Summer in the Systematics – Pneumatology (Part 1): The Person of the Holy Spirit

Transcript

JRS 62
Summer In The Systematics: “The Person of the Holy Spirit”
6/1/2025
Selected Scriptures
Jesse Randolph

Welcome, everyone, to our fourth year of Summer in the Systematics. This summer we’ll be studying Pneumatology, the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, His person and His works. I’m looking forward to getting this kicked off tonight as we dive deep into this important study.

As I mentioned in my first summer here in 2022, if the Lord allows, you can see it on the screen here. I’d like to teach our church systematic theology through each of these major categories on Sunday evenings in the summer, not only over the course of this summer but over the course of next several years. What we’ll do over these next several summers, if the Lord allows and if He tarries, and you can see here. By the year 2031, I’ll be much older, you will be much older and your kids will be much older. Some of you will be in glory already. We will be studying Eschatology in that final year.

But this summer our topic is Pneumatology for summer of 2025. I’m committed to this, and we’re all committed to doing this because we all know and affirm that theology matters. Theology is important. In the times in which we live where truth has been relativized and minimized and mocked and dismissed. We need to be theological people, plain and simple. We need to know what we believe Biblically, and we need to know what we believe Biblically and not only that be able to express why we believe what we believe Biblically. We need to be more than ever, clinging to the flagpole of Biblical truth as the increasingly crazy winds of the culture continue to blow. And in many cases, blow faster and more furiously. We need to be working to strengthen our grip on what we know from this book to be true, as we do so. We are called from Ephesians 6:13 to “stand firm.” We do so in various different ways. Most of the time, of course we’re doing that through the exegesis of and the exposition of the Word, verse by verse, morning, evening, each week. But there are times when it is good and appropriate and helpful to handle the Word categorically and systematically which is what we’ve been doing in these summertime studies.

So, what we’re going to do is start our time together, as we have the past couple of summers, defining some real basic terms. Some of this will be familiar, some of this will be new. But starting with the term theology. What is “theology”? Well, it comes from this term, two words really in Greek. Theos and logos. So, we start with the term theology here. What is theology? Well, it’s this compound term that means the study of God. Or the engagement of the study of God. A word about God would be the actual literal rendering here. But smoothed out it becomes the study of God. Some older theologians have referred to theology as the
“The science of God.”

In reality, is there are many definitions of theology as there are theologians. My favorite definition continues to be this one from David Wells which I’ve shown you the last three summers. I’m sure you’ve got it locked into your memory banks by now. But he says “Theology is the sustained effort to know the character, will, and actions of the triune God as He has disclosed and interpreted these for His people in Scripture in order that we might know Him, learn to think our thoughts after Him, live our lives in His world on His terms, and by thought and action project His truth into our own time and culture.” I think that’s a very helpful and comprehensive definition of what is truly is a massive undertaking in studying theology.

I want to just emphasize here a few points that Wells makes. Theology requires effort. It’s the sustained effort to know these things. Theology as a target, which is to know the character, will and actions, of God, theology is trinitarian. We are studying not just some abstract God, but the triune God revealed in Scripture. Theology has a source, I just mentioned it, Scripture, and theology is a purpose, that we might know Him, learn to think our thoughts after Him, live our lives in His world on His terms, and by thought and action project His truth into our own time and culture.” So that I think is still the standard bearer in terms of a good definition of “theology.” There are many others out there. That just happens to be my favorite.

What about “Systematic Theology”? How do we define “Systematic Theology”? Here’s a definition from Lewis Sperry Chafer. He says “It, (the systematic theology) is the collecting, systematically arranging, comparing, exhibiting, and defending of all facts concerning God and His works from any and every source.” This comes from Chafer’s 8 volumes systematic theology from 1947. I think that’s helpful and a good definition. And I do appreciate here Chafer’s focus on the process of systematizing and arranging data as part of this study of systematic theology. But because I already quoted him this morning, I’m going to “one up” Dr. Chafer here with my favorite theologian, Dr. Jim Mook. This is who I studied under at Masters. He says, “Systematic Theology is the organic (unified, integrated, interrelated, interdependent) science of God and all things outside of God in their relations to Him, as revealed by God in the Bible.”

What I especially appreciate about Dr. Mook’s definition here, is that it makes clear more clear, than Chafer’s definition I would say, that any system of theology that we build or any thoughts of God that we entertain or really any things outside of God and their relations to Him as he says, they have to come from the Bible. We must build our theology from the Word. And do so with no apology and no compromise and no watering down. So that’s my favorite definition of Systematic Theology for this summer.

Now here’s a helpful illustration that I discovered of what Systematic Theology is from the pen of of Layton Talbert, who teaches theology at Bob Jones University and Seminary. He says: “Systematic Theology is like turning a piece of wild, raw countryside into a finely cultivated piece of productive farmland with symmetrical patchwork fields and crisp fence-lines and orderly crops and segregated livestock. Without Systematic Theology we would have less appreciation for the Bible as a holistic, self-consistent, pedagogical vehicle for communicating God’s revelation on every topic necessary for man’s knowledge and welfare. We would tend to view the Bible as a rather loosely fitting collection of historical and literary documents. We would have no clear, organized, refined teaching of the Trinity, the nature of Christ, soteriology, or dozens of other important doctrines. Then he points out here that farms display a manmade beauty and order and structure.”

