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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit," R. A. Torrey delves deeply into the theological significance of the Holy Spirit within the Christian faith. Employing a didactic and accessible literary style, Torrey explores the complexities of the Holy Spirit's role in the lives of believers, scriptural foundations, and the transformative power attributed to Him. With clear exegesis and a structured approach, the book engages with key biblical texts, providing a comprehensive and yet concise analysis that caters to both scholars and lay readers alike. R. A. Torrey was a prominent American evangelist, theologian, and educator known for his fervent advocacy for holiness and deep biblical understanding. His background as a pastor and educator, coupled with a commitment to revivalism, undoubtedly influenced the writing of this book. Torrey's scholarship is marked by a desire to impart spiritual truths, making complex theological concepts accessible to a broader audience, which is evident throughout his exploration of the Holy Spirit. This book is highly recommended for anyone seeking to deepen their understanding of the Holy Spirit's active presence in their lives and the Church. Whether you are a clergy member, a theology student, or a devoted layperson, Torrey's insightful examination provides profound theological insights and practical applications that resonate with contemporary Christian living. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit
Table of Contents
Introduction
With steady conviction, this work presses a single claim: that the Holy Spirit is not an abstract force but the personal, divine presence who brings Scripture to life, awakens faith, purifies character, illumines prayer, guides discernment, and empowers witness, enabling ordinary believers to live holy lives, to serve with courage, and to bear lasting fruit, so that Christian doctrine becomes embodied practice and the church’s calling in the world—worship, mission, and steadfast hope—moves from aspiration to experience.
R. A. Torrey’s The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit stands as a classic of Christian theology and pastoral instruction from the early twentieth century. Torrey, an American evangelist and educator, writes with the clarity of a teacher and the urgency of a preacher, addressing readers across church backgrounds who seek a grounded understanding of the Spirit’s identity and activity. Rather than offering speculation, the book builds its case from careful engagement with biblical texts, reflecting the era’s evangelical emphasis on Scripture as the authoritative guide for belief and practice. The result is a work that is both doctrinally focused and practically oriented toward the everyday life of faith.
The premise is straightforward yet far-reaching: if Christians are to live faithfully, they must know who the Holy Spirit is and how the Spirit works. Torrey organizes his study around clear claims supported by numerous scriptural references, moving from foundational questions about the Spirit’s personhood to the implications for prayer, holiness, service, and witness. The voice is earnest and direct, the style expository rather than speculative, and the mood confident, pastoral, and devotional. Readers can expect accessible prose that offers instruction without resorting to technical jargon, encouraging thoughtful reflection, personal examination, and a deepened attentiveness to God’s presence and purpose.
Key themes include the Spirit’s personality and deity, the Spirit’s relation to the Father and the Son, and the Spirit’s role in revealing truth. Torrey explores how the Spirit works in bringing people to faith, assuring believers of salvation, and reshaping character in the direction of Christlikeness. He also considers the Spirit’s ministry in illuminating Scripture, cultivating godly affections, and equipping the church for service. Throughout, the emphasis falls on both understanding and response: recognizing the Spirit as personal and divine calls forth trust, reverence, and obedience, while a biblical view of the Spirit guards against reducing faith to either bare intellect or passing emotion.
Practical application is never far from sight. Torrey consistently draws lines between surrender and strength, prayer and power, obedience and usefulness. He urges readers to anchor their expectations not in personal impression but in scriptural promise, and to approach the Christian life as participation in the Spirit’s ongoing work. The book outlines how reliance on the Spirit shapes habits of prayer, fuels witness, and sustains love and purity in ordinary responsibilities. In this way, it offers a pattern of spirituality that is both energized and disciplined, encouraging Christians to seek fullness of life and service without abandoning the steady safeguards of biblical teaching.
Readers today will find the book relevant for navigating a landscape where spirituality is often either privatized or sensationalized. Torrey’s measured, text-driven approach invites discernment: how do we test spiritual claims, cultivate genuine dependence on God, and avoid confusing intensity with maturity? By rooting Christian experience in the character and promises of God, the work offers a framework for unity across differences in temperament and tradition. It encourages perseverance in prayer, confidence in Scripture, courage in witness, and humility in service—qualities that speak to contemporary questions about authenticity, formation, and the integration of belief and practice.
