My pastor during my student days was a remarkable man by the name of William Still. As is true in most vibrant ministries, there were certain recurring themes in his preaching. Such ministries often have distinctive burdens shaped by experience, context, and biblical insights — motifs that run like a melodic line through the music of their preaching. One such motif in Mr. Still’s ministry was a regular reminder of the words of a Henry Francis Lyte hymn:
Think what Spirit dwells within thee,
What a Father’s smile is thine,
What thy Saviour died to win thee.
Child of heav’n, should’st thou repine?
The hymn is rarely sung now — the tune is far from contemporary, we have become allergic to “thee” and “thou,” and few today ever “repine”! We can afford the linguistic losses; but we cannot afford the theological and spiritual loss of the hymn’s exhortation to think what Spirit dwells within thee.
Forgotten Person of the Godhead?
Those were the days of what was usually described as “the charismatic renewal,” which in my teenage years was often accompanied by the divisive issue of whether speaking in tongues was the sure sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit (and even of authentic Spirit-filled life). It was frequently stated in sermons or addresses that the Holy Spirit was “the forgotten Person of the Godhead.” The mantra was so often repeated that it seemed a truism. Who could doubt it?
But invariably, what was in view were the gifts of the Spirit (especially speaking in tongues and prophesying), not his Person. And over time, it became fairly obvious that possessing impressive (even apparently spiritual) gifts is neither identical to, or even necessarily accompanied by, communion with the person of the Spirit or the evident manifestation of his fruit. After all, Jesus himself indicated that it is possible to exercise extraordinary gifts and yet not be known by him and therefore to be bereft of the Spirit of grace (Matthew 7:21–23). Paul echoed the sentiment (1 Corinthians 13:1). Indeed, the “ministry” of some prominent individuals left a Simon Magus–like impression of an ambition to exercise impressive power and even to seem in control of the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:9–24).
For all the attention given to the gifts of the Spirit, the “forgotten Person of the Trinity” remained just that, and indeed an unknown Person. Missing was the aspiration of the ancient prayer of the church:
Teach us to know the Father, Son,
And Thee of Both, to be but One,
That through the ages all along
This may be our eternal song.
Praise to thine eternal merit,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
It was this Trinitarian — “whole Godhead” — perspective on the Holy Spirit that was cherished by the best of the early fathers of the church. It was recovered at the time of the Reformation by theologians like John Calvin, and in later centuries by others like John Owen, Thomas Goodwin, and Abraham Kuyper. The loss of this perspective has meant (at least during my lifetime) that an unnerving degree of “evangelical” teaching has had a unitarian rather than a Trinitarian tincture, focusing on the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit, but rarely on all three persons of the blessed Trinity.
Who Is the Holy Spirit?
So, for all the repetition of the mantra that the Holy Spirit is no longer “the forgotten person of the Godhead,” it is questionable whether we enjoy richer, more intimate communion with the Spirit himself. So, the lingering question (at least for me) remains this: Who is the Holy Spirit? How can I think what Spirit dwells within me?
The answer surely requires a knowledge of the whole Bible. There is no shortcut — despite our cravings for one. For apart from the word of God, we have no means of knowing who he is or interpreting how he works. We no more invent the work of the Spirit than we invent the work of Christ.
My purpose here is not to decry genuine gifts of the Spirit and their importance for the life we enjoy together in our church families. Nor is it to marginalize the church’s need for the power of the Spirit to rest on our weakness — so long as we guard ourselves against the lust for power that will eliminate our sense of weakness, since the two belong together (2 Corinthians 11:29–30; 12:5, 9; 13:4). But neither gifts nor power-deeds equate to the “fellowship/communion” of the Holy Spirit, to knowing him and bearing his fruit.
What would you think of a husband who answered the question “Why do you trust and love your wife?” by saying, “She’s a fantastic cook, and I just love eating”? Or what would you think of a wife who, asked why she loved her husband, responded by saying, “He’s rich, he’s spectacularly good looking, and he makes me look good — and I love spending money and having other people look at me”? Would we not rather hear “I trust her because of who she is” or “I love him because he has given me the amazing privilege of the communion of love we enjoy”?
How then are we to think of him who indwells us?
Here we must limit ourselves to a brief (if Bible-reference intense) summary answer that should expand our minds and warm our hearts (and perhaps also hurt our heads!). The Spirit who indwells us is the One who has a history with God’s purposes and a history with God’s Son in order that he might have a history with us.
Spirit in the Old Testament
The first biblical reference to the Holy Spirit is in Genesis 1:2: “The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” The Hebrew word ruach can be translated either “spirit” or “wind,” and sometimes this translation is disputed; but what cannot be disputed is the work of the Spirit in creation in general and in our own creation in particular (Job 33:4 is a true statement, no matter how Elihu’s speech is to be understood).
Soon after the fall, because of human sin, God announced that his “Spirit shall not abide in man forever” (Genesis 6:3). Nevertheless, the Spirit superintended the lives of Old Testament saints like Joseph (Genesis 41:38), led the people of God in the exodus (Isaiah 63:10–14), and was grieved by them (Isaiah 63:10) — a sure indication of his personal nature since we do not grieve impersonal forces.
