There are many people who have the impression that the Holy Spirit is not a Person. The title 'Son' which is used of the Lord Jesus Christ immediately suggests personality, but that is not so with the terms 'Holy Spirit' and 'Spirit of God'. The Son of God came among us as a man, but the Holy Spirit has never appeared in so obviously a personal form. It is all too easy to think of Him as merely a force or influence that comes from God. And there are passages of Scripture which seem to reinforce this impression: for instance, those which speak of Him as a wind, or breath, or in terms of power (Ezekiel 37:1-14 is a good example). But when we look at all that the Scriptures say about the Holy Spirit, it becomes clear that He is indeed a Person, who is God in the same sense as are the Father and the Son, and yet who is distinct from both of them.
We see Him acting as a Person. If you simply survey John chapters 14-16, you will see Jesus speaking of Him as dwelling (14:17); teaching, and bringing things to remembrance (14:26); testifying (15:26); convincing (16:8); guiding, hearing, speaking, showing and glorifying (16:13-14). A mere power or influence cannot do all these things. Elsewhere in the New Testament we read of Him teaching (Luke 12:12; 1 Corinthians 2:13); witnessing (Acts 5:32); speaking (Acts 8:29; 28:25; Hebrews 3:7); calling to the ministry (Acts 13:2); sending out (Acts 13:4); forbidding certain actions (Acts 16:6-7); raising from the dead (Romans 8:11); interceding (Romans 8:26); sanctifying (Romans 15:16); revealing, searching, knowing (1 Corinthians 2:10-11); and performing many other actions which can only be done by a person.
Not only does He act as a Person, but the characteristics which make up personality are ascribed to Him. He is said to have intelligence (John 14:26; 15:26; Romans 8:16); a will (1 Corinthians 12:11); and affections (Isaiah 63:10; Ephesians 4:30). Gould Paul talk of 'the love of the Spirit' if the Holy Spirit was just a way of describing a force who is 'God at work'? (Romans 15:30). Gould God be said to know the Spirit's mind, if He were not a separate Person in the Godhead? (Romans 8:27.) And how could men lie to Him (Acts 5:3), tempt Him (Acts 5:9), resist Him (Acts 7:51), grieve Him (Ephesians 4:30), outrage Him (Hebrews 10:29), blaspheme against Him (Matthew 12:31) and call upon Him (Ezekiel 37:9), if He were not a Person? Who could do these things to an impersonal power?
Could the apostles have said, 'It seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us...' (Acts 15:28) if He were a mere force or influence? How could converts be baptized 'in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit' (Matthew 28:19), if the first two were Persons, and the third was not? Could Jesus be said to have 'returned in the power of the Spirit' (Luke 4:14) if the word 'Spirit' simply means 'power'? The whole point of that verse is that the Spirit and His power are two different things. He has power but he is not a power. The same could be said for a number of other verses (like Acts 10:38; Romans 15:13 and 1 Corinthians 2:4) which become meaningless and absurd if you replace the word 'Spirit' with the word 'power'.
The New Testament was written in Greek, and the Greek word for 'Spirit' is pneuma. This noun is neuter. This means that the Greeks regarded pneuma as neither a 'he', nor a 'she', but an 'it'. Yet in John 16:7, 8, 13-14 etc., Jesus referred to the neuter pneuma with a masculine pronoun. In other words, He called Him a 'he' when, to obey the rules of grammar, He should have called Him an 'it'. In doing so, Jesus stressed to us that the Holy Spirit is a Person, and not a thing. At the same time He called the Spirit by the name 'Comforter' (or 'Helper': John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7). This cannot possibly be translated 'comfort', or be regarded as the name for some sort of power or influence. Jesus promised that after His own departure, this Comforter would be to His disciples what He Himself was at the time. It is clear that the Holy Spirit must be as much a Person as is Jesus Himself. It is also clear that Jesus and the Spirit are distinct from one another.
A divine Person Jesus is God, and it would be surprising if the Person He sent to take His place were anything less. Who could be to His disciples what Jesus Himself had been, if he were not also God? And this is the way it was. There is but one Spirit (Ephesians 4:4), and the New Testament gives us four clear lines of thought which display to us that He is God. These are exactly similar to the lines of thought which establish the deity of Christ, but they are no less convincing because of that.The first is that the names of God are used of the Holy Spirit. He is called God. For instance, in Exodus 17:7 we read that 'the children of Israel... tempted the Lord', that is, Jehovah. Psalm 95:8 refers to this incident, and in it God says, 'Harden not your heart, as in the provocation . . . when your fathers tempted me.' When this passage of the Psalm is quoted in Hebrews 3:7-11, its words are said to be those of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the God who speaks in the Psalm–the Jehovah who was tempted in the wilderness–is none other than the Holy Spirit.
