Question:
What is the “earnest of the Spirit” that Paul speaks about in 2 Corinthians?
Answer:
There are two mentions of the “earnest of the Spirit” made by Paul:
“But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts” (2 Corinthians 1:18-22).
“Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:5-8).
This “earnest” makes the possessor confident in the promises of God being sealed by the Spirit. God thus assures his people that they shall be saved; this “pledge” makes their title to eternal life sure.
Noted preacher Charles Spurgeon describes it this way:
In the early times when land was sold, the owner cut a turf from the greensward and cast it into the cap of the purchase as a token that it was his; or he tore off the branch of a tree and put it into the new owner’s hand to show that he was entitled to all the products of the soil; and when the purchaser of a house received seizing or possession, the key of the door or a bundle of thatch plucked from the roof; signified that the building was yielded up to him. The God of all grace has given to his people all the perfections of heaven to be their heritage for ever, and the earnest of his Spirit is to them the blessed token that all things are theirs. The Spirit’s work of comfort and sanctification is a part of heaven’s covenant blessings, a turf from the soil of Canaan, a twig from the tree of life, the key to mansions in the skies. Possessing the earnest of the Spirit we have received seizing of heaven.
Spurgeon, Charles. Entry for ‘Earnest of the Spirit: the Pledge of Heaven’. Spurgeon’s Illustration Collection. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fff/e/earnest-of-the-spirit-the-pledge-of-heaven.html. 1870.
