SPIRIT OF GRACE

Our text for today is often quoted in connection with a prayer meeting. As believers desire fervency in prayer they often ask that a spirit of grace and supplications be granted to them. Indeed, many translations, including the KJV, have ‘spirit’ here without a capital, understanding the expression to refer to a human disposition of good-will and intercession. Here, however, the context points to the Holy Spirit. Zechariah 12 describes one of the great conversions of Scripture. As Isaiah predicts, a nation shall be born at once, Isa. 66. 8. Like all true conversions, this one will be preceded by real conviction of sin. The agent of this work of grace will be the Holy Spirit and the result will be the spiritual deliverance of a remnant of latter day Israel.

In our times when mass evangelism has tended to produce a shallowness in conversions and where emotional manipulation and high pressure tactics have often been employed to generate results in Gospel preaching, our text is a healthy reminder of the indispensable place given in Scripture to the Holy Spirit’s work in this area. His ministry produces, through the word preached, a sense of guiltiness and helplessness leading the soul to faith in Christ. In this divine operation, the work of the Holy Spirit is as necessary as the work of Christ.

Here, the Holy Spirit is designated the ‘Spirit of grace and supplications’. He is the ‘Spirit of grace’ because it is a special favour for sinners to be the subjects of His gracious and tender strivings. These strivings, in turn, produce a sense of need in the conscience of those involved and earnest pleas for mercy. Associated with these strivings and supplications there is sorrow as the attention is directed to the Saviour who suffered, and a sight of the crucified One serves to increase a sense of sin and guilt. This leads to a solitude where normal social life is suspended because the repentance is so real. All of this comes about through the work of the ‘Spirit of grace and supplications’.

This is not the ‘irresistible grace’ of some systematic theology, for this very same expression is employed in Hebrews, where we are told of some who have ‘done despite unto the Spirit of grace’, Heb. 10. 29.