Approaching this book, expect rigorous attention to Scripture, a warm pastoral tone, and repeated invitations to act on what is learned. Torrey writes for both the thoughtful lay reader and the minister who seeks clarity and exhortation, providing a guide that is catechetical in structure and devotional in effect. The focus is constructive rather than combative, aiming to build readers up in sound understanding and resilient hope. As an introduction to Christian teaching on the Spirit, it opens a doorway into deeper study and faithful living, urging readers not merely to admire truth from a distance but to welcome the Spirit’s renewing work with reverence and joy.
Synopsis
R. A. Torrey presents The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit as a systematic, Scripture-centered study of who the Holy Spirit is and what He does. The book states its aim plainly: to gather biblical evidence so readers can understand the Spirit’s nature, offices, and practical importance for Christian life and service. Torrey proceeds inductively, collecting passages and drawing concise conclusions rather than proposing novel theories. He distinguishes between doctrinal foundations and practical applications, but keeps both in view throughout. The overall purpose is to show that a right knowledge of the Spirit is essential to effective Christian living, fruitful ministry, and a church empowered for its mission.
The opening chapters argue for the Holy Spirit’s personality, not as an impersonal force but as a personal agent with mind, will, and affections. Torrey draws on biblical texts where the Spirit speaks, teaches, grieves, bears witness, commands, and can be resisted. He emphasizes personal pronouns and personal actions to show volition and relational capacity. This section also stresses the Spirit’s distinctness from the Father and the Son, while maintaining unity within the Godhead. By establishing personality and distinctness, Torrey sets the frame for reverent response: the Spirit can be known, obeyed, and trusted, and His ministry must be approached in personal, not merely abstract, terms.
Torrey then presents the deity of the Holy Spirit. He assembles passages attributing divine names, attributes, and works to the Spirit: omniscience, omnipresence, creative activity, and sovereign distribution of gifts. He highlights triadic formulas in Scripture where the Spirit stands with the Father and the Son, and notes that lying to the Spirit is treated as lying to God. The section includes the Spirit’s role in the inspiration of Scripture, asserting that the Bible owes its authority to His superintendence. Worship, obedience, and faith appropriate to God are shown to be fittingly directed to the Spirit, grounding the book’s later practical calls in a robust doctrinal base.
Transitioning from who the Spirit is to what He does, Torrey outlines the Spirit’s work in the world and in individuals. He describes the Spirit’s convicting ministry concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment, preparing people to receive the gospel. He then treats regeneration as the Spirit’s act in imparting new life, followed by indwelling, sealing, and adoption, through which believers gain assurance and membership in God’s family. The Spirit’s witness within the believer confirms this new status. Torrey identifies sanctification as an ongoing work in which the Spirit produces holiness, not merely by external command but by internal transformation oriented toward Christlike character and obedience.
A substantial section addresses the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Torrey defines it as an enduement of power for service distinct from the new birth, appealing to examples in Acts and related promises. He argues that this baptism equips believers for effective witness and ministry rather than serving as a mark of spiritual superiority. Conditions commonly urged include surrender to God’s will, persistent prayer, obedience, and faith in the promise. Torrey maintains that the primary evidence is power in testimony and fruit in service, not necessarily particular emotions or extraordinary manifestations. The focus remains practical: God provides power for the church’s work through the Spirit’s baptism.
Torrey differentiates between the baptism with the Spirit and the filling of the Spirit, noting that believers are called to be continually filled. He discusses how repeated fillings can occur and how they relate to readiness for specific tasks. Hindrances receive careful treatment: sin grieves the Spirit, spiritual dullness quenches His operations, and persistent unbelief resists His influence. Torrey also warns about the unpardonable sin as a distinct, solemn case, while keeping pastoral balance. The path to fullness includes prompt obedience, confession, and faith based on God’s promises. The aim is a steady, Spirit-governed life marked by purity, power, and persistent dependence.
