Read: John 14:15-31
Life is hard for one poor Japanese businessman. Given the low interest rates the financial institutions were offering at the time, this businessman decided to bury his savings in his back garden. Whenever he needed some money, he would go and dig up his stash, take what he needed, and then rebury it. However, on October 10th, he noticed that his back garden has been dug up. When he looked for his money, it had gone. The seriousness of the incident only appeared when it was revealed how much the man had lost – he told police that the equivalent of 2.8million pounds had been stolen from his back garden. It’s an awful lot of money to lose in one go!
The Church of Jesus Christ is often guilty of losing the most precious and valuable things through its own neglect and ignorance. One such precious thing (or I should more properly say precious person) the Church has neglected is the Holy Spirit. Never mind 2.8 million pounds, if we lose the Holy Spirit, we’ve lost God and we’ve lost everything. By contrast, with Him there is nothing we cannot do. The person of the Holy Spirit forms the fourth of our studies into Q. & A. 6 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism – “How many persons are there in the Godhead? There are three persons in the Godhead, – the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.” By way of rediscovering the glory of the doctrine and person of the Holy Spirit, I want to explore three avenues tonight – hoping that they will be useful starters for your own studies into His precious person: first, the divinity of the Holy Spirit; secondly, the Personality of the Holy Spirit and lastly, the Role of the Holy Spirit.
[A] The Divinity of the Holy Spirit
Life isn’t hard just for one Japanese businessmen, but also for a poor Romanian man called Ghergohe Stirbu of Timosoara. For a whole year, he was listed as another man, and even when he pointed it out to officials, they refused to acknowledge their mistake. Stirbu ended up taking the authorities to court at a cost of £500 to convince the court that he really is Ghergohe Stirbu – to persuade them of his true identity. What does the Holy Spirit of God have to do to convince us of His true identity – to persuade us that He is God Himself – One Person, the same in substance, equal in power and glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit? There are three levels at which He argues from God’s Word that He is God:
1. Divine Titles – the Holy Spirit is known by a plethora of names in the Bible, many of which confer divine titles upon Him. Among the hundreds, I want to briefly mention four. First, in Judges 3:10, in the context of His anointing of one of the judges of Israel, He is called “the Spirit of Yahweh”. Secondly, in Isaiah 61:1, in the context of His anointing of the preaching and mission of the Messiah, He is called the Spirit of the Lord God, or more literally, “the Spirit of the Lord Yahweh”. Thirdly, in the context of we Christians being living epistles for Christ, He is called “the Spirit of the Living God”. Lastly, in the context of the prayers of God’s people on behalf of the apostle Paul, He is called “the Spirit of Christ Jesus.” The Spirit of Yahweh, the Spirit of the Lord Yahweh, the Spirit of the Living God, the Spirit of Christ Jesus – these and a thousand other names proclaim to us that the Holy Spirit is God Himself.
2. Divine Identity – there are two fascinating identikit images of the Holy Spirit given in the Bible which reveal Him to be God. The first is in Acts 5:3-4, where the deceitful Ananias is confronted by the apostle Peter with these words, “Ananias, how is that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit … you have not lied to men but to God.” To lie to the Holy Spirit is to lie to God. The Holy Spirit is God. The second is in Acts 28:25-27, where the Apostle Paul is ruminating over the hardness of people’s hearts, and he’s using the words of Isaiah 6:9-11 to do so. God spoke these words regarding the stubbornness of the people of Isaiah’s day, however Paul says in Acts 28:25 – “The Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your forefathers when he said through Isaiah the prophet …” In other words, what God says, the Holy Spirit says. To read the Word of God is to read the Word of the Holy Spirit. Again, the Holy Spirit is shown to be God. Not to be irreverent I hope, but the Holy Spirit looks like God because the Holy Spirit is God.
3. Divine Attributes – as we read through the Scriptures, we find that the Holy Spirit possesses many divine attributes or characteristics. For example, we find in Hebrews 9:14 (and you can see this from John 14:16) that He is eternal. He is with us forever. We also find from Psalm 139:7-10 that He is omnipresent – that is, He is present everywhere. There’s nowhere we can go to get away from Him. Again, in John 3:8 in context of talking about the wind blowing where He wants to, we discover that the Holy Spirit is sovereign.
