Instinct for Animals, the Holy Spirit for Man

 The following is from W. Ian Thomas' final book The Indwelling Life of Christ:  All of Him in All of Me:

 "Instinct is indispensable to animals in the same way that the Holy Spirit is indispensable to us in our humanity.  

"Human beings are uniquely made with the capacity to be governed by God Himself dwelling within the human spirit in intimate identity with the human soul, so that God, within the human spirit, gains access to the human soul.  There He plays that role in man's soul which instinct plays in the animal--teaching the mind, controlling the emotions, and directing the will.  In this way, according to His intended design and purpose, He governs our behavior, so that He in us is the origin of His own image, source of His own activity, dynamic of His own demands, and cause of His own effect.

"God has created us to be functional only by virtue of His presence, exercising His divine sovereignty within our humanity so that out of our love for Him, we live in utter dependence upon Him.  Moreover, the only evidence any of us can give of such dependence on Him is our unquestioning obedience to Him.

"This is the threefold moral relationship--love for Him, dependence upon Him, and obedience to Him--that allows God to be God in action within a human being.

"This is also the threefold moral relationship which Jesus Christ, for thirty-three years on earth, expressed toward His Father.  His love for the Father demanded absolute, unquestioning dependence upon the Father and total obedience to the Father.  That is why He said that without His Father, He could do nothing (John 5:19, 30).  The true sinlessness of Jesus was His constant reliance on the Father, never falling back on Himself.

"If you and I are to be functional, this same relationship that existed between Jesus Christ and His Father in heaven must also be the relationship between ourselves and the Lord Jesus.

". . . Your new birth puts God into action in you.  It lets all of God loose, clothed with the redeemed humanity of your own flesh and blood as a forgiven sinner, so that at last you become a normal human being as Jesus was."