Above picture was a photo I took of a sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean down at Ocean City, NJ.
Introduction:
As we continue on in our study of the Nicene Creed, we progress further in the Creed's section on the Holy Spirit. To review, four statements are found in the Nicene Creed's confession of the Holy Spirit. I'll give headings to ease our memory of past postings.
1. The Deity of the Holy Spirit.
"And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life.
2. The Divine relation of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son.
" who proceeds from the Father and the Son".
3. The Divine equality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son.
"who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified."1
4. The Divine Author of the Scriptures.
"who spoke by the prophets."
Today we move on to consider the Divine equality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son in how He is worthy of worship and glory with them.
The Holy Spirit, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified.
Let's breakdown this clause phrase-by-phrase in the Nicene Creed.
Proper arranging of our worship - "The Holy Spirit, who with the Father and the Son together".
First, we find a proper arranging of our worship of the Spirit as He is in eternal relation to the Father and the Son. Sometimes people wonder if it is appropriate to pray to the Holy Spirit. As we shall see in a moment, the short answer is "yes". I often pray for the Holy Spirit to strengthen me before I preach. The point of this first phrase is to remind us that when we pray to the Father, Son, or Spirit, we automatically include any of the other two Persons, since all three are One God. The "proper arranging of worship" aids our faith and mind in its trek to commune with God.
Four New Testament texts help us to consider this proper arrangement of our worship of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son. When Jesus taught His disciples to pray in Matthew 6:9-12, He told them to aim their prayers to the Father in Matthew 6:9 “Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name." The Person of the Father in the Trinity is the origin of the eternal relations He has with the Son and with the Holy Spirit through the Son, with the Divine essence unoriginated and common to all three. It makes sense to direct our prayers to the Father as that relational source - as one would trace a river to its source.
The second text is Ephesians 2:18 "for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father." The arrangement of all prayer, worship, and glorifying of God is directed to the Father and through our Mediator, the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. He, after all, is the Mediator (1 Timothy 2:5) who perfectly is and does reveal the Father (Hebrews 1:2-3).2 The worship of the true and living God is directed to the Father, through the Son, and by the Spirit.
We come then to our third passage that directs us on the arranging of our worship of the Holy Spirit - namely 2 Corinthians 3:18 "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit."
As He did in creation, and as He does in salvation, the Holy Spirit brings to completion and to fullest expression the revelation of God's glory. The Spirit of God brings to us in worship what we seek from the Father through the Son - delight in and desire for God. This is why the Nicene Creed affirms the proper arranging of our worship of the Spirit as never separated from the Father and the Son, since His task is to draw our attention to the Father through the Son to make known the glory of God (John 16:14-15).
Personal adoration of the Spirit - "is worshipped".
Once we understand the proper arranging of our worship of the Spirit as He eternally relates to the Son and the Father, we can then grasp why it is appropriate to include Him in our adoration of God. Basil of Caesarea, whom I've mentioned before in prior posts, wrote a wonderful book "On The Holy Spirit" to defend the deity of the Holy Spirit and who also was the chief contributor to the article on the Holy Spirit in the Nicene Creed.3 Basil notes this of the Holy Spirit as worthy of worship as God in his "One The Holy Spirit", 9.22:
"On our hearing, then, of a spirit, it is impossible to form the idea of a nature circumscribed, subject to change and variation, or at all like the creature. We are compelled to advance in our conceptions to the highest, and to think of an intelligent essence, in power infinite, in magnitude unlimited, unmeasured by times or ages....".
Basil then later notes:
....."but as Supplier of life; not growing by additions; but straightway full, self-established, omnipresent, origin of sanctification, light perceptible to the mind, supplying, as it were, through Itself, illumination to every faculty in the search for truth; by nature unapproachable, apprehended by reason of goodness, filling all things with Its power."
Basil reminds us that the Holy Spirit is by nature God, one with the Father and the Son, and thus just as much worthy of worship as they. Modern author Geoffrey Thomas wrote a book for Reformation Heritage Books in 2011 entitled "The Holy Spirit". What he writes captures our point and Basil's point of why the Holy Spirit is included in our worship:
"The Holy Spirit is a person, and the Holy Spirit is God. So when our Lord commissioned the church to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, He stipulated that they should be baptized 'in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost' (Matt. 28:19). The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. These three are One God."
Pleasure of communing with the Holy Spirit - "and glorified".
We've looked at the proper arranging of our adoration of the Holy Spirit and our personal adoration of Him. We arrive at one final heading - the pleasure of communing with the Holy Spirit as seen in that phrase "and glorified".
Notice with me the whole clause with our final phrase underlined: "who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified." John Piper years ago coined a statement that has helped me over the years in my worship of God: "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him".
The Holy Spirit makes complete and satisfying our worship of God by the appreciation of the glory of God. We had noted earlier 2 Corinthians 3:18. That text in Paul's second letter to the Corinthians anchors us in the proper arranging of our worship, our personal adoration of the Spirit, and our personal enjoyment of Him. If my worship of God does not lead to enjoyment of Him - my worship is incomplete.
Closing thoughts for today's post.
To illustrate, one of my children enjoys looking at sunsets (just as I enjoy sunrises). She will drive many miles to catch the sun setting over a harbor in our area. What if she drove all that way, found the perfect spot, and yet had just missed the sun's setting? The joy of seeing the sunset would make her trip incomplete. The Holy Spirit is necessary in our worship because He is the One who brings to us the inner life of God, since He Himself is God! He is the One who enables me to approach the Father through the Son. He is the One who makes possible such worship. As I participate in the Holy Spirit's working, I come to find myself delighting in God, just as driving many miles is worth it - if one gets to see a sunset over a lake.
Endnotes:
1. We have so far studied the first two clauses that pertain to the deity of the Holy Spirit and His Divine relating to the Father and the Son. We have witnessed in the confession in those first two headings the identity of the Holy Spirit as "proceeding" from the Father and the Son, as well as His deity as "Lord and Giver of life". If one takes those two headings seriously, then it follows that the Holy Spirit is worthy of worship along with the Father and the Son.
2 The eternal Son is termed "the second Person of the Trinity" due to the ordering of the eternal relating within the Godhead. The Father eternally begets the Son as it pertains to His identity, with the Son and the Father spirating or breathing out the Holy Spirit as the eternal procession of who God is as the living God, as the "Lord and Giver of Life". The Son is of the same nature as the Father while in ordering of eternal relation He is begotten of Him as we've looked at earlier in other posts in this series.
3. As Basil writes on the Holy Spirit's deity, He keeps in mind the Spirit as being Personally God, even though He uses the pronoun "it" in referencing Him (the word for Spirit in the Greek is grammatically neuter, which explains Basil's way of talking of the Spirit, who himself wrote "On The Holy Spirit" in Greek).
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