Word of Salvation – Vol. 46 No.24 – June 2001
The Holy Spirit
Sermon by Rev MP Geluk
on Lord’s Day 20 (Q&A 53 Heid Cat)
Scripture Readings: John 14:15-18; 25-27; John 16:5-16
Suggested Hymns: BoW 341; 104:1,2,13; 345; 207; 209
Beloved in the Lord.
The Heidelberg Catechism deals with the doctrine of Christ in eight Lord’s Days, or 23 Questions and Answers. But there is only one Lord’s Day or just one Question and Answer on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. But before you think that the Catechism did not rate the Holy Spirit very highly, allow me to point out the many references on the Holy Spirit throughout the Catechism. It will surprise you if you think the authors of the Catechism, and the Reformation of the 16th century, did not give the Holy Spirit enough emphasis. Some, of course, do think that.
In Answer 1 the Catechism says that the Holy Spirit assures the Christian believer of eternal life, and making the believer wholeheartedly willing and ready to live for Christ. Answer 8 says that the Holy Spirit causes the sinner, dead in trespasses and sins, to be born again. Answer 21 says that the Holy Spirit works in the believer’s faith a deep-rooted assurance that all his sins are forgiven through Christ, that he is right with God, and therefore saved.
Answer 49 says that the Holy Spirit enables the Christian to make, not earthly, but heavenly riches the goal of his life. Answer 54 says that the Holy Spirit produces faith in the heart of the sinner through the preaching of the gospel and the Holy Spirit strengthens that faith through the sacraments. And in the Catechism’s section on the sacraments, Answers 57-80, the Holy Spirit is mentioned several times.
Answer 86 says that the Holy Spirit helps the Christian to grow into Christ’s likeness and enables the believer do good works. As to being obedient to God’s commandments, Answers 103, 109, and 115 say that the Holy Spirit enables the Christian to be obedient.
In the Catechism’s last section on the Lord’s Prayer, the Holy Spirit is referred to in Answers 116, 123, and 127. So about the work of God in the believer the Catechism frequently points to the role of the Holy Spirit.
The Catechism also clearly points out the relationship between the Holy Spirit and Christ. Answer 31 says the Holy Spirit anointed Christ to be prophet, priest and king. Answer 35 says the Holy Spirit was involved in the virgin birth of Christ. Answer 47 states that Christ, now in heaven with His Father, is also present with us on earth through the Holy Spirit. And Answer 51 says that through the Holy Spirit Christ pours out His gifts on the members of His church.
So although Lord’s Day 20 is brief on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, one cannot say that the Heidelberg Catechism failed to give the Holy Spirit His due. The scriptural teachings on the Holy Spirit are all there. And so whenever you hear regular preaching from the Catechism, then you are regularly exposed to Scripture’s teaching on the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit. In our preaching now about the Holy Spirit, we first of all see who the Holy Spirit is and, secondly, what He does.
1. The Person of the Holy Spirit
To think of the Holy Spirit as a person is more difficult than to think of Christ as a Person. Christ became man and therefore it is easier for us to picture Him as a person. But even the Person of Christ goes beyond Him just being human. Christ is also God. Therefore the Person of Christ takes in all what He is, both God and man, with all the characteristics and qualities that make Christ what He is.
It is the same with the Holy Spirit. Although a Spirit, He, like Christ and like the Father, has characteristics and qualities that are unique to Him. When we speak of the Person of the Holy Spirit then we should not think of Him as someone you meet in the street but as the being of God who has a whole range of personal characteristics that make the Spirit who He is.
The Bible also speaks of the Holy Spirit as a power. “By the power of the Spirit” is a frequent biblical expression (Rom.15:19 etc.). But we should not reduce the Spirit to a mere force or influence. The power of the Spirit flows from the Spirit. He is the source of that power. The Bible speaks equally much of the power of God and of the power of Christ. The Holy Spirit as a person works on people with His power. He influences people. But not only people. The power of the Spirit was also there when God created the heavens and the earth.
