God Is Spirit

God Is Spirit

Dr. Jeffrey P. Pedersen

Copyright © 2015 Dr. Jeffrey P. Pedersen.

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-8655-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-8657-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-8656-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015910279

WestBow Press rev. date: 08/12/2015

Contents

God Is Spirit

The Holy Spirit in Creation

The Holy Spirit and the Temple

The Holy Spirit and the Word of God

The Work of the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit’s Filling

The Holy Spirit and Holy Baptism

The Holy Spirit and Holy Communion

The Holy Spirit and Relationships

The Holy Spirit’s Disciplines

The Holy Spirit and Faith Growth

The Fruit of the Holy Spirit

The Gifts of the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit and the Church

The Holy Spirit and Integrity

The Holy Spirit and Prayer

The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Warfare

The Holy Spirit and Eternity

God Is Spirit

Two questions that humanity has wrestled with throughout time are 1) Is there a God? and 2) Can I know God in a personal and intimate way? How can we begin to understand and relate to God who is eternal and infinite and who has created the universe with billions and billions of stars? God has blessed us with language; it can be summed up in 26 letters. God has blessed us with mathematics; it can be summed up in no less than an infinite amount of numbers. Why? Because God is eternal who created the infinite universe. He will allow us to delve into it, but we will need to have an infinite amount of numbers to do that. The fact that God has given to us an infinite amount of numbers reflects the nature of his infinitude.

People can develop an understanding of God based on an image that someone else has portrayed for them. Sometimes we can create God in our own image. In our minds, we have an understanding of who we think God should be. We want God to fit into the confines of our own intellect and understanding. We want a God who we can manage according to our own wills and likings. People sometimes become atheists because the images of God that were formulated in their minds as children do not hold truth as they get older. If people are taught as children that God is a fairy godmother who appears at certain tragic moments of their lives and makes everything better, their image of God will turn to disbelief as they get older. If their image of God is based on a portrait or a statue, God may seem lifeless and irrelevant to the life and world that they live in. If a child who is taught that when people die, God sends them in an elevator to heaven, the theory that has been taught does not hold true as an adult; if anything, the child develops a fear of elevators. If we are taught to pray with the understanding that God will answer our every prayer much like a genie grants wishes, we will doubt and despair. When people grow older, they give up childish thinking. This is why I say to people who are atheists, agnostics, or simply in a season of doubt, Tell me about the God you don’t believe in. It is very interesting to hear the various images that people have of God, and it is no wonder they don’t believe.

We ask the existential questions, How did creation happen? How did we get here? What is the meaning of life? How is it we have both physical and social laws in place? and What happens when we die? I know a woman who is a Christian missionary. At one time in her life, she was an atheist. I asked her, How did you go from being an atheist to a Christian missionary? She replied, Just because you are an atheist doesn’t mean that your basic existential questions stop. Our spirit hungers and thirsts to understand the most basic questions of life. God is the first cause of creation and has set forth the forms of life. God is not the fairy godmother but rather the sovereign God who shows mercy through his Son Jesus Christ. We live by faith according to God’s will. One of the fundamental problems of faith is people live according to their personal plans, and they expect God to fit into them. God is not so small that we can manipulate him, and he is not into the plans of mortal humanity. God in his love has the purpose for life, and we are to live in relationship to his wisdom that is unfathomable. We walk by faith that God is the one who purposes and plans for our lives. (Jeremiah 29:10) We must always pray, God, may your will be done in my life. Help me to understand my place in your creation and the church.

So often we need to clear our minds of the many false images that we have formulated so that God can reveal his true presence to us. God reveals and makes his presence known to us in the ways that he chooses. God has chosen to reveal himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ, who died on a cross and is risen from the dead. The risen Christ left his presence with us in the Holy Spirit.

God has created our human spirit to long for the transcendent, to reach beyond any human expectations, and to find our peace and rest in him. The Holy Spirit connects with our spirits so that we may be filled with God’s heavenly presence on earth.

God has created us with a body, mind, and spirit. We are to take care of our bodies as we eat right and get our exercise. We may join a gym where we can work out and maximize our body’s strength. God has given us minds to think with. We are encouraged to develop our intellect and knowledge just as we may take classes at a university. God has also given us a spirit. It is our spirit that hungers and thirsts for God. God has designed us to be in relationship with him, and it is the Holy Spirit that connects with our spirits who forms a strong relationship with God. He is not a graven image or idol made of metal, wood, or stone that has been created by people’s imaginations. God is not a mere theological concept. God is spirit; he is a living presence that we can know in the most intimate way. If we want to know God, we must understand that God’s presence in our world and lives is spiritual in nature. God is present to us in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit reveals the risen Jesus Christ through the Word. Jesus Christ, who suffered and died on a cross, has been raised from the dead. His risen presence is with us.

