Romans 8
Mention the Holy Spirit to any follower of Jesus Christ and you’re liable to get several different reactions. For the believer today, the Holy Spirit is the most vital component of the Trinity, but He’s also the hardest to understand. The best way to consider the Holy Spirit – and everything else in scripture for that matter – is to focus on what God’s Word says instead of speculating endlessly over what it doesn’t. Let’s apply that specifically to what we know about the Holy Spirit.
Because we tend to be a visual people, we have, over the centuries created for ourselves images of both God the Father and Jesus that help make them more relatable. Look at Michelangelo’s depiction of God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and you get the standard most of us hang our hat on when we think about God. Flowing white hair, beard, and robes, surrounded by angels. It’s an image that radiates ultimate power.
Physical images of Jesus got hijacked hundreds of years ago when white, Anglo renaissance artists began depicting Him as a white Anglo. Thanks to that and, later, movies and TV you can pretty much pick from a million different depictions of Jesus, few if any showing Him to be a Jewish man of middle eastern descent.
The Holy Spirit is different. The most detailed description we get of the Spirit is when Jesus refers to Him as “He”. In John’s Gospel, chapter 14 verses 16-17 Jesus tells the apostles, “And I will ask the Father and He will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth.” As our Advocate, the Holy Spirit is the One who connects us to Jesus. And that connection is ultimately what gets us into Heaven. In Romans 8, Paul takes a deep dive into what “Life in the Spirit” looks like. He tells us that the Spirit puts to death the deeds of our sinful nature. The Holy Spirit protects us from fear and anxiety and, as Paul says, “gives us a foretaste of the glory to come.” The Holy Spirit is equal to God the Father and Jesus the Son.
You can’t have the God of the Holy Bible without the Holy Spirit. He’s been present since the creation. Genesis 1:2 tells us, “The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.”
We may not be able to conjure up a mental image of the Spirit the way we can with the Father and Son but, scripture gives us wonderful insights into His characteristics and why He is so vitally important to all of us. We already know He is our advocate, but He also gives us a constant awareness of Jesus, especially when we find ourselves in sin. The Spirit convicts us and prompts us towards confession and repentance. The Spirit helps us to live like Jesus. He motivates us to study the Bible and helps us to grow in our understanding of what we’re studying. The Spirit reveals God’s calling on our lives and then empowers us to step into that calling. The Spirit helps us to pray, to share our testimony, and to grow the church.
He gives comfort and wisdom and discernment. And because – somehow – His presence becomes a permanent indwelling in those who have received Jesus as their Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit is our living assurance that no matter what trials and challenges we may face in this life, we will never face them alone. And I’m not sure that we can experience a greater source of comfort than that.
So, when it comes to the Holy Spirit, we may not know how tall He is, or what color His hair is. We can’t quite figure out who would play Him in a movie, but we can know this. He is a constant, loving, guiding presence in our lives and the truest manifestation of the grace and mercy of Jesus that we will ever know this side of Heaven. So rather than spending an inordinate amount of time trying to piece together what God’s Word doesn’t tell us about His Spirit, how about celebrating what we do know and focus on allowing our lives to be led by the Holy Spirit and give thanks for all that beautiful presence brings to our lives.