The Holy Spirit in Biblical Perspective

Why Begin Here

This course studies a movement named, above all others, for its emphasis on the Holy Spirit — His baptism, His gifts, His power. Before we can weigh such a movement well, we must be clear about the One at its center: who the Holy Spirit is, as the whole of Scripture presents Him. Every question that lies ahead — what tongues are, what the baptism in the Spirit means, whether the gifts continue — rests upon some understanding of the Spirit Himself. Get Him wrong, and much that follows will go wrong with Him. So we begin by laying the foundation.

If you have studied the person and work of the Holy Spirit elsewhere, you will find some of this familiar; here it is gathered and pointed toward the particular questions this course will raise. We will consider four things in turn: that the Spirit is God, that He is a Person, what He does — in creation, in Christ, and in the believer — and how His gifts open the door into the rest of our study. Through all of it, one thread will hold: the Spirit always leads us to Christ.

The Spirit Is God

First and most basic: the Holy Spirit is fully God — not a lesser being, not a created power, but the third Person of the one true God, together with the Father and the Son. Scripture ascribes to Him the names, the attributes, and the works of God. He is eternal (Heb 9:14), present everywhere (Ps 139:7), and active in creation itself, moving over the face of the waters at the beginning (Gen 1:2).

That He is God is shown most sharply in a solemn scene from the early church, when Ananias lied about his gift and Peter named his sin:

"Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit…? You have not lied to men but to God."Acts 5:3–4 (NKJV)

To lie to the Holy Spirit, Peter says, is to lie to God; the two are one. And when the Lord Jesus gave the church its baptismal command, He joined the Spirit with the Father and the Son under a single name — "baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt 28:19) — as the apostolic blessing likewise joins all three (2 Cor 13:14). The Spirit is therefore to be worshiped and obeyed as God, for that is what He is.

Scripture assigns to the Spirit works that God alone can do. He searches even the deep things of God, knowing His thoughts as a person's own spirit knows his (1 Cor 2:10–11) — a knowledge no creature could have. He gives new life to the dead soul; He inspired the Scriptures; He raised the Lord Jesus and will raise us (Rom 8:11). These are the works of God, and the Spirit does them, because He is God.

The Spirit Is a Person

Second, the Holy Spirit is a Person — not an "it," not an impersonal force or energy or atmosphere, but a "He," a Person with mind, will, and affection. This truth is easy to lose, and losing it does real harm. Scripture will not let us reduce Him to a power to be harnessed.

For the Spirit does what only a person can do. He teaches and brings to remembrance (John 14:26); He speaks, and forbids, and sends out workers (Acts 13:2; 16:6–7); He can be grieved (Eph 4:30), lied to (Acts 5:3), and resisted (Acts 7:51). He acts by His own will, "distributing to each one individually as He wills" (1 Cor 12:11). And the Lord Jesus called Him "another Helper" (John 14:16) — another of the same kind as Himself, a personal Comforter to take His place among them.

This matters greatly for the movement we study, and for our own prayers. To speak of "getting more of the Holy Spirit," as though He were a substance we could obtain in larger quantities, mistakes a Person for a power. We do not get more of Him as we might get more water in a jar. Rather, we yield more of ourselves to Him, that He may fill and govern more of our lives. The question is never how much of the Spirit we have, but how much of us the Spirit has.

The Spirit in Creation and the Old Covenant

Third, we turn to what the Spirit does — and His work did not begin at Pentecost. From the first verses of Scripture He is at work: hovering over the unformed creation (Gen 1:2), and giving life, for "the Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life" (Job 33:4). Throughout the Old Testament He comes upon particular people for particular tasks — upon craftsmen to build the tabernacle, upon judges to deliver Israel, upon kings like David when he was anointed (1 Sam 16:13), and upon the prophets, who spoke as they were "moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Pet 1:21).

But in the old covenant the Spirit came upon chosen individuals for a time and a purpose; He did not yet indwell all God's people alike. And so the prophets looked ahead to a greater day, when God would pour out His Spirit on all flesh and put His Spirit within His people, writing His law on their hearts (Joel 2:28; Ezek 36:26–27; Jer 31:33). That promised day dawned at Pentecost, which we will study in the very next unit.

The Spirit and Christ

Fourth, and at the heart of everything, is the Spirit's relation to the Lord Jesus Christ — for the two work in the closest possible harmony. The Spirit was upon Christ at every stage of His earthly life: at His conception in the virgin (Luke 1:35), at His baptism, when the Spirit descended upon Him (Luke 3:22), and throughout His ministry, which He carried out in the power of the Spirit (Luke 4:18; Acts 10:38). And the risen, exalted Christ, in turn, poured out the Spirit upon the church (Acts 2:33).

