Power or Person: Nature of the Holy Spirit

Scripture is the primary source for any knowledge of the God of heaven—and when dealing with issues of divinity, it must be studied attentively and listened to carefully. Within its sacred pages God reveals Himself with a triune identity. The nature of the biblical God cannot be fully explained without God the Holy Spirit, along with Jesus and the Father. God’s personal plurality, seen throughout Scripture, presents One of the Three of the divine Godhead as the Holy Spirit. Because the Spirit has never been incarnated as Jesus was, He is more inscrutable, making, to a greater extent, potential misunderstandings and distortions about Him possible. Dealing with the Spirit, we encounter God Himself: (1) His awesome presence; (2) the infilling of Christ through the Holy Spirit; and (3) in God’s Word inscripturated by the Holy Spirit.1 One of the final invitations in Scripture is given by the Spirit: “the Spirit and the Bride say ‘come’” (Rev 22:17). Canonical writers present the Holy Spirit as divine, and a divine person. A Christianity neglectful of the Spirit is hardly biblical Christianity at all. This paper will address these parameters, reviewing the mysterious but very real Third Member of the Godhead