The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit

Part Five

By Michael K. Farrar, O.D.

© God’s Breath Publications

 

So far in this series on the Holy Spirit we have learned that the Holy Spirit is our Advocate and that He indwells us when we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior. We have also learned that the Holy Spirit is instrumental in the process of us coming to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. He energizes the truth in our mind. He convicts us of sin which causes us to repent and turn to Jesus. After this the Holy Spirit begins a process of spiritual regeneration within us. He encourages us to grow spiritually into the image of Christ. At our conversion we are baptized into the Body of Christ with the Holy Spirit by Jesus Christ. Thus we receive the Holy Spirit as a gift from God when we accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. The Holy Spirit separates us from sin and death. We are also sealed with the Holy Spirit and this guarantees that we will always belong to the Lord. This establishes the fact that our salvation is secure. Finally the Holy Spirit gifts us for service so we can minister to other followers of Christ. He distributes spiritual gifts to each Christian so that they can minister to others in unique ways to build up the Body of Christ, His Church.

 

But it is also true that after the salvation takes place in the life of a follower of Christ the Holy proceeds to minister to us in seven critical areas to foster growth in our Christian life. We have covered the actions of the Holy Spirit as we come to faith in Christ, we will now cover the additional ministries of our Advocate and Counselor who indwells us after we become a Believer.

 

The Holy Spirit’s Ministry Area Number One

The Holy Spirit Brings Us Intimacy with God

 

When we accept Christ as our Savior and Lord and are indwelt with the Holy Spirit, we now have access to God on an intimate personal level. We can now approach God personally because we have been saved from our sins, are no longer under His judgment and His Holy Spirit lives within us. It is amazing to realize that God lives within us. Because the Holy Spirit dwells within us as followers of Jesus Christ He travels with us wherever we go. He knows all our thoughts, intentions and desires. He wishes to bring us intimacy with our Heavenly Father so that we can benefit from this holy and pure spiritual relationship. This is one of the purposes that we were made, to have an intimate relationship with the Lord God.

   

In Galatians Paul tells us that because we are now a child of God and have the Holy Spirit living within us, the Holy Spirit, with our spirit, calls out to God “Abba Father.” Much like a baby calls out “da da,” a young adult “dad” or an older adult  “father,” we cry out to our Heavenly Father in such a loving way in our prayers and thought life. God also calls us His child, His heir. We are precious to Him and we love Him because of what He has done for us through His grace by saving us from our sins. Galatians 4:6-9, “ Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”  So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir. Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God — or rather are known by God”

    

In Ephesians 2:18 Paul writes, “For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.” Paul instructs us that we have access to our Heavenly Father because of the Holy Spirit. Before we were saved we were strangers to God. We belonged to the world, the flesh and the devil and were under judgment. Now as spiritual children of God made possible by Christ’s death on the cross and the indwelling of the Spirit within us, we are allowed to come into His holy presence relationally.

   

Paul gives us further instruction in this in Romans 8:14-15, “because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”

 

Here Paul speaks of our lives before we knew Christ as our Savior and Lord. We were salves living in fear because of the penalty of our sin. But because we now live as people led by the Spirit of God, because we are sons of God, we can call Him our Father in the truest sense of the word. Father in this and other verses implies a deep intimate, protective, loving relationship even deeper and more meaningful than the best relationship with a father anyone might have on a human level.

 

Psalms 42:1-2 gives us a vivid picture of our intimacy with God, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” This passage in Psalms gives us a description of how deep our relationship can be with the Lord as we grow in our intimacy with Him. As the Holy Spirit moves in our lives and ministers to us He brings us ever closer to our Heavenly Father. Our desire for God increases as we become more spiritually mature, walk in the way of the Spirit and become more like Jesus Christ.