The Spirit’s power is in nature. By the power of His Spirit God shows His awesome strength in nature, in storms, earthquakes and floods, but also in His gentle touch in the opening of a flower and the settling of dew drops on grass. And the Spirit’s power was on craftsmen like Oholiab and Bezalel, who, under God’s directions, designed and built the Old Testament tabernacle. In Exodus 35 we read of God filling them with His Spirit, thus equipping them with skill, ability, and knowledge. And, of course, the Spirit works His wonderful power in sinners whom God is saving through Jesus Christ, and we’ll come back to that a little later.
Because of all these characteristics, the Spirit is not an ‘it’. For many the Spirit is no more than an impersonal ‘it’. But when Jesus spoke of the Spirit to His disciples, then He referred to the Spirit as a ‘He’. When Jesus prepared the disciples for His ascension to heaven, then He said that another Counsellor will come to them (Jn.14:15). Jesus Himself was a Counsellor to His disciples but after His ascension to heaven He would do that work through the Spirit. The Lord spoke of the Spirit as ‘he’ and ‘him’. Definitely not as an ‘iť.
This does not mean that the Holy Spirit is male. The Spirit is neither male nor female. Jesus simply refers to the Spirit in the masculine in the same way the Bible often refers to God in the masculine. That’s just the way it is. And of course, the Spirit being a Person and not an ‘it’ also means that you either have or don’t have the Spirit. No one has a third, or a half, or three-quarters of the Spirit. All Christian believers have the Holy Spirit. All non-Christians don’t. When you, a sinner, were born again and converted, when you repent and believe, and all the other wonderful things that God causes to happen to you in becoming a Christian and remaining a Christian, then the full Spirit of God is in you. Not half a Spirit, for there is no such thing, but the whole Spirit.
But what the Bible also teaches is that you and I can resist the Holy Spirit. God warns us not to quench the Holy Spirit. So whilst God gives the full Person of the Spirit to all His children in Christ, it can happen, and it frequently does, that as Christians we don’t give ourselves fully to the Spirit. Every act of disobedience to God is hindering the Spirit. Every sin is an obstacle to Him.
Then we must also remind one another that in the Bible God the Holy Spirit is put on the same level as God the Father and God the Son. In the teaching about the Trinity the Bible reminds us that God is not three but one. So in speaking about the Holy Spirit we are not to think of Him as being superior or inferior, more or less, but equal to the Father and the Son.
We may pray to the Father and to the Son, but also to the Holy Spirit, for we are praying to God. We can say in our prayers – Father, guide us with Your Spirit, or – Jesus, guide us with Your Spirit, but we can also pray – Holy Spirit, lead us, guide us, strengthen us.
We can sin against the Father and the Son but also against the Spirit, for when we sin against God then we sin against the Spirit. When the apostle Peter accused Ananias and Sapphira of lying, then he first said, “You have lied to the Holy Spirit.” But in the next sentence Peter said, “You have lied to God” (Acts 5:3,4).
Baptism is to be done “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mat.28:19). And the benediction at the conclusion of our worship services is based on the blessing given at the end of most New Testament letters. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
In all these, formulations, the Holy Spirit is equal with the Father and the Son.
With the Holy Spirit being God, it follows then that He is also eternal, everywhere present, all-powerful, and all-knowing. Yes, all the characteristics and qualities that belong to God belong to the Spirit, for the Spirit is God. Whilst within the being of God there is the special work of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we must not make the Spirit second-rate or third-rate, just as we must not do that to the Father or the Son.
2. The Work of the Holy Spirit
In our time there have been sad divisions over the work of the Spirit. In the wider Christian church believers worship separately because of different views held about the Spirit. It’s nothing new. The history of the Christian church right through the ages shows controversy over the Spirit, just as there are controversies about Christ. Already in the first century there were divisions in the church of Corinth about tongue-speaking and prophecies.