So, what he’s essentially saying here is, like when you’re flying over Nebraska, and you see farmland out there in this beautiful patchwork out there, that’s what theology is essentially accomplishing. There’s beauty and there’s substance in the fields below of course and that’s where the really work gets done, but the end product is this tapestry that we can see from above in a sense.

Now there are ten traditional categories of Systematic Theology. Some articulate more, some fewer. Different men will put these in different order, according to a different outline I have here, but most if not, all would recognize at least these 10. Theology Proper - the doctrine of the existence and being of God. Bibliology – the doctrine of the inspiration, inerrancy, authority, and canonicity of the Bible. Christology – the doctrine of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Pneumatology – the doctrine of the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Anthropology – the doctrine of man. Hamartiology – the doctrine of sin. Soteriology – the doctrine of salvation. Angelology – the doctrine of angels. Ecclesiology – the doctrine of the church. Eschatology – the doctrine of last things.

Three summers ago, we covered Theology Proper - “The Doctrine of God.” Two summers ago, we covered Bibliology - “The Doctrine of the Bible.” Last summer we covered Christology - “The Doctrine of Christ.” Now this summer, the summer of 2025, we’re looking at Pneumatology - the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

What is Pneumatology? Here’s a very simple streamline definition. Pneumatology is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, His person, His works, and His purposes. In the realm of Pneumatology, there are various sub-studies of interest, and we’re going to be touching over these in the next many months, such as the person of the Holy Spirit, the deity of the Holy Spirit. The ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Old and New Testaments. The work of the Holy Spirit in salvation. The indwelling, sealing and filling of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Holy Spirit. The gifts of the Holy Spirit. The ministry of the Holy Spirit through the Word. That would be both as the Spirit has inscripturated the Word, but also as men like me and others here, preach the Word. The ministry of the Holy Spirit in the future. And big one there, the abuse of the Holy Spirit. All this to say we have our work cut out for us this summer. We have a lot to get to. It’s going to be a heavy work and that’s ok because as Richard Campbell Raines here notes, “It does not take a great mind to be a Christian, but it takes all the mind a man has.” That’s true. So be encouraged by these words as we dive deep this summer as you do your best to follow along as we go through hundreds and hundreds of slides.

Now, this subject, the Holy Spirit, is, it truly is a vital one, an important one. The reality is there are all sorts of wrong teachings and false teachings on the Holy Spirit which are circulating in our day. Especially over the past 125 or so years. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit has been truly abused in different parts of the country and the world. We will have a whole segment or message on that very topic where we will look at some of the gross abuses of the person and ministry of the Holy Spirit that have been committed especially in certain charismatic and Pentecostal circles over the past century and a quarter. But sadly, because of some of that, in the broader landscape of Evangelicalism, the Holy Spirit is a much misunderstood and I would say much mistreated Person of the Godhead.

Now, we don’t want to over correct with that. We don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Oftentimes, we become so fixated on how the Holy Spirit has been abused, that we don’t give enough legitimate thought to the legitimate ways that the Holy Spirit does operate today. And the legitimate ways that we are to engage with Him. Not only that, I think there’s this tendency for us to get “scared off” by the Holy Spirit. Because there’s inherently more of a sense of mystery about the Holy Spirit. It’s easier for us to conceptualize relatively speaking, God the Father because He’s a “Father.” It’s relatively easier for us to conceptualize God the Son because He’s God the “Son.” And we relate with those terms, “father” and “son” all the time as part of our ordinary life and practice.

The Holy Spirit though is different. The term Holy Spirit just sounds so mysterious. It sounds so mystical. We don’t relate to Him as naturally or as easily. And in a sense, that’s understandable. As Sinclair Ferguson here is notes, “For while His work has been recognized, the Spirit Himself remains to many Christians as an anonymous, faceless aspect of the divine being.” J.I. Packer notes, “The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is the Cinderella of Christian doctrines. Christian people are not in doubt as to the work that Christ did; they know that He redeemed men by His atoning death. But the average Christian is in a complete fog as to what work the Holy Spirit does.” Then there’s Abraham Kiper who says, “The Holy Spirit leaves no footprints in the sand.” That’s good. That’s poignant and true. This is why some theologians have called the Holy Spirit the forgotten person of the trinity. Or the unknown person of the Godhead. He’s so mysterious to us that we are somewhat fearful of engaging with Him and studying with Him lest we fall into the trap the charismatics and the Pentecostals have.

But that shouldn’t be so! It shouldn’t be so because the Holy Spirit is a real, divine person. And as a real divine person, as a person within the three-person Godhead, the “tri” part type God, we should want to know Him. We don’t want to be ignorant of the Holy Spirit. Rather, we want to have better thoughts of Him, right thoughts of Him, Biblical thoughts of Him. As A.W. Pink notes, and here he’s referring to the Holy Spirit, “Unless we have a right conception of His glorious being, it is impossible that we should entertain right thoughts about Him, and therefore impossible for us to render to Him that homage, love, confidence, and submission, which are His due.” Indeed.

