The Person and work of the holy spirit

The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is one of the things that sets Christianity apart from other religions. Whereas other religions worship a God that is far away and unknown, we serve a God who we can know personally and have a relationship with. When Jesus died he did not abandon us as orphans leaving us without a Father, but He has come to live in us, to lead us into all truth and to equip us. The Spirit reveals God to us. And that makes Him more than just someone who we read about in a book, but makes Him a living truth in our lives.
So over the next few weeks we’re going to be looking at various aspects of the Holy Spirit, And today we are going to look specifically at who the Holy Spirit is and the work that He does in our lives.

Understanding the Holy Spirit

A common mistake that people make is thinking of the Holy Spirit as an impersonal force or power.Although he does have power, He is a person. He is referred to as He throughout the Bible. His preferred pronouns are He/Him, not it! He is part of the triune of God along with God the Father and God the Son. He is considered equal with the Father and Son.And he has their characteristics of being omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. Because he is a person he has a personality and a character. He possesses a mind, emotions, and a will. He thinks and knows, and he makes decisions according to His will 


Holy Spirit in Creation

​Now, the Spirit was there right at the beginning of creation. In the second verse of the Bible we can see The Holy Spirit involved in the creation of the world.

Genesis 1:2 (NLT) The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

And then as God created man the Holy Spirit was breathed into man and man gained life.

Genesis 2:7 (NLT) Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.

The phrase for  breath of life is the same Hebrew word as the Spirit of God. When man is created, God breathes into man much like the kiss of life. We can see a parallel to this in the New Testament.

John 20:19-22 (NLT) That Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them! “Peace be with you,” he said. As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord! Again he said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Again there’s a perfect mirroring of the Old Testament and the New of the Holy Spirit breathing life into mankind.

Guarantee - Owned by Christ

And from the point that we are saved, God fills us with His Spirit

Ephesians 1:13-14 (NLT) And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.

So He comes in us as a seal of our salvation, He is a guarantee of our inheritance in Christ  - He is proof that we have been purchased by  God as one of His own people. He is a receipt showing proof of purchase, proof that we have been bought by the blood of the lamb and set aside for Jesus.

Ephesians 4:30 (NLT) And do not bring sorrow to God’s Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, he has identified you as his own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption.

When we turn to Jesus we cease to belong to ourselves, but rather are owned, and paid for by God.  And if we don’t have the Spirit of God in us, then we do not belong to God, and indeed Jesus said that those who are not His cannot receive the Spirit.

Romans 8:9 (NLT) But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. (And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all.)

Advocate - pointing to Jesus

John 14:15-21 (NLT) “If you love me, obey my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognise him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you. No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you. Soon the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Since I live, you also will live. When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them. And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them.”

Jesus gives a promise to all those who love Him and obey His commandments. This promise is That He will send us an advocate. The use of the word advocate here means counsellor or someone to come alongside us and show us the way. 

John 14:26 calls Him our helper

So when Jesus died, He did not abandon us. He did not leave us as orphans, as a people without a father to love and lead us. Instead He sent His Spirit to guide us and be with us. And His Spirit comes and lives within us for a purpose, to advocate for Jesus. He comes in us to reveal Jesus to us, to reveal His will to us. 

John 16:12-15 (NLT) “There is so much more I want to tell you, but you can’t bear it now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the future. He will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me. All that belongs to the Father is mine; this is why I said, ‘The Spirit will tell you whatever he receives from me.’

He comes to glorify Jesus, to show us His will and His way. He also reveals to us what Jesus is saying, bringing Him glory and even telling us about the future. Everything that the Father has belongs to Jesus and He in turn reveals His will to us by His Spirit.

John 14:26 (NLT) But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.

The Spirit teaches us everything.  When we read our bibles, when we listen to sermons or read teaching books or even in our everyday life the Spirit reveals truth to us if we allow Him to. God’s word is more than a piece of history that we can read about, when the Spirit opens ours eyes and ears to understand it, it becomes life. 

1 Corinthians 2:10-12 (NLT) But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit. For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets. No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.

Our Christian walk is one of knowing the truth of God deeper and deeper. The Spirit shows us even God’s deep secrets, even what He is thinking. To have him living in us and revealing the truth of God is such an amazing and precious gift and something that we should eagerly desire.

New Life

So He comes to live is us to guide us, to seal our redemption but He also brings us into new life. We’ve already heard that the Spirit is a part of creation, He literally breathed life into the world and mankind.

John 3:5-8 (NLT) Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.”

