God the Holy Spirit

by John Hosier

Brighton, UK

The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, yet he is surely the one most difficult to think of as a person. The titles ‘God the Father’ and ‘Jesus the Son’ immediately identify them as persons, but if we speak of the Holy Spirit or even God the Holy Spirit, that identification is not so obvious.

Years ago I was helped by a book written by the evangelist R A Torrey, a contemporary and friend of D L Moody. It was entitled The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit. He clearly recognised the Holy Spirit as a person.

He is a person

The Creeds and Confessions of the church throughout the centuries spell out the Holy Spirit’s personhood in very definite terms. The Nicene Creed speaks of ‘the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life’. The Athanasian Creed says, ‘For there is one person of the Father: another of the Son: and another of the Holy Spirit.’ It goes on, ‘The Father (is) eternal: the Son (is) eternal: the Holy Spirit (is) eternal.’ The Westminster Confession of Faith declares, ‘In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power and eternity; God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost…‘

The Confessions and Creeds gain their understanding of truth directly from the Scriptures but, while clearly implying the personhood of the Holy Spirit, the Bible doesn’t state it in quite those terms. The danger, then, is that though we believe in the Trinity, we can be inclined to feel that the Holy Spirit is more like a power or influence than a person. Certainly the Holy Spirit has great power and influence, but he exercises those as the third person of the Trinity. ‘Theoretically most of us believe this but do we, in our real thought of him and in our practical attitude towards him, treat him as if he were indeed a person?’(R A Torrey, The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, Zondervan. p22). Good question, and it’s right to remind ourselves that the Holy Spirit does what only persons can do. He knows things (1 Cor. 2:11), he prays (Rom. 8:27), he loves (Rom. 15:30), he feels deeply (Eph. 4:30), and he speaks (Rev. 2:7) – to name but a few.

In some way there is always controversy over the different members of the Trinity. Probably with God the Father it is around the area of His love and His wrath. Concerning the Son, it often has to do with accepting both his full deity and full humanity. When it comes to the Holy Spirit it is most likely to be around his remoteness and his nearness or, to put it more theologically, his transcendence and imminence.

He is holy

Certainly he is the Holy Spirit, for he is God and in terms of majesty, perfection and utter sinlessness he is totally removed and different from us, which is where some seem to want to keep him, utterly remote in every way! So there are those who agree that the Holy Spirit does indwell the believer but don’t expect to experience anything. Yes, the Holy Spirit gave signs and wonders and miracles to the early church but don’t expect them now. Yes, the Holy Spirit gave gifts to the early church but such things died out with the end of the apostolic age and the completion of the Scriptures. These opinions clash with those who claim present powerful experiences of the Holy Spirit; that miracles are being done today and that there are church communities where every gift of the Spirit mentioned in the New Testament is to some degree, at least, in use right now.

It is wonderful to discover that the Spirit who hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation (Gen. 1:2), who anointed certain men and women with power in the Old Testament period (eg 1 Sam. 10:10), who was poured out on the early church on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1f), and who gave gifts to the church (1 Cor. 12) is the same person who is coming with power, gifts and miracles to the church today. It makes you feel pretty positive about the church’s future prospects! As Peter Lewis says, ‘The Holy Spirit is God-next-to-us’ (Peter Lewis, The Glory of Christ, Hodder and Stoughton, p42). This is exactly what Jesus promised to his disciples when he said he was going away but that he would send another one just like himself (John 16:7). If Jesus was still here with us in person we would expect power, gifts and miracles. Well, another one just like him is here with us: the Holy Spirit.

He is here for us

In the early days of the modern charismatic movement I was a young pastor overseeing my first church. I was college-trained but very inexperienced and I knew that I desperately needed something more from God. For me the teaching of Dr Lloyd-Jones on baptism in the Spirit was highly persuasive and influential. I sought God for this and on my own in my study felt myself being filled downwards from my head to my feet. My arms shot into the air as I began to worship and a stream of language which I didn’t know came out of my mouth. I was so concerned what my wife might think about me speaking in tongues that I recorded it on an old reel to reel tape recorder, picked my moment and played it to her with the question, ‘What do you think about that?’

He is here for the church

The strange thing was that, once I had been baptised in the Holy Spirit, personally experiencing the power of God became something that couldn’t remain personal. It began to change my whole way of thinking about the church. Surely a church community should know openness to the Spirit, should expect to enjoy freedom in worship, and should be eager for the manifestation of spiritual gifts. This didn’t all dawn on me overnight but it was a result of experiencing the person of the Spirit with power.

Sometimes churches that put an emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit are accused of being casual in their exaltation of Jesus, being more taken up with sensational experiences of the Spirit. But over the years we have found that nothing could be further from the truth. Experiencing the Spirit removes us from a dull academic approach to theology, and stokes our passion and love for Jesus himself. This is hardly surprising when Jesus said the Holy Spirit would make his glory known to us (John 16:14). Jack Deere writes that before being filled with the Spirit, ‘The majority of my efforts and time were given to understanding the Bible and orthodox theology rather than pursuing the Son of God and becoming like him. I had no idea of the depth of the deception that had gripped me’ (Jack Deere, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit, Kingsway, p188). The Holy Spirit is the one who stirs our passion and pursuit of Jesus. He is certainly not remote but the one who is right alongside, speaking to us and illuminating God’s Word. We all know the experience of reading something in the Bible over the years and not really understanding it until one day the light dawns.

He is with us for ever

One of my more recent discoveries about the Holy Spirit is that he will be a dominating figure in our lives even in eternity. I realised this when preparing a sermon on the resurrection of the body and studying 1 Corinthians 15, ‘…The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body’ (1 Cor. 15:42-44).

A ‘spiritual body’ will be real and solid but, in contrast with a natural body, can sound almost ghost-like and ethereal. But I discovered in Tom Wright’s studies that a ‘spiritual body’ most likely means that our resurrection body will be enlivened or dominated by the Holy Spirit – in that sense it will be a spiritual body (see N T Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, SPCK, p354). Edward Donnelly writes, ‘A spiritual body is one completely under the Spirit’s control’ (Edward Donnelly, Heaven and Hell, Banner of Truth, p107). So the Holy Spirit, who is God-next-to-us, will be God present with us for ever. The Spirit won’t disappear in eternity – job done – he will always be present with us. He will be a person whose fellowship and friendship we will enjoy for ever.

As we long for more of the Spirit’s presence today we pray, ‘Come, Holy Spirit.’ After all, if people who are evil know how to give their children good gifts, then, ‘…how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’ (Luke 11:13).