What does the Bible say about the Holy Spirit?

Examples

• Matthew 28:19, the great commissioning
• John 14:26, the Holy Spirit will teach you everything
• John 15:26, the Spirit will testify on Jesus' behalf
• Acts 5:3-4, Peter and Ananias speaking about how Satan has filled Ananias' heart
• Romans 8:9, you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit
• Romans 8:26, the Spirit helps us in our weakness
• 1 Corinthians 2:10, the Spirit searches everything
• 2 Corinthians 13:13, the Holy Spirit be with all of you

Warnings

• Mark 3:29, do not speak against the Holy Spirit
• Ephesians 4:30, do not grieve the Holy Spirit

Sermon ideas about the Holy Spirit

Moving to Trinitarianism

The move from binitarianism to trinitarianism is conceptually and religiously not problematic. If one can conceive of and devote herself to two divine persons, probably she can to three. But biblically there are real problems in the move to full three-person theism. The New Testament's treatment of the Holy Spirit is difficult and elusive. Pneuma ("Spirit") is not a clearly personal name as are "Father" and "Son." "Spirit" may refer to a faculty or dimension of a person, as it sometimes does in Scripture (Matthew5:3, 1 Corinthians5:3-5). Accordingly, some theologians are functional binitarians, conceiving the Spirit as a name for "God's active presence" or for "the power of God."

The Spirit is called "God" at most once (Acts 5:3-4). Old Testament passages about Yahweh are not transferred to the Holy Spirit as they are with Jesus Christ. Contrary to the case with Jesus Christ, no biblical author says that the Spirit is equal with God, or in the form of God, or in the image of God, or that he is God's "exegesis," or that he bears the very stamp of God's being. The Spirit is never said to be uncreated.

Does the Holy Spirit love? The most onecan say is that whether the Spirit is ever said to love at all, let alone superlatively, depends on whether the genitive form of pneuma in Romans 15:30 is objective or subjective! More significantly, the Holy Spirit in the New Testament is never an object of worship or of prayer. By the late fourth century, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed could say that the Spirit is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and the Son, but this is a theological deduction from the assumption that the Spirit is divine. It is not a repetition of a biblical claim.

And yet. The Spirit speaks (Mark 13:11), searches (1 Corinthians2:10), bears witness and intercedes (Romans 8:16, 26), teaches (John 14:26), apportions gifts (1 Corinthians12:11), exercises will (Acts 16:6-7), and can be grieved (Ephesians4:30). These are functions of a person.

Moreover, if in Romans 8:26, 34 Paul can attribute the same intercessory function to Christ and to the Spirit, and if intercession is a personal function, and if Christ is a person, then a reasonable inference is that the Spirit is too. Exactly the same goes for "another Advocate" in John 14:16.

The Spirit is repeatedly referred to in the New Testament as "the Spirit of God" or as "the Spirit of Christ." These locutions suggest both close association and distinction.

And the Spirit does perform divine functions. The Spirit judges (John 16:8-11), pours out the love of God (Romans5:5), gives life free from the tyranny of sin (Rom. 8:2), frees believers to be children of God (Romans8:15) and to know themselves as such (8:16), and begin responding as such (8:15b). The Spirit sanctifies (Romans15:16); renews (Romans 7:6); gives love (Romans 15:30), joy (Romans 14:17), hope (Romans 8:17 ff.), peace (Romans 8:6), and faith (1 Corinthians12:9). Moreover, according to Mark 3:29, the Spirit can be blasphemed — unforgivably so. Blasphemy in the New Testament is verbal injury to someone divine, usually God the Father. Finally, the Spirit appears in numerous bi-partite and tri-partite formulas with Jesus Christ, or with Jesus Christ and God the Father, implying that the Spirit is the same sort of being they are.

Pentecost

When theSpirit is poured out at Pentecost, fires start and winds blow and people speak and hear in unfamiliar languages. But these are only attention-getters. The real miracle of Pentecost — the God-almighty, Holy Ghost miracle — is that Jews whom Peter has accused of crucifying God's Messiah are "cut to the heart" and saved. The Holy Spirit cut through their armor and regenerated them in an act "not inferior in power to that of creation or of raising the dead." (The Canons of Dort, Third/Fourth Point, art. 12.)This is the characteristic work of the powerful and mysterious third person of the Holy Trinity.

Raising the dead

In fact, wherever previously hostile or indifferent persons find their hearts strangely warmed by the gospel and Jesus Christ newly attractive to them, Christians properly conclude that the Holy Spirit has been in the neighborhood to do the mighty work of raising the dead.