We need to know Him as He is, in order to worship Him as He deserves. A study like this one this summer is going to challenge us to not only think academically about who the Holy Spirit is. But I’m also going to be challenging with questions like, “Is the Holy Spirit producing in my life certain spiritual qualities?” “Am I a loving person in light of what the Spirit is doing through me? “Am I a believer who is marked by love and joy, and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and self-control?” “Am I walking in the spirit?” as Galatians 5:16 calls me to do. “Do I quench the Spirit?” as I Thessalonians 5:19 tells me not to do. “Am I filled with the Spirit?” as Ephesians 5:18 calls me to be. “Do I pray in the Spirit?” as Ephesians 6:18 calls me to do. “Am I being led by the Spirit?” Romans 8:14. “Do I minister and serve in my own strength, or in the enablement of the Spirit?” I Corinthians 2:4.

In other words, all summer long we are going to need to examine both our minds and our hearts as we engage in this study. This study won’t merely be about learning Biblical data about the Holy Spirit. There will be plenty of that, hence the hundreds of slides. No, you’re going to hear from me frequent exhortations about how we all ought to be living out these truths about the Spirit, in light of what we know about the Spirit, the Spirit who lives in us if we put our faith in Jesus. I love what John Ryland, Jr. said. He said, “Can a man have the Holy Spirit, and not love holiness?” The answer obviously, is “no” because it is a practical study that we are to be engaged in this summer.

As I’ve said up here many times I think in more recent months, this is a church. It’s not a seminary. Though this will be more in a lecture style format on Sunday evenings this summer, I’m a pastor, not a professor. But the point is this, not just to store up material in our head without impacting our hearts. The whole point of this study is to learn the truth of God’s Word and then have it go into our hearts and then move us to action as we seek to love the Lord and love the lost and obey His Word.

At that end, let’s let Woodhouse clean up what I wanted to say there. John Woodhouse says, “Paul speaks of a ‘knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness”, Titus 1:1. He also speaks of those who “profess to know God, but they deny him by their works” Titus 1:6. He urges upon Timothy “the teaching that accords with Godliness” I Timothy 6:3. Our knowledge of God is inseparably tied up with ‘godliness,’ a theme in the Pastoral epistles that describes a certain way of living and being that goes far beyond the mere acquisition of facts. We are not here as providers and consumers in a fact-factory, and you will be seriously mistaken about the nature of your participation if you approach it as just another intellectual or academic enterprise. We could know the whole Bible by heart in Greek and Hebrew; we could recite the contents of several textbooks; we could attain high distinctions in every subject, and yet, it would be perfectly possible that we did not know God. Knowing God is real, not abstract; personal, not just intellectual; and will be displayed in your character and conduct, not your cleverness. Amen to that. May those words ring in our ears over the next many months as we dive into this classroom-like context study on the Holy Spirit.

Well with that, your pastor, not your professor, is going to get you dialed in now to this study of Pneumatology. We’re going to get into this with a study of “The Person of the Holy Spirit.” That’s our first topic for this summer. The Person of the Holy Spirit. Now the basic roadmap or outline of where we’ll be going tonight is on your worksheet. We have this 2-sided, way too small worksheet with two points in it this evening. There are just two blanks on that worksheet, and they are very simple points. Feel free to fill these in now. Point 1 is going to be this. What the Holy Spirit Is Not. And then the second point on the back of your worksheet will be Who the Holy Spirit Is.

What the Holy Spirit Is Not and Who the Holy Spirit Is. Let’s start with What the Holy Spirit Is Not. We’re going to spend less time on this first point than we will on our second point. We’ll spend less time on this negative evidence of what the Holy Spirit is not, and more time on the positive evidence of who the Holy Spirit is. But it is important that we cover both.

So, let’s start with what the Holy Spirit is not. We are going to start here, that the Holy Spirit is not like the spirit of man. Man is a spirit being. By that I mean, man has a physical body, with teeth, and bones, and skin, and the like. But man, also has a spirit. Going back to the creation account in Genesis 2, we remember how God said this through Moses. “Yahweh God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and so, the man became a living being.”

So, man is not just a physical object, he’s a living being. And having received the “breath of life” from God, this means that he has both material and immaterial elements. He is both body and spirit. This is what Jesus Himself acknowledged in Matthew 10:28, where He distinguishes between man’s body and soul where he says, “And do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Paul also speaks of that distinction between the material and the immaterial in man in
I Thessalonians 5:23, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It’ll be fun to get into the debate next summer, when we look at Biblical Anthropology, about whether man is made up of two parts, dichotomy, or three parts, trichotomy. But we’ll do that next summer. One summer at a time.

The point though here is that there is an aspect of man that is spiritual. And now the question is, how is the Holy Spirit different than man’s spirit? Is the Holy Spirit different than man’s spirit? And the answer is yes. A place to go for the distinction between the spirit of man and the Holy Spirit is I Corinthians 2:11, which says “For who among men knows the depths of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the depths of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.” So, there’s this very clear distinction that’s being made here between “the spirit of the man which is in him,” and “the Spirit of God” which it says here, knows “the Spirit of God.” We’ll get into this more next Sunday night when we look at the deity, the Godness of the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit knows “the depths of God” because the Holy Spirit is God! He is co-equal with the other two members of the Trinity. We as humans are spirit beings. We’re made in the image of God. We dwell in these physical bodies. But we’re spirit beings. We have the “breath of life.” Genesis 2:7. The Holy Spirit, though, has more than just the “breath of life.” As God He is the source of life. He gives life.

