Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
"And grieve not the holy Spirit of promise, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption."
Throughout most of earth's history, historians say, the vast majority of people in every society could neither read nor write. So, a person's seal took the place of a signature. A seal was intended as a sign to be looked at and immediately understood to belong to a particular king or other well-known individual. A person's seal was the equivalent of his name written out. It was designed to make its owner clear, so that even if a person was grossly ignorant and knew nothing of reading or writing, he could look at the seal and know whose seal it was.
Paul said that the saints have been sealed by God with the holy Ghost. By that statement, Paul was teaching that, upon seeing the saints moved by the power of the holy Ghost to praise God, and upon hearing them speaking in tongues, any reasonable person would recognize that those people belonged to God.
God knows how ignorant humans are of eternal, spiritual things. He knows that man cannot find God through human knowledge. So, in great love for everyone, God sets an unmistakable seal on His people. It is a seal like no one else's, so that all men can easily recognize the seal of God as being God's when they first see it. Some people will admit that they recognize the seal of God as being God's seal, but those who are proud and rebellious will not confess it. The proud cannot confess that they know the sign is of God because if they confessed that, others would ask them why they are not also sealed with it. A man has to humble himself to acknowledge the works of God. Whether or not anyone admits it, however, every man's conscience knows that the holy Ghost is of God when he is confronted with it.
Paul said that the miraculous event of speaking in tongues was ordained by God to be "as a sign to unbelievers" (1Cor. 14:22). The saints who meet in my house believe that God is perfect in wisdom. That being so, we also believe that God designed as His seal a sign that always communicates with man's heart. Because it was God, not man, who chose speaking in tongues as the "initial evidence" of God's seal being placed upon His people, we KNOW that seal does exactly what God intended for His seal to do. There is not a better sign to sinners than to see and hear the saints speaking in tongues by the power of the holy Ghost. God Himself chose speaking in tongues as His sign; therefore, it must be perfect. Sinners do not have to be educated in God's ways to be able to know that the people speaking in tongues belong to God. They just have to look at the seal.
The seal of God communicates to the heart of man, not his mind, the very first time that he witnesses a person speaking in tongues. It still points all people to the way of Christ Jesus. Those who have seen the seal may afterward be indoctrinated by false teachers against it and, so, forget what they felt when they first heard one of God's children speak in tongues, but that changes nothing. It does not alter the fact that speaking in tongues is God's chosen sign, His seal on those whom He has redeemed to Himself, nor does a man's rejection of the sign mean that God's perfect, chosen sign has failed in its purpose. It only means that men are still liars, easily deceived.
Without God's seal, no transaction is legitimate in the kingdom of God. The claims of conversions to Christ by hundreds of millions of Christians on earth are shown to be false by the absence of the seal of God on their lives. You must be sealed by the holy Ghost, and you will be sealed when your faith and repentance have pleased the Father. Do not look to men to tell you when your soul is prepared to meet God in peace. Look to Jesus, "the author and finisher of our faith". He is the one who sets the seal of God on a person's soul, and when he seals you with that "holy Spirit of promise", you will speak in tongues and become one of those who provide sinners with the sign of the way to eternal life.