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I. WE ARE THE HEIRS OF A SPIRITUAL INHERITANCE. It is quite consistent with the present economy of mercy that we should enjoy some of this whilst on earth, and before we are put in full possession. Many things in the Divine purpose, and in the history of the world, preceded Christ's personal mediation, prepared the way for it, and passed over, through His work, in blessings upon our souls. We were originally members of a disinherited race. The inheritance under consideration was the rightful possession of our Lord as the Only-begotten of the Father. As to our interest in it, it lay under a forfeiture, and we were treated as aliens. It is also) a merciful part of the plan that it should, at least for a time, be vested in Christ as trustee for us. In Eden, the inheritance of life was vested in the first man, who lost it to himself and all his posterity. God is our inheritance, and heaven is the place where most perfectly we shall enter upon its full and undisputed enjoyment. This is our estate; not ours for years merely, but for eternity, It will then be subject neither to corruption nor violence. Heaven, with its freedom from sin, sickness, pain, the curse, and death, is ours in reversion.

II. THE SPIRIT IS GIVEN TO US AS AN EARNEST OF THIS SPLENDID INHERITANCE.

1. It is supposed that the word and its use came to the Greeks from the Syrian and Phoenician merchants, just as the words "tariff " and "cargo" came to England from Spanish merchants. The technical sense of the word signifies the deposit paid by the purchaser on entering into an agreement for the purchase of anything. The identity of the deposit with the full payment is a very essential consideration in the force and use of the word. In many of the rural districts of Scotland, and possibly in other places, a shilling, or small sum of money, is put into the hand of a servant when hired for a certain work as handsel-money, and as a pledge that when the whole work is done the whole wages shall be paid. Two things, therefore, seem to be included in the meaning of the word used: first, that it should be the same in kind as the fulness of which it is a part; and, secondly, representing our present state as Christians, it affirms the certainty of our privileges in this world and the next. As God Himself is said to be our inheritance — as we are said to have the inheritance in Christ — so the Holy Ghost is Himself the earnest of it in our hearts. It is not a work which He delegates to another; nor would it suffice to say that any one blessing, such as pardon, life, or peace, is the earnest of heaven it is the Spirit Himself only. He is the earnest of heaven.

2. The earnest is thus part of- our future inheritance, and identical in kind with it. An infant has a title to an inheritance which has descended from his deceased father; and though not legally, or in fact, in possession, except as under tutors and governors, certain advances are made from it to conduct his education, and in this way foretastes of it are given to him. As he passes through the family mansion, forests, and fields, and meets with the servants of the estate, he has in this walk, and in the loving respect of faithful dependents, an earnest of what he is speedily coming to; and we can imagine how his breast, as heir, would heave with excitement on the eve of possessing the inheritance. This experience of the earthly heir may help us, as an illustration, to understand our present enjoyment of "the firstfruits of the Spirit," which, upon the testimony of the apostle, we now have. To take the blessing, eternal life, it is obvious, from both our Lord's teaching and that of His apostles, that in all the essential elements of eternal life we are equal to "the spirits of just men made perfect" (Hebrews 12:23). We form part of the same family. Life in heaven is just our spiritual life here, excepting the amplification and elevation which death, as a freedom from the body and from the fretting power of sin, will confer upon us. Again, how vivid is the writer's conception of the likeness, and indeed identity, of the earnest to the whole in his view of the nearness of the believers on earth to heaven. "But ye are come unto Mount Sion" (Hebrews 12:22, 23). Portions of this inheritance are ministered to us in advance. True, it is but twilight yet with us. But as the sun is seen from the lofty Swiss mountains to throw forward on the distant peaks his rays, as skirmishers before an army, to announce his coming, so our present foretastes of heaven — the earnest of our inheritance, calm, intelligent faith in the Lord, love to Him and to His people, and our luminous hope cast as an anchor within the veil — testify that the day in which there shall be no night is at hand. All these experiences are pledges of our immediate admission into heaven when we die.

3. The earnest of the Spirit, which is thus a real part of the inheritance of heaven, is only a part of it. There is no principle or fixed rule by which we could define the proportion which it bears as a part to the whole. A handful of wheat offered by the farmer in the market as a sample to the purchaser of the entire crop, though identically the same, bears a very small proportion to the whole. We may safely infer that the earnest is less than the whole. The Spirit who Himself is the earnest, with all the grace and love which He is pleased to bestow upon our souls, is but a part. All the blessings of which God kindly thought and devised for us in eternity, which cost the Redeemer His life to secure and bestow as the efficient cause of oar salvation, and which the Holy Ghost came down from heaven to reveal, are undoubtedly involved in this earnest. How stupendous a thought that something greater — and how much greater! — awaits us when we shall see God! It may be said that even here we have God, and what more can we have inheaven? But there He will be our God without any of the deductions made for our present imperfections and actual transgressions (1 Corinthians 13:12; 1 John 3:2).

(A. Douglas McMillan.)

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KJV: Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.

WEB: who also sealed us, and gave us the down payment of the Spirit in our hearts.