Sermon Tone Analysis

Who is the Holy Spirit?

The fact that the Holy Spirit is a person is seen in a multitude of ways in Scripture.

One of the primary evidences is that the Bible repeatedly and consistently uses personal pronouns to refer to Him.

He is called “He,” “Him,” and so on, not “it.”

Also, He does things that we associate with personality.

He teaches, He inspires, He guides, He leads, He grieves, He convicts us of sin, and more.

Impersonal objects do not behave in this manner.

Only a person can do these things.

But the Holy Spirit is seen in Scripture not merely as personal but also as fully divine.

We see this in a curious story from the book of

But the Holy Spirit is seen in Scripture not merely as personal but also as fully divine.

We see this in a curious story from the book of

The sin of Ananias and Sapphira was that they pretended that their donation to the church was greater than it was.

Peter concluded by saying, “You have not lied to man but to God.” So, the lie that Ananias told to the Holy Spirit was actually told to God.

The clear implication is that the Holy Spirit is God.

The sin of Ananias and Sapphira was that they pretended that their donation to the church was greater than it was.

Peter concluded by saying, “You have not lied to man but to God.” So, the lie that Ananias told to the Holy Spirit was actually told to God.

The clear implication is that the Holy Spirit is God.

ATTRIBUTES AND WORKS OF GOD

Furthermore, the New Testament often describes the Holy Spirit as having attributes that are clearly divine.

For instance, the Holy Spirit is eternal () and omniscient ().

These are both attributes of God.

Moreover, they are incommunicable attributes, attributes of God that cannot be shared by man.

But none of these things avail for our benefit until they are applied to us personally.

The Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit into the world to apply salvation to us (; ).

The role of the Holy Spirit chiefly and principally in the New Testament is to apply the work of Christ to believers.

Most importantly, redemption is a Trinitarian work.

The Father sent the Son into the world ().

The Son performed all the work that was necessary for our salvation—living a life of perfect obedience and dying to make a perfect satisfaction (; ).

But none of these things avail for our benefit until they are applied to us personally.

Therefore, the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit into the world to apply salvation to us (; ).

The role of the Holy Spirit chiefly and principally in the New Testament is to apply the work of Christ to believers.

FROM SPIRITUAL DEATH TO LIFE

It is very important that we have an accurate understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit in spiritual rebirth.

One of the best places to gain such an understanding is in .

We read there:

He declares that Christians have been “made alive.”

But if they are now alive, what were they previously?

They were “dead in trespasses and sins.”

So, Paul is talking about some kind or resurrection, a transformation of people who are dead to new life.

We need to understand what kind of death is in view here.

Paul is not talking about physical resurrection because he is not talking about physical death.

In His conversation with Nicodemus, after He explained that no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit, Jesus said in

We are dead on arrival spiritually—not just weak, ailing, critically ill, or comatose.

There is no spiritual heartbeat, no spiritual breathing, no spiritual brain-wave activity.

We are spiritually stillborn, and so we remain—unless God the Holy Spirit makes us alive.

Here Jesus distinguished between the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of human flesh.

He said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.”

He was speaking of people, and He was not simply saying that human beings are born with physical bodies, but that they are born fallen.

This means they do not have spiritual life.

Instead, they are born spiritually dead.

Yet, that is clearly what Paul is saying.

We are dead on arrival spiritually—not just weak, ailing, critically ill, or comatose.

There is no spiritual heartbeat, no spiritual breathing, no spiritual brain-wave activity.

We are spiritually stillborn, and so we remain—unless God the Holy Spirit makes us alive.

Yet, that is clearly what Paul is saying.

We are dead on arrival spiritually—not just weak, ailing, critically ill, or comatose.

There is no spiritual heartbeat, no spiritual breathing, no spiritual brain-wave activity.

We are spiritually stillborn, and so we remain—unless God the Holy Spirit makes us alive.

“ANOTHER HELPER”

In the upper room on the night before His crucifixion, Jesus gave His disciples some important promises regarding the Spirit.

He told them that He was about to depart and that they could not go with Him.

Look at

Some translations use the word “Comforter” instead of “Helper.”

The Greek word that is translated as “Helper” or “Comforter” is parakletos; it is the source of the English word paraclete.

This word includes a prefix, para-, that means “alongside,” and a root that is a form of the verb kletos, which means “to call.”

So, a parakletos was someone who was called to stand alongside another.

That is the way it is in our relationship with the Holy Spirit.

We are part of the family of God, and the family attorney is the Holy Spirit Himself.

He is always present to come alongside us and help in times of troubles.

Consider what the Disciples were facing: They were going to be without Him in the midst of a hostile world, where they would be hated as He had been hated.

Every moment of their lives would be filled with pressure, hostility, and persecution from the world.

No one wants to enter that kind of scenario without help.

The Holy Spirit comes to empower and strengthen Christians, to ensure victory or conquest.

The Sanctifier

Among the persons of the Trinity, the Spirit is the principal actor who works for our sanctification, enabling the process by which we are conformed to the image of Christ and made holy.

Look at ; ;

There are a couple of reasons why the third person is known as the Holy Spirit.

First, the term holy is attached to His title because of the particular task the Spirit performs in our redemption.

Among the persons of the Trinity, the Spirit is the principal actor who works for our sanctification, enabling the process by which we are conformed to the image of Christ and made holy.

The primary leading of the Spirit, as set forth in Scripture, is to holiness.

It is His power working in us that helps us grow in holiness.

We need to be very careful to go to the pages of the Scripture to learn about God’s will and the leading of the Spirit, and not simply to listen to the popular teachings of the Christian subculture in which we live.

So, a primary reason why the Holy Spirit is called the Holy Spirit is because it is His specific task to enable followers of Christ in their quest for sanctification.

I emphasize these points for this reason: In the Christian world, many of us are masters at justifying our sin, and one of the chief ways we do it is by saying we were led to do such and such by the Holy Spirit.

This is not a problem that I encounter once every ten years.

At least once a week I talk to a professing Christian who tells me he or she is getting a divorce without biblical grounds, entering into a marriage in opposition to the biblical qualification for marriage, or running a business according to unscriptural principles.

They are doing this and that, and without fail they tell me they feel free to do it because “I prayed about it and God has given me peace” or “The Holy Spirit has led me to do this.”

When I hear these kinds of justifications for unbiblical behavior, I realize the people may actually believe what they are telling me, but they are not speaking the truth.

They are speaking in error—very serious error.

I know this for two reasons, and these reasons are grounded in two crucial designations about the character of the Spirit of God.

The first is that He is the Holy Spirit.

The second is that Jesus repeatedly called Him “the Spirit of truth” (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13).

The Holy Spirit never entices us to do something that is unholy.

Neither does the Holy Spirit ever incline us to embrace a lie.

We refer to the Bible as the Word of God, and so it is.

One of the reasons why the church has confessed its faith that the Scriptures are the Word of God is the biblical claim that the words of sacred Scripture were originally inspired by God the Holy Spirit.

Of course, the Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit not only inspired the writing of the biblical books, He works to illumine the Scriptures and to apply them to our understanding.

Paul writes, “God is not a God of confusion” (1 Cor.

14:33a), and that includes the Holy Spirit.