Here’s another one. As we consider what the Holy Spirit is not. The Holy Spirit is not a physical being. Jesus taught that God is spirit in essence. John 4:24, “God is spirit.” The Holy Spirit, as God, also is a spirit being or spiritual being. Also, this is going to be one of those “Captain Obvious” type of statements, but His very name, “The Holy Spirit” means that He is immaterial in nature. Meaning He has no shape or form. He is not embodied. He is Spirit.

You go to the Old Testament, and you’ll see these example of theophanies where God appeared in human form, or some will see Christophanies, where the Son of God appeared in a preincarnate state back in the Old Testament. Not so with the Spirit. Then you get to the New Testament, as we saw recently in our study in Luke on Sunday mornings, we do see things like the Spirit descending upon Jesus as a dove or like a dove at His baptism. But that doesn’t mean He physically took the form of a dove, or He was incarnated into an actual dove. All it means is that He alighted upon the Son, at His baptism, as a dove would alight on a person. Landing on their shoulder or their head or what have you. So, while the Holy Spirit is a Person, as we’ll get into momentarily. And while He is a personal, eternal being, and while He is everywhere present, He has no physical properties. He is spirit.

Here’s another one. The Holy Spirit is not a thing. For this one I’m going to take you into what I consider to be a really fun study in the Greek New Testament. Who is not excited about a study through the Greek New Testament on a beautiful summer evening in June right? See when we have the words “Holy Spirit” in our English Bibles, they are translating those Greek words “tao hagion pneuma,” the Holy Spirit. Now, the word pneuma is a noun. That’s the word “Spirit” and it is grammatically neuter. In the Greek language, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, articles, they fall into one of three categories. They are either masculine, feminine, or neuter. The noun here, spirit, pneuma is neuter. Now, some who deny the person or the personhood of the Holy Spirit, will point to the fact that that word pneuma is neuter. Not masculine, not feminine, and they will say, Ah ha. The Holy Spirit is not a person; the Holy Spirit is an “it.” It’s a “thing.” It’s a “force.” Now, that argument might carry weight if the Biblical authors of the New Testament went “by the book” in terms of applying ordinary rules of Greek grammar and Greek construction when they put the sentences together or they describe the Holy Spirit. See, according to ordinary rules of Greek grammar, any pronoun that is linked to a noun that is neuter, would itself have to be neuter.

Here's what I mean by that. If I walked up to you and said this in person out in the south lobby after the message, after the service. And I said this to you. “I mowed the lawn today and then I watered it.” But I said it to you in Greek. I don’t know how to say that in Greek. I don’t know that they had lawn mowers in ancient Greece. But if I said this to you, “I mowed the lawn today and then I watered it.” Now the “noun” in that sentence is “lawn.” Now let’s say that in Greek that now is neuter. Well according to Greek grammar rules the impersonal pronoun, the very last word in the sentence, the word “it” where I say, “I watered it.” That would also be by the normal rules have to be neuter. It would have to match the word lawn. The noun and the pronoun must match. That would be the typically way of going by the book in Greek.

Well, in several places in the New Testament when referring to the Holy Spirit, the Biblical writers deviated from this rule. Instead of using a neuter pronoun like “it” when referring to the noun, lawn here or pneuma in our case, they deliberately contradicted the normal rules and they used the neuter noun pneuma but then the pronoun that went with is masculine.
It’d be like if I had said I mowed the lawn today and then I watered him. It would make no sense to us unless the lawn was a man, or masculine or male.

Here’s an example of what I mean by this. In John 14:26, these are the words of Jesus. He says, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” The words “Holy Spirit” there are neuter. But then the pronoun there, “He” rightly translated is masculine. My point is this is curious, this is odd, this is strange. This is not how Greek grammar typically works.

Another example is John 15:26. “When the Advocate comes, (still Jesus talking) whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness about Me.” Again, the word “Spirit,” “pneuma” is neuter here. So, you would expect that the word “He” there would not be He but a Greek neuter pronoun, that would be translated it. But that’s not what is said here.

Here’s another one. John 16:13, these are the words of Jesus still. “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth.” Now the noun again “Spirit” is neuter. And in this case the pronoun I want to point out is the one that comes before the word Spirit, He. That is not a neuter pronoun. That is a masculine pronoun and again that is weird. That is odd. Then there’s the example in Ephesians 1:13-14. Where Paul now says, you were sealed in Him, “with the Holy Spirit of promise.” And then the very next word, in verse 14, “who,” “is given as a pledge of our inheritance, unto the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.” Now that word who is what’s known as a relative pronoun. A relative pronoun if this were neuter would be translated “which.” So, it would be sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is given to us as a pledge of our inheritance.

But that’s not how it’s translated is it? No. It’s “who.” And why? Because it’s masculine. So, Paul like Jesus in John 14:15,16, has translated where he’s given the word pneuma, spirit, neuter, but then he attaches a pronoun that’s masculine to the word spirit which indicates that the spirit is not an it, not a thing, not a force, but a person. A Him, properly said. So that’s our fun Greek grammar lesson.

