The Holy Spirit is the Giver of Life

III. The Giver of Life

The Holy Spirit of God gives life to us in Christ and puts to death the sin nature that is killing us.

Jesus gave the Holy Spirit the name, “the Giver of Life” (John 6:63). This name was later brought into the Nicene Creed to identify the third person of the Holy Trinity. In summary, the Holy Spirit gives everyone life in the first place. He then gives renewed life to all who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Christ’s Spirit will raise our bodies from the dead. God’s Spirit brings us into eternal communion with God the Trinity as well as with all the other saints who have ever been and ever will be.

The Apostle Paul tells us even more about how the Giver of Life gives life, and how we are personally involved in his work upon us. In Romans 8 and Galatians 5, he says the Spirit both gives life to us and kills sin within us.

The Church’s divines—Catholic and Reformed as well as Baptist—variously used the language of mortification and vivification to describe this process. “Mortification” speaks of the putting to death of the desire for sin within us. “Vivification” speaks of the way life works itself into us. The sin nature, which Paul calls “flesh,” must be mortified or “put to death” by the Spirit. Our new nature, which Paul says is characterized by the Spirit’s fruit, must be vivified or “come to life” by the Spirit.

And the Spirit does all this, as our Pastor has continually reminded us, by focusing our faith upon Jesus Christ. In Romans 8:1-13, Paul writes:

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do since it was weakened by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering, in order that the law’s requirement would be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 

For those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their minds set on the things of the Spirit. Now the mindset of the flesh is death, but the mindset of the Spirit is life and peace. The mindset of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit to God’s law. Indeed, it is unable to do so. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.  

You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through his Spirit who lives in you. 

So then, brothers and sisters, we are not obligated to the flesh to live according to the flesh, because if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 

In conclusion, we find that the Holy Spirit of God gives life in Christ to us and puts to death the sin nature that is killing us. Death is in the flesh. Life is in the Spirit. The Spirit offers you both life and the fruit which demonstrates there is life in the root.

(Theological Note: Paul distinguishes between “flesh” [sarx] and “body” [soma] in this passage. While the flesh refers in this passage and in Galatians 5 to the sin nature, the body is itself raised by the Spirit into life. The ancient pagan and modern concept of the body as inherently evil does not agree with Paul. The material body is not inherently evil, although it may act in evil ways through the influence of the sin nature. Note also that Paul can use flesh without direct reference to the sin nature [Gal 2:20]. For Paul, the body is typically a reference to the physical person, while the flesh is typically a reference to the sin nature that leads us toward sin.)

(This is the third in a four-part short series on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. For part one, concerning the Spirit as Love, click here. For part two, concerning the Spirit as Intimate, click here.)

The Holy Spirit is God Intimate

II. Intimate

At the deepest place in every single human heart is the need for intimacy with a person totally safe, entirely powerful, incredibly close—A confidant, a protector, a hero. Alas, many of us carry indescribable wounds, because we trusted a friend, a relative, a lover—We gave somebody our heart, and we were betrayed. We need intimacy; we fear treachery.

When men and women became friends with Jesus, they found one upon whom they could really rely. He was trustworthy in his intentions, and he had the power to meet their every need. John, the artistic apostle, knew Jesus as beauty itself. He self-identified as “the one whom Jesus loved” (John 13:23). He also leaned against his very breast. Mary Magdalene knew Jesus as the only man who ever spoke to her with purity. He also healed her soul with power. Lazarus was the friend for whom Jesus wept. And Jesus also raised Lazarus from death. Jesus healed people, fed people, gave them the all-fulfilling words of life.

The powerful, faithful intimacy of Jesus is why his disciples, his friends, were distraught when he told them he must leave. He encouraged them in John 14, “Let not your heart be troubled” (v 1). Christ promised them that he was going to prepare a place for them in God the Father’s eternal mansion. And, at some point, he was coming back to get them. He also told them he would soon be with them in a way they never imagined.

True friendship is deep intimacy, oneness with another which cannot let go. Sometimes, when Karen is out of my sight, even if only feet away in another room, I miss her terribly. Jesus frankly told them he was leaving the world, leaving their sight. He was leaving them in one way, but coming to them in another way. 

Indeed, he promised that he would come in a way not unlike the relationship God the Father has with his Son. The Father and the Son are so intertwined that to see one is to see the other. “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:11). The words and the works of the Son are the words and works of the Father! “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father!” (John 14:9).

And there is a third Person just as intimately bound with the Godhead as the Father and the Son. Jesus promised his distraught disciples, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:16-18).

In Romans 8, Paul used the same language to describe the union of Christ with the believer and the union of the Spirit with the believer. If the Spirit of God is in you, then Christ also is in you. The indwelling of Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit are coterminous personal relationships. To have “Christ in you” (Rom 8:10) is to be “in the Spirit” (Rom 8:9) and to have the Spirit reside “in you” (Rom 8:11). The Holy Spirit who indwells us is “the Spirit of Christ” (Rom 8:9). 

The Spirit is distinct from Christ; but the Spirit is also one with Christ. “The Lord is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:17). Therefore, although Jesus departed in body, he came through the presence of his Spirit to be, in an even more intimate way, present to his followers: To John, the apostle whom he loved, Jesus came in the Spirit. To Mary, who could not let go of him when she saw he had risen from death itself, Jesus dwelt in the Spirit. To Peter, the one friend who had horribly betrayed him in his hour of greatest need, not once but three times, Jesus resided by the Spirit.

Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ came to live “in” and “with” John and Mary and Peter. But this promise of intimacy with the divine is not only for them then. For even now the all-powerful Spirit of God offers to live in us, to heal us of every affliction, to feed us forever, to ensure us of eternal life. The Spirit offers you intimacy with the eternal Christ himself. If Christ is “God incarnate,” then the Spirit is “God intimate.” Have you been born again by faith in Christ? If so, the Spirit desires to fill your life with his immediate, powerful, saving presence.

(This is the second in a four-part short series on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. For part one, concerning the Spirit as Love, click here. For part three, concerning the Spirt as the Giver of Life, click here.)

The Holy Spirit is the God of Love

In the Bible, three persons are revealed to be God—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. There is no difference whatsoever in the divine attributes, in the divine will, and in the divine working, as well as in the divine worship due to each person, for the three are the one God. Each person is fully God, yet the three persons remain distinct from one another.

The Father is the person from whom the Son of God is eternally begotten, begotten not in a flat carnal way, but in an analogically beautiful way from the very being of the Father. The Son always has been “in the bosom of the Father” (John 1:18). The Son of God possesses all the Father possesses (John 16:14-15), does whatever the Father does (John 14:10), and speaks whatever the Father speaks (John 12:49-50). The persons of the Father and the Son are united not only in act but in being. The two may thus be described, according to Jesus, as “in” one another (John 14:11). The Son is one with God (John 10:30).

And both the Father and the Son in turn send the Holy Spirit from eternity into the world to work the will of God declared by the eternal Word. “Sending” speaks to the economy or work of the Spirit, while “proceeding” speaks to the ontology or essence of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit proceeds from God eternally. The language used to describe the eternal procession from the Father in John 15:26 is both fascinating and instructive. The Greek term is ἐκπορεύομαι, which the Bauer lexicon says can be used in two closely related ways. It can either mean “to be in motion from” or “to come forth from.” Bauer classifies John 15:26 under the first to mean the Spirit “proceeds from someone.” And this someone is God.

Did you catch that? The Holy Spirit does not proceed from a creature. He is not like you and me or any other creature. Nor is the Holy Spirit sent by any mere creature. The Holy Spirit proceeds, like the Son, directly from God. The Son and the Spirit are uniquely related to the Father in that both participate by nature in the Godhead. The Son is the eternally begotten God. The Holy Spirit is the eternally proceeding God.

The Spirit’s deity is why, throughout Scripture, we find the Holy Spirit described with divine attributes, working with the divine will, doing things only God can do. Over the next several weeks we must speak of the Holy Spirit in his person and his work. And the first thing we must consider about the Holy Spirit is that He is Love.

I. Love

One of the divine perfections, alongside the attributes of sovereignty, knowledge, holiness, and so on, understood simply, is love. But be careful about your definition of love. When we run up against the Bible’s definition of love, we soon discover God the Trinity’s love is totally beyond our love. God’s love is perfect love.

John writes that “God is love,” not once but twice (1 John 4:8, 16). God the Father is ontologically love and practically love. From the internal perfection of the dynamic, eternal, and unitary love of the Three, the Father sends His Son into the world (1 John 4:9; John 3:16).

And from the internal perfection of the dynamic, eternal, and unitary love of the Three, God the Son demonstrates perfect love in the supreme loving act of becoming the God-Man. He is the One who was crucified for his unworthy friends. “Greater love has no man than this, that He lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). The Son showed his love toward us by giving his life for us, even while we were yet sinners.

So, the Father is love, the Son is love, and the Holy Spirit, too, is love. Another apostle, Paul, wrote, “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5). The Spirit as God brings the love of the Trinity to us, working with the dynamic Word to encounter us from without (Romans 10:9-10, 17) and within, engaging our minds, convicting our hearts, and loosening our tongues (Romans 8:26-27). The Spirit wants to unite you with Himself and with the Son, so that you become indwelt by the Son and the Spirit (Romans 8:9-11).

Did you catch that? The Father loves us by sending his Son as a propitiation for our sins. The Son loves us by dying so we might be reconciled to God and by arising from death so we will be justified before the eternal throne of judgment (Romans 4:25). The Triune God works from the perfection of his love so that we may be saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. And the Spirit presents to our hearts that perfect love, pulling us majestically and gently into the very heart of God.

And God’s love is perfect, pure, for: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends” (1 Cor 13:4-8a).

Why is the Holy Spirit so humble, so focused upon glorifying the other persons of the Godhead, especially the Son? Why does the Holy Spirit appear at first to recede into the background in our mind as He makes sure we clearly see Jesus Christ, the Son of God who was crucified and died for our sin, and who arose for our justification?

The Holy Spirit is humble, because humility is the perfect expression of pure love. The Holy Spirit is love. He humbly loves both the Son and the Father, and He humbly loves you. He is gently knocking on the door of your heart. As your pastor preaches the Word, will you let the Holy Spirit into your heart and confess the truth of the Gospel with your tongue?

(This is the first part in a four-part short series on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. For part two, concerning the Spirit as Intimate, click here. For part three, concerning the Spirit as the Giver of Life, click here.)