The Holy Spirit is called God, to lie to the Holy Spirit is to lie to God and to listen to the Holy Spirit is to listen to God; the Holy Spirit is eternal, omnipresent and sovereign – I hope He doesn’t have to do any more persuading of His identity. He is God – as God as the Father and as God as the Son.
[B] The Personality of the Holy Spirit
Some have mistakenly taught that the Holy Spirit is not a person, but a force. He is not an individual person, but merely one of the attributes of God – the power of God, the knowledge of God or the presence of God. This has been taught since early times and is still taught today by Unitarian Churches. In their view, we can think of the Holy Spirit in some kind of New-Agey spiritualistic, airy-fairy way. By contrast, the Bible consistently teaches that the Holy Spirit is a Person, just like the God the Son is a Person and God the Father is a Person. There are three elements of the Bible’s teaching I want to draw your attention to:
1. Agency – when we talk about agency, we are talking about how the Holy Spirit is described not as ‘it’, but as ‘He’ in the Bible. In the Gospel of John, the Holy Spirit is addressed as “He” in John 15:26, 16:13-14. He also refers to Himself as “I”. In Acts 10:19-20, as Peter is pondering a vision, we read that “the Spirit said to him, ‘behold, three men are looking for you … I have sent them.’” Forces and powers are not he’s and I’s – only people can talk of themselves in these ways. The Holy Spirit is a person, not a mindless force akin to the Star Wars variety. In our prayers therefore, we must never talk of Him as an ‘it’ – we wouldn’t talk of each other or of Jesus in those terms – so we do not speak of the Person of the Holy Spirit in this way either.
2. Activity – The Holy Spirit consciously and wilfully fulfils the activities of divinity. For example, we are told in Psalm 104:30 that He creates. We are told in Titus 2:13 that He regenerates (or converts). We are told in Romans 8:11 that He raises up God’s people and glorifies them. These are actions He does – actions He decides and wills for Himself to do. Only a Person can do these things. The Holy Spirit is therefore a ‘He’, not an ‘it’. He does things which only God can do, and He is not a force nor an impersonal power, but a personal ‘He’.
3. Accountability – there are various ways in the Scriptures that we are called to be accountable to the Holy Spirit. For example, in Ephesians 4:30, we can grieve the Holy Spirit. In Acts 7:51, we can resist the Holy Spirit and in Mark 12:31-32, we can blaspheme the Holy Spirit. One cannot grieve, resist and blaspheme an impersonal force – only a person.
The Holy Spirit is therefore divine and He is a Person. He is God as much as the Father is and He is as much of a person as the Son is. The catechism is therefore correct when it says of Him that He is of the same substance, equal in power and glory with the other persons of the Godhead.
[C] The Role of the Holy Spirit
John 14 is an incredibly powerful passage of God’s Word. It is filled with pathos and feeling. Jesus is going away and His disciples are troubled. However, He promises that He will not leave them as orphans but will come to them. Although the Holy Spirit performs thousands of functions and has a hundred different roles, we will concentrate just on those which Jesus enumerates for us in John 14:15-31. Briefly, and by way of application, the Holy Spirit has 5 roles according to this passage:
1. Ability (vs. 15-16a) – in vs. 15, in some of Jesus’ most famous words, we read, “If you love me, keep my commandments”. That’s all very well for Him to say that, but the harder we try and keep His commandments, the more we fail. Supposing we only had our own strength to rely on, we would always fail. However, immediately following this amazing statement, and linked by the word ‘and’, Jesus says, “and I will ask the Father and another Helper He will give to be with you forever.” In other words, our ability to keep the commandments of Jesus is directly related to the role of the Holy Spirit as the Helper. It is His ability in us which gives us the ability to keep the commandments of Jesus. Without Him, we can do nothing. With the Holy Spirit, we can keep the commandments of Jesus. We must therefore rely upon His power working through us and pray for Him to give us ability.