Now what’s the importance of all this? Again, it’s just highlighting that the Holy Spirit is a person, not a force, not a thing, not some holy source of power. The Bible doesn’t teach “Star Wars Theology.” The force is not with us because of the Holy Spirit. No. The Holy Spirit is a person.

Now with that, I told you that’d be quick. That was the negative. That was our point one, What the Holy Spirit Is Not. Now we want to move on to the positive. Who the Holy Spirit Is. That’s the second point on your outline, on the back of your worksheets. What we’re going to do now and for the rest of our time this evening, is evaluate a variety of the different positive Biblical evidence, that is the affirmative statements that are made in the Scriptures, that highlight that the Holy Spirit is a divine Person. A Person who, as we’ll see next Sunday night, is equal in essence, in substance, in personhood to the other two members of the Trinity. Because He’s also God.

Now theologians will commonly speak of God having intellect, and emotion, and will and they will also speak of how we as image bearers, we also have intellect, emotion and will, all three. That’s one of the ways we can know and affirm that we are made in the image of God as we resemble those characteristics that He has perfectly. Well, that is true of the Holy Spirit. He is like the Father and like the Son. He has intellect, emotion, and will. Each of those are aspects of His being a person. Of His personhood.

Now to get us started on this subject of His personhood or as some theologians call it, His “personality.” And that just sounds a little too psychological to me. Let’s start by noting that He, the Holy Spirit, has certain “traits of personhood” which would distinguish persons like you and me for instance, from non-persons. Like you and I are different than a fencepost, right? You and I are different than a car window or a squirrel or a fish. We are persons. We have personhood. And so has the Holy Spirit. There are ways that we can detect from the Scriptures that He is a person. For instance, we know that the Holy Spirit has life. He has energy. Life basically defined is energy, it’s the potential to carry out activity. Putting it very simply, it’s the ability to do things. That’s the definition of life that I would go with.

But beyond having life the way a frog has life or even you and I have life, the Holy Spirit’s life is rooted in His self-existence, as God. His life is self-existent life. Look at these words from Jesus, in John 7:38. He says, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” Then look at these insights, this is now John, narrating in John 7:39 where He says, “But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were going to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”

The quote back in John 7:38 is, according to John here, Jesus speaking of the Spirit. In other words, that inexhaustible supply of “living water” that Jesus spoke of in John 7:38, that flows from within the believer, is specifically the Spirit. So, the Spirit, being self-existent in His life is the source of our life. John Gill renders “As the Father had life in Himself, and the Son had life in Himself, so has the Holy Spirit: since He is the Author of natural and spiritual life to men, which He could not be unless He had life in Himself; and if He has life in Himself, He must subsist in Himself.” The main takeaway there is He has inherent life. He’s the provider of life. He isn’t drawing on anything or anyone else for His life. He has life in a way that we couldn’t say that we have life. Because we don’t have a self-existent life. We have dependent life on God.

Or when we get to Paul’s letters, specifically the book of Romans and even more specifically, to Romans chapter 8 which I read this evening. We see Paul classifying these two spheres into which all humans can be classified. They are either “unsaved” or “saved.” They are either “in the flesh” or “in the Spirit.” Paul makes those comparisons all throughout Romans 8. The flesh is equated with death and the Spirit is equated with life.

Look at these words again from Romans 8 where He says, “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.” This is saying that the Holy Spirit is the source of life for us in Christ Jesus. He is our source of life. So, if He is our source of life, then standing behind that proposition is that He Himself has life or else how can He be our source of life. And standing behind that proposition is that if He is the source of life, and He fundamentally must be a person. He fundamentally must have personhood.

Now life itself, I have to say, can’t be the only defining trait of the Holy Spirit’s personhood. We can’t build our whole case on the Holy Spirit being a person by virtue of the fact that He has life, because then we’d have to say a whole lot of other things have personhood, because they have life. Like we would have to admit that a cat is a person, by virtue of simply having life. And I am unwilling to concede that a cat is a person. And I hope that you’re with me and not conceding that cats are people. We have cats. There’s an argument going on in our house, a friendly debate, about the value of the cats in our home.

The Holy Spirit has life. The Holy Spirit has intelligence. Intelligence is basically made up of knowledge, and understanding, and wisdom. The Holy Spirit has each of those. For starters, this was prophesied of Him, of the Spirit, back in Isaiah 11:2, which refers to Israel’s coming Messiah. It says, “The Spirit of Yahweh will rest on Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of Yahweh.”

The Holy Spirit has a mind. Romans 8:27, “He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is.” So, the Spirit has a mind and the Spirit has an infinite mind. And with that mind, He demonstrates that He has intelligence. The Spirit of God must have intelligence to teach. John 14:26, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” The Spirit of God must have intelligence to testify. John 15:26, We looked at these earlier for the Greek purposes, but this is testifying to His intelligence. “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness about Me.” That takes intelligence.

The Spirit of God must have intelligence to convict. John 16:8, “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” The Holy Spirit must have intelligence to guide. John 16:13, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth.” The Spirit of truth must have wisdom and intelligence to disclose. John 16:14, “He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.” The Spirit of God must have intelligence to know the depths of God. I Corinthians 2:11, “The depths of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.” One more, the Spirit of God must have intelligence to impart the gifts of wisdom and knowledge, as He is described as doing in I Corinthians 12:8, “For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit.” All of those require intelligence.