Further chapters explore the Spirit’s ministries of illumination, guidance, and prayer. Torrey argues that the Spirit who inspired Scripture also enables understanding, linking spiritual discernment to humble, believing study. Guidance is presented as the Spirit’s application of biblical principles to concrete decisions, tested by the Word and character. In prayer, the Spirit sustains desire, directs requests according to God’s will, and empowers intercession. Torrey connects these ministries to the formation of Christian character, often summarized as the fruit of the Spirit. Assurance, joy, love, and self-control are described as outcomes of the Spirit’s work, shaping life and service in ordinary and demanding circumstances.
Addressing the Spirit’s gifts, Torrey states that the Spirit distributes a variety of abilities for the common good: teaching, exhortation, leadership, evangelism, helps, and more. He stresses that gifts are sovereignly assigned and are to be exercised in order and humility, always tested by Scripture. Public worship and ministry should be edifying rather than disorderly. The book emphasizes the Spirit’s role in evangelism and missions, granting boldness, conviction, and clarity in proclaiming the gospel. Torrey presents historical and biblical examples to show how spiritual power advances witness. He maintains a practical priority: character and truth must shape the use of gifts for lasting fruit.
The closing chapters gather the main lines of argument into practical counsel. Torrey reiterates that knowing the Spirit’s person and deity leads to reverence and obedience, while understanding His work leads to expectant prayer for power and holiness. He outlines steps for seeking fullness: yield to God, search the Scriptures, confess sin, ask believingly, and serve in dependence on the Spirit. Results are framed in terms of effective testimony, steady character, and Christ-centered worship. Throughout, Torrey returns to the theme that the Spirit glorifies Christ and equips the church. The book ends with an appeal for ongoing, scripturally grounded reliance on the Spirit for life and service.
Historical Context
R. A. Torrey’s The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit emerged in the transatlantic Protestant world of the 1890s–1910s, a period of urban expansion, new mass evangelism, and intense debate over modernity. First published in 1910 by Fleming H. Revell (Chicago and New York), the book reflects Torrey’s ministry bases in Chicago—at Moody Bible Institute and Chicago Avenue Church—and, soon after, Los Angeles, where the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (founded 1908) would become a hub for conservative evangelical thought. The Progressive Era’s reform atmosphere, alongside rapid industrialization and immigration, pressed churches to define the Holy Spirit’s role in personal conversion, sanctification, and social engagement.
The urban revivalism of Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) decisively shaped Torrey’s theology and methods. Moody’s large-scale city campaigns in the 1870s–1890s and the founding of the Chicago Evangelization Society (later Moody Bible Institute, 1886) institutionalized training for practical evangelism. Torrey served as MBI superintendent from 1889 to 1908 and pastored Chicago Avenue Church (1894–1906). In this milieu, he witnessed disciplined Bible teaching, organized personal work, and prayer-focused revivals. The book channels this heritage by arguing that the Spirit empowers effective witness and conviction of sin, translating Moody-era mass-evangelism pragmatics into a systematic account of the Spirit’s personhood, indwelling, and power for service.
The Keswick Convention (begun 1875 in Keswick, Cumbria) and the wider Higher Life and Holiness emphases formed another vital backdrop. Leaders such as Evan H. Hopkins and H. C. G. Moule advanced a theology of consecration, surrender, and a Spirit-filled “victorious life.” Annual gatherings in England, replicated in North America, popularized terms like “full surrender” and “enduement of power.” Torrey absorbed these currents but pressed for biblical precision: in his book he distinguishes regeneration, indwelling, and the baptism with the Holy Spirit, framing the latter chiefly as empowerment for witness rather than a second-blessing experience defined by particular manifestations.
Torrey’s global evangelistic campaigns with song leader Charles M. Alexander (1902–1907) further informed the work. They conducted missions in Australia (Sydney and Melbourne, 1902), New Zealand, and Great Britain (1903–1905), drawing vast crowds in London, Liverpool, and Edinburgh. The contemporaneous Welsh Revival (1904–1905), associated with Evan Roberts and claims of 100,000 converts, heightened expectations of Spirit-driven awakening. Field realities—organizing inquiry rooms, training counselors, and encouraging sustained prayer—shaped Torrey’s insistence that the Spirit convicts, guides Scripture application, and energizes proclamation. The book synthesizes lessons from these campaigns into doctrinal propositions designed to undergird practical revival work.
