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The Holy Spirit
What Is The Role Of The Holy Spirit?
BY JACK WELLMAN
What is the role of the Holy
Spirit? Why is the Spirit called the “Holy Spirit?”
God is Holy
What is the role of the Holy Spirit?
First of all, the holiness of
God is the only attribute that is mentioned three times in the Bible.
We read
Isaiah’s account of his view of the throne of God. He writes that he saw three
seraphim over the throne, saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of
hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah
6:3).
Isaiah
did what the psalmist would do, and writes, “I will bow down toward your holy
temple in the fear of you” (Psalm 5:7).
When God is mentioned as being
holy, this includes all three Persons of the Trinity, so the Holy Spirit is
just as holy as God the Father and just as holy as the Son of God.
They are all three co-equally
God as well as holy, holy, holy.
The Work of the Spirit
The Trinity consists of God the Father, God the Son (Jesus
Christ), and God the Holy Spirit, so why not the “Holy Father,” or the “Holy
Son” since we call the Spirit Holy?
Of course, all three Persons of
the Trinity are holy, but the Spirit may be called the Holy Spirit due to the
work He does in us, making us more holy over time, at least in His sanctifying
work in us.
Naturally, we’ll never be
sinless until we enter the kingdom, but the Spirit does work in us to renew us
and to conform us into the image of Christ (Romans 12:1-2).
The Holy Spirit works along
with the Word of God to make us more like the Son of God, although we do fall
infinitely short of His glory (Romans 3:23), and
there are no exceptions.
He is holy… we are not (Romans
3:10-12), but the Holy Spirit uses the Word of God to point us
to the Son of God.
The Spirit always testifies of
Christ (John 15:26), and the Holy Spirit highlights the Person
and Work of Christ and seeks to glorify Him.
The Role of the Spirit
The role of the Holy Spirit is not only to bring conviction of sin,
but first, He must bring us to an awareness of our sins.
Before the Spirit came, we were
dead in our sins and could not hear or see the need to repent (Ephesians
2:1-4), but God granted us repentance (2 Timothy 2:24-26)
through the Spirit’s birthing from above (John 3:3-7), and
then the Word of God brought us to saving faith in Christ.
Jesus said the gospel of the
kingdom of God must include repentance and faith (Mark 1:14-15).
The Holy Spirit shows us why we
need to repent, and thus, why we need the Savior.
We cannot even know the things
of God without the Spirit of God because “Those who are in the flesh cannot
please God” (Romans 8:8) as “the
mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to
God’s law; indeed, it cannot” (Romans 8:7).
This means
only those “who
are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” and daughters of
God (Romans 8:14).
The
Apostle Paul asked, “For who knows a person’s thoughts
except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends
the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians
2:11).
That is
a key role of the Holy Spirit. He reveals the “thoughts of God.”
The Holy Spirit will convict
our conscience when we’re not doing the right thing or not doing what we should
do, and He is continually dealing with the sins in our life.
He won’t let us get comfortable
in our sins, and the Holy Spirit helps us to avoid sin, but He also prompts the
believer to help someone when opportunity presents itself.
The Teaching of the Spirit
When you sit down to read the Bible, pray that the Holy Spirit
will open up the Scriptures to you, because one of the roles of the Holy Spirit
is to teach us all things, as Christ told the disciples before He ascended back
to the Father (John 14:26, Luke 12:12).
The Holy Spirit is also called
the Helper and the Comforter, and teaches us about the things of God through
the Word of God.
He will guide us in revealing
the meaning of God’s written Word (John 16:13), and
will help us remember Jesus’ teachings when we need to remember them the most (John
14:26).
If you want to know more about
the work, role, and ministry of the Holy Spirit, read John chapters 14, 15 and
16 and Romans 8.
The Spirit as Author
Finally we know that the Holy Spirit guided the content and the
assembly of the Old Testament and the New Testament.
Paul
reminds Timothy that he can trust the Word of God because “All Scripture is breathed out
by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for
training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for
every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
The
Apostle Peter says that not even one “prophecy was ever produced by the
will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy
Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21).
We see
this when “the word of the LORD came to Ezekiel the priest… and
the hand of the LORD was upon him there” (Ezekiel
1:3).
One of the roles of the Holy
Spirit was that He authored all Scripture while ensuring the proper assembling
of the different books of the Bible.
Conclusion
Did you know that we can actually grieve the Holy Spirit of God?
You can quench Him, you can
resist Him, you can ignore Him, you can grieve Him, and you can fail to yield
to Him, but we need His work in our lives to renew our minds (Romans
12:1-2).
We cannot fully know the Word
without the Spirit. We cannot know we need Christ without the Spirit, and we
cannot know how to grow in holiness without His prompting and convicting us of
sin.
That’s the role of the Holy
Spirit… thus His name is what He does in us… to make us more holy than before.
Not perfection or sinless-ness,
but hopefully, sinning a little less over time.
Jack Wellman is
Pastor of the Mulvane Brethren Church in Mulvane Kansas. Jack is a writer at Christian Quotes and
also the Senior Writer at What Christians Want To Know whose mission is to
equip, encourage, and energize Christians and to address questions about the
believer’s daily walk with God and the Bible. You can follow Jack on Google
Plus or check out his book Teaching Children the Gospel available on Amazon.
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