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Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Who is the Holy Spirit? - His Personality

Deuteronomy 6:4-5 4 “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Matthew 28:19-20 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,

GOD IN US, WITH US AND ABOVE US
As we consider the God of the Bible, biblical testimony reveals that God is One in existence and three in identity. The Holy Spirit, who will be the focus of today's blog, is for the Christian "God in us".  God the Father is "God above us", unseen, dwelling in thick darkness, immortal and invisible (Jude 24-25).  God the Son is God with us, visibly revealing the Father, fully divine and completely human (John 1:14,18). God the Holy Spirit is in scripture the Third Person of the Trinity who comes to indwell the Christian at salvation (John 16:17).

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY "PERSON"?
Personhood is that quality of a living being that includes the conscious expression of intellect, emotion and will.  The Holy Spirit has emotions, being that He can be grieved by our sin (Ephesians 4:30).  We also see that as the Spirit of revelation He has a mind by which to communicate and articulate Himself to Christians (Ephesians 1:18, 2 Peter 1:21). Finally, the Holy Spirit has a will by which He calls and gifts Christians in the church (Ephesians 4, 1 Corinthians 12,14).  Perhaps the greatest evidence of the Holy Spirit's personhood comes from the lips of Jesus Himself.  Time and time again Christ refers to the Holy Spirit as "He", not "it".  

HOW DOES THE SPIRIT'S PERSONALITY POINT TO HIS DEITY?
John 14:16 has Jesus stating - "And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever".  The word "another" in this passage refers to "another of the same kind".  When Christ is speaking to his disciples, He is clearly explaining His Deity, being that to see Him is to see the Father (John 14:7).  In saying to the disciples He is going to "send another comforter", He is stating that the Father and He are going to send forth the third person of the Trinity who shares in their nature.  The logic of Jesus' statements can be summarized below:
1. The Father is God(John 14:1)
2. To see and believe Jesus is to see and believe in God (John 14:1, 7)
3. The Holy Spirit is "another of the same kind" as Jesus Christ (John 14:16)
4. Thus the Holy Spirit is God, sharing in the same Deity as The Father and The Son (John 14:23)

THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THE PERSONAL GOD OF GLORY
The Holy Spirit is God who comes to the sinner, calling them to fall in love with God the Son.  In later blogs we will be exploring more about the God of Glory, the Holy Spirit, "God in us".