Teen Tree of Life. The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Part 6.

TEEN TREE OF LIFE

The Doctrine of

The Deity of

The Holy Spirit

Part 6

October 23, 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).

In our final segment of our study of the Doctrine of the Deity of The Holy Spirit, we are continuing to look at His Work in relation to the believer.

The Holy Spirit produces the Blessed Fruit of the Christian life which is discussed in GAL 5:22-23: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. What an amazing list! It’s especially beautiful when you compare it to the “deeds of the flesh” in GAL 19-21: Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. When contrasted, these two verses spell out the right way and the wrong way as clearly as day!!

Now, there are three groupings in this list of fruit. The first is in relation to God: “love, joy, peace.” The second is in relation to our fellow man: longsuffering, gentleness, goodness.  The third is for our individual Christian life: faith, meekness, self-control. It is all so well thought out. And the key is being filled with The Spirit so that you produce His Fruit. The Holy Spirit is the Guide of the believer's life. He guides him as to the details of his daily life. Look at ROM 8:14: For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. GAL 5:16 warns us: But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.

There is no detail of the believer's life that may not be under the control and direction of The Holy Spirit. He guides the believer as to the field in which he should labor in his Christian life: While they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then, when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia and from there they sailed to Cyprus. (ACT 13:2-4) What a prominent part the Spirit played in selecting the fields of labor for the apostles! Every step in the missionary activity of the early church seemed to be under the Direct Guidance of The Spirit.

The Holy Spirit Anoints the believer. First, for knowledge and teaching: As for you, the anointing which you received from Him [The Holy Spirit] abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.(1JO 2:27) This is also substantiated in JOH 2:20: But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. It is not enough to learn the truth from human teachers. We must listen to the teaching of The Spirit.

1CO 2:9-14 teaches us that there are some great truths that are spiritually discerned; they cannot be understood unless the believer is Spirit-filled:  but just as it is written, “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, And which have not entered the heart of man, All that God has prepared for those who love Him.” For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. With respect to those who are not believers – natural men – the last sentence says it all!

The Spirit’s work as our teacher is described in JOH 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 said to you. And again in JOH16:13: 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. So you can see what an important role The Holy Spirit has in the life of the believer.

Now let’s look at The Holy Spirit’s role in our service or Christian duties. It’s clear how dependent Christ was upon The Holy Spirit for the Power in which to perform the duties of life in such passages as LUK 4:18: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set free those who are oppressed… and ACTS 10:38: You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.

Three classes of persons in the Old Testament were anointed: the prophet, the priest, and the king. The result of anointing was consecration. Consecration refers to the state of being in which we are made an aristocrat forever. It especially emphasizes our relationship to the integrity of God.

Now we’ll look at the relationship of The Holy Spirit to the scriptures. First and foremost, He is the Author of the Scriptures. Holy men of God spoke and wrote as they were moved by The Holy Spirit according to 2Pe 1:20-21: But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. According to the Bible, the Scriptures came by the inbreathing of God: All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness…. (2TI 3:16 – NIV)

Jesus told the apostles that it was the Spirit who was to guide and show them things to come: 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.  (JOH 16:13)

The Spirit is also the Interpreter of the Scriptures according to 1CO 2:9-14 which is printed in the sixth paragraph above.

As we end our study of the Doctrine of the Deity of The Holy Spirit, we will look at The Relation of The Holy Spirit to Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ was immensely dependent on The Holy Spirit in His state of humiliation. If He needed to depend solely upon the Spirit shouldn’t we???  Paul began by affirming that Jesus is God. That is the point where the incarnation began and from which Christ began the descent of His humiliation. The first step in the humiliation of Christ was that He did not hold on to equality with God. Yet though He did not cling to that equality, there is no question that Jesus claimed it and that the people who heard Him knew He claimed it. Instead of fighting back, Christ humbled Himself. After all the humiliation He suffered to this point, if we had been Him we would be screaming, "That's enough! I want My rights! Don't you know who I am?!" We would have blasted everything to bits. But Christ humbled Himself.  Consider the trial of Christ. He didn’t say a word to defend Himself through unbelievable humiliation. He admitted who He was only by agreeing with what had been asked. He was silent and accepted man's abuse through each phase of His mock trial. He didn't demand His rights, but humbled Himself. AND He relied on the Power of the Holy Spirit to do all of this because He did not use His Own Deity!

Jesus Christ was Conceived by The Holy Spirit and born of the Spirit: The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God. (LUK 1:35) He was also led by The Spirit as we read in MAT 4:1: Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Jesus Christ was also Anointed by the Spirit for Service as we are, as we learned above in ACT 10:38. He was Crucified in the Power of the Spirit: …how much more will the blood of Christ, who through [a]the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (HEB 9:14)

Jesus Christ was also Raised by the Power of The Spirit: … 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. (ROM 1:4)  This is also taught 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 learn Jesus Christ gave Commandments to His Disciples and Church through The Holy Spirit in ACT 1:2: …until the day when He was taken up to heaven, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen.

In ACT 2:32-33, we learn that Jesus Christ gives The Holy Spirit as a Gift: God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. (NIV)

To sum it all up, THE HOLY SPIRIT IS A PERSON! The Scriptures make this abundantly clear to those who candidly go to the Scriptures to find out what they really teach. We have to ask ourselves if we view Him as a Person? Do we regard Him as real as Jesus Christ, as loving, as wise, as strong, as worthy of our confidence and love and surrender as He? The Holy Spirit came into this world to be to the disciples and to us what Jesus Christ had been to them during the days of His personal companionship with them. Is He that to us today? Do we walk in conscious fellowship with Him? Do we realize that He walks by our side every day and hour? And better than that, that He dwells in our hearts and is ready to fill them and take complete possession of our lives? The secret of a real Christian life, a life of liberty and joy and power and fullness, is knowing Who and What He is. True Christian living is to be conscious that you have an ever-present Friend in the Holy Spirit and then, to surrender your life entirely to His Control.