Who is the Holy Spirit?

The fact that the Holy Spirit is a person is seen in a multitude of ways in Scripture. One of the primary evidences is that the Bible repeatedly and consistently uses personal pronouns to refer to Him. He is called “He,” “Him,” and so on, not “it.” Also, He does things that we associate with personality.

He teaches, He inspires, He guides, He leads, He grieves, He convicts us of sin, and more. Impersonal objects do not behave in this manner. Only a person can do these things.

Acts 13:2 NIV

While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

But the Holy Spirit is seen in Scripture not merely as personal but also as fully divine. We see this in a curious story from the book of

But the Holy Spirit is seen in Scripture not merely as personal but also as fully divine. We see this in a curious story from the book of

Acts 5:1–4 NIV

Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet. Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”

The sin of Ananias and Sapphira was that they pretended that their donation to the church was greater than it was. Peter concluded by saying, “You have not lied to man but to God.” So, the lie that Ananias told to the Holy Spirit was actually told to God. The clear implication is that the Holy Spirit is God.

The sin of Ananias and Sapphira was that they pretended that their donation to the church was greater than it was. Peter concluded by saying, “You have not lied to man but to God.” So, the lie that Ananias told to the Holy Spirit was actually told to God. The clear implication is that the Holy Spirit is God.

ATTRIBUTES AND WORKS OF GOD

Furthermore, the New Testament often describes the Holy Spirit as having attributes that are clearly divine. For instance, the Holy Spirit is eternal () and omniscient (). These are both attributes of God. Moreover, they are incommunicable attributes, attributes of God that cannot be shared by man.

Hebrews 9:14 NIV

How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

1 Corinthians 2:10–11 NIV

these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

But none of these things avail for our benefit until they are applied to us personally.

John 1:3 NIV

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

Genesis 1:2 NIV

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

The Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit into the world to apply salvation to us (; ). The role of the Holy Spirit chiefly and principally in the New Testament is to apply the work of Christ to believers.

Most importantly, redemption is a Trinitarian work. The Father sent the Son into the world (). The Son performed all the work that was necessary for our salvation—living a life of perfect obedience and dying to make a perfect satisfaction (; ).

1 John 4:14 NIV

And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.

Philippians 3:9 NIV

and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.

1 Corinthians 15:3 NIV

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,

But none of these things avail for our benefit until they are applied to us personally. Therefore, the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit into the world to apply salvation to us (; ). The role of the Holy Spirit chiefly and principally in the New Testament is to apply the work of Christ to believers.

John 15:26 NIV

“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.

Galatians 4:6 NIV

Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”

FROM SPIRITUAL DEATH TO LIFE

It is very important that we have an accurate understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit in spiritual rebirth. One of the best places to gain such an understanding is in . We read there:

Ephesians 2:1–6 NIV

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,

He declares that Christians have been “made alive.” But if they are now alive, what were they previously? They were “dead in trespasses and sins.” So, Paul is talking about some kind or resurrection, a transformation of people who are dead to new life.

We need to understand what kind of death is in view here. Paul is not talking about physical resurrection because he is not talking about physical death. In His conversation with Nicodemus, after He explained that no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit, Jesus said in

John 3:6–8 NIV

Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

We are dead on arrival spiritually—not just weak, ailing, critically ill, or comatose. There is no spiritual heartbeat, no spiritual breathing, no spiritual brain-wave activity. We are spiritually stillborn, and so we remain—unless God the Holy Spirit makes us alive.

Here Jesus distinguished between the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of human flesh. He said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” He was speaking of people, and He was not simply saying that human beings are born with physical bodies, but that they are born fallen. This means they do not have spiritual life. Instead, they are born spiritually dead.

Yet, that is clearly what Paul is saying. We are dead on arrival spiritually—not just weak, ailing, critically ill, or comatose. There is no spiritual heartbeat, no spiritual breathing, no spiritual brain-wave activity. We are spiritually stillborn, and so we remain—unless God the Holy Spirit makes us alive.

Yet, that is clearly what Paul is saying. We are dead on arrival spiritually—not just weak, ailing, critically ill, or comatose. There is no spiritual heartbeat, no spiritual breathing, no spiritual brain-wave activity. We are spiritually stillborn, and so we remain—unless God the Holy Spirit makes us alive.