The Spirit also furnished gifts for the construction of the tabernacle (Exodus 31:1–5; 35:31). His presence rested on Moses, his seventy elders, and indeed on two others (Numbers 11:17, 25–26). In this last context, Moses, the mediator of the old covenant, expressed a prophetic aspiration for what only Jesus Christ, the mediator of the new covenant, could grant: “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put his Spirit on them” (Numbers 11:29).
This same Spirit was in Joshua (Numbers 27:18) and came upon the judges of Israel, who functioned as anointed deliverers of God’s ancient people (Judges 3:10; 6:34; and so on). He was the “spirit of prophecy” and of inspiration, through whom men spoke from God (2 Samuel 23:2; 2 Peter 1:21). He promised the coming Messiah (1 Peter 1:12), whose life and character he would shape (Isaiah 11:2; 48:16). He was, supremely, the Spirit of the Servant of the Lord, who would suffer but be exalted, who would “sprinkle many nations,” before whom “kings [would] shut their mouths” (Isaiah 52:15), and in whose hands the spoils of his victory would be shared with “the strong” (Isaiah 53:12).
Spirit in the Gospels
It was this Spirit through whom the Lord Jesus was conceived in the womb of Mary as “the head of the new creation” (Luke 1:31, 35; the phrase is John Owen’s), in whose wisdom he grew (Luke 2:52; Isaiah 11:2), and with whom he was anointed for public ministry at the river Jordan (John 1:32–34; 3:22–35). By this same Spirit — the very “finger of God” (Luke 11:20) — he was led into the wilderness (Luke 4:1), assailed the stronghold of Satan, and won the long-hoped-for victory promised in Eden (Genesis 3:15).
Spirit in Us
Now we come to the crux of the matter: The Lord Jesus, as the Christ of God, bore the Spirit and was borne by the Spirit throughout the whole course of his life in order that he might bestow the Spirit on his people. When Jesus sent the promise of his Father, fulfilling the prophecy of John the Baptist that he would baptize with the Holy Spirit (Luke 3:17; Acts 2:33), it was this same Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus himself — and not another or additional or different Spirit — who was poured out upon the church on the day of Pentecost. This is the one baptism in which we all share when, being born from above through the Spirit (John 3:3–5), we come to Christ in faith and repentance (1 Corinthians 12:13; Ephesians 4:5).
This, then, is the “Spirit who dwells within thee”! And we have not finished surveying his Scripture-portrayed identity. For this is the same Spirit who put the finishing touches to the creation, who superintended the purposes of God throughout redemptive history, who was dwelling “with” the apostles in the person of the incarnate Son (this I take to be the meaning of John 14:17) and who came to dwell “in” them following his dying, rising, ascending, and petitioning the Father to grant him the promised honor of bestowing one and the same Spirit (and not another) on them (John 7:37–39). The audible, visible, earthly drama of Pentecost revealed that the promised invisible transaction between Father and Son — “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever” — had now taken place (John 14:16; Acts 2:33).
And this — to cut a millennia-long story short — is the Spirit who convinced the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment on the day of Pentecost (John 16:8–11; Acts 2:37–41), guided the infant church through the phases of its early development (e.g., Acts 8:29, 39; 10:19; 11:28; 16:7; 19:21), and is given to every believer as the Spirit of adoption (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6). He, the indwelling Spirit, joins his voice with the prayer of the church in every age for the Lord Jesus to come (Revelation 22:17).
Think about all of that! This Spirit — this one and the same Spirit, and no other — “dwells within thee.” He is the very Spirit who dwelled in the Lord Jesus.
Is that how you think about him?
Think Who Dwells Within You
Do you see what this implies? Perhaps the most staggering, mind-stretching, heart-warming, life-transforming biblical truths we need to grasp about the Holy Spirit are in fact these simple ones (albeit none can fully fathom them):
- There are not two Holy Spirits — one in whose grace and power the Lord Jesus lived and another who now indwells you.
- There are not multiple Holy Spirits — one in whose grace and power the Lord Jesus lived, one who indwells you, one who indwells me, and a multiplicity of other Holy Spirits indwelling an innumerable company of believers.
- No! There is only one Holy Spirit; and he who thus indwells me as the Spirit of Christ also indwells every believer I shall ever meet.
Through this one Spirit of Christ, we can call out both “Jesus is Lord!” and “Abba! Father!” (1 Corinthians 12:3; Romans 8:15). This is the Spirit — and none other — who indwells you, Christian brother or sister.
To try to think about this — to grasp its significance and rejoice in its reality — requires feeding on every explicit and implicit biblical statement about the Spirit, letting each one inform our minds and transform our thinking, inflame our affections and mold our wills. For the rest of my Christian life, I therefore need to be connected to the “spiritual-drip” of this bibline solution identifying and describing the Spirit who glorifies Christ and leads us into the presence of the Father.
And lest we make a further mistake: the fact that he glorifies Christ rather than himself (John 16:14) does not mean that we should not glorify him. For he is to be ever glorified together with the Father and the Son.
Then, as we remember to
Think what Spirit dwells within thee,
What a Father’s smile is thine,
What thy Saviour died to win thee,
we will feel the weighty encouragement of the question that follows:
Child of heav’n, should’st thou repine?
