The Holy Spirit Is.....
The Holy Spirit is God himself personally present in the believer. "If" "Spirit of God" no more implies deity than does the Angel of God, why is not the Holy Spirit called simply the angel or messenger of God?
The Spirit and the incarnation the Holy Spirit is God in his innermost being or essence, the principle of life of both the Father and the Son; that in which God, both as Father and Son, does everything, and in which he comes to us and is in us increasingly through his manifestations. Through the working and indwelling of this Holy Spirit, God in his person of Son was fully incarnate in Christ (I Corinthians 2:11).
This analogy must not be pushed to far, as if the Spirit of God and God were co-extensive terms, as the corresponding terms are, substantially, in man. The point of the analogy is evidently self-knowledge, and in both cases the contrast is between the spirit within and anything outside. We must not expect always to feel the power of the Spirit when it works.
As spirit is nothing less than the inmost principle of life, and the spirit of man himself, so the spirit of God must be God (I Corinthians 2:11). Christian experience, moreover, expressed as it is in the prayers and hymns of the Church, furnishes an argument for the deity of the Holy Spirit similar to that for the deity of Jesus Christ. When our eyes are opened to see Christ as a Savior. We are compelled to recognize the work i us of a divine Spirit who has taken of the things of Christ and has shown them to us; (Revelation) and this divine Spirit we necessarily distinguish both from the Father and from the Son. (Christian experience), however, is not an original and independent witness to the deity of the Holy Spirit. It simply shows what the Church has held to be the natural and unforced interpretation of the scriptures, and so confirms the Scripture argument.
Scripture links power and weakness in a wonderful way, not as succeeding each other but as existing together (I Corinthians 2:3; II Corinthians 12:10). The power is the power of God given to faith, and faith grows strong in the dark....He who would command nature must first and most absolutely obey her.....We want to get possession of the Power, and use it. God wants the Power to get possession of us, and use us.
The Spirit and the incarnation the Holy Spirit is God in his innermost being or essence, the principle of life of both the Father and the Son; that in which God, both as Father and Son, does everything, and in which he comes to us and is in us increasingly through his manifestations. Through the working and indwelling of this Holy Spirit, God in his person of Son was fully incarnate in Christ (I Corinthians 2:11).
This analogy must not be pushed to far, as if the Spirit of God and God were co-extensive terms, as the corresponding terms are, substantially, in man. The point of the analogy is evidently self-knowledge, and in both cases the contrast is between the spirit within and anything outside. We must not expect always to feel the power of the Spirit when it works.
As spirit is nothing less than the inmost principle of life, and the spirit of man himself, so the spirit of God must be God (I Corinthians 2:11). Christian experience, moreover, expressed as it is in the prayers and hymns of the Church, furnishes an argument for the deity of the Holy Spirit similar to that for the deity of Jesus Christ. When our eyes are opened to see Christ as a Savior. We are compelled to recognize the work i us of a divine Spirit who has taken of the things of Christ and has shown them to us; (Revelation) and this divine Spirit we necessarily distinguish both from the Father and from the Son. (Christian experience), however, is not an original and independent witness to the deity of the Holy Spirit. It simply shows what the Church has held to be the natural and unforced interpretation of the scriptures, and so confirms the Scripture argument.
Scripture links power and weakness in a wonderful way, not as succeeding each other but as existing together (I Corinthians 2:3; II Corinthians 12:10). The power is the power of God given to faith, and faith grows strong in the dark....He who would command nature must first and most absolutely obey her.....We want to get possession of the Power, and use it. God wants the Power to get possession of us, and use us.
Talk to you soon,
James P. Norman Jr.
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