Holy Spirit Part 2

Part 2

The Being, Mission and Work of the Holy Spirit

John 6:63 (ESV) — It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

This month I’m continuing to address questions about the Holy Spirit. Last month I barely scratched the surface on beginning to answer some of the questions that have been posed. The questions of “Who is the Holy Spirit and how does He work?” are important ones. We noted that the issue arises naturally from a reading of Galatians, where Paul is both insistent that receiving the gift of the indwelling Spirit comes by “faith with hearing” (Galatians 3:2), but also that the true form of worshipping the Lord (who is also the Spirit, 2 Corinthians 3:17) has changed in the New Testament dispensation (Galatians 2:18-19). 

Yet if the Holy Spirit is Himself the Lord God, then He cannot change (Malachi 3:6). So how does this all fit together?

“Being” versus “Mission” versus “Works”

A key to understanding this is the realization that someone can change how they do something without changing what they are doing, and even more essentially, who they are.

A person’s “being” is their identity. It’s the essence of who they are. Now, we are created human beings, so our identity and being can actually change over time. The most notable of all changes to our essence/identity/being is when we are rescued from death and reborn as saved saints. Other things change our identities too. Marriage is a complete union of two separate people into a one flesh union. This also involves a change in your identity.

Being/Identity

These days there is a tremendous amount of confusion in our society about what a person’s identity actually is. We’re apt to think a significant portion of our identity is the sports team we obsess over, a political camp we belong to, or a community we identify with, but those things are not our identities. Alas, that is a discussion for another time, as our focus of this article is on the Holy Spirit’s being, not ours.

The Holy Spirit is the Lord, so His “being” and “identity” has never and will never change. He differs from us in that regard (Praise the Lord!). He has revealed to us that He will never change and has never changed. Malachi 3:6 (ESV) very simply says to us: “For I the Lord do not change.” We should understand this to be a statement about the Holy Spirit’s “being.”

Work(s)

Who you are, however, is not necessarily the same thing as what you do. In the case of God, His character and identity are unchanging. His identity is static and unmoving. “Work”, meanwhile, is defined by the fact that something changes. Consider this: If you have a sink full of dirty dishes, and you sit still and do nothing for two hours so that two hours later you still have a sink full of dirty dishes, you could be said to be unchanging. After all, nothing about you changed in that time. But you also have to recognize that no work has been accomplished. God both has unchanging character and essence, and yet is always working (John 5:17).

A person’s “being” and their “work” are different things. In God’s case, “being” is totally static and “work” is dynamic and never ceasing. So when theology textbooks discuss “God”, they typically break it all into two larger sections. The first section is on His “Being”: His attributes and so-forth. The second section is on His work: what it is He actually has done and does.

God works without His character or identity ever changing. So Jesus can speak wrath and woe to the Pharisees and hypocrites (Matthew 23:13-39 for example), and while this is a reflection of His character attribute of righteousness, it does not for a second demonstrate Him to be ungracious or lacking mercy. His character and being remain unchanged, even while God’s works will often display one or another attribute much more prominently.

Another example comes when we consider God creating the heavens and the earth. That work is an incredible display of God’s omnipotence (His unlimited power), but His holiness and mercy are not absent from Him at that time. God’s “being” is who He is. God’s “work(s)” is/are what He is doing.

Mission

As I said, theology textbooks tend to break their discussion of “Theology proper” (the academic title for “the study of God”) into “Ontology” (the academic title for “the study of being”) and “Economy” (the study of “God’s works”). One answers who God is, the second answers what He is doing. I think, however, that we need to ask a third question- “What is He up to?”

This is, I have to admit, where you guys are getting a little bit more than you have paid for. I don’t know that I have seen any modern theology textbooks break the discussion into 3 parts instead of two. So I want to warn everyone, I am perhaps treading new ground here (which is usually bad news in the world of theology). Yet, I’m going to use a 3-part method anyways, and here’s why: I think I’m putting a name on something that is explicitly described in our creeds. The use of the term “mission” might be new and be mine, but the theology I’m going to base it on is taught right in the Nicene Creed. So while I am a little worried that I’m accidentally applying corporate America’s obsession with mission statements to our theology, I also believe that in coming newsletter articles a distinction between “mission” and “work” will be helpful.