So don’t be surprised when Jesus says that we need to be born again. Humans can only produce human life, so when we are born in the natural we have human life that has come from humans ie reproduction. But Spiritual life only comes from being born again by His Spirit.  When we are filled with His Spirit we are born again into a new life. A new life with a new Heavenly Father, who we can know and follow because He lives in us. God doesn’t want us to be the same as we were before we were saved, He wants us to be transformed, and we can do that because His Spirit in us reveals Jesus to us.

Titus 3:5 (NLT) he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.

The life that he brings us is abundant life, life that flows out of that connection that he gives us with Jesus.

John 10:10 (ESV) The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Sanctification

The Holy Spirit also sanctifies us. 

1 Corinthians 6:11 (NLT) Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Sanctification is a work that takes place within us by His Spirit. We are made holy and right with God in Jesus’ name and by the work of the Spirit of God. Having His life within us makes us right with God. We are justified, just as if I’d never sinned, because we have His righteousness within us. When we are born again He gives us His righteousness. When He lives in us, when God looks upon us He sees the righteousness of Jesus living within us. We’ve seen before how we could never make ourselves right enough for a holy God.  And where most religions are about the works we must do to try to achieve that holiness before god, Christianity is about God entering the lives of sinful people and making them holy by His Spirit, He justifies us from the inside out, and he does that by His Spirit within us, not because of us or anything that we have done, but because of His grace and mercy.

Conviction

The Holy Spirit does not just work in believers. He also does a work in unbelievers.

John 16:5-8 (NLT) “But now I am going away to the one who sent me, and not one of you is asking where I am going. Instead, you grieve because of what I’ve told you. But in fact, it is best for you that I go away, because if I don’t, the Advocate won’t come. If I do go away, then I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment.

He convicts the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness. Because this Spirit is the goodness and the righteousness of God He brings conviction, because when we see His righteousness we realise our sin and our need for Him. It’s not our preaching or finger pointing will convict us of our sin, it is the Holy Spirit, although His conviction may come through our preaching. The world is facing judgment, and the Holy Spirit also convicts them of this truth There is a day of reckoning scheduled—a day in which the holy God will hand out justice and rid His creation of sin

Gifts

Another role of the Holy Spirit is to distribute gifts amongst His people

1 Corinthians 12:7-11 (NLT) A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other. To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; to another the same Spirit gives a message of special knowledge. The same Spirit gives great faith to another, and to someone else the one Spirit gives the gift of healing. He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit. Still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages, while another is given the ability to interpret what is being said. It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have.

We looked a couple of weeks ago at How Jesus has given gifts to the church in terms of roles such as pastors or evangelists, but He also gives gifts to His people within the church with the same purpose of building it up. It says that they are given in order that we can help each other. Again, we are made to rely on each other, not one of us has the fullness of god, so that we need each other.

And He alone decides how these gifts are distributed,  but it does state that we are each given a gift. Each of us are a gift to the church, and we’re each given gifts by the Holy Spirit in order to help one another.

Advocate in Prayer

The Holy Spirit assists believers in prayer

Jude 1:20 (NLT) But you, dear friends, must build each other up in your most holy faith, pray in the power of the Holy Spirit,

So when we pray we are not just to pray, but pray in the power of the Holy Spirit. Praying in the power of the Holy Spirit means that it is not just us praying, but the Holy Spirit praying through us. The advocate shows us what we are to pray. We don’t even know what is right to pray, so the Spirit prays for us.

Romans 8:26-27 (NLT) And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will. The Holy Spirit partners with us in prayer.

Worship in the Spirit

John 4:24 (NLT) For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”

Jesus taught this after talking to the woman at the well where she asked Jesus where she should go to worship. But Jesus replies that she does not need to go to any physical location, because the Holy Spirit has made a way that we can worship Him anywhere because he has come to live in us, so we can glorify him anywhere. We no longer have to go to a temple to worship, because our bodies become the temple of the Holy Spirit. Just like the Spirit partners with us in prayer, he also partners with us in worship, so it is Him in us worshiping God.

Unity in the Spirit

Ephesians 4:3-4 (NLT) Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. The Holy Spirit brings is in unity with Jesus, the head of the church. That in turn brings us into unity with each other, because we are one body. If each of us are connected to Him by His Spirit we will each walk in perfect harmony with each other.

Led by the Spirit

The Holy Spirit leads us in every part of our lives.

Galatians 5:25 (NLT) Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. We live by the Spirit and we follow the Spirit.

Conclusion

There is no such thing as a Christian walk that is not led by the Spirit.

Romans 8:14 (NLT) For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.

The Holy Spirit isn’t an optional extra to our lives, but our following of Him defines whether or not we are a child of God. We cannot do this without Him.  The Spirit is God Himself working through us, and anything that is not from Him is merely our own works.