 

There are several significant privileges we have as we grow in our intimacy with God. First we have access to resources. Philippians 4:19 states “And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.” The closer we move into the intimacy we have with our Heavenly Father the more we will experience our needs met, appreciate the richness of knowing Christ Jesus and becoming more like Him. Even when we face hardships and trials we will understand that such experiences will make us more spiritually mature as we draw closer to God and trust Him for provision of our needs. Secondly we will have access to godly wisdom as we have intimacy with our Heavenly Father. In James 1:5 it says “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”

 

The Holy Spirit’s Ministry Area Number Two

The Holy Spirit Illuminates Scripture to Us

 

Just as the Holy Spirit illuminated God’s Word to us to convict us of sin before we were Christians, He continues this ministry afterwards as well. When the Spirit of God indwells us He seeks to help us understand the Bible so we can know more about God, learn how to walk like Jesus and discover how the precepts in scripture can give us strength, comfort and peace. One way God can talk to us is through His Holy Word, as it is explained to us by the Holy Spirit.

 

The apostle John spoke of this when he wrote 1 John 2:20-21,27, “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.  I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth…As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit — just as it has taught you, remain in him.”

 

John tells us in this passage that we received an anointing when we became a follower of Jesus Christ. To be “anointed” (chrisma) means to have a special endowment of the Holy Spirit. This anointing comes from the Holy Spirit and He enables us to know the truth of God. This anointing remains upon our lives because the Holy Spirit lives within us our whole life. When John states, “you do not need anyone to teach you.” He was not implying that we don’t need preachers and teachers of God’s Word. He was responding to the local false teachers that were trying to lead Christians astray. His intent was to tell the Christians in Asia that they should not listen to the false teachers, but listen to the Holy Spirit within them as He taught them from God’s Word and to test anything they heard by the Word of God and the Spirit of God within them. John is stating here that we have the internal voice of the Holy Spirit that teaches us the doctrines of God from God’s Word. We also benefit from the preaching and teaching of others as the Holy Spirit speaks through them. The Holy Spirit will never contradict God’s Word, but will use it to communicate God’s truth to us. As we seek to let the Word of Christ dwell within us (Colossians 3:16), we are filled with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18).

 

Paul told the Christians at Corinth how the ministry of the Holy Spirit searches the deep things of God and explains them to us. He tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:9-14,

 

“However, as it is written: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”— but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

Here in the last part of this passage we see how impossible it is for a non-believer to understand Holy Scripture without the Spirit of God for they are spiritually discerned and the non-believer does not have the Spirit within them. The Holy Spirit has not only written Scripture (2 Peter 1:20, 2 Timothy 3:16-17). He also illuminates it for us who read and meditate upon it.

    

Sometimes we forget what the Spirit teaches us and instead of listening to Him, we try to live by what we humanly understand. We strive to live by human reasoning rather than by the illumination of the Word by the Holy Spirit. Paul had to confront the Christians in Galatia about this. They had forgotten the work of the Holy Spirit as teacher and instructor in their lives and therefore they began to try to live their Christian life according to the written law rather than by the Spirit of the law. Galatians 3:1-5, “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Have you suffered so much for nothing — if it really was for nothing? Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?”

 

We can only live appropriately and correctly if we continue to listen to the Holy Spirit who illuminates God’s Word to us. As we grow in maturity, the Spirit goes deeper and deeper in His instruction from the Word of God.

   

Two specific portions of scripture tell us that God gives us all the spiritual blessings we need to live the Christian life. These spiritual blessings are the knowledge of Christ which we obtain from the Holy Spirit illuminating God’s Word and all the promises God grants to us as members of His royal family.

 

Ephesians 1:3

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”

 

2 Peter 1:3-4

“His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”

 

In our next segment we cover more areas in which the Holy Spirit ministers to us as followers of Christ. What a blessing it is to have an ever-present advocate and teacher who is always ready to instruct, lead and guide us in the ways of righteousness. May we never grieve Him by ignoring His influence and instruction. May we as followers of Christ seek more intimacy with God by listening to the Spirit’s instruction through God’s Word.