The Azusa Street Revival (Los Angeles, 1906–1909) profoundly reframed public debates about the Holy Spirit. Preceded by the Topeka, Kansas, episode at Bethel Bible College (1 January 1901, Agnes Ozman’s glossolalia under Charles F. Parham’s teaching), Azusa began after an 9 April 1906 prayer meeting on Bonnie Brae Street led by William J. Seymour, an African American Holiness preacher. Meetings soon moved to 312 Azusa Street, where interracial, multiethnic worship featured speaking in tongues, healing testimonies, and lay participation. Press coverage in the Los Angeles Times and religious periodicals propelled reports worldwide; missionaries departed from Los Angeles to India, Africa, and Latin America, catalyzing Classical Pentecostal denominations in the 1910s. In the same city, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles was founded in 1908 by Lyman Stewart and T. C. Horton; Torrey would become its dean in 1912. Torrey welcomed robust pneumatology and missionary fervor yet rejected the claim that tongues were the necessary initial evidence of Spirit baptism, warning against doctrinal reductionism and disorder. The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, appearing in 1910, offers a measured alternative: it affirms the Spirit’s deity and experiential power while grounding experience in Scripture, prioritizing empowerment for evangelism, and enumerating diverse evidences (holy living, effective witness, assurance). Its careful definitions engage the Pentecostal moment directly, providing pastors and lay readers a framework to test phenomena without quenching genuine revival.
The Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy, crystallizing between 1910 and 1925, also shaped Torrey’s emphasis. Higher criticism, evolutionary theory, and liberal theology challenged traditional doctrines of revelation and Christ’s deity. Financed by Lyman and Milton Stewart, The Fundamentals (12 volumes, 1910–1915) distributed free to ministers; A. C. Dixon initially edited, with R. A. Torrey later serving as editor and contributor. Within this dispute, some modernists treated the Spirit as an impersonal force or ethical inspiration. Torrey’s book insists, with copious biblical citation, on the Spirit’s personality and deity, safeguarding Trinitarian orthodoxy and offering clergy a doctrinal anchor amid institutional and denominational battles.
Progressive Era social tensions—industrial labor conflicts, immigration, and urban poverty—encouraged the Social Gospel, articulated by Walter Rauschenbusch in Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) and echoed in the Federal Council of Churches’ Social Creed (1908). While not opposing reform, conservative evangelicals feared neglect of conversion and holiness. Torrey’s circles promoted temperance, philanthropy, and missions but grounded change in new birth and Spirit-enabled sanctification. The book implicitly answers this climate: it argues that societal transformation flows from Spirit-wrought conviction, prayer, and Scripture-centered renewal, thus prioritizing personal and congregational revival as the engine of ethical action rather than programmatic social engineering.
As a social and political critique, the book challenges the era’s confidence in managerial progress and purely ethical religion by asserting that power for lasting reform originates in the personal, divine agency of the Holy Spirit. It undermines clerical elitism and academic gatekeeping by locating authority in Scripture and the Spirit’s work among ordinary believers, including women and lay workers central to revival campaigns. Against sectarian fragmentation and race or class barriers spotlighted at Azusa Street and in urban missions, its universal pneumatology affirms spiritual equality before God, critiquing social stratification while resisting chaotic sensationalism through ordered, verifiable standards of spiritual life.
The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit
Chapter I. The Personality of the Holy Spirit.
Before one can correctly understand the work of the Holy Spirit[1], he must first of all know the Spirit Himself. A frequent source of error and fanaticism about the work of the Holy Spirit is the attempt to study and understand His work without first of all coming to know Him as a Person.
It is of the highest importance from the standpoint of worship that we decide whether the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person, worthy to receive our adoration, our faith, our love, and our entire surrender to Himself, or whether it is simply an influence emanating from God or a power or an illumination that God imparts to us. If the Holy Spirit is a person, and a Divine Person, and we do not know Him as such, then we are robbing a Divine Being of the worship and the faith and the love and the surrender to Himself which are His due.