2. Presence (vs. 17b, 18, 23) – Jesus promises in vs. 17 that the Holy Spirit will be ‘in you’. He lives in us. What does that mean though? In the following verse Jesus says, “I will not leave you as orphans – I will come to you”; and again in vs. 23 Jesus talks of He and His Father making their dwelling place with us. In other words, the Holy Spirit within us is the presence of God. In the past, God was present in the Temple, but now we are His Temple – as Paul says, “Do you not know that you are a temple of the Holy Spirit”. All the splendour of the temple and the majesty of God’s presence there is condensed down into the dwelling place of God in you. When Jesus says, “Behold, I am with you always”, He’s talking about His presence with us by the Holy Spirit. He is always with us. We need to carry that knowledge around with us so that we will not grieve the Holy Spirit.
3. Revelation (vs. 21, 22) – I find the idea of Jesus revealing Himself or manifesting Himself to us by the Holy Spirit fascinating. He’s not talking about the Spirit helping us to remember what Jesus said, He’s talking about the kind of revelation saints of old were privileged to view when the Angel of the Lord appeared among them. He’s talking of the kind of appearing with which He will appear when He comes again to wrap up time and space. Jesus isn’t talking here about visions and hallucinations as much as He is talking about the impact that His appearance has upon the individuals He appears to – it fills them with reverence and awe; it causes them to fall down at His face as though dead. Now this sense of reverential praise, submission and glory isn’t something we need to conjure up in ourselves in a drug-fuelled frenzy, nor is it something we need rely upon an angel to produce within us. Rather, it is something which is ours by right of the Holy Spirit’s presence within us – there are times when, regardless of where we are, we are just struck with the holiness, love and beauty of the revelation of Christ and we bow down in our hearts before Him in worship.
4. Remembrance (vs. 26) – contrary to what much of the modern church holds to, the function of the Holy Spirit is not to draw attention to Himself, but to draw attention to Jesus Christ. He is like the lights which illuminate a magnificent building at night – nobody looks at the lights, but rather at the building – the Holy Spirit’s role is not to shed light on Himself, but on Jesus Christ. This seems clear enough from what Jesus says in vs. 26 – “this One will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all the things I said to you”. His role and function is to teach us about Jesus and to call us to follow Him. He pricks our conscience and stirs up our minds to pursue Christ. He takes the Word which He Himself has inspired and uses it as a foundation for our discipleship. Our discipleship is therefore a function of the teaching of the Holy Spirit within us. Are we listening to Him – are we reading our Bibles so that He may speak to us of Jesus?
5. Peace (vs. 27) – the Holy Spirit is often represented as a dove – a picture some say is one of peace. Whilst I do not doubt that the Holy Spirit is the person through whom Jesus gives us His peace, I doubt it is such a ‘nice’ picture as we make it out to be. It is often an intrusive peace – not generated through a transcendental meditative state, but peace breaking in through our pain. That peace replaces and displaces the anxiety we so often feel about the circumstances of life and enables us to live above our situations. Through the Holy Spirit therefore, we can even have peace supposing we are in prison for our faith in Christ – as Paul was. The Holy Spirit gives us the ‘shalom’ which Jesus died to give us – the holistic peace of knowing Him in every circumstance and situation – the peace of contentment in Christ.
I’m sure many of you would have read the lovely story I did the other day – the story of Michelle and David Stevenson, who were to host an engagement party only for them to call it off and announce that they were getting married instead. The waiting was over – half-way houses were avoided and they just got married instead. God is in you in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Maybe it’s about time we called the engagement off with Him and started getting serious about our faith! The Holy Spirit is within us – how will the knowledge of that affect our prayers, our character, our Christian maturity and our behaviour as Christians? In our worship, we can be more confident that the Holy Spirit will reveal Christ to us and impact us; in our temptations, we can be more confident that the Holy Spirit will give us the ability to overcome; in our pain, we can be more confident that the Holy Spirit will give us peace. Praise God for the Holy Spirit! AMEN
