The Deity Of The Holy Spirit

The chapter shows that the Holy Spirit is truly God by highlighting five key points: He has divine attributes like eternity and omnipresence, performs divine works such as creation and inspiring prophecy, is identified with Jehovah in Scripture, is named alongside the Father and Son as equal, and is explicitly called God in the New Testament. These proofs make clear that the Holy Spirit is a divine Person, not just a force or created being.

In the preceding chapter, we have seen clearly that the Holy Spirit is a Person. But what sort of a Person is He? Is He a finite person or an infinite person? Is He God? This question is also plainly answered in the Bible. There are five distinct and decisive lines of proof of the Deity of the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

I. Each of the four distinctively Divine attributes is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. What are the distinctively Divine attributes? Eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. All of these are ascribed to the Holy Spirit in the Bible. We find eternity ascribed to the Holy Spirit in Hebrews 9:14, “How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”

Omnipresence is ascribed to the Holy Spirit in Psalm 139:7- 10, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.”

Omniscience is ascribed to the Holy Spirit in several passages. For example, we read in 1 Corinthians 2:10- 11, “ These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. Who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

Again in John 14:26, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” Still further, we read in John 16:12- 1, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come .” We find omnipotence ascribed to the Holy Spirit in Luke 1:35, “The angel answered, 'The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.”

II. Three distinctively Divine works are ascribed to the Holy Spirit. When we think of God and His work, the first work we always believe in is that of creation. In the Scriptures, creation is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. We read in Job 33:4, “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life. ” We read again in Psalm 104:30, “Whe n you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.” In connection with the description of creation in the first chapter of Genesis, the activity of the Spirit is referred to (Genesis 1-3). The impartation of life is also a Divine work, and this is ascribed in the Scriptures to the Holy Spirit.

We read in John 6:63, “ 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. ” We also read in Romans 8:11, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you .”

In the description of the creation of man in Genesis 2:7, “Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit's soul. Th e exact words are, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being .” The Greek word, which is rendered “spirit,” means “breath,” and though the Holy Spirit as a Person does not come out distinctly in this early reference to Him in Genesis 2:7, this passage, interpreted in the light of the fuller revelation of the New Testament, refers to the Holy Spirit.

The authorship of Divine prophecies is also ascribed to the Holy Spirit. We read in 2 Peter 1:21, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Even in the Old Testament, there is a reference to the Holy Spirit as the author of prophecy. We read in 2 Samuel 23:2- 3, “The Spirit of the Lord speaks by me; his word is on my tongue.

The God of Israel has spoken; the Rock of Israel has said to me: When one rules justly over m en, ruling in the fear of God,” So we see that the three distinctly Divine works of creation, the impartation of life, and prophecy, are ascribed to the Holy Spirit.

III. Statements which in the Old Testament distinctly name the LORD or Jehovah as their subject are applied to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. For example, the Holy Spirit occupies the position of Deity in New Testament thought. A striking illustration of this is found in Isaiah 6:8-10, And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” In v erse five, we are told that it was Jehovah (whenever the word LORD is spelled in capitals in the Old Testament, it stands for Jehovah in the Hebrew and is so rendered in the American Standard Version) whom Isaiah saw and who speaks.

In Acts 28:25-27, and disagreeing among themselves, they departed after Paul had made one statement: “The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet: ‘Go to this people, and say, ‘You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive. ‘For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed; lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would h eal them.” So we see that what is distinctly ascribed to Jehovah in the Old Testament is ascribed to the Holy Spirit in the New: for example, the Holy Spirit is identified with Jehovah.

It is a noteworthy fact that in the Gospel of John, the twelfth chapter and the thirty-ninth to forty-first verses, where another reference is made to this passage in Isaiah, this same passage is ascribed to Christ (note carefully the forty-first verse). So in different parts of Scripture, we have the same passage referring to Jehovah, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ.

May we not find the explanation of this in the threefold “Holy” of the seraphic cry in Isaiah 6:3, where we read, “And one called to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth i s full of his glory!” In this, we have a distinct suggestion of the tri -personality of Jehovah of Hosts is found in the eighth verse of the chapter, where the Lord is represented as saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”

Another striking illustration of the application of passages in the New Testament to the Holy Spirit which in the Old Testament 20, The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit distinctly name Jehovah as their subject is found in Exodus 16:7, Here we read, “And in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against the Lord. For what are we, that you grumble against us?” Here, the murmuring of the children of Israel is distinctly said to be against Jehovah. But in Hebrews 3:7- 9, we read, “Th erefore, as the Holy Spirit says, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years..”

The murmurings which Moses in the Book of Exodus says were against Jehovah, we are told in the Epistle to the Hebrews, were against the Holy Spirit. This leaves it beyond question that the Holy Spirit occupies the position of Jehovah (or Deity) in the New Testament (Psalm 95:8-11).

IV. The name of the Holy Spirit is coupled with that of God in a way that it would be impossible for a reverent and thoughtful mind to couple the name of any finite being with that of the Deity.

We have an illustration of this in 1 Corinthians 12:4- 6, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.” Here we find God, the Lord, and the Spirit associated together in a relation of equality that would be shocking to contemplate if the Spirit were a finite being. We have a still more striking illustration of this in Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” Who, that had grasped the Bible conception of God the Father, would think for a moment of coupling the name of the Holy Spirit with that of the Father in this way if the Holy Spirit were a finite being, even the most exalted of angelic beings?

Another striking illustration is found in 2 Corinthians 13:14, “14 the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.” Can anyone ponder these words and catch anything like their real import without seeing clearly that it would be impossible to couple the name of the Holy Spirit with that of God the Father in the way in which it is coupled in this verse unless the Holy Spirit were Himself a Divine Being?

V. The Holy Spirit is called God. The final and decisive proof of the Deity of the Holy Spirit is found in the fact that He is called God in the New Testament. We read in Acts 5:3- 4, “But Peter said, 'Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.”

In the first part of this passage, Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit; it was not to men but to God that he had lied in lying to the Holy Spirit, i.e., the Holy Spirit to whom he lied is called God. To sum it all up, by the ascription of all the distinctively Divine attributes, and several distinctly Divine works, by referring statements which in the Old Testament name Jehovah, the Lord, or God as their subject to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, by coupling the name of the Holy Spirit with that of God in a way that would be impossible to couple that of any finite being with that of Deity, by plainly calling the Holy Spirit God, in all these unmistakable ways, God in His Word distinctly proclaims that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person.