The Holy Spirit
John 14:26 – “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”
When Jesus went back to Heaven after His resurrection, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, was sent, by the Father, to this earth to indwell the hearts of those who would surrender to Him. He is the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the Father, and yet He is a person Himself, and God Himself. We cannot fully grasp the truth of all of this but we know it to be true from the Word of God.
In order to truly understand how the Spirit of God works, we first of all have to recognize that He is a person. We cannot just see Him as some kind of divine power or influence from God. He, the Holy Spirit, is a divine person who is worthy of our love, adoration and surrender. He is, as one writer put it, “a real person, infinitely holy, infinitely wise, infinitely mighty, and infinitely tender…”
The same writer goes on to say, “If we think of the Holy Spirit, as so many do, as merely a power or influence, our constant thought will be, ‘How can I get more of the Holy Spirit,’ but if we think of Him in the biblical way as a divine person, our thought will rather be, ‘How can the Holy Spirit have more of “ me?’”
It is this Holy Spirit, sent by God the Fathe and Christ the Son, one who is full of glory, majesty,
power, authority, and holiness, who has come to this earth to make our hearts and lives His temple; His dwelling place! Just that thought in itself should put us on our knees in humble adoration and praise.
He does have power! He does have mighty influence! And yet He is One with whom we can have a relationship, just as real as with Jesus our Savior! He, as a person, has knowledge, feelings or emotions, and He has a will! And He is able to understand all that you and I go through, and all that we feel, and He is able to use you and me according to His will!
According to the Bible He has just as much love for us, being God Himself, as does our Heavenly Father and our Savior, Jesus! Paul, in Romans 15:30, says this, “Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for the love of the Spirit…” We can thank our Heavenly Father for His love which caused Him to send His only begotten Son to die in our place! We can thank Jesus Christ for giving Himself to take our place, becoming the great sacrifice for sin so we could be delivered from sin! But we can also thank the Holy Spirit for being the One who comes and woos us to Christ, helping us see our need of a Savior, and then coming into our hearts to indwell in order to make us more like Jesus!
We will come back to this subject, but until then let’s be thankful for the person of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead!