The Personality of the Holy Spirit
by
R. A. Torrey
(1856-1928)
From The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit
Before one can correctly understand the work of the Holy Spirit, 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 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 fetish worshiper 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 of 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 somehow, we are 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 Spirit man," or
"I am a Holy Spirit 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 marvelous 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 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.
1.
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 Spirit has hands and
feet and eyes and ears and mouth, and so on, but these are not the
characteristics of personality but of bodily existence. 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 Corinthians 2:10,11,
"But God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all
things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a
man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the
thoughts of God except 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 Corinthians 12:11, we read, "All these
are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as
he determines." 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 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 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,
can 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 Romans 8:27, "He who searches our
hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the
saints in accordance with God's will." 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 Romans 8:7, where we read that "the sinful mind is hostile to
God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so." 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 Romans 15:30, "I urge you,
brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in
my struggle by praying to God for me." Here we have "love"
ascribed to the Holy Spirit. The reader would do well to stop and ponder those
five words, "the love of the Spirit." We dwell often on the love of
God the Father. It is the subject of our daily and constant thought.
We dwell often on 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 Savior, but how often have we meditated on
"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 You, Father, for Your great love that led
You to give Your only Son to die on the cross of Calvary for me." Each day
of our lives we also look up into the face of our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ, and say, "Oh, glorious Lord and Savior, Jesus, Son of God, I thank
You for Your great love that led You not to count it a thing to be grasped to
be equal with God but to empty Yourself and, forsaking all the glory of heaven,
come down to earth with all its shame and to take my sins upon Yourself and die
in my place on the cross of Calvary."
But how often do we kneel and say to the Holy
Spirit, "Oh, eternal and infinite Spirit of God, I thank You for Your
great love that led You to come into this world of sin and darkness and to seek
me out and to follow me so patiently until You brought me to see my utter ruin
and need of a Savior and to reveal to me my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, as
just the Savior whom I need"? Yet we owe our salvation just as truly to
the love of the Spirit as to the love of the Father and the love of the Son. If
it had not been for the love of God the Father looking down on 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 today.
If it had not been for the love of Jesus Christ,
the eternal Word of God, looking on 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 on the cross of Calvary and pouring out
His life utterly for me, I would have been in hell today. 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 14:16), 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 Savior that would meet my every need and then enabled me to
receive this Jesus as my own Savior; 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 today. 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 Nehemiah 9:20, "You
gave your good Spirit to instruct them. You did not withhold your manna from
their mouths, and you gave 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 so 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 Ephesians 4:30, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom
you were sealed for 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 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 on 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 on 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. 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
thoughts in our mind, and if there is anything unholy, impure, selfish, mean,
petty, unkind, harsh, unjust, or any evil 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.
2.
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
Corinthians 2:10, "But God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit
searches all things, even 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 Revelation 2:7, "He who has an ear,
let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will
give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of
God." Here the Holy Spirit is set before us, not merely as an impersonal
enlightenment that comes to our mind but as 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 Galatians 4:6, we read, "Because you are
sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out,
'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
Romans 8:16)
The Holy Spirit is also represented in the
Scripture as one who prays. We read in Romans 8:26, "In the same way, the
Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but
the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot
express." 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 on 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 (Hebrews
7:25; 1 John 2:1); and another Person, just as Divine as the Son, 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 15:26, "When the
Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth
who goes out from the Father, he will testify about 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
as 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 you also must testify, for you 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.
The Holy Spirit is also spoken of as a teacher. We
read in John 14:26, "But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father
will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of
everything I have said to you." And in a similar way, we read in John
16:12-14, "I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But
when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will
not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you
what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and
making it known to you." And in the Old Testament, Nehemiah 9:20,
"You gave your good Spirit to instruct them." In all these passages
it is perfectly clear that the Holy Spirit is not a mere illumination that
enables us to apprehend the truth, but a Person who comes to us to teach us day
by day the truth of God. It is the privilege of the humblest believer in Jesus
Christ, not merely to have his mind illumined to comprehend the truth of God,
but to have a Divine Teacher to teach him daily the truth he needs to know (cf.
1 John 2:20, 27).
The Holy Spirit is also represented as the Leader
and Guide of the children of God. We read in Romans 8:14, "Because those
who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." He is not merely an
influence that enables us to see the way that God would have us go, nor merely
a power that gives us strength to go that way, but a Person who takes us by the
hand and gently leads us on in the paths in which God would have us walk.
The Holy Spirit is also represented as a Person who
has authority to command men in their service of Jesus Christ. We read of the
Apostle Paul and his companions in Acts 16:6, 7, "Paul and his companions
traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the
Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. When they came to
the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus
would not allow them to." Here it is a Person who takes the direction of
the conduct of Paul and his companions and a Person whose authority they
recognize and to whom they instantly submit.
Further still than this, the Holy Spirit is
represented as the One who is the supreme authority in the church, who calls
men to work and appoints them to office. We read in Acts 13:2, "While they
were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for me
Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.'" And in Acts
20:28, "Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy
Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he
bought with his own blood." There can be no doubt to a candid seeker after
truth that it is a Person, and a person of Divine majesty and sovereignty, who
is here set before us.
