The Deity of the Spirit: He Is God
The third misunderstanding corrected: the Spirit is not a creature but God — called God, indwelling as God, bearing the attributes and doing the works of God
1. Which Person Is the Spirit?
In the last unit we proved that the Holy Spirit is a Person and not a force. But that settles only half the matter and raises a sharper question: which Person is He? Is He some lesser, created being, an exalted angel perhaps, who stands below God and runs His errands? Or is He Himself God? The Bible leaves no room for doubt. The Spirit is not a creature, however high and holy; He is God, the third Person of the one Godhead, equal with the Father and the Son. He is not a force that flows out from God, and He is not a servant whom God made. He is God. This is the truth that completes the one before it: the Person we met in the last unit is none other than God Himself, come to dwell among His people and within them. The early church had to defend this very point, for some rose up to say that the Spirit was only a creature, the first and highest of God's works but a work all the same. The church searched the Scriptures and confessed otherwise, and rightly so. Let us see how the Scriptures press this home.
2. He Is Called God
The plainest proof is that the Bible simply calls Him God. The book of Acts records the sin of Ananias and Sapphira, who sold a piece of property and pretended to lay the whole price at the apostles' feet while secretly holding part of it back. Peter saw through the lie and asked, "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?" (Acts 5:3). Then in the very next breath he said, "You have not lied to men but to God" (Acts 5:4). Read those two sentences together. To lie to the Holy Spirit, Peter says, is to lie to God, for the Holy Spirit is God. The apostle moves from one name to the other without a pause, because in his mind they name the same divine Person. Nor does Paul hesitate to call Him by the other great name, for he writes, "Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Corinthians 3:17). God and Lord are the highest names there are, and the Spirit wears them both. Here is the deity of the Spirit stated as plainly as words can state it.
3. He Is God Dwelling in You
The same truth meets us from another direction when Paul speaks of the believer as a temple. "Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16). A temple is the house of a god, the place where deity is pleased to dwell. And whose temple are we? God's temple, says Paul, and then in the same sentence he tells us who lives there: the Spirit of God. Later he says it again of the body of each believer: "your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you" (1 Corinthians 6:19). Put the two together and the logic is unanswerable. The temple belongs to God, and the One who dwells in that temple is the Holy Spirit; therefore the Holy Spirit is God. Think of what this means. The God of heaven has not merely sent us a gift or a power. He has come to live in us by His Spirit, making the believer His own dwelling place.
4. He Has the Attributes of God
There are certain things that are true of God and of no one else. No creature is all-knowing, all-powerful, present everywhere at once, or without beginning and end; these belong to God alone. Yet the Bible hands every one of them to the Holy Spirit. He is all-knowing, for Paul writes that "the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God," and that no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:10–11). He is all-powerful, for the angel told Mary, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you" (Luke 1:35); the mightiest work of all, the conception of the Son of God, was the Spirit's doing. He is everywhere present, as David confessed when he cried, "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?" (Psalm 139:7); whether he climbed to heaven or made his bed in the depths, he found the Spirit already there (Psalm 139:8). And He is eternal, for the Scripture speaks of "the eternal Spirit" through whom Christ offered Himself to God (Hebrews 9:14). What belongs to God alone belongs also to the Spirit; therefore the Spirit is God. No creature could be handed even one of these, much less all four at once.
5. He Does the Works of God
We may reason the same way from His works, for the Spirit does what only God can do. He shares in the work of creation. "The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life," said Job (Job 33:4), and the psalmist sang to the Lord, "You send forth Your Spirit, they are created" (Psalm 104:30). He is also the Author of Scripture. Peter tells us that the prophets did not speak on their own, but "holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21), and Paul calls all Scripture God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). The breath that breathed out the Word of God is the breath of the Spirit. He even gives resurrection life, for Paul promises that "He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you" (Romans 8:11). To raise the dead is the work of God if anything is. To create life, to give the very Word of God, and to raise the dead are not the labors of a creature; they are the works of God, and the Spirit does them.
6. He Is Like the Wind
How shall we picture One so far above us? Jesus Himself reached for a picture from nature. Speaking to Nicodemus by night, He said, "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8). The wind is invisible, yet no one denies that it is real; you feel its force and hear its voice though you never see it. It goes where it pleases and answers to no man. And yet, while no sailor commands the wind, every good sailor has learned to use it. He sets his sails and trims them, he runs before the wind or tacks against it, bowing to a power he cannot control but gladly putting it to work. So it is with the Spirit of God. We do not command Him, and we cannot fully trace His ways, but we bow to His sovereign freedom and we spread our sails to His power.
7. He Is Like Electricity
A more modern picture says nearly the same thing. To this day no one can give a complete account of electricity. We cannot say exactly what it is that runs along the wire, or even whether "runs" is the right word at all. And yet no one stands hesitating in a dark room, refusing to flip the switch until the mystery is solved. We use the power freely though our understanding falls far short of it. In just this way we may lean upon the power of the Holy Spirit without first comprehending Him. We will never reach the bottom of who He is, for He is God, and God is past finding out. But we are not asked to explain Him before we trust Him. We are asked to yield to Him and to walk in His power day by day.
8. One God, and This Person Is God
Let us gather it up. We worship one God, and we will never fully fathom the mystery that this one God is three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But the mystery does not cancel the truth; it crowns it. The Spirit is not a second-rate member of the Godhead, not a power on loan, not an angel of high rank. He is called God, He is worshiped as God dwelling in His temple, He bears the attributes of God, and He does the works of God. And this is the wonder of the gospel for us: the God who is all-knowing, all-powerful, everywhere present, and eternal has come by His Spirit to live inside ordinary people who trust His Son. To have the Spirit is to have God Himself. Let that drive us to worship, for the Guest within us is worthy of all the adoration we give the Father and the Son. Let it steady us, for the God who upholds the universe has pledged His own presence to us and will not fail. And let it teach us never to grieve so great a Guest, but to lean with all our weight upon His power, the very power of God at work within us.