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Paul knows the language of obedience, and often speaks of the operation of the word of God on the mind. But in his inspired words here he doesn't use that language, but instead portrays the Holy Spirit as an active Person Who has been given to us, and is acting on our hearts to fill them with the love of God, which love human intellect can neither contain nor even faintly begin to describe.

One has to wonder, then, why Paul bothered to make such an exhaustive case for the gospel in Romans (and elsewhere). Let's look again at Rom. 5:5, noting that he doesn't start there, nor does he stop there.

"And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us."

Note the use of "because" to explain why our hope maketh not ashamed. The love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. How did that happen? We see the answer in the next several verses, as Paul explains what the love of God did:

"For while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God through him. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life; and not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation."

The love of God is plainly seen in Paul's summary here, and seeing it makes us "rejoice in the hope of the glory of God." Did he get this from intellectual pondering or discussions at the Aeropagus? No, the Holy Spirit revealed it to him, and he preached it to the lost so it could be shed abroad in their hearts.

In which we see Paul making a clear distinction between a Gospel in word only versus a Gospel come in both words and in Holy Spirit power. If the word and the Spirit were the functionally same thing, there'd be no point in making the distinction.

From the beginning in Acts 1, we see that the apostles were to be equipped for their task of testifying to the resurrection and preaching the gospel:

"But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." - Acts 1:8

The fulfillment of that promise, their equipping for the task, comes in Acts 2. And throughout Acts we see God authenticating these preachers by signs and wonders through the Holy Spirit, just as He had done with His Son. The gospel came "not in word only, but also in power". As intended, this was convincing to the Thessalonians. Who among them wouldn't rejoice at such a gospel?

This is much more than simple, mechanical obedience.

Indeed it is, and I wouldn't argue otherwise. In Ps. 119 (and elsewhere), we see the joy David found in studying and obeying the word of God. Did he have an indwelling of the Holy Spirit? Did he have "a real, personal communion with the Spirit of the living God"?

Words do not grieve. Persons grieve. He says right there we have that seal of the Holy Spirit until the day of redemption, so He is not going anywhere, even when we grieve Him.

The Holy Spirit is indeed a person. And disciples are sealed (authenticated, attested to, preserved) by Him. How does this happen? How does the child of God avoid grieving the Holy Spirit? And how did he become authenticated? The answer is found throughout that chapter (your excerpt of v. 30 falls right in the midst of it), in the warnings and instructions Paul gives the Ephesian Christians, contrasting them with the ungodly, those who are not sealed by the Holy Ghost:

"But ye did not so learn Christ; if so be that ye heard him, and were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus..." (vv. 20-21)

In sum, Campbellism appears to me to be a kind of radical cessationism, the idea that the Holy Spirit has totally left off any involvement with believers other than leaving them with the text of Scripture.

If you wish to debate Campbell, feel free to do so. But I ain't him. Nor am I a disciple of his, but of Christ's.

The text of Scripture is nothing to take lightly. It is the very word of the King. To disparage, reject, ignore, or be ashamed of it is to do likewise to the King (Luke 6:47, Mark 8:38, etc.) God spoke, and the worlds came into existence.

"...so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." - Is. 51:16

"...how shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation? which having at the first been spoken through the Lord, was confirmed unto us by them that heard; God also bearing witness with them, both by signs and wonders, and by manifold powers, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to his own will." - Heb. 2:3

God has spoken to us through His Son and through those whom He inspired and authenticated by the Holy Spirit. We disparage God's message to our peril.

"For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for he giveth not the Spirit by measure." - John 3:34

"For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart." - Heb. 4:12

This word, delivered to us by God, by the Son, and by the Spirit, guides the disciple, guards him, saves him, seals him, fills him, gives him joy, and on and on.

This is God doing it. And Jesus doing it. And the Spirit doing it.

This is God living in him. And Jesus abiding in him. And the Sprit dwelling in him.

My argument is not with someone dead and gone like Campbell, but with the legacy of his false teaching that lives on in Campbellism.

Having said that, I will be honest. I am having a hard time tracking your argument. Yes, in Romans 5:5 Paul speaks of the love that the Holy Spirit:, Who has been given to us, as being "poured out" ("ekxeo") in our heart, but you draw an odd and counterintuitive set of causal connections. The passage begins at verse 1 with our justification by faith (as opposed to works). Paul then goes on with a series of consequences to this justification grounded in faith:

1. Peace with God,
2. Access by faith into the grace that gives us this standing before God
3. As a result of our new standing, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God
4. We even glory in tribulation, because tribulation produces certain effects:
    a) patience, which produces
    b) experience, which produces
    c) hope

Now this hope is not like false hope. It has a sound basis in objective truth. No matter what happens to us in this life, we know where we stand with God. We know our hope in Him will not come up short. And here's the causal link: We know this because God's Holy Spirit has poured love into our hearts! Epistemologically, God gives us certainty.

By contrast, consider this:

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.
(Proverbs 13:12)

Paul and Solomon are both addressing the inner workings of the human heart. In Solomon's case, he understands how hard it is to go on when we realize some dear hope we have will never, ever be realized. I have lived that. It can feel like dying. Solomon understood the heart well.

And so does Paul, in these equally inspired words. This new hope we have, being justified by faith, will not be deferred, but we have the indwelling Holy Spirit as the seal, the down-payment on the greater inheritance to come, and this living relationship, this love He pours out in our hearts, is not transitory as in the Old Covenant, but gives us a certainty of our standing before God.

And as if some Doubting Thomas might raise the objection that we don't really know if God loves us, Paul jumps right from our subjective experience of that love into objective proof of that love, how Christ in giving Himself for our sins shows that love unmistakably. We can, as those justified by faith, have absolute confidence in His love for us, and His protection of us from the divine wrath against sin which we so richly deserve. Our hope will not be disappointed.

So again this looks mainly like a false dilemma. There is no one here that I know of suggesting disobedience to Jesus. For myself at least, I am assuming that everyone here wants to obey Him. So that isn't even an issue. Nor is it even a question whether He uses His word to accomplish His purifying work among His people. Of course He does. No one is arguing against either of those propositions.

The problem comes in the added language, the extra baggage added to Scripture that isn't there. In the case of Campbellism, the added term would be this, that the Holy Spirit indwells by the word only, and not as the Comforter, the Paraclete, the one who comes along side us, who prays for us in our stead, saying for us what we need to say to God when we can't even think of how to form the words, who pours the love of God into our hearts personally and individually, testifying to us of the reality of our blessed hope:

The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
(Romans 8:16)

We don't say that we know how that works. But taking the surrounding context of the passage, it is obvious once again that Paul is describing a vital union that is based on an objective reality and has many happy subjective effects. It is a false dilemma to position those two things as if they were in conflict with one another. They are perfectly harmonious.

Are there those who abuse the Scriptural teachings on the indwelling of the Spirit? Sure. But just because a truth can be abused doesn't make it untrue. Are there things we don't understand about the workings of God's Spirit with the spirit of the believer? Absolutely. Does that give us an excuse to convert all those gaps in our knowledge into something more "manageable?" Probably not a good idea. It's one thing to try and explain the word, or to have thoughts about what it means. It's quite another thing altogether to take multiple passages and cancel their plain sense meaning in order to preserve some other doctrinal objective, whatever that might be. We don't have that authority. The Pharisees canceled out the plain sense of honoring mother and father by their "creative" Corban rule. Spiritually, that is a high risk area, and there isn't enough hazard pay in the world to make it worth my while to go there. Just sayin ...

Peace,

SR