"There is no Christianity without the Holy Spirit." Everything in the Christian life rests on the help and power of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who enables us to repent and believe. It is the Holy Spirit who gives us power to hate and resist sin. It is the Holy Spirit who is at work in opening out minds to know and understand the scriptures. It is the Holy Spirit who makes us holy and conformed to the image of Christ. Without his power and help, we can do nothing.

There is no Christianity without the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, that glorious and holy person, that member of the Trinity, that breathes life into our souls. He is the one that resurrects us from the dead. And what I mean by that is a reference to Paul's saying to the Ephesians that you are dead in trespasses and sins. That's certainly true legally.

We are under the condemnation of the law. We're dead men. We have broken God's laws. We're guilty before Him and God's death sentence is upon us until we trust the Lord Jesus Christ. But we're also spiritually dead.

I once wanted a very expensive tuner, FM tuner. This was years ago. And I went in to see it demonstrated because I'd heard so many things about it. And the salesman was telling me all of this great stuff about it and why I can't live without it. And I said, well, you know, let's crank it up, let's hear it.

And he pressed the button and it was dead as it could be. And he couldn't get it going And quite interestingly, someone who had been doing something with the displays had unplugged it. And in all of its beauty, in all of its value, and it was quite an expensive piece, it was completely useless because it was not plugged into the source of power. And so it is with human beings, if I can use that without being irreverent, so it is with human beings who are not born of God's Spirit. They're disconnected from God's power.

They cannot hate sin. They hate the results of sin. They hate the misery that sin brings into their lives, making them uncomfortable. But they don't hate sin because it's a crime against God. They don't hate sin because it dishonors their Creator.

And it is only when God in His mercy opens their hearts, grants them life by the power of the Holy Spirit, that they begin to desire holiness, righteous living. So it is the Holy Spirit that is the very power of being a Christian. It is what makes me alive before God. And if the Holy Spirit, who gave us the Scriptures, dwells within me, there is going to be a desire within me to know what the Word of God says and to begin to, by grace, the grace of Christ, what He has done for me in the pardon of my sins, and in the power of the Holy Spirit and the knowledge of the scriptures, I begin to go to work on mortifying my sins, learning how to be a sin assassin, doing what I can to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and learn how to live righteously and soberly and godly in the present world. That's all the work of the Holy Spirit.

I love Him because He is the One who makes me alive in Christ. There is no holiness without the Holy Spirit. And as I said at the beginning, there's no Christianity without the Holy Spirit. So these are inseparable things.