“And grieve not the holy Spirit of God…..” Eph. 4:30
The word “grieve” speaks of causing pain and sorrow. It is associated with love. This tells us that the Holy Spirit is a person. You can’t grieve an influence. Since He is a person he knows, loves, hates, feels, and hurts. Since He loves us it is possible for us to cause Him grief. And the greater the love the deeper the grief. That being the case, we cannot even imagine how much it hurts God when we grieve Him. It hurts Him because He knows and cares that we are actually hurting ourselves. So this is no minor matter.
When we think of sin we generally think about how it hurts us or others, but our greater concern should be how it hurts God. It’s our responsibility to please God, but when we sin we cause Him pain. We hurt the one who loves us most. What we need to remember is that the Holy Spirit is more sensitive to sin than we realize. Sin of any sort grieves Him – whether it is an act, an attitude, or an absence. Even the appearance of evil concerns Him. Our manner of life is of great importance to God and we must give an account for even the smallest word or deed. This is why God tells us how we should walk in this wicked world.
Looking at this letter we see that we should walk worthy ( 4:1-16); differently ( 4:17-24); in love ( 4:25-5:2); in light ( 5:3-14), and carefully (5:15). We are to avoid anything that offends, hurts, hinders, or brings sorrow to the Holy Spirit. As Christians we find our greatest happiness in pleasing God and we suffer our greatest harm in hurting Him. We cannot sin successfully. Hurting God hurts us and hinders others. So, “grieve not the holy Spirit of God..…”. The only way for us to succeed at this is to “ be filled with the Spirit” ( 5:18). Unless we are under His control we are out of control. – HDS
David Stone
Lakeway Baptist Church
5801 FM 1960 E
Humble, TX. 77346