Most important of all is what Jesus Himself said the Spirit came to do. The Spirit does not come to advertise Himself or to draw attention to His own gifts; He comes to point to the Son:

"But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me."John 15:26 (NKJV)

"He will glorify Me," Jesus said, "for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you" (John 16:14). This is the Spirit's great work and delight — to magnify Christ. And it gives us, as this course repeats again and again, the surest test of any work that claims to be the Spirit's: does it exalt Jesus Christ and lead people to Him? The Spirit will also never lead against the Scriptures He Himself inspired (2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:21); the Spirit and the Word are always in agreement, for they are of one God.

The Spirit in the Christian

Fifth, we come to the Spirit's work in the believer — the work by which each of us who trusts Christ is brought to life and kept. It begins before conversion, for the Spirit convicts the world "of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment" (John 16:8), and it is by the Spirit that a person is born again, for "unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God" (John 3:5). No one comes to Christ apart from this inward work.

And every true believer, without exception, has the Spirit. This is a point of great importance, and we must not let it slip:

"But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His."Romans 8:9 (NKJV)

The Spirit indwells the believer as a temple (1 Cor 6:19); He bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God (Rom 8:16); He produces His fruit in us — love, joy, peace, patience, and the rest (Gal 5:22–23); He helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us in prayer (Rom 8:26); and He seals us for the day of redemption (Eph 1:13–14). Note well: this indwelling belongs to all who are Christ's, from the moment of faith, not to an advanced few. The further question of whether there is a distinct later experience called the baptism in the Spirit we take up in its own unit; here we simply establish that every Christian already possesses the Spirit of God.

By the same Spirit we are given access to the Father, for through Christ we both have access in one Spirit to the Father (Eph 2:18). He is the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, Abba, Father (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6), and He is the down payment, the guarantee of our inheritance until we take full possession of it (2 Cor 1:22; Eph 1:14). So the Spirit is not only the One who begins the Christian life but the One who carries it, and secures it, all the way home.

The Spirit and the Gifts

Sixth and finally, the Spirit who indwells His people also equips them, and here we reach the doorway into the rest of this course. To the church He distributes gifts — the charismata — for the common good and the building up of the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:4–11; Rom 12:6–8; Eph 4:11–12; 1 Pet 4:10–11). These gifts are His to give, and He gives them freely:

"But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills."1 Corinthians 12:11 (NKJV)

The movement we study is, above all, concerned with these gifts of the Spirit — which of them there are, whether all continue today, and what such gifts as tongues and prophecy mean. Those questions fill the units ahead, and we do not settle them here. For now we mark only this: the gifts are the Spirit's, distributed as He wills, for the church's good and God's glory; and the fitting posture toward Him is to be filled with the Spirit — an ongoing command (Eph 5:18) — to walk in the Spirit and to keep in step with Him.

It is worth marking here a distinction that will steady us throughout: the gifts of the Spirit are not the same as the fruit of the Spirit. The gifts are abilities He grants for service — teaching, helping, healing, and the rest — and Scripture never measures a person's spiritual maturity by them. The fruit — love, joy, peace, and the graces that make us like Christ — is the surer sign of the Spirit's deep work. A believer may have striking gifts and little fruit, or humble gifts and abundant fruit; and it is the fruit, not the gift, that reveals a life truly filled with the Spirit.

Getting the Spirit Right

Before we go on, it is worth naming two errors that this foundation helps us avoid, for both are common and both do damage. The first is to reduce the Holy Spirit to a mere power or influence — a force to be tapped, a current to be plugged into — forgetting that He is God and a Person, to be worshiped and yielded to, not used. The second is the opposite temptation: to become so absorbed in the Spirit's gifts and outward manifestations that we forget His central work is to make us holy and to glorify Christ.

The Spirit-filled life, as Scripture describes it, is not first about the spectacular; it is about Christlikeness — the quiet, steady growth of His fruit in a surrendered life. A church may prize the gifts and yet grieve the Giver if it forgets this. So we keep the Spirit in His proper place: God, and a Person; the giver of life, and of gifts; and always, in everything, the One who turns our eyes to the Son.

Christ at the Center

For the whole doctrine of the Spirit bends, at last, toward Christ. He is fully God and a distinct Person; He worked in creation and the old covenant and now indwells the church; He gives life, and fruit, and gifts. And in all of it He points away from Himself to Jesus, whom He came to glorify. To know the Spirit rightly is to worship Him as God, to yield to Him as a Person, to receive His life and His gifts with gratitude, and to follow where He always leads — to the Savior.

Looking Ahead

With this foundation laid, we are ready to turn to the day the promised Spirit was poured out upon the church, the day it was born and its mission to the nations began. To Pentecost, then, and the events of Acts 2, we go in the next unit.

Discussion Questions

• Why does it matter, in practice, whether we think of the Holy Spirit as a Person or as a power?
• How does the Spirit's mission to glorify Christ help us test what is and is not His work?
• What does it mean that every true believer already has the Holy Spirit?
• How can a church value the Spirit's gifts without forgetting that His main work is holiness and the exalting of Christ?

Ministry Application

Write two or three sentences you might use to correct, gently, someone who speaks of getting more of the Holy Spirit as though He were a substance rather than a Person.