The Spirit and the Word

This is the word of the Lord, not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Hosts. He’s the Lord of Hosts. He has all power. He has all might. But in dealing with us, He does not use power and might because they cannot produce the results which He desires. They can only be produced by the Holy Spirit through His inward working in our hearts and lives, where He changes us and conforms us to the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today, I want to speak about the relationship between the Spirit of God and the Word of God. The first thing I need to say is that there is always perfect harmony between the Spirit and the Word. They never are in disagreement. There is total intimacy and complete harmony. We’ll take, first of all, an example from creation. In Psalm 33, verse six, the psalmist says,

“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.”

Now, where the English translation says ‘breath,’ the word actually in Hebrew is ‘spirit.’

“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the spirit of his mouth all their host.”

So, the whole creation, originally, came into being through two agents: the Word of the Lord and the Spirit of the Lord. It’s important for us to see that they operated together in perfect harmony. Neither operated without the other. And that’s true in our lives today. God’s results are achieved in us by His Word and by His Spirit working together.

If you turn back to the original record of creation in Genesis chapter 1, verses two and three, we find this account:

“The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving or hovering over the surface of the waters.”

So there we see the Spirit of God moving or hovering like a dove over the face of the dark waters. It’s interesting, I think, that the first specific person of the Godhead mentioned in Scripture is the Holy Spirit. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. In that verse, we see God’s Word went forth. He spoke the word ‘light,’ and the thing, light, came into being. But it was not without the Spirit of God. First of all, the Spirit of God moved, prepared the way for the Word of God. Then the Word was united with the Spirit, and the Word and the Spirit together produced creation. Now, it’s so important to understand this because this is precisely how God operates in our lives: by His Word and by His Spirit working in harmony, never the one without the other.

I want to say two things about the part of the Holy Spirit in giving us the Word of God. The Holy Spirit is both the author and the interpreter of the Word of God, not merely the author, but also the interpreter. First of all, let’s look at His part as author. In 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 16, Paul says,

“All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.”

Now, that word translated there ‘inspired by God’ is literally ‘in-breathed by God.’ It’s a single word. And the word ‘breathed’ is directly related to the word for ‘spirit.’ Spirit is *pneuma*, breathed is *pneustos*. They’re from exactly the same root. So, what it tells us is that the Holy Spirit was the author of all Scripture. No matter who was the human writer, the Holy Spirit was the one who gave the word, who breathed it into the writer, so that the authority behind all Scripture is the authority of the author, and the author is the Holy Spirit.

Peter touches on this also in 2 Peter chapter 1, verses 20 and 21, when he says this:

“But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”

So here we see that, again, prophecy, the prophetic revelation of Scripture, came from the Holy Spirit. It was never just the product of a human mind or human thinking or rationalization, but always behind it was the power and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.