We see the same thing in Isaiah 6:8-9. Here Isaiah hears the voice of Jehovah asking, 'Whom shall I send...?' Shortly afterwards Jehovah commissions him to be a prophet, with the words: 'Go, and tell this people . . .'. When Paul quotes these words in Acts 28:25-27, he says that it was the Holy Spirit who was speaking; so the Holy Spirit is Jehovah. He is God. The same lesson can be learned by comparing Jeremiah 31:33 with Hebrews 10:15-16. This is why Peter is so adamant that to lie to the Holy Spirit is to lie to God (Acts 5:3-4). This is why Paul insists that the Spirit of God dwelling in a person makes that person's body the temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 6:19).
A second line of argument is that the attributes of God are ascribed to the Holy Spirit. What can be said of God alone, is said of Him! This could not be so if He were not God Himself. A few examples will be sufficient. None but God is eternal; but in Hebrews 9:14 this is Said of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is holy. The Spirit is in all places at all times (Psalm 139:7-10). The Spirit is all-knowing (Isaiah 40:13-14; 1 Corinthians 2:10-11; Romans 11:34). The Spirit is able to do all He pleases (1 Corinthians 12:11; Romans 15:19). These things are only true of God; but they are true of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God.
A third line of argument is that the works of God are attributed to the Holy Spirit. Was it not God who created man? Yet Elihu could say, 'The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life' (Job 33:4). Who but God is able to sustain the universe He created? Who but God is able to work miracles? Who but God can give a sinner a new nature, and make him spiritually alive? Who but God can, and will, raise the dead? And yet all of these things are attributed by the Scriptures to the Holy Spirit (Psalm 104:30 and Job 26:13; Matthew 12:28 and 1 Corinthians 12:9-11; John 3:5-6 and Titus 3:5; Romans 8:11). Who but God Himself can do the works of God? But these are precisely the works which the Holy Spirit does!
In 2 Corinthians 3:18 we are told that the Holy Spirit increasingly transforms the characters of believers. They are changed more and more into God's image. Could anyone less than God do that? In the same way, while Paul tells us that the Scriptures were breathed out 'by God' (2 Timothy 3:16), Peter tells us that their true Author is the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21). Indeed, the Holy Spirit is God!
A fourth line of argument is that the worship and honour which is to be paid to God alone, is, in the Scriptures, paid to the Holy Spirit. Christian converts are baptized in His name (Matthew 28:19). There is such a thing as blasphemy against Him. Blasphemy is insulting the honour of God, and if the Holy Spirit were not God, it would be impossible to blaspheme against Him. As it is, this sort of blasphemy is the most serious of all, and can never be forgiven (Matthew 12:31-32). In Romans 1:9 Paul calls on God to bear witness to the truth of what he is saying; but in Romans 9:1, in a similar passage, he declares that it is in the Holy Spirit that his conscience bears witness to the truth of his words. He is not afraid to invoke the Holy Spirit when he prays the blessing of God on those to whom he has been writing (2 Corinthians 13:14).
So the Holy Spirit is called God. He has the attributes of God. He does the works of God. He is invoked and honoured as God. We can only conclude that He's God, and that He is God in the same sense as are the Father and the Son.
A distinct PersonHowever, we must be careful to note that the Holy Spirit is a distinct Person. He is God, as is the Father. He is God, as is the Son. But He is not the Father. He is not the Son.
We shall deal with this more thoroughly in our next chapter. Yet the point needs to be established now. Two texts will do. The first is Matthew 12:31-32, to which we recently referred. Here Jesus says that blasphemy may be forgiven. His original hearers would have understood that He was talking about blasphemy against God the Father. He goes on to teach that blasphemy against the Son can also be forgiven. But blasphemy against the Holy Spirit can never be forgiven. It is obvious that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not the same act as blasphemy against the Father, or against the Son. For this to be so, the Holy Spirit must be distinct from the Father. He must be distinct from the Son.
The second text is John 15:26, where Jesus speaks of the Comforter, 'whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father...'. It is plain that the Holy Spirit is not the Lord Jesus Christ, for it is Christ who promises to send Him. It is equally plain that the Holy Spirit is not the Father, for Christ sends Him from the Father. Each is God, yet each is distinct. The truth is, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it, that 'There are three persons in the Godhead; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.' That is the doctrine of the Trinity stated in its most simple form.