The Work of The Holy Spirit
Because I was brought up in a Christian home, I have had the ‘three persons and yet one God’ conversation many times. My parents, my AWANA leaders, my youth pastor, college professors, and others have explained to me over the years that God is made up of something called the Trinity. There are three parts to God that all have different functions; and yet He is one and the same. While I can kind of understand this and there is a level where it makes sense, my brain cannot totally comprehend the three parts of God being one because it is simply outside of any human mind. God is simply too vast and complex for me to figure out, and that is simply because His ways and thoughts are higher than mine. Someday I will have understanding, but for now, I have found the easiest way to think of the three parts of God is to break each one down into the different roles and characteristics. In this post, we will be focusing specifically on the role of the Holy Spirit and how He fits into a specific niche.
Even though the Holy Spirit is one of the three parts of God and therefore just as significant as the others, I feel He can sometimes be a bit misunderstood because He simply isn’t talked about as much in Scripture as God the Father and God the Son. When He is talked about, it can still sometimes be confusing to completely understand His role, and that is probably something I will grapple with until Heaven. However, I have had so much help in my understanding of the trinity through reading the book Gentle and Lowly, by Dane Ortlund, where he gives a list of the workings of the Holy Spirit that I found to be insightful. He says that the Holy Spirit,
Regenerates us (John 3:6-7)
Convicts us (John 16:8)
Empowers us with gifts (1 Cor. 12:4-7)
Testifies in our hearts that we are God’s children (Gal. 4:6)
Leads us (Gal. 5:18, 25)
Makes us fruitful (Gal. 5:22-23)
Grants and nurtures in us resurrection life (Rom. 8:11)
Enables us to kill sin (Rom. 8:13)
Intercedes for us when we don’t know what to pray (Rom. 8:26-27)
Guides us into truth (John 16:13)
Transforms us into the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18)” (Ortlund, 121-122).
While I know that this is a huge list, I hope that you are able to find it just as helpful as I do in working to understand exactly what the Holy Spirit’s role is. I also find it extremely helpful that there is Scripture tied to every description on the list, because then I can go right into my Bible and do my own digging on the work of the Spirit.
While all of the points above are interesting to read and (hopefully) helpful to you in figuring out what the Holy Spirit does, there should still be some clarification, and I think the work of the Holy Spirit requires more explanation. For me, the main thing I have learned about the Spirit that I have found to be both clarifying and encouraging, is that the Spirit resides in us to make our God personal. Yes, we can easily read in the Bible about the wonderful, gracious, forgiving Heavenly Father we have and know that He loves us. However, accepting the Holy Spirit into our hearts takes what we read and makes it a reality. We no longer just know that God and His love for us exists, but we can actually feel it inside of us. Ortlund puts it this way, “It is one thing, as a child, to be told your father loves you. You believe him. You take him at his word. But it is another thing, unutterably more real, to be swept up into his embrace, to feel the warmth, to hear his beating heart within his chest, to instantly know the protective grip of his arms” (Ortlund, 122). Arguably, the Holy Spirit’s greatest work is to make you know the love of your Heavenly Father on an intimate and personal level. Not only do you possess the book knowledge of who God is, but you get to actually feel His great love for you in your very own heart.
Another wonderful attribute of the Holy Spirit is that He is in fact a person, as Isaiah 63:10 and Ephesians 4:30 tell us. While it is probably quite confusing to hear that a spirit is a person, the Bible specifically tells us that the Holy Spirit is in fact a “He” and not an “It,” and he has a huge role in our faith and our lives. This means that we can embrace this person as the good friend He is by talking to Him and acknowledging Him, and we can pour out our hearts to Him whenever we need to. Yes, we can certainly pour our hearts out to God the Father or God the Son, and our words will be received just as readily and lovingly. The amazing thing about the Holy Spirit, though, is that He is physically dwelling inside of us, and that is an amazing attribute and level of closeness that we shouldn’t ignore. Not only should we communicate with God and Christ, but we should also recognize the wonderful gift it is to have God the Holy Spirit living inside us, in our very own hearts. How special and amazing that God lives with us that intimately!
As with all the gifts we receive from God, the Holy Spirit too has a purpose. God has given us His very own Spirit to live inside us and give us comfort, strength, or simply just a loving friend to talk to. I hope that this post makes Him seem more accessible, and gives you a good sense of His role in your life. He is there to help you feel the heart of Christ for you instead of simply reading about it. Ortlund puts it this way, “The Spirit’s role, in summary, is to turn our postcard apprehensions of Christ’s great heart of longing affection for us into an experience of sitting on the beach, in a lawn chair, drink in hand enjoying the actual experience” (Ortlund, 126). God loves us so much that He has chosen to live inside us and get as personal as one can get through the work of His Holy Spirit. Rest in knowing that if you are in Christ, the Holy Spirit lives in you and that means you have both the love and joy of God in your very own heart.
