HOLY SPIRIT: GOD IN CONTACT WITH HIS CREATURES

“…The Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me” (JOHN 15:26)

If I read aright the record of Christian experience through the years, those who most enjoyed the power of the Spirit of God have had the least to say about Him by way of attempted definition.

 

The Bible saints who walked in the Spirit never tried to explain Him. In postbiblical times many who were filled and possessed by the Spirit were by the limitations of their literary gifts prevented from telling us much about Him. They had no gift for self-analysis but lived from within in uncritical simplicity.

 

To them the Spirit was One to be loved and fellowshipped the same as the Lord Jesus Himself. They would have been lost completely in any metaphysical discussion of the nature of the Spirit, but they had no trouble in claiming the power of the Spirit for holy living and fruitful service.

 

This is as it should be. Personal experience must always be first in real life. Knowledge by acquaintance is always better than knowledge by description, and the first does not presuppose the second nor require it.

 

What we have in the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit is Deity present among us.

 

He is not God’s messenger only—He is God!

 

He is God in contact with His creatures, doing in them and among them a saving and renewing work.

 

  1. W. Tozer