From all the passages here quoted, it is evident
that many acts that only a person can perform are ascribed to the Holy Spirit.
3.
An office is predicated of the Holy Spirit that can be predicated only of a
person.
Our Savior says in John 14:16, 17, "I will ask
the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever--the
Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor
knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you."
Our Lord had announced to the disciples that He was about to leave them. An
awful sense of desolation took possession of them. Sorrow filled their hearts
(John 16:6) at the contemplation of their loneliness and absolute helplessness
when Jesus should thus leave them alone. To comfort them the Lord tells them
that they shall not be left alone, that in leaving them He was going to the
Father and that He would pray the Father, who would give them another Comforter
to take the place of Himself during His absence. Is it possible that Jesus
Christ could have used such language if the other Comforter who was coming to
take His place was only an impersonal influence or power? Still more, is it
possible that Jesus could have said as He did in John 16:7, "But I tell
you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the
Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you," if
this Comforter whom He was to send was simply an impersonal influence or power?
No, one Divine Person was going, another Person just as Divine was coming to
take His place, and it was expedient for the disciples that the One go to represent
them before the Father, for another just as Divine and sufficient was coming to
take His place. This promise of our Lord and Savior of the coming of the other
Comforter and of His abiding with us is the greatest and best of all for the
present dispensation. This is the promise of the Father (Acts 1:4), the promise
of promises. We shall take it up again when we come to study the names of the
Holy Spirit.
4.
A treatment is predicated of the Holy Spirit that could be predicated only of a
Person.
We read in Isaiah 63:10, "Yet they rebelled
and grieved his Holy Spirit. So he turned and became their enemy and he himself
fought against them." Here we are told that the Holy Spirit is rebelled
against and grieved (cf. Ephesians 4:30). Only a person can be rebelled against
and only a person of authority. Only a person can be grieved. You cannot grieve
a mere influence or power. In Hebrews 10:29, we read, "How much more
severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of
God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant
that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?" Here we
are told that the Holy Spirit is "insulted." There is but one kind of
entity in the universe that can be insulted and that is a person. It is absurd
to think of insulting an influence or a power or any kind of being except a
person. We read again in Acts 5:3, "Then Peter said, 'Ananias, how is it
that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and
have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land?'" Here
we have the Holy Spirit represented as one who can be lied to. One cannot lie
to anything but a person.
In Matthew 12:31, 32, we read, "And so I tell
you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against
the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of
Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be
forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come." Here we are told that
the Holy Spirit is blasphemed against. It is impossible to blaspheme anything
but a person. If the Holy Spirit is not a person, it certainly cannot be a more
serious and decisive sin to blaspheme Him than it is to blaspheme the Son of
man, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ Himself.
Here, then, we have four distinctive and decisive
lines of proof that the Holy Spirit is a Person. Theoretically most of us
believe this, but do we, in our real thoughts of Him and in our practical
attitude toward Him, treat Him as if He were indeed a Person? At the close of
an address on the Personality of the Holy Spirit at a Bible conference some
years ago, one who had been a church member many years, a member of one of the
most orthodox of our modern denominations, said to me, "I never thought of
It before as a Person." Doubtless this Christian woman had often sung:
Praise
God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below,
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
Doubtless she had often sung:
Glory be
to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
World without end, Amen.
But it is one thing to sing words; it is quite another
thing to realize the meaning of what we sing. If this Christian woman had been
questioned in regard to her doctrine, she would doubtless have said that she
believed that there were three Persons in the Godhead--Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit--but a theological confession is one thing, a practical realization of
the truth we confess is quite another. So the question is altogether necessary,
no matter how orthodox you may be in your creedal statements, Do you regard the
Holy Spirit as indeed as real a Person as Jesus Christ, as loving and wise and
strong, as worthy of your confidence and love and surrender as Jesus Christ
Himself?
The
Holy Spirit came into this world to be to the disciples of our Lord after His
departure, and to us, what Jesus Christ had been to them during the days of His
personal companionship with them (John 14:16, 17). Is He that to you? Do you
know Him? Every week in your life you hear the apostolic benediction, "May
the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of
the Holy Spirit be with you all." (2 Corinthians 13:14), and while you
hear it, do you take in the significance of it? Do you know the communion of
the Holy Ghost? The fellowship of the Holy Ghost? The partnership of the Holy
Ghost? The comradeship of the Holy Ghost? The intimate personal friendship of
the Holy Ghost? Herein lies the whole secret of a real Christian life, a life
of liberty and joy and power and fullness. To have as one's ever-present
Friend, and to be conscious that one has as his ever-present Friend, the Holy
Spirit, and to surrender one's life in all its departments entirely to His
control, this is true Christian living. The doctrine of the Personality of the
Holy Spirit is as distinctive of the religion that Jesus taught as the
doctrines of the Deity and the atonement of Jesus Christ Himself. But it is not
enough to believe the doctrine--one must know the Holy Spirit Himself. The
whole purpose of this chapter (God help me to say it reverently) is to
introduce you to my Friend, the Holy Spirit.