What the Holy Spirit does

Who the Holy Spirit is

Many people hear the words Holy Spirit and think of a force, or a warm feeling. But Scripture and the church, the gathering of people who belong to Jesus, confess the Spirit as God, a person who knows, speaks and loves. God is one, and is Father, Son and Holy Spirit: this is what Christians call the Trinity. The Nicene Creed, a short confession of faith settled by councils of church leaders in the fourth century and said by many churches around the world, confesses (‘Holy Ghost’ is an older English name for the Spirit):

And we believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; … who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified

The Nicene Creed, fourth article

On the night before he died, Jesus promised, "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever" (John 14:16). An Advocate stands beside us to help, comfort and speak for us. John Chrysostom, a preacher of the fourth century, comments: "The Spirit does not depart even at death" Chrysostom. The Spirit teaches us (John 14:26), and he can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30). A force cannot grieve.

What he does in believers

First, the Spirit gives new birth. Jesus said that "no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit" (John 3:5), and Paul speaks of "the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5). This is regeneration, being born again. The Spirit convicts us of sin (John 16:8) and points us to Christ: "He will glorify Me" (John 16:14). If you have grieved over your sin and come to trust Jesus, the Spirit has already been at work, for "no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:3).

The Spirit lives in every believer: "if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ" (Romans 8:9). So all who belong to Christ have the Spirit, and their body is "a temple of the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 6:19), a house where God lives.

And in Him, having heard and believed the word of truth — the gospel of your salvation — you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the pledge of our inheritance

Ephesians 1:13-14

A seal is the mark an owner sets on what is his; a pledge is a first payment that promises the rest; our inheritance is all that God will give his children. The Spirit makes us cry "Abba! Father!" (Romans 8:15), and when we do not know how to pray, "the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words" (Romans 8:26).

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Galatians 5:22-23

Fruit does not appear overnight; it grows. So Paul says, "walk by the Spirit" (Galatians 5:16). The Spirit also gives gifts, abilities for serving one another: "to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good" (1 Corinthians 12:7), and he gives them "as He determines" (1 Corinthians 12:11).

The bond that joins us to Christ

The Reformed churches grew from the sixteenth-century Reformation, a movement to renew the church by Scripture, in the line of teachers such as John Calvin. Presbyterians are the best known; the Reformed churches of continental Europe are another branch, and among Baptists the Reformed Baptists confess the same faith. Calvin called the Holy Spirit the bond by which Christ joins us to himself Calvin, Institutes 3.1: what Christ has done becomes ours through the Spirit. The Heidelberg Catechism (1563), a catechism that teaches by questions and answers, confesses (‘partaker’ means sharer):

First, that he is co-eternal God with the Father and the Son. Secondly, that he is also given unto me, makes me by a true faith partaker of Christ and all his benefits, comforts me, and shall abide with me forever.

Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 53

The Reformed teach that the Spirit works with the Word and through it. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647) says that the Spirit of God makes ‘the reading, but especially the preaching of the Word’ an effectual means of converting sinners and building them up Q. 89; preaching is the explaining of Scripture to the gathered church. The Heidelberg Catechism adds that the Spirit works faith ‘by the preaching of the holy Gospel, and confirms it by the use of the holy Sacraments’ Q. 65, the sacraments being holy rites Christ gave his church. So those who seek the Spirit look for him in Scripture, prayer, worship (the church's gathering before God) and the sacraments, not apart from them.

Where Christians differ

Pentecostal churches, and many churches of the charismatic movement, which stresses the Spirit's gifts within many denominations, teach a baptism in the Spirit that comes after conversion, the turning from sin to trust in Christ. Pentecost, a Jewish feast, was the day the Spirit came on the disciples after Jesus rose, and they began to speak in tongues, languages they had not learned (Acts 2:1-4). The paper of the 1906 Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles taught that the baptism in the Spirit is a gift of power upon the sanctified life, with speaking in new tongues as its evidence, as at Pentecost The Apostolic Faith, 1906. Many Pentecostal churches still hold tongues to be its first sign; many charismatics do not. They read "you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you" (Acts 1:8), and teach that this baptism is not a second salvation but power to serve as Christ's witnesses.

Most Reformed, Baptist and other churches teach that every believer receives the Spirit, and is baptized in him, on coming to faith: "in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body" (1 Corinthians 12:13). They read "be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18) as a call to yield to him again and again.

On whether prophecy (speaking a word given by God), tongues and healing continue today, the Reformed themselves are divided. Many Reformed teachers hold that these gifts confirmed the gospel in the apostles' time and then ceased; others hold that they are still given, and must be tested by Scripture. Both believe that God still hears prayer and can heal, and both hold to "Do not extinguish the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt, but test all things. Hold fast to what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:19-21), and "everything must be done in a proper and orderly manner" (1 Corinthians 14:40). The doctrine course's Gifts of the Spirit and the theology course's The Pentecostal and charismatic movements go further.

No one needs a particular experience to prove that the Spirit is theirs. Confessing Jesus as Lord is already his work, and the surer sign is fruit that grows. See also the doctrine course's Who the Holy Spirit is and New birth and the indwelling Spirit, and Who is the Holy Spirit?

This week

Read Galatians 5:13-26. Notice how the works of the flesh differ from the fruit of the Spirit. Choose one of the nine fruits and pray for it this week.

Ask your Father in heaven for the Spirit. Jesus promised, "how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!" (Luke 11:13). You need no fine words: Holy Spirit, please help me, is enough. The next lesson is about starting to read the Bible, the word through which the Spirit speaks.

Practice