So, the Spirit has life. The Spirit has intelligence, as we’ve just seen. And now we’re going to see that the Holy Spirit Has Emotions. For this one, we go to Ephesians 4:30. “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” Do not grieve the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can be grieved. What does that mean? Is the Holy Spirit some sort of unstable bag of emotions? No. He is God. So whatever emotions He experiences, He experiences perfectly, which is an experience that you and I have never experienced. Because we’re people and we’re sinful and we’re flawed. But the Holy Spirit does experience emotion as it says here in Ephesians 4:30. He can be grieved by, hurt by sins committed by followers of Christ. The very individuals whom He indwells.

So again, what does that mean? What does it mean that He can be grieved or that we can grieve Him. Well, thankfully, the word that Paul uses there for “grieve” the Greek verb is lupeo, it is found in a variety of other places in the New Testament. And from those other instances of this verb being used, we can piece together some clues.

In Matthew 17:23, that same word that is translated grieve here is used to describe the apostles’ sorrow over the forthcoming crucifixion of Jesus. Matthew 19:22, that same word is used to describe the sorrow of the rich young ruler as he left Christ in his unbelief. In Matthew 26:22, that same word is used to describe the disciples’ sorrow over the announcement that one of them would betray Christ. Matthew 26:37, the same word is used to describe Jesus’ intense sorrow as He prayed at the garden of Gethsemane. John 21:17, that same word that’s translated grieve here, is used to describe Peter’s sorrow when Jesus asks him a third time “Do you love Me?” In Romans 9:2, Paul speaks of the “great sorrow and unceasing grief” (same word) that he had for his countrymen in Israel. II Corinthians 2 and II Corinthians 7, the same word is used to describe the sorrow of the Corinthian church, which ultimately led its members to repentance. In I Thessalonians 4:13, the same word is used to describe those who “grieve” the loss of a loved one, albeit without hope. And in I Peter 1:6, Peter speaks of being “grieved by various trials.” Same verb.

So, in a way that’s similar to how we as persons, as people, as humans, grieve over sin. Maybe it’s a child sin against us when they talk back or disobey. Maybe it’s a spouse’s sin against us when they lie or show something other than unrequited love. So, it is with the Holy Spirit. All sin grieves the Spirit. The grief He experiences when we sin, demonstrates that He has emotion, albeit, as God, perfect emotion. Which is a demonstration of His Personhood another aspect of His Personhood.

Or what about this one? Under this category of the Holy Spirit’s ability to experience emotion? We know that God the Father loves. John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” We know that God the Son loves. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” Well, God the Spirit, being coequal with the Father and coequal with the Son also loves. Look at this text, Romans 15:30, “Now I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God for me.” Now some will take that to mean “our love for the Spirit” where it says the love of the Spirit like how we as people love the Holy Spirit. I think the more natural reading here is as it’s translated here that it’s “the Spirit’s love for us.” The love of the Spirit for us and that reading is not only supported by the way the sentence is constructed but it’s supported by the fact that this is really one of the Holy Spirit’s purposes. One of the Holy Spirit’s purposes for believers is to produce love in us. What is at the very head of the list of the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5:22? “Love.” So just as He expects us to have love for others, He models that love for us to begin with.

Well, another aspect of the personhood of the Holy Spirit is that He decides. He has a will. He has a volitional capacity. He can choose. He can decide. We see this for instance in Acts 13:2. This is where the Spirit gives directions to the prophets and teachers of the church at Antioch. It says, “And while they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’” So, the Holy Spirit spoke. That’s an indication of personhood. Then He chose that it was His will that Paul and Barnabas would be the first missionaries out of this group that were there, to be the missionaries in the Gentile world.

Then on Paul’s second missionary journey, we see another aspect of the Holy Spirit’s will, and volition, and decision-making authority and ability in Acts 16. It says, “And they passed through the Phrygian and Galatian region, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the Word in Asia; and after they came to Mysia, they were trying to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them.” Paul and his team were forbidden by the Spirit as it says here to go into certain regions at certain times. What’s happening here is that the Spirit is revealing His will as to where He wanted the preached Word to go at specific points in time and places. He’s revealing His will. He’s making decisive decisions, wielding authority. Now another way that we see the Spirit making decisions and demonstrating His volition and His will, is how He determines which spiritual gifts will be imparted to which believers. I Corinthians 12:11, “But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills.” Note that language. Gifts are not distributed according to what we want, but rather in accordance with what He wills.

In terms of these key pillars of personhood, intellect, emotion, and will. What we’ve seen in this very quick survey is that the Holy Spirit possesses all three. He has knowledge and a mind, which demonstrates His intellect. He loves and can be grieved, which demonstrates His emotion. And He makes volitional decisions, like distributing gifts or forbidding people from going certain places which demonstrates His will. So just as we show the traits of our human personality, or personhood, through our intelligence, and emotion, and will, so does the Holy Spirit albeit with total perfection in His case.

Alright so we’ve looked at how He, the Spirit, possesses certain aspects of personality or personhood. Next, we’re going to see how the Holy Spirit’s works affirm His personhood. What He does, in other words, reveals who He is. His actions demonstrate His personhood. John Walvoord even goes so far as to say that “The most tangible and conclusive evidence for the personality of the Holy Spirit is found in His works.”

