Teen Tree of Life. The Doctrine of the Deity of the Holy Spirit. Part 4.

TEEN TREE OF LIFE

The Doctrine of

The Deity of

The Holy Spirit

Part 4

October 9, 2016

BEFORE we begin, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, take a moment to name your sins to God the Father. This will allow you to be filled with the power of The Holy Spirit as you read this booklet (EPH 5:18 & 1JO 1:9). IF YOU HAVE never believed in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have that opportunity right now. Simply tell God the Father that you are believing on His Son Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you make that decision, you are now a believer and will always be a child of God! When you die, you will spend eternity with Him forever in heaven! (JOH 3:16 & ACT 16:31).

As we continue to learn about The Deity of The Holy Spirit, we are going to look at the fact that Divine Works are attributed to The Holy Spirit. The first is Creation:  You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; And You renew the face of the ground. (PSA104:30) Creation is also attributed to The Holy Spirit in JOB 33:4: “The Spirit of God has made me, And the breath of the Almighty gives me life.” Regeneration is attributed to The Holy Spirit in JOH 3:5-8:  Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Resurrection is attributed to The Holy Spirit in ROM 8:11: But 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.

We have seen that The Holy Spirit is associated with The Father and The Son throughout the Bible and just as The Father and The Son have certain Names attributed to Them, setting forth Their Nature and Work, so also does The Holy Spirit have Names which reflect His Character and Work.

One name, obviously, is The Holy Spirit. Here it is used in LUKE 11:13: If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”

In ROM 1:4, His Name is The Spirit of Holiness: … who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord…

Another Name for Him is The Spirit of Grace which we find in HEB10:29: How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? As the Executive of the Godhead, The Spirit bestows grace. So to resist the Spirit is to shut off all hope of Salvation. To resist His Appeal is to insult the Godhead. That is why the punishment mentioned here is so intense.

The Holy Spirit is called The Spirit of Burning in MATT 3:11-12: “As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me [The Holy Spirit] is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” This cleansing is done by the blast of the Spirit's burning. This is the searching, illuminating, refining, trash-consuming character of the Spirit. He burns up the trash in our lives when He enters and takes possession.

He is called The Spirit of Truth in JOH 14:17:  that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. Our Lord again calls Him The Spirit of Truth in JOH15:26: “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me…” And again in JOH 16:13: But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.

In ROM 8:2, The Holy Spirit is called The Spirit of Life: For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. The flesh had been the principle of life and now The Holy Spirit has taken control; The Spirit then is the dynamic of the believer's experience that leads him into a life of liberty and power.

The Holy Spirit has many titles in ISA11:2: The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him, The spirit of wisdom and understanding, The spirit of counsel and strength, The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

In EPH1:13, Paul refers to Him as The Spirit of Promise:  In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise…

In 1PE, The Holy Spirit is called The Spirit of Glory: If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. (1 PET 4:14) Glory here means character. The Holy Spirit is the One Who Produces Godlike Character in the believer.

Now let’s look at The Work of The Holy Spirit. The Work of the Spirit may be summed up under the following headings: His work in the universe; in humanity as a whole; in relation to the believer; with reference to the Scriptures; and, finally, with reference to Jesus Christ.

With respect to The Holy Spirit’s Work in the universe, there is a sense in which the creation of the universe may be attributed to God's Spirit. In PSA 33:6, we read: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath (Spirit) of his mouth," which attributes the work of creation to the Trinity, The Lord, The Word of The Lord, and The Spirit of The Lord. The creation of man is attributed to the Spirit. Job says (in JOB 33:4): "The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life." It would be proper to say that the Father created all things through the agency of the Word and the Spirit.

Not only is it true that The Spirit's Work is seen in the act of creation, but His Power is seen also in the preservation of nature. We read in ISA 40:7: The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; Surely the people are grass. This is a staggering declaration! The Holy Spirit comes in the fierce east wind with its keen, biting blast of death. He comes also in the summer zephyr, which brings life and beauty.

With regard to humanity as a whole, Jesus says this about The Holy Spirit in in JOH 16:8-11: “And He[The Holy Spirit], when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.” Jesus also says about The Holy Spirit in JOH 15:26: “When the Helper [The Holy Spirit] comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me…”

We learn in ACTS 5:32 that it is the job of The Holy Spirit to constantly bear witness of Christ and His Finished Work to the world of sinful and sinning men. This He does largely, although not exclusively, through the testimony of believers to The Saving Power and Work of Christ: “And we [Peter and the apostles] are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him.”

{to be continued}