Knowing the Holy Spirit
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The great commission presents the Trinitarian name of God – “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19)[1]. Warfield writes: “[This is] the nearest approach to a formal announcement of the doctrine of the Trinity which is recorded from our Lord’s lips…. With stately impressiveness it asserts the unity of the three by combining them all within the bounds of the single Name.”[2]
We rightly speak of the first, second, and third Persons of the Trinity, but this is not always the order in Scripture. The New Testament arranges the Persons in every possible order. Father, Son, Spirit (Matt. 28:19); Father, Spirit, Son (Titus 3:4–6); Son, Spirit, Father (1 Pet. 4:14); Son, Father, Spirit (2 Cor. 13:14); Spirit, Son, Father (1 Cor. 12:4–6); Spirit, Father, Son (Heb. 6:4–6). In human life, father-son is the natural order to us. Spirit as the third Person requires careful consideration however, which we are seeking now to do.
Millard Erickson describes the Trinity well:
The Trinity must be understood as fundamentally a society. The Godhead is a complex of persons. Love exists within the Godhead as a binding relationship of each of the persons to each of the others. . . The statement “God is love” in 1 John is a very basic characterization of God, which cannot be understood simply as a definition or an equation, but is more than merely, “God is loving.” The Trinity is three persons so closely bound together that they are actually one. . . . . In a sense, God being love virtually requires that he be more than one person. Love, to be love, must have both a subject and an object.[3]
Understand that a spirit is a personal being. John writes, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). The false prophet is called a spirit, a personal being, a man, and here a teacher. What John says next is enlightening. “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; This is the spirit of the antichrist” (1 John 4:2, 3). It shows us that there are holy spirits and unholy spirits in the world. The false teacher is an unholy spirit. The believer in Christ is a holy (hagios, “saint”) spirit because the Holy Spirit of God indwells him. “We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He gave us” (1 John 3:24). “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (1 John 4:13).
The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity. He is not a mere force. He is God, as the Father is God and the Son is God. The Spirit brings the indwelling of the Trinity into our hearts (John 14:17, 23). This is the greatest gift of salvation.[4] “The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom. 5:5). Paul says that God is “the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you” (1 Thess. 4:8). God who gives good gifts gives us the best gift, Himself! He personally lives in our hearts, which were previously alienated and hostile, through the Person of the Holy Spirit. Treasure and safeguard this personal gift and never grieve (Eph. 4:30) or quench the Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19).
His Trinitarian Name
Father and Son are filial (family) names, but the Holy Spirit is not a filial name. What are we to make of this?
Paul asks, “For who among men knows the depths of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the depths of God no one knows except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:11). Man has a spirit; God has a Spirit. God “forms the spirit of man within him” (Zech. 12:1), and man’s spirit is a reflection of God’s Spirit. Paul’s point is that a man knows himself through his spirit, but God’s Spirit in the Trinity is a co-eternal communion within the Trinity.
When Jesus said, “God is spirit” (John 4:24) He was indicating several things. First, that God is a personal being.
Second, that He is living and active. The Hebrew and Greek words (ruach, pneuma) refer to breath, wind, motion, and life.
Leon Morris comments on this:
In view of the references to living water (which symbolizes the life-giving Spirit) in the context, it is probable that this verse contains an allusion to the life-giving activity of God. This is all the more likely in that when the OT refers to the Spirit of God, the usual idea is that of divine activity, not of opposition to things material.[5]
Third, that the only way to worship God is in one’s spirit in response to the revealed truth of Scripture. One must have the Holy Spirit in the human spirit to worship in spirit and truth.
Throughout Scripture the Holy Spirit is called “the Spirit of God” (Gen. 1:1, 2; Exod. 31:3; 1 Sam. 11:6; Isa. 61:1) and the “Spirit of Christ” (Rom. 8:9) or the “Spirit of Jesus” (Acts 16:7; Phil. 1:19) The reason for the change to the Spirit of Jesus in the New Testament is that Christ poured out His spirit/Spirit at Pentecost. So it is now Christ in us (Col. 1:27) by His Spirit (John 14:17).
Augustine explained:
Because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit both of the Father and of the Son . . . therefore the Holy Spirit is a certain unutterable communion of the Father and the Son; and on that account, perhaps, he is so-called, because the same name is suitable to both the Father and the Son. For he himself is called specially that which they are called in common; because both the Father is a spirit and the Son is a spirit, both the Father is holy and the Son is holy. In order, therefore, that the communion of both may be signified from a name which is suitable to both, the Holy Spirit is called the Gift of both.[6]
His non-filial name, Holy Spirit, leads naturally to the consideration of His roles.
His Trinitarian Role
Each Person of the Trinity has His story, or history of revelation. In the Old Testament we primarily find the revelation of The Father and the Spirit. Jesus is revealed in types and shadows, promises and prophecies, and Christophanies. In the New Testament we find the revelation of Christ and the Spirit.
The roles of each of the Trinitarian Persons becomes evident in Trinitarian passages such as the doxology of Ephesians 1:3–14. The Father is praised for His sovereign election of a people in Christ (1:3-6). The Son is praised for the redemption purchased by His blood (1:7–12). The Holy Spirit is praised for sealing us as the pledge of our inheritance in Christ (1:13, 14).
John Calvin writes: “To the Father is attributed the beginning of activity, and the fountain and wellspring of all things; to the Son, wisdom, counsel, and the ordered disposition of all things; but to the Spirit is assigned the power and efficacy of that activity.”[7]
The Spirit is the one sent forth into the world and into the hearts of men. This is consistent with the Hebrew ruach and the Greek pneuma. The Holy Spirit is introduced in the creation of the world. “And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters” (Gen. 1:2). The Spirit was brooding over the initial creation to bring it to fullness. The creation days describe how God formed and filled the creation for man to dwell on it through the Spirit.
We see that the Holy Spirit is the Person of the Trinity who promotes, perfects, and empowers, from creation to Christ to the Christian life. The title of Michael Horton’s book on the Holy Spirit captures His role throughout history, Rediscovering the Holy Spirit: God’s Perfecting Presence in Creation, Redemption, and Everyday Life.[8]
The Holy Spirit sustains the creation (Psalm 104, 139). But His saving and sanctifying work in us begins at regeneration (John 3) and continues throughout the Christian life in production of spiritual fruit (Gal. 5:22, 23), spiritual gifts (1 Pet. 4:11), as well as illumination, His witness to our hearts, His leading, and help in prayer.
The conclusion, or the great commandment to the believer who knows the Spirit is, “be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). The filling and fullness of the Spirit (Eph. 3:19) is His crowning, perfecting work in us.
Are you knowing the Holy Spirit personally? In Christ you have the Holy Spirit and He indwells you. But are you experiencing His fillings? And are you regularly asking, as Jesus said in Luke 11:13, for more of Him? We should be praying for His presence to be known each day, His power manifested in our lives, and His influence through us to glorify God in Christ, be salt and light in the world, and speak and serve in the church (1 Pet. 4:11).
[1] Scripture quotations are from the Legacy Standard Bible, an NASB update, The Lockman Foundation, 2021.
[2] The Works of Banjamin B. Warfield, Vol. 2, Biblical Doctrines (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003). 153.
[3] Millard J. Erickson, God in Three Persons (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 221.
[4] Jesus said the Father gives good gifts to those who ask Him Matt. 7:11). In Luke 11:13 He said, “how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.”
[5] Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 240.
[6] Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Philip Schaff, ed. Volume III, “On the Trinity” (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 93.
[7] John Calvin, Library of Christian Classics, Volume XX, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960),143.
[8] Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017.