Who the Holy Spirit is

Not an it, but he

Ask Christians to picture God the Father and most can. Ask them to picture the Son and they think of Jesus. Ask about the Holy Spirit and many go quiet, or reach for the language of power: a force, an energy, a warm feeling, something like divine electricity. In the last lesson we saw the ascended Christ pour out the Spirit he had promised. So who is the one he poured out?

Jesus answered that question himself, on the night before he died. His disciples were troubled that he was leaving them, and he made them a promise.

And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever

John 14:16

‘Advocate’ translates paraklētos (παράκλητος), someone called alongside: a lawyer who speaks up for you, a helper who stands by you, a comforter. John uses the same word of Jesus: "we have an advocate before the Father" (1 John 2:1). So ‘another Advocate’ means one like Jesus, who will go on doing for the disciples what Jesus had been doing at their side. Chrysostom saw a whole doctrine in that phrase: "The word another, shows the distinct personality of the Spirit: the word Paraclete, His consubstantiality" Chrysostom.

The rest of that evening's teaching describes the Spirit in the same personal way. He "will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have told you" (John 14:26). He "will testify about Me" (John 15:26). He "will guide you into all truth" (John 16:13). And he does not draw attention to himself; he points to Christ.

He will glorify Me by taking from what is Mine and disclosing it to you.

John 16:14

The rest of the New Testament speaks the same way. In Antioch the Spirit speaks in the first person: "Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them" (Acts 13:2), and the two set out "sent forth by the Holy Spirit" (Acts 13:4). Paul warns, "do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God" (Ephesians 4:30), and tells us that when we do not know how to pray, "the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words" (Romans 8:26). A force can be used up or switched off. It cannot teach, testify, speak, send, grieve or pray. Scripture does picture the Spirit as wind and fire and water poured out, and those pictures are precious, but they sit beside this personal language and never cancel it.

The Spirit is God

The Spirit is not only personal; he is God. When Ananias kept back part of the money from his land while pretending to give it all, Peter asked him why he had chosen to lie to the Holy Spirit, and then said: "You have not lied to men, but to God!" (Acts 5:4). Paul adds that only the Spirit knows God from the inside.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of man except his own spirit within him? So too, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

1 Corinthians 2:10-11

Matthew Henry calls this "most clear testimony, both to the real Godhead and the distinct person of the Holy Spirit" Matthew Henry. Paul can even write, "Now the Lord is the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:17). And Jesus sent his disciples to baptize "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19): not three names, but one name shared by three.

The church had to fight to keep this confession. In the fourth century, after the Council of Nicaea had confessed the Son to be of one being with the Father, some who honoured the Son as divine still taught that the Spirit was a creature, a ministering spirit higher than the angels but not God. Their opponents called them ‘fighters against the Spirit’, and they were often linked with Macedonius, a bishop of Constantinople. Around 375 Basil of Caesarea answered them in On the Holy Spirit. His argument began from baptism. We are baptized into the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit together, so we must believe in them together and give them glory together; to rank the Spirit among creatures would unravel the very baptism by which we were saved Basil, On the Holy Spirit.

In 381 the Council of Constantinople enlarged the Nicene Creed with a fuller confession of the Spirit. In the familiar words of the 1662 Prayer Book, it confesses him as "the Lord and giver of life", "who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spake by the Prophets" The Nicene Creed. The creed does not use the word ‘God’ of the Spirit, but it gives him the title Lord and the worship that belongs to God alone, which says the same thing. (That English wording also has the Spirit proceeding "from the Father and the Son", the Western form of the creed; the Orthodox keep the original "from the Father", and the lesson on the Trinity explains the difference.)

From creation to Pentecost

The Spirit's work runs through the whole Bible. At creation "the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters" (Genesis 1:2). The psalmist, looking at every living creature, sings, "When You send Your Spirit, they are created, and You renew the face of the earth" (Psalm 104:30). That is why the creed calls him the giver of life. The prophets spoke "as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21), as we saw in the lesson on Scripture.

The Spirit was present at every stage of Jesus' life. The angel told Mary, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you" (Luke 1:35). At his baptism "the Holy Spirit descended on Him in a bodily form like a dove" (Luke 3:22), and the Father's voice spoke from heaven. Then in the synagogue at Nazareth Jesus read from Isaiah and said that the words had come true in him.

The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor.

Luke 4:18

On the day of Pentecost the disciples "were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them" (Acts 2:4). Followers who had hidden behind locked doors now spoke openly of Jesus. Augustine, commenting on Jesus' promise that the Spirit would testify about him, describes what followed: "The Holy Spirit by His testimony made others testify, taking away fear from the friends of Christ’s, and converting the hatred of His enemies into love" Augustine.

Beside us and within us

To confess that the Spirit is a person, and is God, changes the shape of Christian life. If the Spirit were a force, our question would be how to get more of it. Because he is a person, the question is how to give more of ourselves to him. We do not use the Spirit; he leads us.

It also means that no Christian is left alone. Jesus promised "another Advocate", and he keeps that promise. When we do not know what to pray, the Spirit prays for us. When we open the Scriptures, he reminds us of what Jesus said. And wherever he is truly at work, the result is not fascination with the Spirit but love for Jesus, because that is what he came to do. To long for the Spirit is, in the end, to long to know Christ better.

The next lesson looks at how the Spirit gives new birth and comes to live in those who believe, and the one after it at the gifts he gives the church. For more, see Who is the Holy Spirit? and What is the Trinity?.

Practice