“What God is up to” is a reflection of God’s character. His “mission” is separate from His “being” because His “mission” (unlike His “being”) is outside of Himself. Sometimes theologians use the word “work” (in the singular) in a way that encompasses all the work that God has done and His reasons for doing it. That’s a common way for theologians to speak, but it gets confusing because the word “work” can also mean a singular, not-all-encompassing work. So what I’m saying is, if we’re talking about the all-encompassing concept of what God is up to and why (the thing sometimes called “work”, but not always), let’s just use the term “mission.”

So, to recap- “being” is who God is, “mission” is the all-encompassing idea of what He’s up to, and “work” is any activity He does, has done or will do while pursuing that Mission.

Help From The Creeds

Remember, innovation in theology is generally not that great a thing. We’re surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1). We’re a temple built on the foundation of the Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers who have all gone before us to equip the saints (Ephesians 4:11-12). “New ideas” should be regarded with great skepticism. The witness and teaching of the ancient church is a powerful guide for us. I don’t intend to overthrow that. Instead, I intend to clarify it.

What I’m saying we should do is pay closer attention to the ideas that the Church catholic (notice the small c there) has universally held for hundreds and hundreds of years. These ideas can be found boiled down to their widely accepted forms in the three ecumenical creeds: The Apostles, Nicene and Athanasian Creeds (page 105-107 in our hymnal). We should find guidance there.

The Athanasian Creed is an awesome statement about the identity of God. Relevant to our discussion, it makes clear that the Holy Spirit is God, yet is not the Son nor the Father.

The Apostle’s Creed (the shortest and oldest creed) has less content on the Holy Spirit. His work of conceiving the Christ child is acknowledged, and we also state that we “believe in the Holy Spirit”: a slightly ambiguous statement that we Lutherans confess to mean that “...the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies the whole Christian Church...” (Small Catechism Article III, p.98 in our hymnal). So the Athanasian Creed hits the Spirit’s “being”, and the Apostle’s speaks of some of the Spirit’s “works”, but neither states a mission.

The Nicene Creed (Ambassador p.105), though, is where the meat and potatoes is. The Nicene Creed gives us a statement of identity, a mission, and some works.

Lord, Maker of Life

The first time the Holy Spirit is mentioned in the Nicene Creed it references one of His works. The creed states that Jesus “Came down from heaven and became incarnate by the power of the Holy Spirit.” The incarnation is a work of the Holy Spirit (see Matthew 1:18, Luke 1:35). It’s not, however, His identity or His mission. It’s certainly a part of His mission (obviously, since He did it), but not the entirety of it.

Then, a little further down, we get a whole paragraph about the Holy Spirit. He is “The Lord” (a noun), “and the giver of life” (a participle or a verbal-noun). “Giver of Life” is less a statement of identity and more a statement of what He does. To be more clear, what He is always doing. So much so that it’s presented as a verbal-noun. This isn’t what He occasionally does, nor is it something He did once (like the incarnation). This is the activity that He is always doing. This is a statement of “what He is up to.” This is His mission, or at least part of it.

Now, I need to make an important distinction on how we translate this. In Greek, “the giver of life” is one word (a participle) that comes from jamming two words together. Jesus Himself is the one that fused them together and said “The Holy Spirit IS this”, so we know it’s legit. In John 6:63, Jesus says, “The Spirit is the life-maker.” He just took the noun “life” and jammed it together with the verb we translate “to make” or “to do.”

The thing is, the word is commonly translated “giver of life” instead of “maker of life.” Since it’s important for us to remember that our life is given to us, not apprehended by our own strength, this is not an awful translation. Still, it misses something. The verbal part of “life maker” in John 6:63 is the same verb that means “to make or to do” in the Greek version of Genesis 1:1. The parallel is intentional.

The Nicene Creed intends for us to understand the Holy Spirit’s mission as “giving and making life.” This is a title that you can call Him by, so I guess I wouldn’t deny it if someone confronted me and said “Life-Maker is His identity.” I would agree that Jesus gives Him that status as a title in John 6:63. But as I close out this month's newsletter article, I’m going to restate the awesome truth that we will explore more next month: The Holy Spirit’s mission, inside creation and even beyond space-time in the incomprehensible realm of God’s Heaven, is to give and make life. All life was made and given by Him. That’s what He has always been up to, and that is what He is up to now.

Anytime you see Him discussed in the Bible, He is working on His mission of making life. This is not perplexing sometimes (Luke 1:35) and is a little harder to understand at other times (Luke 4:1, 1 Samuel 19:23-24). I encourage you, over this next month, to ponder various Scriptures that speak of the Holy Spirit and to let them paint a broader picture of the Spirit’s being, mission, and works.

Part 2