TEEN TREE 
OF LIFE
The Gift of The Holy Spirit
Part 3
August 29, 2021
Before you begin, ask yourself a very important question: Do you believe that Jesus Christ died on The Cross for all of your sins? If you answered yes, you will need to be sure that you are filled with The Holy Spirit. How do you do this? You name your sins to God The Father in His Son’s Name. This is called Rebound. As a Christian, you must rebound any time you sin. This is taught in 1 JOH 1:9: If we confess [name] our sins [directly to God], He [God] is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, if you have never believed that Jesus Christ died on The Cross for all of your sins, all you have to do is say to yourself that you believe in Him and you are saved! The Bible verse which teaches us this is ACTS 16:31: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.”
We’ll start this week’s study with a look at The Holy Spirit’s Role in His Relationship with Jesus Christ. He had a very special Relationship with Our Savior since it was by The Power of The Holy Spirit that the virgin Mary conceived and gave birth to Jesus. We learn this in LUK 1:35 (New International Reader’s Version): The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come to you. The power of the Most High God will cover you. So the holy one that is born will be called the Son of God. The Holy Spirit is The Person of the Trinity Whose role it is to deal directly with mankind. So it shouldn’t surprise us that The Spirit is the One who performs this miraculous deed, playing such a vital role in Christ’s Conception.
Then, during His childhood, Jesus Christ’s understanding of the things of God made it obvious that The Holy Spirit was upon Him: The next day they found him in the Temple seated among the teachers, listening to them and asking questions. The teachers were all quite taken with him, impressed with the sharpness of his answers. But his parents were not impressed; they were upset and hurt. His mother said, “Young man, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been half out of our minds looking for you.” (LUK 2:46-48 The Message Bible)
The Spirit came upon Jesus at His Baptism and empowered Him for The Ministry that He would carry out over the next three years as we see in MATT 3:16 (New International Reader’s Version): As soon as Jesus was baptized, he came up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened. Jesus saw the Spirit of God coming down on him like a dove.
Jesus was sent to earth by His Father with a mission to fulfill. When the time for the mission arrived, God gave Him The Spirit to empower Him to fulfill the mission. But why would the Son of God need the power of the Holy Spirit? It was not the Divinity of The Lord Jesus Christ but His Humanity that was being anointed and that needed The Power of The Holy Spirit. In ACTS 10:38 (The Message Bible) Peter says, “You know the story of what happened in Judea. It began in Galilee after John preached a total life-change. Then Jesus arrived from Nazareth, anointed by God with the Holy Spirit, ready for action. He went through the country helping people and healing everyone who was beaten down by the Devil. He was able to do all this because God was with him.”
It was by The Power of The Holy Spirit that Jesus was able to teach the things of God, to proclaim The Gospel, and to perform His many miracles. That is why it was so serious when the Pharisees charged Jesus with casting out demons by the power of Beelzebul. This was blasphemy against The Holy Spirit and His Work, and nothing more can be done for a person that rejects The Revelation of The Spirit of God and proclaims it to be Satan. They are left in their sins without recourse. This is taught in MATT 12:30-32 (New International Reader’s Version): “Anyone who is not with me is against me. Anyone who does not gather sheep with me scatters them. So here is what I tell you. Every kind of sin and every evil word spoken against God will be forgiven. But speaking evil things against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven. But anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. A person like that won’t be forgiven either now or in days to come.”
The Holy Spirit was also at work in Our Savior’s Death and Resurrection. HEB 9:14 (New International Reader’s Version) tells us that it was through The Eternal Spirit that Jesus offered Himself without blemish to God: But Christ offered himself to God without any flaw. He did this through the power of the eternal Holy Spirit. So how much cleaner will the blood of Christ make us! It washes away our feelings of guilt for committing sin. Sin always leads to death. But now we can serve the living God.
1 PET 3:18 (New International Reader’s Version) tell us about the role of The Holy Spirit in Christ’s Death and Resurrection: Christ also suffered once for sins. The one who did what is right suffered for those who don’t do right. He suffered to bring you to God. His body was put to death. But the Holy Spirit brought him back to life.
Presently, The Lord Jesus Christ is in Heaven preparing a place for His followers according to JOH 14:1-3 (New American Standard Bible): “Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many rooms; if that were not so, I would have told you, because I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will take you to Myself, so that where I am, there you also will be.” He is seated at The Right Hand of The Father and making intercession for us. Making intercession means praying. Look at HEB 7:25 (New International Reader’s Version): People now come to God through him. And he is able to save them completely and for all time. Jesus lives forever. He prays for them. When Jesus Christ returns to set up His Millennial Kingdom, it will be by The Power of The Holy Spirit that He will rule the nations.
Now let’s look at the relationship between The Persons of The Godhead. First, though each Person within The Trinity is equal in nature and attributes, there is a hierarchy of order. The apostle Paul explains it perfectly in 1 COR 11:3 (New International Reader’s Version): But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ. The head of the woman is the man. And the head of Christ is God.
Jesus Christ sends The Spirit and The Spirit proceeds from The Father, according to JOHN 15:26 (New International Reader’s Version): “I will send the Friend to you from the Father. He is the Spirit of truth, who comes out from the Father. When the Friend comes to help you, he will be a witness about me.” Don’t you love how Our Lord calls The Holy Spirit “the friend”?
The designations of The Holy Spirit as The Spirit of God, The Spirit of The Lord and The Spirit of Christ, further strengthen this idea of The Spirit’s Purpose as coming from The Father and The Son. An examination of The Ministry of The Spirit shows that He glorifies The Father and The Son: But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears. And he will tell you what is still going to happen. He will bring me glory. That’s because what he receives from me he will show to you. Everything that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said what the Holy Spirit receives from me he will show to you. (JOH 16:13-15 New International Reader’s Version) Interestingly, The Spirit glorifies The Father and The Son without ever seeking glory for Himself. There are no commands to worship Him or even pray to Him, though it would be impossible to worship God or to pray without Him.
As we learned earlier, The Holy Spirit revealed the Will and Message of God to the prophets. Many of those revelations were written down as the record of the Old Testament. God then revealed Himself through The Incarnation of Jesus Christ with His Life and Teachings recorded in the Gospel accounts. The Revelation of God then continued through The Holy Spirit’s Ministry with Him moving upon the apostles and inspiring them to write the books of the New Testament. This is taught in 2 PET 1:21 (New International Reader’s Version): Prophecy never came simply because a prophet wanted it to. Instead, the Holy Spirit guided the prophets as they spoke. So, although prophets are human, prophecy comes from God.
The Holy Spirit worked through the apostles to receive the divine message and record exactly what God wanted while still enabling the writer to produce it, according to his own personality and writing style. We call this infallible, inerrant, verbal, plenary inspiration. It is true in all it speaks about, it does not lead astray, it is inspired in specific and in whole. We can be confident that the Bible in its original autographs is The Word of God. Our translations will vary in their ability to communicate that message to us, which is why we must be diligent in our own study and rely on The Holy Spirit to help us understand it. Always remember: Do your best to please God. Be a worker who doesn’t need to be ashamed. Teach the message of truth correctly. (2 TIM 2:15 New International Reader’s Version)
{to be continued}