By Neil Earle
Many may have read the Christian classic, “Mr. Jones, Meet the Master,” a summary of the sermons of Peter Marshall, a Scots immigrant who rose to become Chaplain of the U.S. Senate. Let’s substitute the Holy Spirit for “Mr. Jones” – the Christian Everyman – in this informal study of the personality and activity of the Holy Spirit. We want to show that it’s worth every effort to know more about the third member of the Godhead, as Christian doctrine describes him.
Few teachings evoke more controversy. Many agree with J.I. Packer that the Trinity is often considered “a useless piece of theological lumber” that is hardly used. The threefold Nature of God is a mystery of the Bible but one capable of being understood. Eloquent advocates of the faith insist that this teaching is essential to any sound teaching on salvation (1 Timothy 3:16).
The mission and ministry of the Holy Spirit – an essential offshoot of trinitarian teaching – has become lost and clouded for many. “The average Christian,” adds Packer, “is in a complete fog as to what work the Holy Spirit does.” He adds: “It is often assumed that the doctrine of the Trinity…is [one] we can get on very happily without.” Not so, argues Packer. “One wonders what the apostle John would say [for] according to him the doctrine of the Trinity is an essential part of the Christian gospel” (Knowing God, pages 65-68). It represents strict line of demarcation between the other “Abrahamic” religions – Judaism and Islam.
The Holy Spirit is fundamental to our understanding of God and the working out of our salvation. Why? “It is the Holy Spirit that takes up His abode in the hearts of believers, that separates them unto God, and that cleanses them from sin,” writes Louis Berkhof (Systematic Theology, page 95).
Is anything more important on the personal level? Berkhof here approaches the subject “from below” rather then from the rarefied perspective of “theology from above.” It was a great pulpit preacher after all, C.H. Spurgeon, who advertised: “The most excellent study is the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity.”
Nevertheless, Christian theologians can be a great help along the way. Packer’s insights, added to those of German theologian Jurgen Moltmann and popular Christian writer C.S. Lewis, can guide us to a deeper comprehension.
Moltmann clearly grasps why the third member of the Godhead remains a sometimes shadowy figure in Christian experience. “We know so little about the Holy Spirit because he is too close, not because he is so far away from us,” writes Moltmann. This important insight comes close to piercing the fog almost immediately. As Moltmann explains in The Spirit of Life: To a certain extent, the Father and the Son can be visualized as being “out there,” almost as objective presences away from us. For example, even Scripture pictures the Father as sitting on a throne, with the Son at his right hand (Revelation 4:1-7; Acts 7:56).
But the Holy Spirit? The favorite biblical symbols for the Holy Spirit – wind, water, fire – are elemental forces, not personal examples. This fact has misled many across the centuries to construe the Holy Spirit as a force, not a person. But, as we shall see, that is not the full story, not by a long shot.
A further complication is the wonderful truth that the Holy Spirit does his work from inside, within us. Also, we are “in the Spirit” as well as having the Spirit in us, as many texts explain (Romans 8:9).
Let’s explain that. In Scripture, the Holy Spirit is equated many times with intellectual or mental traits. Thus we read of converted individuals “full of the Spirit and wisdom” (Acts 6:3). Stephen’s opponents “could not stand up against his wisdom or the Spirit by which he spoke” (Acts 6:10). Paul wrote: “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit” (Romans 8:16). Romans 8:27 speaks plainly of the “mind of the Spirit.” These statements line up with some of the Old Testament revelation as well: “The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord” (Isaiah 11:2).
The important point here is that mental or intellectual traits are not easily sketched or described or explained. This has often placed preachers and teachers at a slight disadvantage in picturing the Holy Spirit and perhaps why Christian artists have preferred the symbol of the dove from Matthew 3:16 or fire from Acts 2. This symbolic description at least gave artists and writers and speakers something “concrete” with which to depict God, the Holy Spirit. And as human beings, as Luther and Calvin would say, we seem to need these pictorial expressions as “aids to faith” (John 3:12). It is when the picture gets mixed up with the reality that problems occur in Christian thinking.
The Spirit as Teacher, as Jesus described Him (John 16:13), is vitally concerned with enlightening our minds about the things of God, about expanding our minds, about “sending our thoughts God-ward” as the old Puritans might put it. Moltmann explained that all Christian speech about the Spirit is in fact speaking “out of the Spirit.” That is, in all meaningful Christian communion we speak under the prompting of the indwelling Holy Spirit. This is why our unity with other believers whether near or far away is in and through the Spirit (Ephesians 4:3).
Thus God’s Spirit, adds Moltmann, is “closer to our inner being than we ourselves.” This is a key insight. It helps explain why the Holy Spirit has often been a difficult subject for Christians which has led – alas – to some of the abuses we see around us today. To boil it down to an oversimplified statement: It is hard to see someone who is inside you. C.S. Lewis made much the same point in Mere Christianity:
“If you think of the Father as something ‘out there,’ in front of you, and of the Son as someone standing at your side, helping you to pray…[then] you have to think of the third Person as something inside you, or behind you…In the Christian life you are not usually looking at him. He is always acting through you” (page 149).
We can see already how contemplation upon the Holy Spirit opens up many wonderful truths about God to our comprehension. In a rich nugget of inspiration, from his unsurpassed letter to the Ephesians, Paul reveals a marvelous three-fold working of the Godhead. “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better” (Ephesians 1:17). This verse, and other like it, helps us in our quest.
