As I have been a Christian for more than 30 years, the subject of “Spirit of God” has brought many confusions and misunderstanding for me and our people. As I have been learning and teaching about the Spirit of God as I preach through a book of the Bible, this subject does get addressed.
From the beginning, the Spirit of God was highly active as the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:2). At Jesus’ baptism the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus in a bodily form as a dove signifying that Jesus was going to be sacrifice like a dove as Holy Spirit points us to Jesus Christ not Himself.
We must read and re-read John 14 through 16 to correctly understand the function of the Holy Spirit. Jesus taught us what the Holy Spirit will do. This is not whatever the Spirit wants to do, but Jesus taught us very clearly what the Spirit will do. Scripture must give us the understanding of the Holy Spirit. Yes there are different theologies (e.g. cessationism vs. continuationism), but we must be grounded in the Scripture and not deviate from it.
Spirit of God is so crucial for Christians. In fact, if you don’t have the Spirit of Christ, you don’t belong to Christ (Romans 8:9). Per Acts 1:8, Spirit gives us the power to be Jesus’ witness in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. We operate by the Spirit empowering us to do God’s will being Jesus’ witnesses all over the world. He overcomes all of our short comings to accomplish His will and bear the fruit of the Spirit so that we can be more like Jesus Christ.
Spirit of God is God the Spirit. He is the third person in Trinity. We are living in the age of the Spirit where He dwells in every born-again Christians to accomplish the great commission. He helps us focus on Jesus, reminds us of Jesus, teaches us about Jesus, reminds us sin to repent, and draw near to God to receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
We need the Spirit of God. We thank God for the Spirit living inside of us. We rely on the Spirit to guide us to all truth (Jesus). We desire for Jesus’ work to be done in us and through us. We want God to receive maximum glory from us as the Spirit of God works in us.
pastor young su (PYS)