We read in Matthew 28:18–19,

Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

At the end of this passage, Jesus made the promise that he would be with us always until the end of time, but if Jesus ascended into heaven, how can he be with us always until the end of time? He is present in the Holy Spirit, who manifests God’s Word in us. The Holy Spirit is exactly like Jesus. They are of the same substance as God the Father.

In John 16:5–7, Jesus said, Now I am going to him who sent me, yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ Because I have said these things, you are filled with grief. But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.

Jesus is telling his disciples that he must leave them and ascend back into heaven with the Father. The disciples’ hearts are filled with grief. Jesus says, It is for your good that I am going away. While Jesus was living his life in this world and going about his ministry, he could only be in one place at a time. Being in the physical form of a human, Jesus was bound to space. Jesus spent most of his ministry in the region of Galilee, a region that was approximately thirty miles in diameter. However, once the Holy Spirit came, Jesus was able to be omnipresent, meaning he could be everywhere. How could Jesus be present everywhere? If God can create something in the world that is omnipresent, such as air, he, too, can be all present. Wherever we go in this world, there is air to breathe. Wouldn’t it be awful if we were not allowed to travel to a particular place that we wanted to see because there was no air there? A person living in the United States survives by breathing the air. That person may travel to China and still be able to survive by breathing the air. In a like manner, one person can be praying to God in the United States while another person is praying to God in China, and God is able to hear both people’s prayers because of his omnipresence.

In John 14:15–20, the Bible says,

If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.

The Holy Spirit will be omnipresent and will also be intimate. The Holy Spirit will dwell among us and also within us. Jesus promised in Matthew 28:20 that he would be with us always until the end of the age, and with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, this promise is fulfilled. God now comes to us and dwells in us as spirit.

God comes to us as the Holy Spirit because God wants to be in relationship with us. How could Jesus be simultaneously in the Father and in us, except through a spiritual unity? We must remember that relationships are not bound together by physical bonds, such as ropes, hitches, and chains; rather, relationships are spiritual in nature. The strongest bonds are the ones we cannot see. With the Holy Spirit among us and within us, we are bonded to God the Father in a most special way. The risen Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit in us. The Holy Spirit is exactly like Jesus. Jesus is always with us since the Holy Spirit is infused in our person. The apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 2:20, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The eternal salvation that Jesus won for us on the cross now dwells within us by the Holy Spirit’s presence.

The Holy Spirit is also referred to as a counselor who will guide and lead us in the truth about God. The Holy Spirit also leads us into the truth concerning worship, sin, and salvation through Jesus.

We read in Romans 1:18–25,

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

God created us in his image. In all of God’s good creation, God delights in people more than any other part of creation. He created us to be in relationship with him. We are in relationship with God the Father as we worship him. God has created us to be people of worship. Because of sin and disobedience to God, we, by nature, do not know whom or what to worship. We must remember that everybody does worship something or someone because worship is at the center of who we are as people. Sin distorts our worship. We may find ourselves worshipping all kinds of things. Paul states that because of our sinful human nature, instead of worshipping God the Creator, we worship the created instead. We worship mortal man and the images we make when we worship other created forms such as animals. It is the Holy Spirit within us that teaches us about what is false worship and inspires us in the truth to offer our worship to God.

In John 4:23–24, Jesus says, "Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.

Jesus makes reference to the spirit is the Holy Spirit and the Word as being the Bible. It is the Holy Spirit working through the Word that creates faith in the believers.

The apostle Paul went to Athens to preach the truth about Jesus Christ being raised from the dead. He went to the Areopagus where there was worship to the false gods.

Paul addressed the people of Athens saying, Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you (Acts 17:22–23).

The people of Athens were worshipping false gods. These gods were made of precious metals. They were designed and made by people. False idols are symbolic of people’s desire to worship the self and the things they like. The ultimate sinful desire of humanity is to be God; that is the original sin.

The Holy Spirit dwells within believers and leads them into the truth of God. We offer our worship to God above all things. Without the Holy Spirit, we are lost and worship false things. This is the first order of creation—knowing the truth that we are created in the image of God—and it is by the Holy Spirit that we give to God all of our worship.