Another difficulty many Christians have in imagining and appreciating the Third Person of the Godhead stems from the very dynamic nature of the Holy Spirit Himself. The Holy Spirit is a dramatic, activist presence, difficult to pin down or describe because of His creative activist presence. Just thinking of the words usually associated with Him in the New Testament makes us aware of His robust, active, restless, unrelenting nature. The Greek words transliterated into English are dunamis, charisma and energeia. From these we get such powerhouse expressions as “dynamic,” “charisma” and “energy.” One reason many groups down through the ages confuse the Holy Spirit with a force is precisely because men and women engage with the Holy Spirit in dynamic activity (2 Peter 1:21). It is important to note that in discussing the Holy Spirit human beings in both testaments have usually met Him at the operational level. Notice:
“…and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (Genesis 1:2).
“See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur…and I have filled him with the Spirit of God with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts” (Exodus 31:2-3).
“Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet, summoning the Israelites to follow him” (Judges 6:34).
“The Spirit of the Lord came upon him (Samson) in power. The ropes on his arms became like charred flax…Finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey, he grabbed it and struck down a thousand men” (Judges 15:14-15).
When the Holy Spirit shows up – look out! Great things can occur. Over and over again in the Old Testament the Spirit of God is equated with power, insight, ability and capability. This prepares us for an even more divinely inspired activity in the New Testament. We can understand this from the events of the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2:1-4, “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting…All of then were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”
The Spirit is never stagnant. It is the Spirit of New Life. Every new life wants to grow, to develop. Thus the Holy Spirit creatively distributes the gifts of the Spirit across the church (1 Corinthians 12:1-11). Those gifts propel the church forward. As individual Christians we move forward in the power of the Spirit. The task is never finished just as life in the Spirit is never an experience that is finished and done with. Spirit activity is relentlessly, enthusiastically outward bound. After all, the Spirit as the spirit of new creation, allows Christians to see new possibilities in life’s situations, even in those that appear to be setbacks and disappointments.
The Spirit calls us to a living hope (1 Peter 1:3). Those led by the Spirit believe God and his plans for the future. The life-giving “fired up” Holy Spirit inside us gives assurance that the church can never be ultimately defeated. Conversely, the Spirit also acts very gently and calmly, quietly transforming rough and ready individuals (James and John, “the sons of thunder” – see Mark 3:17) into apostles of love. This transforming work makes up the very stuff of our Christian walk, of our daily Christian experience. Indeed, it calls into being our Christian walk. That is why almost the very worse thing you can say to a Christian is: “You haven’t changed a bit.”
The Holy Spirit is also the Spirit of evangelism, an inner prompting of the divine love of God springing up inside us (John 4:14). The Spirit is too active to be bottled up inside us. Like Jeremiah’s “fire in the bones” (Jeremiah 20:9), the Spirit will be quenched rather than lie stagnant, a most sobering truth (1 Thessalonians 5:19). In beckoning Christians on to new activity, to new beginnings, God the Holy Spirit does four things for us:
First, the Holy Spirit as Teacher guides the church into new truth (1 Corinthians 2:13). In the First Century, Jewish Christians finally began to see that Gentiles were to be given full equality alongside Jewish believers. This shocking new revelation they described with the phrase “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28). Oh, yes, those early believers knew the Holy Spirit as an intimate guide and acquaintance.
Second, the Holy Spirit actively leads the church. Seven times in Revelation it says, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Revelation 2:7). This tactical leadership is most emphatically revealed in the book of Acts, a book some have nicknamed “the Acts of the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit told Philip what to do (Acts 8:29). The Holy Spirit ferried Philip away (Acts 8:39). The Spirit actively chose Paul and Barnabas for a special mission (Acts 13:2-3). The Holy Spirit kept Paul from working in Asia and Bithynia (Acts 16:6-7). The Holy Spirit appointed overseers and elders (Acts 20:28). That is a lot of direct involvement but consistent with the same Spirit that led Jesus into the wilderness while he was physical flesh and blood (Matthew 4:1). There, incidentally, is a key text for establishing the full equality of the Holy Spirit in the Godhead.
Third, and most crucially, the Holy Spirit is the Agent directly responsible for our day-to-day salvation. Paul taught that Christians have been saved “through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). In Paul’s teaching the Spirit brings renewal and restoration to the human mind but it also leads that renewal as a personal, uplifting presence. Active Christians know this from daily experience (Romans 12:2). In our best moments of prayer and communion with God there is a sense of some extra presence, something above and beyond, a “rejoicing in the Spirit.” Author Tony Evans calls this “the Holy Spirit Advantage.”
Fourth, a marvelous truth – the Father and the Son take up residence inside Christians through the presence of the Holy Spirit. This is one reason the Spirit is also called the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9). The love of the Godhead is dispersed through our hearts by the Holy Spirit and God is love (Romans 5:5; John 4:16). Berkhof adds: “Just as he Himself is the person who completes the Trinity, so His work is the completion of God’s contact with His creatures and the consummation of the work of God in every sphere.”
That’s a good thought to end with, but not the end of the subject. No, for this is truly a subject without end since the Spirit ever guides the church into fuller understanding. The activity of the Holy Spirit in furthering the threefold work of God is a most wonderful truth and one so sadly misunderstood today. But we can begin to understand. We must, for there is simply no hope of salvation without the Holy Spirit inside us. Is He in you?