The Holy Spirit, our... Midwife?

 The life of a Christian can be put into a rough correspondence with the events of the Exodus, and this imagery is especially helpful for us during the Passover season. I've written previously about the similarities between Pharaoh and the "old man" written of by Paul (Romans 6:6, Ephesians 4:22), and this post is along the same lines. The "old man" is the person that we were before repentance and baptism. As much as we would like to be a 100% new person who doesn't sin anymore after baptism, it just doesn't work that way! We are still physical beings, and we have to struggle against the flesh and bring it into subjection to God. Occasionally, the Old Man gets the upper hand, and our spiritual lives wane - in effect, we go back to bondage in spiritual Egypt.

God allowed Israel, His people, to suffer slavery in Egypt for over 400 years. Even while they were slaves, God watched over them and allowed their population to grow larger and larger, working to fulfill a promise made to Abraham. Eventually, the Pharaoh came to see Israel's increasing numbers as a threat, and so he devised a plan to keep their population under control. 

Exodus 1:9-11
And [Pharaoh] said to his people, "Look, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we; come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land." Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them.

When we're living as slaves to sin and allowing the Old Man to rule over us, he does as much as he can to squash out the influence of the Holy Spirit within us. In effect, he wants to stop us from becoming strong enough to free ourselves.

Exodus 1:12
But the more [the Egyptians] afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.

 Fortunately for us, God is jealous for us and He works to prevent us from being lost to sin:

2 Corinthians 11:2
For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.

So how does the Old Man respond to the help that God offers when we're down? When Pharaoh saw that God had allowed the Israelites to multiply, he took even more drastic measures to stop their growth.

Exodus 1:15-16
Then the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives... “When you do the duties of a midwife for the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstools, if it is a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live.”

The Old Man in us will afflict us with all kinds of trials, but God is smarter and stronger than our flesh. He worked out a way to thwart Pharaoh's genocide through these courageous midwives.

Exodus 1:17-20
But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive... Therefore God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very mighty. 

God has put an analog of these midwives in us, something that allows us to always be pulled back to Him no matter how far we go astray.

Galatians 4:6-7
And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.

Because God has put His Spirit in our hearts, we cannot remain in bondage. When we turn from His way, the Holy Spirit cries out for us to turn back to Him. As Jesus promised, the Spirit convicts us of sin and of righteousness, and the only way that we can stay under the Old Man's rule is if we continually deny our new spiritual nature. In this way, the Holy Spirit serves the same function that the midwives served - to protect us and allow us to grow our way out of bondage.