So, what are those works? Well, one would be creation. His Work in creation. Genesis 1:2, “And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.” Rocks don’t create anything. Vending machines don’t create anything. The Holy Spirit is a person. He’s not an inanimate object. He’s a Person and He has always had creative purpose and power.

Or what about the Spirit’s role in rebuilding the temple. In Zechariah 4:6, we have this. “Then he answered and spoke to me, saying, ‘This is the word of Yahweh to Zerubbabel, saying, “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,” says Yahweh of hosts.’” For context, the rebuilding of the temple was a gigantic undertaking in the times in which Zechariah was set. What is being contrasted here is the power of the personal Holy Spirit and impersonal Holy Power. Who is going to build or rebuild the temple at the time. Was it going to be mere people or mere men? No, it would be by the Spirit. God is saying here that it was with His Spirit empowering people, that the work on the temple would get done.

So, there’s the work of the Spirit in creation. There’s the work of the Spirit or empowering the work of the people to rebuild the temple. Move over to the New Testament and there’s the work of the Spirit in teaching and guiding and disclosing. We’ve already seen this passage in John 16:13, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak from Himself, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.” Guiding, speaking, disclosing. Those are all works of the spirit. Works revealing His Personhood.

There’s the work of the Holy Spirit in praying. Romans 8:26, “And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” In other words, we believers are not alone in our prayer burdens. We don’t always know what to pray. But the Holy Spirit knows, and He hears us, and He helps us. Robert Gromacki says, “True prayer goes from our hearts through the mind of the Spirit to the Father.” And what a joy it is to know that!

There’s the work of the Spirit in convicting or bringing conviction. John 16:8, When “He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” That word “convict” is a legal term. The Spirit is like this internal prosecuting attorney, who creates within the center and awareness of their personal sin and their guilt. Then He persuades the sinner, that’s His work, to confess his guilty status before the Judge of the universe, so that he or she might be restored to the God who made them. That is a moral act imparting moral conviction on a moral agent, a human being. He’s a person.

Or what about this one. Another work of the Spirit demonstrating His Personhood? He searches. I Corinthians 2:10, “the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.” I mean in preparing this message, I’ve had to search some things. I’ve had to search the Scriptures and about 20 other books on the Holy Spirit. Searching involves mental processing and cogitating and functioning. Only persons can do that. Conclusion? The Holy Spirit is a person.

There are a lot more examples of His Personhood. He leads. Romans 8:14, “For as many as are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” He forbids. We have already seen this one in Acts 16:6-7 about the people on the second journey not being able to go to certain places. Forbidding. Permitting. Those are choices that persons make. So the Holy Spirit is a person.

He transports. We see this in Acts 8. The whole scene where the Spirit of the Lord takes Phillip away after his encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch and moves him away, geographically to another place. Like a whirlwind He physically transports Phillip from one place to another. It’s a work of the Spirit or even Revelation. The apostle John has a similar experience when Jesus calls John into heaven, in Revelation 4:1. He reports “Immediately I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne.” So, the Holy Spirit’s the one who transported John from earth to heaven and enabled John to see this glorious picture of the future that was provided to him.

But what all these examples show is that the Holy Spirit is doing what He’s doing and is functioning the way He’s functioning because He is a divine Person. He’s not merely an influence or a force. A mere influence or a force doesn’t teach, and guide, and pray, and convict, and command. No. All the works that the Holy Spirit does, He does because He is a Person. These are legitimate Biblical evidences for the Personhood of the Holy Spirit. And that’s important to note. These are Biblical evidences. Every example that we’ve been running through here, what I’ve been trying to do is make it evident from Scripture that the Holy Spirit is a Person. Because as John Walvoord here notes, “In the history of the church, opponents of the personality of the Holy Spirit have found it necessary also to deny the inspiration and accuracy of the Word of God in order to sustain their teaching.” Then he says, “The only tenable position for those who accept the revelation of Scripture is to believe in the full-orbed personality of the Holy Spirit.” That’s what we’ve been doing now for 55 minutes. Walvoord’s on target.

One more category of Biblical data to reveal the Personhood of the Holy Spirit. This one, I want to focus in on how the Spirit can be mistreated. The fact that He can be mistreated in the way that He is mistreated is further evidence that He is not a force or a thing, but a person. He’s not “mistreated” by believers or unbelievers in the way that immaterial things are mistreated. You can mistreat your car by not putting oil in it or your HVAC unit by not putting an air filter in frequently. I wouldn’t know about that. But the Spirit is mistreated in highly personal ways which reveal that He truly is a Person. For instance, He can be grieved. We’ve already worked through that one. Ephesians 4:30. He can be mistreated in a very personal way of being grieved. He can be blasphemed. We remember this from Matthew 12. Here, Jesus cast out the demon from the blind, mute man and suddenly this man is able to see and speak and the Pharisees don’t like what they’ve seen. They attribute what Jesus has done in casting out the demon from the blind man and His works to Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons. They are claiming that the work Jesus did in healing this man, was satanic, not of the Holy Spirit. Jesus replies, “Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven.” There we have the unforgivable sin. The unpardonable sin. Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

We don’t have time to go into a full study of what that is and all of its ramifications, but for our purposes what we want to note is that persons and persons only can be blasphemed. You can’t blaspheme your bank account balance. Right? You can’t blaspheme a construction zone cone. You can’t blaspheme a cow. You blaspheme people. You can only blaspheme a person. And this means, this proves that the Holy Spirit is a person.

