The Holy Spirit

In John 16:13–14 Jesus gives us a glimpse of the Holy Spirit’s ministry and activity.

“However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, [literally speak from Himself] but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.”

So we see the Holy Spirit does not speak from Himself. He has no message of His own. Isn’t that remarkable. He only reports to us what He is hearing from the Father and the Son. Secondly His aim is not to glorify Himself nor to attract attention to Himself, but always He glorifies and focuses attention on Jesus. That is the second important way to identify the Holy Spirit.

Now I want you to listen to this carefully because it is revolutionary. Any spirit that focuses on the Holy Spirit and glorifies the Holy Spirit is not the Holy Spirit. It is contrary to His whole nature and purpose. Once you’ve grasped that it will open your eyes to many things which are going on in the church that are otherwise difficult to understand. For example, we have a very beautiful chorus that we sing about the Father, the Son and the Spirit. The first verse says to the Father, “Glorify Thy name in all the earth.” The second verse says to Jesus, the Son, “Glorify Thy name in all the earth.” The third verse says to the Spirit, “Glorify Thy name in all the earth.” I love to sing the first two verses, but I decline to sing the third verse because I don’t believe it is Scriptural. The Holy Spirit never does glorify His own name. His purpose is to glorify the One who sent Him.

Let me make another statement which may surprise you. I have not found in the Scripture anywhere an example of a prayer addressed to the Holy Spirit. So far as I can understand, no one in the Scripture ever prayed to the Holy Spirit. You probably would do well to check that for yourself. But I have looked carefully and have not found one example.

You might ask, “Why not?” And I would give you this answer. It’s a question of heavenly protocol. There’s so little respect now days for protocol on earth that we sometimes don’t realize that there is protocol in heaven. It is protocol relating to a master-servant relationship. In such a relationship when you are dealing with a servant, you do not speak to the servant but to the master. You ask the master to tell his servant what to do. It is wrong to directly address a servant when the master is available for you to speak to. I believe that is heaven’s protocol. When you recognize the relationship of the Holy Spirit to God the Father and God the Son, you understand that we never give orders to the Holy Spirit. When we want the Holy Spirit to do something we address our request to the Father or to the Son.

When I was looking through this I found a passage in Ezekiel 37, which I thought at first was an exception. It’s part of Ezekiel’s well-known vision of the valley full of dry bones with no life in them. First of all he prophesied and the bones came together, but they were still lifeless corpses. Then in verses 9 and 10 it says,

“Also He said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: ‘Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.’’’ So I prophesied as He commanded me, and breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great army.”

So I thought that the breath is really a picture of the wind or the Holy Spirit. And so Ezekiel was praying to the wind. But he was not praying. He was prophesying and it did not come from himself. He merely passed on to the wind a command that he had received from God Himself. Therefore, as far as I have been able to discover, there is not a single example anywhere in the Scripture of praying to the Holy Spirit.

Now I am not seeking to make a big issue out of that. On the other hand, I think it is very important as we try to discern the nature and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. You would say to me, “Well, doesn’t God hear our prayer when we pray to the Holy Spirit?” I think He does, but we are not praying in full accord with heaven’s protocol. If we really want to please the Lord and show respect for Him, we will show respect for His protocol.

The third important fact about the Holy Spirit is what is indicated in His name. He is holy. This is His primary title, the Holy Spirit. In Hebrew it is “the Spirit of holiness.” He has many other titles, for instance; the Spirit of grace, the Spirit of truth, the Spirit of power, and so on. But they are all subsidiary. His name and His primary title is the Holy Spirit. Anything that is unholy does not proceed from the Holy Spirit.

The Scripture also speaks of the beauty of holiness. There is a beauty in holiness when it proceeds from the Holy Spirit. It’s not necessarily external. It may be internal beauty. For instance in 1 Peter 3:4, Peter speaks about “the hidden person of the heart,” and he speaks about “the adornment of a meek and quiet spirit,” which in the sight of God is of great price. This is not external beauty. It is internal beauty which comes from the Holy Spirit.

I want to say, however, with the utmost emphasis, anything unholy or ugly does not proceed from the Holy Spirit. I’ll give you a list of twelve adjectives, all of which I believe cannot be applied to the Holy Spirit or to anything that is the product of the Holy Spirit. As I go through the list I suggest you check mentally and see if you agree with me. Here then are the words that would never apply to the Holy Spirit.

Self-Exalting

Self-Assertive

Vulgar

Rude

Sham

Indecent

Insensitive

Stupid

Silly

Flippant

Degraded

Degrading.

I’ll repeat that list just once more, and as I repeat the list just see if you agree with me. These are twelve adjectives, or twelve words that would never apply to the Holy Spirit or to anything that proceeds from the Holy Spirit. Here are the words: self-exalting, self-assertive, vulgar, rude, sham, indecent, insensitive, stupid, silly, flippant, degraded, and degrading.

I have in my heart of God wills and I live, to write a book at sometime of which I have already chosen the title. The title is this, Holiness Is Not Optional. Only God knows whether I will ever succeed in writing the book, but I want to say in any case, that the title states the exact truth. In the Christian life holiness is not optional. Many Christians seem to think about holiness as if it is like something added to a car, such as fancy leather upholstery instead of the normal kind of plastic. But that is not true. Holiness is an essential part of salvation. In Hebrews 12:14 the writer says,

“Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.”

What salvation do we have that does not bring us to see the Lord? But without holiness, no one will see the Lord.

We have in our contemporary western Christianity a very incomplete picture of salvation. If I get saved and born again, and then I want to go on and be holy, I can do it, but it’s an option. I want to tell you that your salvation depends on your being holy, and holiness comes only from the Holy Spirit. There are many features of purported moves of the Holy Spirit that I could pick out and hold up as examples of things that are not holy, but I will only deal with one. That is animal behavior in human beings attributed to the Holy Spirit. There are many such examples. Some I have witnessed and some have been reported.

First of all, there is no passage in Scripture that I know of where the Holy Spirit causes any human being to behave like an animal. There is the example of Balaam, but that is in strong contrast. God caused Balaam’s donkey to speak like a man, but he never caused Balaam to bray like a donkey.

There was one man whom God caused to behave like an animal—King Nebuchadnezzar. It says in Daniel 4:33,

“...he was driven from men and ate grass like oxen; his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair had grown like eagles’ feathers and his nails like birds’ claws.”

God certainly caused Nebuchadnezzar to behave like an animal. But that was God’s judgment, not His blessing.

Revelation 4:6–8 depicts four living creatures that surround the throne of God.