The Person of the Holy Spirit

I must confess that there have been times in my life when I have made assumptions about someone.

Assumptions based on appearance, how they speak or the company they keep.

These assumptions have been wrong.

I talk to them and initially underestimate their abilities, skills and level of intelligence.

Now this is something I try not to do and generally I am pretty good at not putting people into a box.

But sometimes I do and then I am surprised to find out later on that I have really not understood who they are or what they are capable of.

Perhaps you do this as well, or perhaps people have done this to you and you have noticed it.

It is something that happens a lot for women and I know makes them quite annoyed.

It might be the mechanic who assumes the woman knows nothing about cars.

Or the salesman at the new car showroom who talks to the husband and not the wife.

It happens a lot for migrants for whom English is a second language.

And it happens quite a bit for Pastors at times as well.

Why is it that gender, ethnicity or role is used by some people as a measure of intelligence, ability and knowledge?

I made this mistake when I first met one of the most effective ministers the Baptist movement in Queensland or even Australia has ever had.

As I spoke with this man my initial thoughts were, this is a lovely guy and he will make a good minister of an ethnic congregation but he is going to really struggle outside of that setting.

I was very wrong.

The incredible growth of our ethnic ministries, the training of Pastors and the governance of our ethnic churches and their ongoing success is because this man is incredibly capable.

Not only does he lead our ethnic church ministries he has also completed significant additional higher education so that he can bridge the gap between different cultures, our legal system and government.

Emil Rahimov is a man of incredible ability and I initially underestimated this because I didn’t see past the language gap.

Have you done the same?

Now I think we have a similar problem when it comes to our understanding of the Holy Spirit.

There is a language gap.

Until recent times the church didn’t talk much about this person.

In fact the Old King James language used an old Anglo-Saxon word for the Holy Spirit and called him the Holy Ghost instead of using the word Holy Spirit which is derived from the Latin.

So our language and the resultant understanding hasn’t been helpful, nor has the emphasis on the gifts of the Holy Spirit without first explaining who he is and what he does.

So all sorts of assumptions are made out of ignorance and limited experience.

On top of all that people in the western world are so focussed on the material and closed to the spiritual so they react out of fear to what they don’t understand.

This has been a huge problem for the church and for individual Christians, the result has often been one of extremes. Some hide from the working of the Holy Spirit in their lives others engage in a shallow faith based soley on spiritual experience, while others go down the path of excess.

A core doctrine of orthodox Christianity is the Trinity. One God, three persons. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; Co-equal and Co-eternal. One in three, three in one.

So it is really important that we are comfortable with who the Holy Spirit is and willing to allow him to make us uncomfortable about our lives because it is his role to convict and transform us, to fill us and empower us for ministry.

It is his role to testify through us to the message of Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins, of the need for repentance and acceptance of the gracious gift of salvation .

One of the best ways to begin to grasp who the Holy Spirit is, is by looking at some of the names used to describe him in Scripture.

Names of the Holy Spirit related to the Father

The Spirit of God (Gen. 1:2); the Spirit of the Lord (Luke 4:18); the Spirit of our God (1 Cor. 6:11).

Then another is, the Spirit of the Lord God, which is in Isaiah 61:1.

Jesus speaks, in Matthew 10:20, of the Spirit of your Father, while Paul refers to the Spirit of the living God (2 Cor. 3:3).

My Spirit, says God, in Genesis 6:3, and the psalmist asks, ‘Where can I go from your Spirit?’ (Ps. 139:7).

He is referred to as his Spirit—God’s Spirit—in Numbers 11:29; and Paul, in Romans 8:11, uses the phrase the Spirit of him [God the Father] that raised up Jesus from the dead.

All these are descriptive titles referring to the Holy Spirit in terms of His relationship to the Father.

Names of the Holy Spirit related to the Son

In the second group are the titles that relate the Holy Spirit to the Son.

