Holy Spirit Part 1

Part 1 

Isaiah 63:10–12 (ESV) — But they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit; therefore he turned to be their enemy, and  himself fought against them. Then he remembered the days of old, of Moses and his people. Where is he who  brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of his flock? Where is he who put in the midst of them his Holy Spirit, who caused his glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses, who divided the waters before them to  make for himself an everlasting name, 

I have been asked to write about the Bible’s teachings on the Holy Spirit. Specifically, I was asked by a  few people if I could address the Holy Spirit’s work in the Old Testament. I think it’s best, however, not to treat  only one small part of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, but instead to give a well rounded and fairly comprehensive  answer to the question.  

When I sat down to frame up what all my article should cover, I quickly realized that the limits of time and space would make giving a sufficient answer impossible to do in one month’s newsletter article. Contemporary  Christianity is awash in unbiblical teachings about the Holy Spirit. Simultaneously, contemporary Christianity  (and maybe even me?) are probably not spending enough time teaching the truth about who the Holy Spirit is and what His work is. I feel there’s a lot of things that should be covered. This month’s newsletter article is intended  to serve as a foundation. We’re going to introduce some of the questions, as well as lay out a few essential truths  that we can build on in the upcoming months. 

How The Holy Spirit Question Arose 

Our Adult Sunday School group has been studying the book of Galatians. I think that that is exciting  because Galatians is a book (like many New Testament Epistles) that was written to address a specific crisis or  controversy, and yet it never seems to cease to have a practical application to the daily lives of Christians. All  through the ages, believers need to be instructed and reminded, like the Galatians, that salvation is by grace  alone.  

We need to be reminded because we are easily tempted to doubt that salvation really is a result of God’s  grace towards us. It seems so much like salvation should be a response to our worship, or our good deeds, or our moral living, that it’s hard to trust that salvation is given entirely in grace and received entirely by faith.  

 Galatians 3:7–9 (ESV) — Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the  Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham,  saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham,  the man of faith. 

The Law of God points out our sin. The Law kills our hope of being found righteous by works (Galatians  2:19). Yet the Galatians had begun to teach people in their congregation that certain religious works were  necessary to earn salvation. So when confronting the Galatians, Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (2  Timothy 3:16, see also 2 Peter 3:15-27), wrote this-  

Galatians 3:2–6 (ESV) — Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by  hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did  you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works  miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— just as Abraham “believed God, and it  was counted to him as righteousness”? 

Paul makes clear in the letter to the Galatians that it is by grace through faith that the sins of the  Galatians are justified. Justification is an aspect of salvation; one of the blessings that God gives to us in our  salvation. Paul also, by way of a rhetorical question, explains and/or reminds the Galatians that they received the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit (another blessing and aspect of salvation) “by hearing with faith.” Paul elsewhere says the same thing, that it is the hearing of the Word of God that imparts the gift of the Holy Spirit.   

Ephesians 1:13–14 (ESV) — In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your  salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our  inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.  

 Naturally, questions arise from this teaching. Is Paul the only one that teaches this? Is this a doctrine that  is only taught in the New Testament, or worse, was invented by the New Testament authors?  

The question that I suspect arose in the Sunday School Bible study and led to multiple people asking me  about this is “Does Galatians 3:2-6 and Ephesians 1:13-14 only apply to the New Testament era?”  

A Few Short Answers, And More Questions 

Paul’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit (specifically that the Spirit is received through the Word) is not his own  invention. The Holy Spirit Himself revealed this truth to Paul. All Scripture is the inspired Word of God (2 Timothy  3:16-17) given to build up the believer and to call the unbeliever to faith (Romans 1:16-17 among others).  

The Apostle Peter explains-  

2 Peter 1:19–21 (ESV) — And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well  to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your  hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no  prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy  Spirit. 

And later in the same letter, Peter goes on to explain that Paul’s letters are some of those inspired  Scriptures-  

2 Peter 3:15–16 (ESV) — And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul  also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of  these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist  to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. 

Notice here that Peter lumps Paul’s writings together with the “other Scriptures.”  

Paul’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit was revealed and given to him by the Holy Spirit. The Galatians had  received the Holy Spirit when they heard with faith, and the Holy Spirit Himself led Paul to write and clarify that  for them. It was not simply Paul’s human opinion, nor was it singularly Paul’s opinion.  

John 16:13–14 (ESV) — When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not  speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to  come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 

John quotes Jesus as saying that the Spirit comes guiding people into truth. He speaks the truth that  glorifies Jesus. He comes with the Word, and the Word comes with Him.  

The second question, (“Does this only apply to New Testament believers?”) however, is where the answers start to become more complex. 