The apostle Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians spoke of his struggles with the so-called super apostles. These were people in the church who regarded themselves more spiritual than others because they claimed to have received special revelations. In the third and fourth centuries there were more divisions about the Spirit.
And the Reformation in the sixteenth century was not only a struggle against the false teachings and practices of Roman Catholicism but also against the spiritual excesses of the radicals who felt Luther and Calvin did not go far enough in their reforms.
What causes this continual controversy about the Spirit and His Work? Why can there be such different opinions about what belongs to the Spirit? Why such disagreements about what the Spirit does? Well, has it not a lot to do with claiming certain convictions and emotions as coming from the Holy Spirit? People don’t seem to realise that beside the Spirit of God, there is also the spirit of man.
The Spirit of God works in the human heart, in the spirit of man. When the gospel comes to a sinner then God calls the sinner to repent and believe. That call is addressed to both the mind and the heart. It calls for a response in the human spirit, which involves the human will, human knowledge, human emotions and human convictions. Man is not just a machine or a gadget. God has created us with a mind, feelings and desires. And He asks that we love Him with heart, soul, mind and strength. Our believing also involves all those human qualities.
Now when a sinner has been born again and converted, and thus a Christian believer, then the Spirit of God comes to live in that person. The Spirit dwells in us, but it is our imperfect human nature that He seeks to make holy. And there you have the struggle. How much of us, of our being, will be sanctified by the Spirit? And how much of our own selves do we hang on to? How much of us will submit to God, and how much of our own mind and will continue to dominate us? When the Spirit works in us then what comes out of us? The purposes of God or our own desires?
In this whole matter we must remember that the Spirit of God is always true and leads to truth. But the spirit of man has been contaminated by the fall into sin and cannot be trusted. So how can one know when it is the Spirit of God at work in us, or our own spirit having its own say? Ideally, our human spirit should be fully controlled by God’s Spirit. But it won’t be this side of heaven. Sanctification is a life-long process. Whilst God sees His people as holy in Christ, we take a lifetime to become that. So how can one know when one’s knowledge, convictions, feelings and desires, yes the whole range of human intellect and emotions, are of God or of our own making?
Well, thanks to God, we can know. We can know when we look to Christ and the Word of God. Basically, it is the Word of God, for Christ’s teachings are only found in the Word, the Scriptures. We do not know where to look for Christ’s Word outside the Scriptures. Now the work of the Holy Spirit is nothing more and nothing less than a continuation of Christ’s saving work. The work of the Holy Spirit is to enable the Christian to share in all the salvation blessings of Christ. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit will not speak on His own but He will only speak what He hears (Jn.16:13). The Spirit will remind us of everything Jesus has said and the Father has sent the Spirit in Jesus’ name (Jn.15:26). The Spirit, said Jesus, will take what is mine and make it known to you (Jn.16:15).
The work of the Holy Spirit, then, is to reveal Christ. The Spirit has no agenda of His own. His whole task is to highlight Christ. In all this the Spirit has His own unique characteristics and qualities, but their purpose is to point to Christ. Christ is the revelation of God. He who has seen Christ has seen the Father. In Hebrews 1 we read that in these last days God has spoken to us by His Son (vs.2). All that God wants us to know about Him is to be found in the Son. And the work of the Spirit in us is for us to see Christ.
Imagine a beautiful building in some city. Admiration and praise come from all who take a careful look at it. At night the architect does not want his building to be hidden by darkness and so there are flood lights around the building and these lights make the building stand out even more beautiful against the dark sky.
In a similar way God is the Designer of the whole creation. Sadly, sin has spoiled His beautiful creation. But He has sent Christ as the Saviour all sinners should look up to and believe in. Christ is the lit-up building for people in the darkness of sin. And the floodlight lighting up the building is like the Holy Spirit lighting up Christ. The emphasis must not be on the floodlights but on the building.
