Holy Spirit

“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 have said to you.”

— John 14:26

The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, fully and eternally God together with the Father and the Son, sharing the one undivided divine essence rather than being a lesser or created power.¹ He is a person, not merely an influence or force: Scripture attributes to him the acts of a person — teaching, bearing witness, interceding, and being grieved — and he indwells believers, illumines Scripture, distributes spiritual gifts, and applies the work of salvation to each of them.

Confessional Definition

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession names the Holy Spirit alongside the Father and the Son as one of “three subsistences… of one substance, power, and eternity, each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence undivided,” distinguished from the other two only by his relation of origin: “the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son.”¹

Biblical Basis

Jesus promised the Spirit as another “Helper” who would teach the disciples and bring his own words to their remembrance (John 14:26). Paul describes the Spirit’s work of joining believers to Christ’s body as itself the meaning of Spirit baptism — “in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Cor. 12:13) — and his ongoing intercession for them: “the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26-27). That the Spirit is a person rather than a mere influence is evident in that he can be grieved, “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God” (Eph. 4:30), and Paul closes one letter by placing him alongside the Father and the Son as an equal object of blessing: “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:14).

Related Doctrines

References

The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 2, “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity,” para. 3. ↩ ↩²