain, especially not to one close to me, one who has spent many years caring for me. Yet that is what I am doing to God when I sin. I just never really thought of it in that light before. I never really thought I was causing distress and sorrow to God Himself. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to hurt Him. I hadn’t really realized He could be hurt or that He was sensitive to my sin in that way, but now I do. I had always thought of grieving the Holy Spirit more along the lines of Him getting angry or wanting to stay away from us, not actually hurting Him.
Since He sees everything I do and knows the evil thoughts and intentions of my heart, I think I am grieving and hurting Him and causing Him pain a lot more than I realize. We are not aware of this pain because we don’t feel it; we are numb to it, and we are too insensitive to Him when we sin to feel it anyway. He doesn’t put it onto us, He doesn’t try to use it to manipulate us, He doesn’t bring it up later or hang it over our heads (although He may remind us of it so we can repent of it and confess it to Him and receive forgiveness and restoration of fellowship with God); we can grieve Him and be completely oblivious to it, possibly even going on for years in sin and not realizing we are causing Him emotional pain each and every day! Poor Holy Spirit! Having to put up with not only our sin but our insensitivity to Him and our refusal to listen to His quiet voice!
Loving the Lord enough to not want to grieve Him or cause Him distress can be another powerful motivator for us to avoid evil and work harder at overcoming our sin. Let’s consider the effect of our sin on Him next time we are tempted to disobey Him.