It is also of the highest importance from the practical standpoint that we decide whether the Holy Spirit is [pg 008] merely some mysterious and wonderful power that we in our weakness and ignorance are somehow to get hold of and use, or whether the Holy Spirit is a real Person, infinitely holy, infinitely wise, infinitely mighty and infinitely tender who is to get hold of and use us. The former conception is utterly heathenish, not essentially different from the thought of the African fetich worshipper[2] who has his god whom he uses. The latter conception is sublime and Christian. If we think of the Holy Spirit as so many do as merely a power or influence, our constant thought will be, “How can I get more of the Holy Spirit,” but if we think of Him in the Biblical way as a Divine Person, our thought will rather be, “How can the Holy Spirit have more of me?” The conception of the Holy Spirit as a Divine influence or power that we are somehow to get hold of and use, leads to self-exaltation and self-sufficiency. One who so thinks of the Holy Spirit and who at the same time imagines that he has received the Holy Spirit will almost inevitably be full of spiritual pride and strut about as if he belonged to some superior order of Christians. One frequently hears such persons say, “I am a Holy Ghost man,” or “I am a Holy Ghost woman.” But if we once grasp the thought that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person of infinite majesty, glory and holiness and power, who in marvellous condescension has come into our hearts to make His abode there and take possession of our lives and make use of them, it will put us in the dust and keep us in the dust. I can think of no thought more humbling or more overwhelming than the thought that a person of Divine [pg 009] majesty and glory dwells in my heart and is ready to use even me.
It is of the highest importance from the standpoint of experience that we know the Holy Spirit as a person. Thousands and tens of thousands of men and women can testify to the blessing that has come into their own lives as they have come to know the Holy Spirit, not merely as a gracious influence (emanating, it is true, from God) but as a real Person, just as real as Jesus Christ Himself, an ever-present, loving Friend and mighty Helper, who is not only always by their side but dwells in their heart every day and every hour and who is ready to undertake for them in every emergency of life. Thousands of ministers, Christian workers and Christians in the humblest spheres of life have spoken to me, or written to me, of the complete transformation of their Christian experience that came to them when they grasped the thought (not merely in a theological, but in an experimental way) that the Holy Spirit was a Person and consequently came to know Him.
There are at least four distinct lines of proof in the Bible that the Holy Spirit is a person.
I. All the distinctive characteristics of personality are ascribed to the Holy Spirit in the Bible.
What are the distinctive characteristics, or marks, of personality? Knowledge, feeling or emotion, and will. Any entity that thinks and feels and wills is a person. When we say that the Holy Spirit is a person, there are those who understand us to mean that the Holy [pg 010] Spirit has hands and feet and eyes and ears and mouth, and so on, but these are not the characteristics of personality but of corporeity. All of these characteristics or marks of personality are repeatedly ascribed to the Holy Spirit in the Old and New Testaments. We read in 1 Cor. ii. 10, 11, “But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” Here knowledge is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. We are clearly taught that the Holy Spirit is not merely an influence that illuminates our minds to comprehend the truth but a Being who Himself knows the truth.
In 1 Cor. xii. 11, we read, “But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will.” Here will is ascribed to the Spirit and we are taught that the Holy Spirit is not a power that we get hold of and use according to our will but a Person of sovereign majesty, who uses us according to His will. This distinction is of fundamental importance in our getting into right relations with the Holy Spirit. It is at this very point that many honest seekers after power and efficiency in service go astray. They are reaching out after and struggling to get possession of some mysterious and mighty power that they can make use of in their work according to their own will. They will never get possession of the power they seek until they come to recognize that there is not some Divine power for them to get hold of and [pg 011] use in their blindness and ignorance but that there is a Person, infinitely wise, as well as infinitely mighty, who is willing to take possession of them and use them according to His own perfect will. When we stop to think of it, we must rejoice that there is no Divine power that beings so ignorant as we are, so liable to err, to get hold of and use. How appalling might be the results if there were. But what a holy joy must come into our hearts when we grasp the thought that there is a Divine Person, One who never errs, who is willing to take possession of us and impart to us such gifts as He sees best and to use us according to His wise and loving will.
