Understanding who the Holy Spirit is, can be difficult, especially when we have been taught in school, about only what we can see – the physical world. However, we need to understand that a spiritual world exists which interacts with our physical world. Indeed, it is the spiritual world that created the physical world. The Creator is God. He is a spirit that lives in perpetual community. He is one being with three distinct beings in one: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. St. Patrick is known for taking the three leaf clover to show how the relationship of the trinity works. A clover has one stem, but three distinct leaves. The same is with God. He is one, but with three distinct “leaves.” One leaf is the Father, one leaf is the Son and one leaf in the Holy Spirit.
We see this community of three when God is creating man in Genesis 1:26a, Then God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness… Notice the plural pronouns. Both the Holy Spirit and the Son were with God the Father when He/They created the Heavens, the earth, mankind and all that is on the earth. Therefore, just as God has always been, and will always be, so too has the Holy Spirit always been, and will always be.
Even though the Trinity live as one, they have different functions. God the Father, directs all, and is sovereign over all. Jesus, the Son, came to earth in human form to show us God’s love in the most personal way possible – by walking among us. The Holy Spirit is a gift from God that indwells each of us when we follow God.
If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” (Luke 11:13, NASB)
It isn’t easy to comprehend that the Holy Spirit is living within us. Jesus taught Nicodemus, about the Holy Spirit when he came at night to talk to Him. Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council. He saw Jesus’ miracles and was seeking the truth of who Jesus was. Because he was a Pharisee, he would have been taught from a young age from the Torah. He was considered a learned scholar of the scriptures. And yet, he questioned the prophecies concerning Jesus. He saw what Jesus was doing, probably heard Him teach in the temple and was being led, probably by the Holy Spirit to believe in the truth that Jesus was Messiah. Being a true scholar, Nicodemus came to the source and asked Jesus who He was.
Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3: 1-8, NASB
Nicodemus didn’t understand that the Holy Spirit lives inside us when God gives Him to us. After Jesus returned to Heaven, the Holy Spirit was sent as a helper to us, so that we might know what God wants from us. We don’t know the mind of God, but the Holy Spirit does. Jesus likens the Holy Spirit to the wind. We can’t see the wind, and we can’t control which direction it comes from and where it goes. We can only see the result of the wind as it blows over water and we see which direction the waves are going. When we are obedient to the Holy Spirit when He tells us what to do, then we can see how He is working in our lives, and thereby how God is working in our lives.
Paul explains further concerning how God and the Holy Spirit work in our lives.
Who is the Holy Spirit video (Please be patient as this video loads.)
For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. I Corinthians 2:10-13, NASB
The Holy Spirit teaches us by combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. He is the continued teacher of God until Jesus returns and we live with God in a new Heaven and a new earth. God knew we needed to be taught how to love. Therefore, He gave Moses the law. However, men twisted the meaning of the law and made it burdensome on the people. That is when God sent Jesus down to earth. Through Jesus, He taught us how to love, and how the Law was the first lesson of love to His people. That lesson was fulfilled by Jesus’ death and resurrection so that mankind could now come directly into the presence of God. When Jesus was teaching the disciples after they had eaten the last Passover supper together, He tells them about the Holy Spirit, who will be their teacher when He returns to Heaven. Now the Holy Spirit takes over the job of showing mankind how we are to love as God loves.
If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever, that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.
I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you. After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also. …These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. But the Helper, 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. (John 14: 15-19, 25-26, NASB)
The Holy Spirit is divine, just as God and the Son are divine. He has always been and has been promised to live within Believers, teaching us truth and showing us what God wants from each of us. The Holy Spirit is a gift from God to help us live a holy life of truth and righteousness that we can’t live without Him. The Holy Spirit conveys the thoughts and words of God to us when we need them as we fill Jesus’ commission to go and make disciples of every nation. We need to acknowledge the Holy Spirit and listen to Him as He leads us in the direction God wants us to go. The Holy Spirit is our Godly GPS.
Resources
Photo Credit: Zarish, K. March 30, 2012. Remembrance of St. Patrick’s Day. The Millford Messenger. Retrieved May 11, 2022 from https://www.themilfordmessenger.com/features/2012/03/30/rememberance-of-saint-patricks-day/.
