I Believe in the Holy Ghost

His Divine Personality

On one occasion, when engaged on the third of his great Missionary Circuits, Paul came to the vast heathen city of Ephesus. After some enquiry he discovered a handful of people, who had given up idolatry, and were turning their faces towards Christianity. The first enquiry, which he put to them was sufficiently startling, and certainly went to the root of the matter. “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?” “The Holy Ghost!” said they, ‘“‘we have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.”

So, at least, the A.V. gives it; and the words might be repeated as they stand, by myriads throughout Christendom. They have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. In some quarters the existence of the Holy Ghost is positively denied; in others it is simply ignored. Year in and year out you hardly hear Him mentioned, except in the Creed, the Doxology, and the Benediction. It is a grievous 167 omission, but goes far to explain the lack of earnestness, fervour, and life. The river is shut off, small wonder if the desert refuses to blossom as the rose! The Power is switched off. What wonder that the machinery is at a standstill!

We believe in the Personality of the Holy Ghost, because of the distinct affirmations of Scripture. No one who accepts the teachings of Christ as conclusive can read the 14th, 15th, and 16th chapters of the Fourth Gospel, without being convinced that to our Lord, the Holy Ghost was as distinct a Personality as Himself. He always speaks of Him with the personal pronoun. Even though the word for Spirit in Greek is neuter, it is always followed by the ungrammatical but emphatic use of a personal pronoun. Not the Holy Spirit, which ... but the Holy Spirit, whom ... He shall teach, He shall glorify, He shall convict.

The Apostle bids the Ephesian Christians not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God (Eph. v. 18). Not grieve the Spirit! Grief can only be felt by a Person, and He must be more than a breath or influence, who can be spoken of in such terms.

Again, when He is speaking of the gifts conferred on the early Church, He ends his enumeration by saying, “All these worketh the self-same

Spirit, distributing to every man severally as He will (I Cor. xii. 11). “As He will.” Just now we saw that He had feelings, and could be grieved, now we learn that He has power of choice as well.

Again, when the Antioch Church was awaiting divine direction as to her future, an eye-witness tells us that the Holy Ghost said, “Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them, so they being sent forth by the Holy Ghost departed” (Acts xiii. 1-4). Here in addition to emotion and will is the decision of authoritative power. Moreover, how could Peter charge Ananias and Sapphira as conspiring to lie to the Holy Ghost (Acts v. 3); and how could our Lord have spoken of a certain sin as a blasphemy against the Holy Ghost (Mark iii. 29), unless He were as literal a Being as either the Father or the Son?

That He is a Divine Person is equally obvious. In every mention of the Benediction His Name occurs with that of the Father and the Son; and repeatedly in the references to the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead, there is given an explicit acknowledgment of His Deity. Everywhere it is implied that with the Father and the Son, He must be worshipped and glorified. The Thrice-Holy of the Heavenly Worshippers indicates that

the Sevenfold Spirit which is before the Throne is God.

There is undoubtedly to mortal minds an impenetrable mystery in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, but it is interesting to know that there is no system of ancient Oriental thought, to which it is not familiar; as though it were a necessity of the human mind to conceive of One who loves, of one who is loved, and of one who is the nexus and bond of love between them.