In Romans 8:9 the Apostle Paul wrote, “and remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all”

Clearly identifying the Holy Spirt as being one with Christ yet distinct from him.

In Philippians 1:19, Paul speaks about the Spirit of Jesus Christ, and in Galatians 4:6 he says, ‘God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts’.

Finally He is referred to as the Spirit of the Lord in Acts 5:9.

Direct References to the Holy Spirit

Finally, the third group comprises the direct or personal titles, and first and foremost here, of course, is the name Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost.

A second title in this group is the Spirit of holiness. Romans 1:4 ‘declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead,’

A further title is the Holy One in 1 John 2:20 But you are not like that, for the Holy One has given you his Spirit, and all of you know the truth.

In Hebrews 9:14 He is referred to as the eternal Spirit.

Paul says in Romans 8:2, ‘For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made you free from the law of sin and death.’

In John 14:17 He is called the Spirit of truth, and in chapters 14, 15 and 16 of John’s Gospel, He is referred to as the Comforter.

The Holy Spirit’s personality

From all of these verses there is one obvious point we can not ignore.

The Holy Spirit is more than a force, more than an influence or some mystical experience.

We must not refer to a person as ‘it” we refer to them as a person.

The Holy Spirit is a person as Jesus and the Father are a person.

You do not grow in relationship with an influence.

Star Wars and the Force are a very poor imitation of the person of the Holy Spirit.

You grow in relationship with a person.

A living entity who produces change within us.

Yes the Scriptures use symbolic language to describe his work within us.

Language such as fruits of the Spirit and gifts of the Spirit.

Yes the Scriptures use symbols to describe his physical presence such as a dove in Matthew 3:16 when Jesus was Baptised in the Jordon river and being poured out on believers in Acts 2:17 and also appearing as tongues of fire.

But behind all of these symbolic appearances we have the words of Jesus in John 16:7-8 and again in verses 13-15 whre Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as him and he twelve times.

Then we also have Matthew 28:19 the great Baptismal formula directly from Jesus where he tells his disciples to Baptise in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

This is clear teaching of the Trinity, it is not in the names (plural) but in the name (singular) Three Persons One God, three in one one in three.

The Apostle Paul uses the same formula in 2 Corinthians 13:14

2 Corinthians 13:14 NLT

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

All of these things tell us that the Holy Spirit is more than a breath, even though the Greek behind the word Spirit is the word for breath.

This is breath or presence with personhood.

The Church council in Jerusalem, when deciding the status of Gentile converts in the church, clearly acknowledged that the Holy Spirit is a person because in Acts 15:28 they wrote,

Acts 15:28 NLT

“For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay no greater burden on you than these few requirements:

The Challenge to Know the Holy Spirit as Jesus Intended

If we start by seeing the Holy Spirit as one who walks alongside, teaching, reminding of what Jesus taught us.

Which presumes that we actually read what Jesus said so that we can be reminded of it.

If we begin by seeing the Holy Spirit as someone who is always there, someone whose role it is to help us to not just “do the right thing” but actually helps us to want to be a witness to Christ by our actions and attitudes then we have taken the first step in getting to know him.

The second step is to want to be transformed by the Holy Spirit, that he is permitted to completely rule our lives so that we become more Christlike to display the fruits of the Holy Spirit such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, understanding and self control refered to in Galatians 5:22 in increasing measure.

The thrid step is to allow the Holy Spirit to empower us with is gifts for ministry.

Because the work of the Gospel of Christ is not somethign that is accomplished by human means.

We need the Holy Spirit to use us as his vessels for ministry so that others can be convicted of their need for Christ.

We will deal more with what theHoly Spirit does next week, but it starts with us being willing and wanting to see him at work in our lives.

This requires a simple prayer that goes something like this, “Holy Spirit I invite you to be the one who leads and guides me today, fill me with grace and empower me to witness to Christ that in my life God will be glorified.”