Who or what is the Holy Spirit?

It has often been taught that the Holy Spirit is only an influence, and this denies His Personality. The Holy Spirit is a Person, and every person has an influence; but in the case of the Holy Spirit His Personality includes omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence. The Personality of the Holy Spirit is clearly stated in Scripture.

That the Holy Spirit is a divine Person, one with the Father and the Son, Scripture is clear. He wills, distributes, comes, is sent, is grieved, leads, intercedes: in a word, He does every kind of personal act; and yet what is spoken of as done by Him is expressly said to be done by God, in the same chapter, 1 Corinthians 12.

The Holy Spirit is God, as the Father is God, and the Son is God, in the Unity of the Godhead, of One Substance, One in knowledge, counsel, will, purpose. We are obliged, in speaking of them together, to put their names in a certain order. Scripture gives the order in baptism, that those baptised are baptised in the name (not names) of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). But we must be careful not to make any distinction between the Persons of the Godhead by treating One as more prominent than Another.

Here I would note what is so plain in the Word that one is almost ashamed of having to insist on it: the personal presence of a divine Person — God the Holy Spirit — here on earth; not only in each individual believer, but also in the Church of God. The individual believer is indwelt by the Spirit of God, anointed, sealed, baptized with all other believers into one body. The baptism of the Holy Spirit does not leave him an isolated person. Its action connects him with all other believers, so forming a body of which Christ is the Head.

He is the Source and Power of the new life in the believer; He helps in our fight with the flesh (Galatians 5:17); He helps us in our weakness and in our prayers (Romans 8:26); He is the strength and support of even the smallest of God's children against the power of Satan (1 John 4:4); by Him we are "sealed" and "anointed" and have the "guarantee" of the inheritance... By Him the love of God has been poured into our hearts, and He enables us to answer that love as we say from full hearts — "Abba, Father" (Romans 5:5; Romans 8:15).

When the Spirit came, it was the demonstration to the world of its sin in not believing on Jesus. It was also a demonstration of righteousness, because Christ has gone to the Father, rejected by the world that will see Him no more as He was, but as the Judge. Lastly, it was a demonstration of judgment, because this world's ruler, who led to His rejection, has been judged.

Neither ourselves nor the Spirit are to be objects for us. It is His pleasure to show us the things of the Father and the Son. The Lord Jesus said, when speaking of His coming, "He shall glorify Me, for He shall receive of Mine, and shall announce it to you"; adding, "all things that the Father has are Mine".

Our text says, "After that you believed, and were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise." How long after believing is the Spirit given? The writer well remembers an answer to this question: "After is not a question of time, but of order." Receive the gospel of your salvation, receive the Spirit — the one is the consequence of the other... When once a man or woman receives the gospel of their salvation, that moment God gives the Seal of the Holy Spirit, claiming the believer for Himself for ever.