“ANOTHER HELPER”

In the upper room on the night before His crucifixion, Jesus gave His disciples some important promises regarding the Spirit. He told them that He was about to depart and that they could not go with Him. Look at

John 14:16 NIV

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—

Some translations use the word “Comforter” instead of “Helper.” The Greek word that is translated as “Helper” or “Comforter” is parakletos; it is the source of the English word paraclete. This word includes a prefix, para-, that means “alongside,” and a root that is a form of the verb kletos, which means “to call.” So, a parakletos was someone who was called to stand alongside another.

That is the way it is in our relationship with the Holy Spirit. We are part of the family of God, and the family attorney is the Holy Spirit Himself. He is always present to come alongside us and help in times of troubles.

Consider what the Disciples were facing: They were going to be without Him in the midst of a hostile world, where they would be hated as He had been hated. Every moment of their lives would be filled with pressure, hostility, and persecution from the world. No one wants to enter that kind of scenario without help.

The Holy Spirit comes to empower and strengthen Christians, to ensure victory or conquest.

The Sanctifier

Among the persons of the Trinity, the Spirit is the principal actor who works for our sanctification, enabling the process by which we are conformed to the image of Christ and made holy. Look at ; ;

There are a couple of reasons why the third person is known as the Holy Spirit. First, the term holy is attached to His title because of the particular task the Spirit performs in our redemption. Among the persons of the Trinity, the Spirit is the principal actor who works for our sanctification, enabling the process by which we are conformed to the image of Christ and made holy.

The primary leading of the Spirit, as set forth in Scripture, is to holiness. It is His power working in us that helps us grow in holiness.

We need to be very careful to go to the pages of the Scripture to learn about God’s will and the leading of the Spirit, and not simply to listen to the popular teachings of the Christian subculture in which we live. So, a primary reason why the Holy Spirit is called the Holy Spirit is because it is His specific task to enable followers of Christ in their quest for sanctification.

Romans 15:16 NIV

to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles. He gave me the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

Galatians 5:5 NIV

For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope.

1 Peter 1:2 NIV

who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

I emphasize these points for this reason: In the Christian world, many of us are masters at justifying our sin, and one of the chief ways we do it is by saying we were led to do such and such by the Holy Spirit. This is not a problem that I encounter once every ten years. At least once a week I talk to a professing Christian who tells me he or she is getting a divorce without biblical grounds, entering into a marriage in opposition to the biblical qualification for marriage, or running a business according to unscriptural principles. They are doing this and that, and without fail they tell me they feel free to do it because “I prayed about it and God has given me peace” or “The Holy Spirit has led me to do this.”

When I hear these kinds of justifications for unbiblical behavior, I realize the people may actually believe what they are telling me, but they are not speaking the truth. They are speaking in error—very serious error. I know this for two reasons, and these reasons are grounded in two crucial designations about the character of the Spirit of God. The first is that He is the Holy Spirit. The second is that Jesus repeatedly called Him “the Spirit of truth” (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13). The Holy Spirit never entices us to do something that is unholy. Neither does the Holy Spirit ever incline us to embrace a lie.

We refer to the Bible as the Word of God, and so it is. One of the reasons why the church has confessed its faith that the Scriptures are the Word of God is the biblical claim that the words of sacred Scripture were originally inspired by God the Holy Spirit. Of course, the Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit not only inspired the writing of the biblical books, He works to illumine the Scriptures and to apply them to our understanding. Paul writes, “God is not a God of confusion” (1 Cor. 14:33a), and that includes the Holy Spirit. This means that the Holy Spirit never teaches us to do something that He explicitly forbids in sacred Scripture.

So, when the Bible says we are to test the spirits to see if they are from God, how are we to do it? What kind of a test should we employ? Obviously the test must be a biblical test, because we know that in the Scriptures we have the teaching of the Spirit of truth. Therefore, if I have an internal inclination, a hunch, or a desire, and I want to associate that internal leading with the Holy Spirit, but I also see that this inclination in my heart is clearly opposed to what is taught in Scripture, I have proof positive that I am confusing lust, covetousness, or some other internal feeling with the leading of the Holy Spirit. That is a ghastly thing to do.

We almost never hear about this in the Christian community these days, because Christians easily make themselves seem spiritual by saying that God laid this or that on their hearts or God led them to do various things. Every time I hear such a claim, I want to say to the person: “How do you know God laid that on your heart? How do you know that’s not a manifestation of your own ambition or your own avarice?” I want the person to show me the biblical basis for his claim. As I said above, I do not doubt that the Holy Spirit can put a burden on a believer and can lead a believer supernaturally, but He always does this within and through the Scriptures. He never goes against His own revelation in the Bible. So, the way to test the spirits is to judge them by the Spirit’s own truth.