Am I The Only One Who Doesn’t Get This?
July 27, 2008
We began our study of the Holy Spirit on Sunday by looking at the Bible’s teaching that the Spirit is a person, not merely an impersonal force. If this concept is still challenging for you, take heart; you are not alone! Consider these words from Sinclair Ferguson,
“Most Christians readily and warmly respond to the description of Jesus as the Son of God not only because of his humanity, but also because the designation ‘Son’ indicates a relational identity with which we are familiar. In addition, when, in Christ, we learn to call God ‘Father,’ that name conveys a rich kaleidoscope of images which helps us to understand and respond to him as the one who governs, guides, provides for, guards and loves his children.
“But the name ‘Holy Spirit,’ or worse (at least at the emotional and psychological levels) ‘Holy Ghost,’ tends to convey a cold, even remote image. After all, what is ‘Spirit’? Yet, perhaps the older ‘Holy Ghost,’ with its connotations of vagueness, mystery and insubstantiality, did in fact express what many Christians experience: the Holy Spirit is seen to be distant and impersonal by comparison with the Father and the Son.”
Gordon Fee articulates this struggle to understand the personhood of the Spirit through the perspective of a child. He recalls a children’s lesson that “was trying to illustrate the reality of ‘Spirit’ by blowing on a piece of paper and letting it ‘fly’ away. The Spirit is like that, [the teacher] was saying to the children; it is like the ‘wind,’ very real in its effects, even though invisible to us. At which point a six-year old boy blurted out, ‘But I want the wind to be un-invisible!’ I whispered to Maudine [Fee's wife]: ‘Of course; what a profound theological moment!’
“How often we all feel this way about God as Spirit, as Holy Spirit. ‘I want the Holy Spirit to be un-invisible!’ And because he is not, we tend to think of him in nonpersonal terms. At which point our images take over; we think of the Spirit as wind, fire, water, oil-impersonal images all-and refer to the Spirit as ‘it.’” But, as Fee reminds us, “In dealing with the Spirit, we are dealing with none other than the personal presence of God himself.”
I offer no easy fixes to these inherent difficulties in understanding the Holy Spirit as a person, except to encourage us to soak ourselves in the Bible’s teaching on the Spirit and pray that the Spirit himself would make us more aware of his personal presence in our lives. The personal and church-wide effects of such a growing realization will be nothing less than revival.
Seeking to know God fully with you,
Pastor Chris
The quotes above are from the books I held up on Sunday morning:
The Holy Spirit, by Sinclair Ferguson
God’s Empowering Presence, by Gordon Fee