The Holy Spirit can be lied to. For this we think of the account of Ananias and Sapphira. Here’s the line from Acts 5:3. You know they’ve sold land. They go back to the apostles and then they can or at least suggest that all of the sale proceeds have gone back to the church and to the apostles. But they’ve held money back and Peter says “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land?” Now there’s some sense in which they had sinned against the apostles and sinned against their fellow collected believers, but what ultimately they have done is they had sinned against and lied to the Holy Spirit. You can only lie to a person. That’s a mark of Personhood.

The Holy Spirit can be resisted. This one we’ll go to the account of the church’s first martyr Stephen. He gives this impassioned defense before He’s ultimately stoned to death and in his defense all in the beginning part of Act 7, he lays out the historical record of Israel, and specifically, Israel’s past treatments of the prophets that were sent to rebuke them, and correct them, and he concludes here in Acts 7:51, “You men, stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, are always resisting the Holy Spirit.” And that was true. For centuries Israel had resisted the Holy Spirt. They had rejected all the various Spirit filled prophets who had been sent to them who were declaring and proclaiming to them the Spirit-inspired and Spirit given Word of God. To reject the prophets was to reject the Spirit and to resist the Spirit. As a Person, the Spirit was prompting them and convicting them and yet they rejected Him.

The Holy Spirit can be quenched. Do not quench the Holy Spirit. In I Thessalonians 5:19. Now this concept of quenching really pictures of a fire being doused. A fire is being put out. Cross references are Matthew 25:8, where the foolish virgins lamented that their lamps had gone out. Matthew 12:20, where Christ says that He wouldn’t quench any smoking flax, meaning, He wouldn’t stamp out the smallest amount of flickering faith and commitment. Mark 9, Jesus describes hell as a place where the fire won’t be quenched. Ephesians 6:16, believers are told that with their “shield of faith” they will “be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.”

But here in I Thessalonians 5:19, the idea is that the way that water dropped on a fire can limit its reach and its power. Our sin can effectively douse the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Right? As believers our course, we’ll never lose the Spirit, but we sure can stifle His work in us and quench Him, the more we pursue a pattern of sin.

Here’s one more. The Holy Spirit can be insulted. For this one we go to Hebrews 10:26-29. I’m going to skip through the first part of it and just get us right to that last part of verse 29 about insulting the Spirit of grace. Only a person is capable of taking an insult. Impersonal objects or abstract principles cannot be insulted. You can not scream at a weed and insult a weed for growing in your lawn. You can’t insult a mailbox. If you try to insult a mailbox, I have real concerns for you. You can’t insult world peace. The concept of world peace. You can only insult people. People can be insulted. Only a person can insult and only a person can be on the receiving end in this sense of being insulted. These are all testimonies and testifying to the Personhood of the Holy Spirit.

Well, we have launched our series on Pneumatology officially. We have looked at some basic background ideas here. We’ve looked at these inherent traits of the Spirit’s personality, the fact that He has intellect, emotion, and will. We’ve seen some of the ways He works, which reveal further His personhood. We’ve just now looked at some of the ways He can be mistreated, in ways that reveal specifically that he is a person. I’m going to land the plane now with a couple more quotes and we’ll be done.

First, is John Owen. He writes a lot and says a lot, but I will keep it down to two slides for this one. He says “by all these testimonies we have fully confirmed what was designed to be proved by them, namely, that the Holy Spirit is not a quality, as some speak, residing in the Divine nature; not a mere emanation of virtue and power from God; not the acting of the power of God in and unto our sanctification, but a holy, intelligent subsistent, or Person.”

Much more concise is Charles Ryrie. He says “the Spirit is not merely a mysterious power or a mode of operation or a force. He is a person.” And what should that truth do for us? Spurgeon tells us. “Worship him [the Spirit] as the adorable Lord God. Never call the Holy Spirit ‘it’; nor speak of Him as if he were a doctrine, or an influence, or an orthodox myth. Reverence Him, love Him, and trust Him with familiar yet reverent confidence. He is God, let Him be God to you.”

Last, II Corinthians 13:14, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, (we’ll close with this) and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” Let’s pray.

Father, we thank You for this chance to do a bit of a deeper dive this evening on the topic of the personhood of the Holy Spirit. I do pray that we would be encouraged by this and remember that the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, is not a force, not a thing, not an it, but is a person. We can relate to Him. We can depend upon Him. We know we are indwelt with Him if we believed upon the name of Jesus Christ. And we can walk in Him and bear fruit in accordance with what is laid out for us in the Scriptures. So God I do pray that this study, not just this evening but throughout the summer, will be enriching and edifying and as was explained tonight, that I would not just transform what our minds as we learn things and soak up knowledge, but that this really would impact our hearts and the way we live as we decide to and seek to walk in the Spirit. May you be glorified in our lives in the week ahead. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.