The Spirit’s work, then, is to point to Christ. But how do we know what belongs to Jesus and what He said? How can we distinguish between what is from Christ and His Spirit and what is merely from our sinful self? How can we be prevented from ascribing our own imperfect imagination, thoughts, insights, and words to Christ and the Spirit? When our hearts stir and our emotions run deep, how do we know it is from God and not from our imperfect self? Yes, how do we know truth from error? How do we know what is from God and what is from man?
We can know it from the Bible, the written Word of God. There are no additional revelations from God about salvation and the future of all things outside His written Word. In these last days God has spoken through His Son, says Hebrews 1. And Revelation Chapter 1 also confirms that what must take place between Christ’s first and second coming has been revealed to Christ. And the only place we can know what Christ knows is the Scripture.
There are many things that God has not revealed and therefore no one but God can know them. And He has not found it necessary to reveal these hidden things to us. So any claim to a teaching, or a vision, or a special revelation, or a prophecy, which cannot be clearly linked to what is found in Scripture is not from Christ and therefore it cannot be from the Spirit either. And when it is not based on Scripture then it can only be from man, or worse, from Satan.
That still leaves us with the problem of interpreting the Scriptures. How certain are we that what we claim the Bible is saying is actually what it is saying? There are not so many difficulties with the plain and clear teachings of Scripture. But the more obscure parts have often resulted in controversy in the history of the church. There is also the problem of some interpreters claiming the difficult parts of Scripture to be very plain and easy. Where careful commentators declare the passage or text difficult for us to understand, less careful commentators claim it is all perfectly clear. All this has caused division amongst Christians and will probably continue to do so until Christ’s coming when all things will be cleared up.
Whilst we wait for perfection there are a few things that can help us in the here and now to know what is truth and what is error. The Lord Jesus said that the Spirit will guide us into all truth (Jn.16:13). We can rejoice with that. It means that Christ’s church on earth is not left in deep uncertainty. It is the Spirit’s aim to lead us away from error and into the truth.
A good rule here for interpreting the Bible is to understand the more difficult parts in the light of the easier parts. And not to build up a whole teaching with only a few biblical verses that seem to support it. You have good doctrine when the whole Bible consistently backs it up. Scripture cannot contradict Scripture because God cannot contradict Himself. So when we claim the Bible to be teaching something which is contradicted by plain teaching elsewhere in the Bible, then we can’t very well say the Spirit is leading us.
We also need to be humble here and realise that we are not the only ones in whom the Spirit works. There are many Christians and every child of God has the Spirit. And even more importantly, the Spirit has been guiding God’s church for nearly 2000 years now. It would be silly, therefore, to ignore church history. The Christian church has faced many spiritual battles in the past, and time and again the Lord has preserved His church. So, it makes a lot of sense to learn, for example, from the great church confessions of the past, like those from the Reformation era.
It would be the height of arrogance to think that we are the first or the only Christians to properly understand the Scriptures and the work of the Holy Spirit. Christians, therefore, need each other. Together we look to Christ and the Scriptures and together we search for answers to the issues of our times. The church is a body and the different parts cannot function as though the rest of the body does not exist.
And so, as we have looked at the Person and work of the Holy Spirit, we can be deeply thankful that God has given Him to the church and to each of us personally. To have been given the Spirit is really the same as saying that God is pleased to live with us and in us. What a wonderful thing it is that God through His Spirit is making us share in Christ and all His blessings.
The Spirit strengthens us when we are weak, admonishes us when we sin, comforts us when we experience pain and sorrow, and remains with us forever. We may not always be aware that the Spirit has come to stay with us forever. Especially not, when we resist His working in us and grieve Him. Yet, when God in His wonderful grace has made us His children through Christ, then He will never leave us or forsake us.
Through the Spirit God seeks to bring us back again and again to Christ and His blessings. Yes, if it wasn’t for God holding on to us through His Word and Spirit, we would be lost to the darkness of sin and death. But now in Christ we have been made alive, forever.
Amen.