The first thing we need to understand is that the Holy
Spirit is not some mysterious "ghost" which flies around unseen,
leading people to do and say things that are wholly in conflict with the Bible.
Rather the Holy Spirit is a Divine Personality, just as God and Christ are
Divine Personalities. The Holy Spirit is one of three in the Godhead, and is
coexistent and co-eternal with God and Christ. The three are described in three
different places in the New Testament. (Acts 17: 29 - Rom. 1: 20 - Col. 2: 9)
Rom. 1: 20 says, "For the invisible things of him from the creation of
the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even
his eternal power and Godhead..." and Col. 2: 9 says, "For in
him (Christ) dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily".
Thus we see that God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit
compose the Godhead, and that They have always existed. They worked together in
the creation of the world and in creating mankind, just as they worked together
in creating the New Testament age or dispensation. When the Bible says,
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" the
word "God" is plural in the Hebrew language, and this is clearly seen
in the statement, "Let US make man in OUR image, after OUR
likeness:" (Gen.1: 26) So God was there, and the Holy Spirit was
there-"And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters" (Gen. 1: 2) and Christ was there. "In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God". (John
1: 1) Thus we can see that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Personality, the Same as
God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son, and that these three compose the
Godhead.
The work of the Holy Spirit is primarily that of revelation and inspiration.
The Bible is composed of two factors. First revelation; and second,
inspiration. In 1Cor. 2 when Paul said, "We speak these
things" it is revelation, and when he said, "Not in words
which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches", it is
inspiration. The "THING" that God gave to those apostles was
REVELATION. The "word" with which to express that thing to us was
INSPIRATION. And it is VERBAL inspiration. The Bible then is REVELATION plus
INSPIRATION. When God revealed it, it was revelation, and when inspired men
spoke it and wrote it, not in their own words, but "in demonstration of
the Spirit and of power" it was inspiration. The Bible therefore is
the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God, inspired both in thought
and in word. This is true of both the Old and New Testaments--The entire Bible.
In this series of lessons I will be dealing mostly with the work of the Holy
Spirit in the gospel dispensation, though in lesson number two I will deal
briefly with His work under the Old Testament system.
Go to lesson two The Holy Spirit (Part 2)