We read in Rom. viii. 27, “And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.” In this passage mind is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. The Greek word translated “mind” is a comprehensive word, including the ideas of thought, feeling and purpose. It is the same that is used in Rom. viii. 7 where we read that “the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” So then in this passage we have all the distinctive marks of personality ascribed to the Holy Spirit.
We find the personality of the Holy Spirit brought out in a most touching and suggestive way in Rom. xv. 30, “Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me.” Here we have “love” ascribed to the Holy Spirit. [pg 012] The reader would do well to stop and ponder those five words, “the love of the Spirit[4].” We dwell often upon the love of God the Father. It is the subject of our daily and constant thought. We dwell often upon the love of Jesus Christ the Son. Who would think of calling himself a Christian who passed a day without meditating on the love of his Saviour, but how often have we meditated upon “the love of the Spirit”? Each day of our lives, if we are living as Christians ought, we kneel down in the presence of God the Father and look up into His face and say, “I thank Thee, Father, for Thy great love that led Thee to give Thine only begotten Son to die upon the cross of Calvary for me.” Each day of our lives we also look up into the face of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and say, “Oh, Thou glorious Lord and Saviour, Jesus Thou Son of God, I thank Thee for Thy great love that led Thee not to count it a thing to be grasped to be on equality with God but to empty Thyself and forsaking all the glory of heaven, come down to earth with all its shame and to take my sins upon Thyself and die in my place upon the cross of Calvary.” But how often do we kneel and say to the Holy Spirit, “Oh, Thou eternal and infinite Spirit of God, I thank Thee for Thy great love that led Thee to come into this world of sin and darkness and to seek me out and to follow me so patiently until Thou didst bring me to see my utter ruin and need of a Saviour and to reveal to me my Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, as just the Saviour whom I need.” Yet we owe our salvation just as truly to the love of the Spirit as we do to the love of the [pg 013] Father and the love of the Son. If it had not been for the love of God the Father looking down upon me in my utter ruin and providing a perfect atonement for me in the death of His own Son on the cross of Calvary, I would have been in hell to-day. If it had not been for the love of Jesus Christ, the eternal Word of God, looking upon me in my utter ruin and in obedience to the Father, putting aside all the glory of heaven for all the shame of earth and taking my place, the place of the curse, upon the cross of Calvary and pouring out His life utterly for me, I would have been in hell to-day. But if it had not been for the love of the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father in answer to the prayer of the Son (John xiv. 16) leading Him to seek me out in my utter blindness and ruin and to follow me day after day, week after week, and year after year, when I persistently turned a deaf ear to His pleadings, following me through paths of sin where it must have been agony for that holy One to go, until at last I listened and He opened my eyes to see my utter ruin and then revealed Jesus to me as just the Saviour that would meet my every need and then enabled me to receive this Jesus as my own Saviour; if it had not been for this patient, long-suffering, never-tiring, infinitely-tender love of the Holy Spirit, I would have been in hell to-day. Oh, the Holy Spirit is not merely an influence or a power or an illumination but is a Person just as real as God the Father or Jesus Christ His Son.
The personality of the Holy Spirit comes out in the Old Testament as truly as in the New, for we read in [pg 014] Neh. ix. 20, “Thou gavest also Thy good Spirit to instruct them, and withheldest not Thy manna from their mouth, and gavest them water for their thirst.” Here both intelligence and goodness are ascribed to the Holy Spirit. There are some who tell us that while it is true the personality of the Holy Spirit is found in the New Testament, it is not found in the Old. But it is certainly found in this passage. As a matter of course, the doctrine of the personality of the Holy Spirit is not as fully developed in the Old Testament as in the New. But the doctrine is there.
