When we receive the Holy Spirit, He, is the ‘earnest’, or literally the foretaste, of our Inheritance in Christ! This means that although we don’t get the full Inheritance now (this comes fully when we get into the Kingdom), through the Holy Spirit we already have what I like to call the advance or the ‘down payment’ on the Inheritance!
This means that through the Holy Spirit we can receive ALL the Power, ALL the Glory that was in Christ and we can receive it NOW! Through the Holy Spirit, we don’t have to wait! This is how we can do the same works Jesus did!
'That [Spirit] is the guarantee of our inheritance [the firstfruits, the pledge and foretaste, the down payment on our heritage], in anticipation of its full redemption and our acquiring [complete] possession of it—to the praise of His glory.' (Ephesians 1.14, Amplified Bible)
You see, if the Holy Spirit is the down payment on our Inheritance, it works like this: if you want to buy a car, most of us don’t normally pay for it outright, you pay a deposit, you buy the car on finance, over a number of years! In fact In the old days under communism, you paid every month out of your wages – it could, and usually did, take at least 20 years, but you didn’t get the car, or even see it until after you had paid the full amount, after 20 years! But here in the West, you go into the car showroom, you see that beautiful, shiny car, you put down a deposit – and you can drive it straight out of the showroom! Literally, as they say, ‘pedal to the metal’, you’re driving it, enjoying it – it’s yours to enjoy fully, without limit, although you only made a down payment! I want you to understand what Paul is saying spiritually! We’ve only got the down payment, but the Holy Spirit is that foretaste, that deposit, which enables us to live in ALL the Glory and Power of God, now!
Put it another way. The house that I live in I built in 1965, but I had to borrow the money to pay for it over a period of more than 20 years! And I think I extended the payments even after that… probably in the end it took me 30 years to actually pay for the house. But of course, when I made the down payment, I got the key! So, I opened the front door and I stood in the hallway... Is that where I stopped? Or in the kitchen? No! I took possession of the whole house, every room, the heating, the lighting, everything! Even though I had only made a down payment! Do you understand – only the down payment!!!
This is an illustration of what happens when we receive the Holy Spirit! He’s our down payment, the key to open the door so that we can go in to ALL the Power and the Glory of the Holy Spirit, ALL the Power of God, to possess it and enjoy it. We don’t stay in that one room, so that we can just boil a kettle and drink tea and nothing more – that ‘house’ is now ours, we’re living in it, enjoying every room, every part of it! So that, from that down payment, the Holy Spirit is that key which unlocks the whole! This is what Paul is emphasising here with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is literally that down payment, so that now we can enter in – to the whole amazing power which we ‘inherit’ from Jesus Himself!