God and the Holy Spirit

Our feature on living faith
Living Faith is a declaration of faith of the Presbyterian Church. You can download it at presbyterian.ca. We suggest you read the passage being discussed each month.

Additional reading:
The Forgotten God (June 2009) and Spiritual Presence (September 2010)

Living Faith 4 (God the Holy Spirit)

Living Faith left me deeply under the impression that our entire Christian journey depends on the presence and work of God the Holy Spirit. We don’t always think in these terms, but consider this: Would we be who we are in Christ unless the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ and transforms our lives? Would we have faith? Would any of the things we say and do in Christ’s name be possible without the work of the Holy Spirit? Would there be a church unless the Spirit enables people to believe and binds them together in Christ?

It is safe to say, no. Without the witness of the Spirit there would be no knowledge of the truth, no repentance of sins, no faith in Christ and therefore no hope, and no witnessing to Christ. We would not be in Christ. John Calvin reminds us that “as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us.”

I emphasize this because we tend to be quite casual when it comes to the Holy Spirit. It is not that we don’t believe in the Holy Spirit; we do, but we generally tend to pay less attention to the Spirit than to other aspects of our doctrine and church life. We can even be a little sceptical about people and churches that put more emphasis on the Spirit and experiences of the Spirit.

Since our Christian life is pilgrimage that begins, continues and ends in God, we would do well to be more attentive to the Spirit.

What do we believe about the Holy Spirit?

The first thing we are reminded of is that the Holy Spirit is God. This is imperative. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the triune God, One with the Father and the Son. You may think that I am stating the obvious, but it is not as self-evident as it may seem. It is not uncommon for us to think of the Spirit as merely a characteristic of God, or as an impersonal force that we can harness and manipulate as we choose. The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal power at our disposal. The Spirit is a person within the eternal communion of the Trinity. We relate to the Spirit in the same way as we relate to the Father and the Son. We worship and glorify the Spirit with the Father and the Son.

It is against this background that we read the next line. Living Faith follows the wording of the Nicene Creed in saying that the Spirit is the Lord and Giver of Life. This opens up a vast biblical world. The Spirit is the Breath of God who gives life to all creatures (Psalm 104:29-30). The Spirit comes over Mary and gives life to the Christ child in her womb (Luke 1:35). The Spirit raises people who are dead to God to new life in Christ. It is by the Spirit that we are born again (John 3).

The Spirit gives new life to the church. Living Faith adds a second line to the traditional wording of the Nicene Creed in calling the Spirit the renewer and helper of God’s people. There are many times when we look at our situation and ask, “Can these bones live?” Then we remember that “if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you” (Romans 8:11).

God the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life, the Renewer and Helper of God’s people, is also God with us. Living Faith describes the presence of God in three sentences. It begins with a wide-angle view. By the Spirit, God is present in the world. The Spirit is present outside the church as well; in the world where we are facing enormous ecological, sociological, political and spiritual challenges—climate change, poverty, world hunger, conflict, tension, religious intolerance. Living Faith reminds us that God is not absent or indifferent to the broken world. God is present by the Spirit and ceaselessly at work as the source of all goodness and justice.

While we recognize the presence and work of the Spirit in what is good and true and just in the world, we also confess that the Spirit’s presence in the world has a specific focus. The Spirit convinces the world of sin and testifies to the truth in Christ. The Spirit always directs us towards Christ. The second part of chapter four continues this thought. The Spirit enables us to believe. Remember, “no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3).

The third section takes us a step further. Our modern individualism would have us think in terms of the private experiences we have of the Spirit, and the personal blessings that we receive from the Holy Spirit. But that is not the biblical message. The Spirit’s work is not limited to individual believers. The Spirit forms and equips the church. Those who believe are united to Christ and also to one another. We are united by the same Spirit who dwells and works in all of us. We are blessed with various gifts that we use to serve God and one another. The Spirit is the great church builder.

Now that we know all these things, what do we do? We pray. Chapter four ends with a prayer of invocation, “Come, Holy Spirit!” It is not enough that we are able to articulate an understanding of the Spirit. Knowledge of the Spirit is not an end in itself. We are called to live by the Spirit and Living Faith gives expression to this call by directing us to pray.

“Come, Holy Spirit! Guide us into truth.”