There is perhaps no passage in the entire Bible in which the personality of the Holy Spirit comes out more tenderly and touchingly than in Eph. iv. 30, “And grieve[3] not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” Here grief is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not a blind, impersonal influence or power that comes into our lives to illuminate, sanctify and empower them. No, He is immeasurably more than that, He is a holy Person who comes to dwell in our hearts, One who sees clearly every act we perform, every word we speak, every thought we entertain, even the most fleeting fancy that is allowed to pass through our minds; and if there is anything in act, or word or deed that is impure, unholy, unkind, selfish, mean, petty or untrue, this infinitely holy One is deeply grieved by it. I know of no thought that will help one more than this to lead a holy life and to walk softly in the presence of the holy One. How often a young man is kept back [pg 015] from yielding to the temptations that surround young manhood by the thought that if he should yield to the temptation that now assails him, his holy mother might hear of it and would be grieved by it beyond expression. How often some young man has had his hand upon the door of some place of sin that he is about to enter and the thought has come to him, “If I should enter there, my mother might hear of it and it would nearly kill her,” and he has turned his back upon that door and gone away to lead a pure life, that he might not grieve his mother. But there is One who is holier than any mother, One who is more sensitive against sin than the purest woman who ever walked this earth, and who loves us as even no mother ever loved, and this One dwells in our hearts, if we are really Christians, and He sees every act we do by day or under cover of the night; He hears every word we utter in public or in private; He sees every thought we entertain, He beholds every fancy and imagination that is permitted even a momentary lodgment in our mind, and if there is anything unholy, impure, selfish, mean, petty, unkind, harsh, unjust, or in anywise evil in act or word or thought or fancy, He is grieved by it. If we will allow those words, “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God,” to sink into our hearts and become the motto of our lives, they will keep us from many a sin. How often some thought or fancy has knocked for an entrance into my own mind and was about to find entertainment when the thought has come, “The Holy Spirit sees that thought and will be grieved by it” and that thought has gone.
[pg 016]II. Many acts that only a Person can perform are ascribed to the Holy Spirit.
If we deny the personality of the Holy Spirit, many passages of Scripture become meaningless and absurd. For example, we read in 1 Cor. ii. 10, “But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” This passage sets before us the Holy Spirit, not merely as an illumination whereby we are enabled to grasp the deep things of God, but a Person who Himself searches the deep things of God and then reveals to us the precious discoveries which He has made.
We read in Rev. ii. 7, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.” Here the Holy Spirit is set before us, not merely as an impersonal enlightenment that comes to our mind but a Person who speaks and out of the depths of His own wisdom, whispers into the ear of His listening servant the precious truth of God.
In Gal. iv. 6 we read, “And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” Here the Holy Spirit is represented as crying out in the heart of the individual believer. Not merely a Divine influence producing in our own hearts the assurance of our sonship but one who cries out in our hearts, who bears witness together with our spirit that we are sons of God. (See also Rom. viii. 16.)
The Holy Spirit is also represented in the Scripture [pg 017] as one who prays. We read in Rom. viii. 26, R. V., “And in like manner the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” It is plain from this passage that the Holy Spirit is not merely an influence that moves us to pray, not merely an illumination that teaches us how to pray, but a Person who Himself prays in and through us. There is wondrous comfort in the thought that every true believer has two Divine Persons praying for him, Jesus Christ, the Son who was once upon this earth, who knows all about our temptations, who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities and who is now ascended to the right hand of the Father and in that place of authority and power ever lives to make intercession for us (Heb. vii. 25; 1 John ii. 1); and another Person, just as Divine as He, who walks by our side each day, yes, who dwells in the innermost depths of our being and knows our needs, even as we do not know them ourselves, and from these depths makes intercession to the Father for us. The position of the believer is indeed one of perfect security with these two Divine Persons praying for him.
We read again in John xv. 26, “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me.” Here the Holy Spirit is set before us as a Person who gives His testimony to Jesus Christ, not merely as an illumination that enables the believer to testify of Christ, but [pg 018] a Person who Himself testifies; and a clear distinction is drawn in this and the following verse between the testimony of the Holy Spirit and the testimony of the believer to whom He has borne His witness, for we read in the next verse, “And ye also shall bear witness because ye have been with Me from the beginning.” So there are two witnesses, the Holy Spirit bearing witness to the believer and the believer bearing witness to the world.
