I am currently in West Virginia at a Ski Resort with my church's youth group. I was invited as a guest speaker and teacher, and I am supposed to lead our group meetings at night. My topic of study for these few days is one that has been with me throughout my time in college. We are studying the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
I want to share with you (my readers) some of the big ideas I want these students to take away.
1) The Holy Spirit is a person. He is not an "it" or a mystical power. The Holy Spirit, of course, has great power, but He is not mainly a power. The Spirit wills things, talks to us, has feelings, can be grieved or pleased, and exercises intelligence and wisdom. In other words, the Spirit of God is vastly different from the force in Star Wars.
2) The Holy Spirit is God. Islam denies this truth (and also Jesus' divinity). However, often in the Old Testament, a prophecy or Scripture will be attributed to God. Then, when it is quoted in the New Testament, it is attributed to the Holy Spirit. For an example, see Jeremiah 31:31-34 and Hebrews 10:15-17. Additionally, the Holy Spirit possesses all of the attributes of God - omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, eternality, etc. The Spirit also performs the works of God, things that only God can do.
3) The Holy Spirit indwells believers. This is the one that is craziest to me. Consider God's holiness, and how he made his presence known to the people of Israel by dwelling in their midst in the tabernacle. The high priest could only enter the Holy of Holies, where God made his presence known, once per year. God then made his presence known to us by sending his Son to become a man. Jesus was God in the flesh. And having purchased a new covenant by the blood of Jesus, God make his presence known in a radically new way. The Spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives in us as believers. I cannot comprehend the depths of that truth.
Jesus said that this current arrangement is better for us than if he had simply stayed here on earth. "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you." (John 16:7) This is a very hard verse for me to practically believe, but I must trust Jesus in this. In what way should I be living so that my life bears witness to this truth? I conclude that I must live in much closer fellowship with the Spirit; I must live in far greater dependence on the Spirit; I must trust the Spirit more than I already do.
Jesus taught a great deal in John 14-17, and a lot of it had to do with the Spirit. As he was soon going to the Father, he promised to send the Spirit. A final verse to blow your mind is found in John 14:2, and though it does not specifically mention the Holy Spirit, the context of the passage suggests that only with the divine Helper may this verse be fulfilled:
"Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father." (John 14:2)
God in the person of the Holy Spirit indwells you! May you walk in light of that truth. May God's grace rest on me as I, a sinner and no expert in the ways of the Spirit, attempt to communicate these truths to my friends in the youth group.
Question...when you say the Holy Spirit is a person...isn't Christ the only one in the trinity that has been incarnated into a man. And would you say God the father is a "spirit" not a "person" as we might think of it? So then wouldn't that make the Holy Spirit not a "person" but something else instead? you know me man...playin' devil's advocate with you.
ReplyDeleteYes. Christ is the only member of the Trinity incarnated into a man. And yes, the Father is spirit. And yes, the Father and Spirit may not fit the definition you are using for person.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think you need to take another look at your definition for person. I think you are taking it be synonymous with man (or woman), a being with a body. That is not what I mean.
If you define person the way that you have, then Jesus would not have been a person until his incarnation. (Or pre-incarnation if you take the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament to be Jesus.) And you will cease to be a person when you die until the resurrection of your glorified body.
When I describe the Holy Spirit as a person, it is because he speaks, he has a will, he brings his will to pass, he can be grieved, quenched or pleased with us, he loves, he has emotions. The Spirit in all his activity is much nearer to a person than a thing because of his intelligence, will, and emotions. That is why the pronoun used to refer to him in the Bible is "he", not "it". And my loving relationship with him is much nearer to loving a human than it is to loving "something else instead".
I would not want to take away the personality of the Spirit because it would be much easier for me to begin thinking of him in a very vague way. I can sin against and grieve a person; I can't grieve this amorphous feeling or force that many people think of when they think of the Spirit. I think part of the problem with much of Christianity today (at least in America) is that we are doing church and living our lives outside of the power of the Spirit, and the root to that problem may be that we don't realize there is a holy Someone living in us, not merely a holy Something.
I think you probably agree with me, and we are arguing over the meaning of words. However, to argue that the Holy Spirit is not a person might put you at odds with the orthodox understanding of the Trinity. To answer your devil's advocate question, I believe the Holy Spirit is a person without a body. I believe that the things we look to when we think of our own person-hood are dim approximations of the realities in God that they point to. What a divine miracle to be made in the image of our God!
With grace and peace, I submit this overly long reply. I love you brother.