Unchanged, Yet Something’s Different 

There is something apparently different in the New Testament versus the Old. Paul is writing the  Galatians that the old way of doing things no longer works. Things like circumcision and remaining estranged  from Gentiles need to end. The congregation has been teaching people that these forms of worship are required  for salvation, and in doing so they’ve taught a different “gospel”, which is no Gospel at all (Galatians 1:7). 

These things needed to end. Specifically, teaching that they save needed to end. Paul goes so far as to  employ a groan-inducing pun, saying that he wished those preaching circumcision would be “cut off.”  Yet circumcision was given to the Israelites by God as a sign of the covenant between them (Genesis  17:13). How can this change? Does this indicate some kind of a change in the Holy Spirit?  There are other things that might also seem to indicate some kind of change with the Holy Spirit in the  New Testament. Pentecost certainly seems like the Holy Spirit is doing something wild and different (Acts 2).  Furthermore, when we look at Peter’s sermon that day (Acts 2:15-40), his quotation of the prophet Joel kind of  makes it seem like all the way back in Joel’s time God was talking about doing something different.  

But is this a change in the Holy Spirit? Or is He simply doing something new? Perhaps even a good way to  think of it would be to say that He’s doing the same work He’s always been doing, but in a new way. 

We’re going to take a deeper look at what exactly does change in the coming months. Before we do that,  though, we have to establish what doesn’t and cannot change. Even though we have some Scripture that might  hint at the Holy Spirit changing, we are forced to deny that, or deny His divinity.  

 Psalm 102:26–28 (ESV) — They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You  will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end. The  children of your servants shall dwell secure; their offspring shall be established before you. 

 Malachi 3:6 (ESV) — “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. 

 Hebrews 6:17–18 (ESV) — So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the  unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in  which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast  to the hope set before us. 

The Lord God does not change. This is a vitally important point that we have to establish before we begin  to explore the difference between the Old Testament and New, and the Holy Spirit’s work in both.  

Is the Holy Spirit the Lord God?  

The Lord God does not change, so if the Holy Spirit changes, He is not God. Yet Scripture testifies  abundantly to the truth that the person we call “The Holy Spirit” is Himself fully God. There are many ways that  this comes through, so I will present only a few here.  

In the New Testament, Paul calls us both the Temple of the Holy Spirit and the Temple of the living God.  

 2 Corinthians 6:16 (ESV) — What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of  the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God,  and they shall be my people. 

1 Corinthians 3:16–17 (ESV) — Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in  you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.  1 Corinthians 6:19–20 (ESV) — Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,  whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. God would never encourage us to worship anyone but God Himself (Exodus 20:2-4). A Temple is a place of worship where God and man meet. It would not be possible for Holy Scripture to describe Christians in one  breath as “the temple of the Holy Spirit” and in the next “God’s temple” if the Holy Spirit was not Himself God. And  yet, so it is. We are God’s Temple. We are the Holy Spirit’s Temple. The Holy Spirit is God.  

The Holy Spirit is the Lord God. Paul says the same, but more directly, elsewhere.

 2 Corinthians 3:17 (ESV) — Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is  freedom. 

 2 Corinthians 3:18c (ESV) — For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. 

The Holy Spirit is God. This truth demands that we see and understand Him as unchanging. Nothing we say or teach about Him can run contrary to this truth. So as we begin to wrestle with this question of why the New  Testament’s accounts of His work seem to be different than the Old Testament’s, we have to remember that it’s  not because He changed. Forms of worship may change, but age to age He stays the same.  

Incidentally, my fear is that this is where a great number of contemporary Christian congregations fail in  their treatment of the Holy Spirit. Their zeal to celebrate the “new things” is not accompanied with clear teaching  about the divinity of the Holy Spirit. When this happens, ideas about the New Testament being “different” than the  Old slip into being ideas about the God of the New Testament being different than the God of the Old. This implicitly teaches that the Holy Spirit is not God and leads us into all kinds of untruth and apostacy.  

Pursuing Truth 

So admittedly we’ve barely scratched the surface about the person and work of the Holy Spirit, but  establishing that He is uniquely and powerfully God, unchanging and unending, is an important first step. Until  next month, I encourage you to consider more of the texts speaking about the Holy Spirit. Please feel free to  bring verses that you find particularly perplexing or enlightening to me so that maybe they can be included in  future months. 

Also consider our creeds and confessions. You can find our 3 creeds (the Apostles, Nicene and  Athanasian) on page 105 of the hymnal. I would encourage your to notice the Nicene’s Creed’s longer section on  the Holy Spirit (compared to the Apostle’s). The Athanasian Creed is also very helpful in teaching us how to  properly consider the Trinity. 

And, of course, pray that the Spirit will guide us on this journey.  

John 15:26 (ESV) — “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 bear witness about me.