The Holy Spirit is a member of the Godhead, the Holy Trinity. We worship one God. As Christians, we confess what is written in Deuteronomy 6:4, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God, the Lord is one. We believe in one God but in three persons. In Matthew 28:19, Jesus said, Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Paul writes a benediction in 2 Corinthians 13:14, May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. God is one God but in three persons. These three persons are eternal and have brought forth creation and redemption, making Christian believers a holy people of God.

How can God be one God but in three persons? This has been a mystery that cannot be fully understood by us, but it helps us to understand when we see that there are things of creation that can be three in one and one in three. H2O is a compound that can be in three different forms yet remains the same compound. It can be a liquid (water), a solid (ice), and a gas (clouds). A triangle is one geometric figure, yet it has three sides. St. Patrick pointed out that of a three-leaf clover is one life organism with three separate leaves.

The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:3, Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus be cursed,’ and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that manifests himself in Christians and allows them to have faith in God as well as confess Jesus as divine Savior and Lord. God is spirit, and this is how God makes himself known to people. To know God means to experience him in spirit. Without the Holy Spirit, we cannot know God.

The Bible teaches us that the Holy Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit has all the characteristics of God.

The Holy Spirit is eternal. How much the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (Hebrews 9:14).

The Holy Spirit is all powerful. And the angel answered and said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most high will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Sons of God’ (Luke 1:35).

The Holy Spirit is all present. Where can I go from your Spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? (Psalm 139:7).

The Holy Spirit is all knowing. For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of man, which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:10–11).

The Holy Spirit is called God. And we all, with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The Holy Spirit is the Creator. The spirit of God was hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:2).

God has chosen to reveal himself to the world through the manifestation of his son, Jesus Christ, and now has made his presence with us in the Holy Spirit.

Study Questions

1. What is your childhood image of God?

2. What is an idol?

3. What promise did Jesus give in Matthew 28:18–19?

4. Why was it to the disciples’ advantage that Jesus ascended back into heaven?

5. What does omnipresence mean?

6. How does God bind us together?

7. How is God present to us?

8. How do you understand the Holy Spirit?

9. What are some attributes of the Holy Spirit?

10. How does God make himself manifest to us?

The Holy Spirit in Creation

As we read in Genesis 1:1–2, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

The word for spirit in Hebrew also means wind. That Hebrew word is ruach. The word for spirit in Greek also means breath. The Greek word is pneuma.

When we think of the wind, we think of air in motion. It is incredible how powerful the wind, something that we cannot even see, can be. The wind’s strength can bring destruction. It can take large, deep-rooted trees and shred them into splinters. Tornadoes can take large buildings and reduce them to rubble. And yet, the wind also plays an important role in creation; it dries wet fields and makes them ready for planting, it assists in the pollination of plants, and it has had the power to create beautiful landmarks. The wind has both the power to create and destroy.

The Holy Spirit moved over creation and brought it into order. According to the story of creation in Genesis 1, in the beginning, creation was in a state of chaos, and it was the Holy Spirit that brought it to life and order. The Holy Spirit was moving over the waters, molding and making creation into what it is today. Being in a large airplane that is moving over the clouds provides a visual impression of what it might have been like as the Holy Spirit moved over the waters, but nothing can compare to the spectacular work of the Holy Spirit.

Scientist and author Dr. Willard Pulkrabek, who has written a textbook that is being used by universities throughout the world, explains the second law of thermodynamics, The second law of thermodynamics states, that when a spontaneous movement of creation happens, it will create chaos or disorder. The only thing that can bring order is a power outside of itself. The only power that can do this for creation is God. God is always working to bring order out of chaos. With this understanding of science, there should be no atheists.

A little farther on in the book of Genesis is another installment in the creation story: that of Noah and the great flood. The world had become so evil that God wanted to wipe out his creation and start over. He called Noah, whom God considered to be the only righteous person alive, to play a vital role in this new creation. God instructed Noah to build an ark (a large ship) that would be large enough to carry Noah’s family of eight people and a pair of every species of animals. This is not only a story of creation but, like all stories of the Bible, a story of faith as well. God called Noah to build this large ship because he was going to send a flood that would destroy creation. Noah was called to build the ark in a land that was arid. People must have thought Noah was a real nutcase. Noah was not a nutcase but rather a person of faith. He took God at his word. The day of the flood came without warning. People were going about their business like any normal day. When the flood came, it caught people off guard. Jesus used the story of Noah to illustrate how it will be in the second coming to show that people need to be faithfully prepared (Matthew 24:36–39). The flood that God brought to the world lasted forty days.

We read in Genesis 8:8–12,

Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited