Five Truths About the Holy Spirit

"Jesus said: 'I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you' (John 16:7). Now, I don’t want to bring cold coals to Newcastle by giving you information with which you are already familiar, so let me just briefly give some background on this verse. You know that the Greek word translated here as “Helper” is parakletos. In its technical form, it has a legal dimension; it refers to one who would be an advocate. In its wider context, it speaks of comfort, of protection, of counsel, and of guidance. Jesus also spoke of the Spirit as the Helper in John 14 and introduced Him as “the Spirit of truth” (14:17; 16:13).

I think it best for me to simply say a number of things concerning the identity of this Helper with little embellishment.

First, we need to notice that the Holy Spirit is a unique person and not simply a power or an influence. He is spoken of as “He,” not as “it.” This is a matter of import because if you listen carefully to people speaking, even within your own congregations you may hear the Holy Spirit referenced in terms of the neuter. You may even catch yourself doing it. If you do, I hope you will bite your tongue immediately. We have to understand that the Spirit of God, the third person of the Trinity, is personal. As a person, He may be grieved (Eph. 4:30), He may be quenched in terms of the exercise of His will (1 Thess. 5:19), and He may be resisted (Acts 7:51).

Second, the Holy Spirit is one both with the Father and with the Son.In theological terms, we say that He is both co-equal and co-eternal. When we read the whole Upper Room Discourse, we discover that it was both the Father and the Son who would send the Spirit (John 14:16; 16:7), and the Spirit came and acted, as it were, for both of Them. So the activity of the Spirit is never given to us in Scripture in isolation from the person and work of Christ or in isolation from the eternal will of the Father. Any endeavor to think of the Spirit in terms that are entirely mystical and divorced from Scripture will take us down all kinds of side streets and eventually to dead ends.

Third, the Holy Spirit was the agent of creation. In the account of creation at the very beginning of the Bible, we are told: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:1-2). The Hebrew word translated as “Spirit” here is ruach, which also can mean “breath.” The ruach elohim, “the Breath of the Almighty,” is the agent in creation. It is not the immateriality of the Spirit that is in view here, but rather His power and energy; the picture is of God’s energy breathing out creation, as it were, speaking the worlds into existence, putting the stars into space. Thus, when we read Isaiah 40:26 and the question is asked, “Who created these?” we have the answer in Genesis 1:2—the Spirit is the irresistible power by which God accomplishes His purpose.

The Role of The Holy Spirit in Biblical Interpretation

The role of the Holy Spirit in interpretation is something that is often mentioned in hermeneutics (biblical interpretation) and exegesis (deriving the meaning of the text) books, but little discussion is devoted to explaining what that role is, where the Bible teaches it, and how we know when it occurs. After much reading on the subject and a study of related passages of Scripture it is my contention that the Spirit has a multifaceted role in the life of the believer as he interprets Scripture.

The Spirit’s work in the interpreter is necessary because of the depravity of man. Due to the effects of sin a natural man, the unbeliever, “does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor 2:14). This means that the unbeliever does not see the word of God as wisdom, but rather foolishness. Therefore he rejects it. While he does have a level of cognitive awareness of the signification of the words, He cannot understand in the sense of experientially knowing it as truth in a relationship with God. This is due the fact that it is spiritually discerned. The unbeliever is spiritually dead (Eph 2:1) and consequently has a futile, darkened, ignorant mind, and a hard heart that makes him callous to spiritual things (Eph 4:17-19). He is hostile to God and cannot bring himself under the Scriptures as his authority (Rom 8:7-8).

Is that You Lord? Hearing the True Voice of God

"Most believers think that God speaks to them on a regular basis. At least based on my experience, that appears to be the common perception. People use the expression “God told me” or “I heard God” all the time. Certainly, in its worst form, it announces the blasphemous declarations of today’s preachers of the prosperity gospel. Unfortunately, far too many people mimic that language in their everyday conversation. By using such language, they may be attempting to give legitimacy to a decision they’ve made or to defend some action they taken. For others, it may be an attempt to validate (or even to reach for) some level of perceived intimacy with God. They understand that intimacy is built on two-way communication, and so they feel a need to express their relationship to God in terms that capture the dynamic of dialogue, not monologue. But in all these cases, as teachers and leaders, we need to, first of all, help our people understand the theological dangers inherent in this kind of language. Second, we need to boldly present to people the power of God’s voice in its active sense through the Word of God.

For ages discerning pastors and theologians have recognized the dangers in claiming to hear the voice of God outside of Scripture. They recognize that there are stern warnings in Scripture against attributing to God words which, in fact, He did not speak (cf. Deut 18:20; cf. 13:1–5; 1 Cor 14:29–31). Because of the inherent authority that comes with a Word from God, the Lord recognized the potential abuse if people were to claim His authority for messages that merely come from their own imagination. For that reason, He not only established the very high standard of infallibility for all who claim to be His spokesmen, but He often confirmed them with accompanying miraculous signs (Acts 2:22; 5:12; 2 Cor 12:12). Therefore, for us to claim that God is speaking to us apart from Scripture potentially misrepresents God and places us in danger of His judgment. Instead, we recognize that divine revelation has come to us in the Holy Scripture (1 Cor 2:7–13; 2 Pet 1:19–21), and that this “canon” of Scripture was closed with the writing of the final book of the New Testament in the late first century (Rev 22:18–19). This has been the historic view of the church for most of its existence.

The Word-Driven Ministry of a God-Centered Pastor

"All Word and no Spirit, and the Church dries up; all Spirit and no Word, and we blow up; both Word and Spirit, and the people of God grow up."

Understanding the proper relationship of the Spirit of truth and the wholly sufficient Word of truth (that the Holy Spirit inspired) is an essential aspect of God-honoring worship and of Christian ministry (John 4:23-24; Colossians 1:29).

(The following is a series of articles written by a friend, Pastor Don Green about our former shepherd John MacArthur)... "I was first introduced to the ministry of John MacArthur in 1984. I had been a Christian for less than six months and was wrestling with the issues of the charismatic movement.

A friend recommended his book The Charismatics (1978) to me. It was the precursor to the better-known Charismatic Chaos (1992).

It was among the first ten Christian books I ever purchased.

It was by far the most strategic.

At that formative crossroads in my spiritual life, I read words that changed my spiritual trajectory: “Experience is not the test of biblical truth; biblical truth stands in final judgment on experience” (p. 14).