Who or what is the Holy Spirit? What place does the Spirit take in God's work? These are profound and serious questions that touch the Being of God. We look for the answers to this in this study series, as you are used to by us, only in the word of God and not in human tradition. Our starting point in every reading and speaking or writing about God's word is that we avoid using words and terms that do not occur in the Bible unless we need them to express in intelligible language what is meant by a word or an expression (as in the subtitle of God's presence, which is a logical consequence of his appearance).

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The Spirit of God

When reading the Bible it is noticeable that there is a close relationship between God and the Spirit or the Holy Spirit, which is called "of God", "of the Lord", "of the Father". Nowhere do we read about 'God the Holy Spirit', which should make us think for thought. When God does not speak of Himself as "God the Holy Spirit," we will not be allowed to do that either. For although He is said to be "Spirit," the expression "God the Holy Spirit" can lead to misunderstandings and in the worst case to the misunderstanding or misunderstanding of God and his work, as we shall see.

Already in the opening words of the Bible God introduces his 'Spirit'. And notice how the Creator Himself is described in various places and how He accomplished his creation according to his eternal purpose:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was now desolate and empty, and darkness was upon the flood, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. " (Genesis 1: 1-2)

"Then the Lord God formed man from dust on the face of the earth and breathed the breath of life into his nose; so man became a living being ". (Genesis 2: 7)

"The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty makes me live". (Job 33: 4)

"By the word of the Lord the heavens are made, by the breath of his mouth all their lord ... because He spoke and it was there, He commanded and it stood there". (Psalm 33: 6,9, compare John 1: 3, Hebrews 11: 3)

"... my word that proceedeth out of my mouth ... shall not return to me void, but it shall do that which I please, and accomplish that for which I send it." (Isaiah 55:11)

"He made the earth by his power, He prepares the world by his wisdom and expands heaven by reason". (Jeremiah 10:12, 51:15)

The Spirit means the difference between life and death. When the water-covered earth came to be inhabited by all kinds of life forms, "the Spirit of God" was the creative force and source of life for a great multitude of creatures. Just as in the situation when the earth was covered again with water by the flood, it is possible to say about God's creative activity in the parallelism characteristic of the biblical language:

"... you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and You renew the face of the ground." (Psalm 104: 30)

God, the Spirit of God, God's power, the breath of his mouth and the word of God are synonyms or parallels. God made the earth habitable through a series of commands: "Let there be light," etc. It is presented in such a way that his power and strength are in his word. He out of this his will and the result is the creation. At least, that is how it is presented in Genesis. That not everything is said about how God created creation will be clear, but this is sufficient for us, and God asks us to believe that. The opening words of the Gospel of John are gladly used to prove the eternal pre-existence of Christ. But in the original text is nothing more than in the Old Testament:

"In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and God was the word." (John 1: 1 translation from the original text)

The use in many Bible translations of a capital letter in 'word' is based on the idea that this means Christ. But this does not coincide with what John wrote, because God and his word can not be separated. The breath of God's mouth indicates the expression of his creative commands, the expression of his intention. God is the source of all existence and the all-directional force in history. The creation is filled with Him; by his divine energy He works out His great purpose, which He had before He created planet earth. He alone made a miraculous plan in his wisdom, and He executes it through the glorious and almighty power that flows eternally out of Him and with which He is omnipresent. The creation story does not make any mention of the Spirit of God. This is characteristic of Scripture, in which the origin of the cosmos is usually not attributed to the Spirit but usually directly to the Lord.

The Spirit is not a separate part of God or other Person within the Godhead, but God Himself. This may include his Personality, but also the way his presence manifests on earth. Every human being also has a mind, but that is, as we shall understand, no other person who is separate from us. Our spirit is part of us. Similarly, the Spirit of God is inextricably linked to God and does not occur as an independent Person. God and his Spirit are one, just as you and your spirit are one. The apostle Paul wrote about this entity unit:

"... the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. Who among men knows what is in a man, then his own spirit that is in him? So no one knows what is in God, except the Spirit of God ... ". (1 Corinthians 2: 10-11 freely translated)

"God is Spirit," said the Lord Jesus (John 4:24). In the Bible, the spirit is usually opposed to meat, but God is not the opponent of the flesh, of the physical. "God is Spirit" means, among other things, that He has a different way of existence than we are creatures that are flesh. He is free from the flesh, not bound and subject to it like us, and therefore He can be omnipresent. In addition, He is almighty, stronger than anything He created: the whole world of nature with his people indomitable to us humans in hurricanes, tidal waves, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. But also the greatest and strongest animals and the most powerful world leaders with their retinue, who oppress innocent people. The Spirit is therefore not a vague influence, but the radiance of his Being, such as the rays coming from the sun. In a psalm, David asked God, the Creator:

"Where would I go for your Spirit, where you flee before your face". (Psalm 139: 7, compare Psalm 51:13)

The noblest part of the body is the face because the personality and character of a person are visible in his features. What someone is, radiates from his face and especially from his eyes. Hence in the biblical idiom, the 'face' of a man can be synonymous with the man himself, and this practice also occurs in relation to the Lord. He was present in his sanctuary among the people and there they met Him:

"Three times in the year each of you ... will appear before the Lord ...". (Exodus 34:23, compare Psalm 42: 3)

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Ru'ach: Wind and Spirit in the Old Testament

Sometimes, however, the Spirit is written as if it were an independent Person. We call that personification. It is used to describe abstract concepts, such as phenomena that are invisible to themselves, but whose presence is shown by visible phenomena and consequences. Some examples are wisdom, love, death, the wind. The latter is worth viewing because there is a direct connection with the Spirit.

The Old Testament word for spirit, ru'ach, occurs 378 times, of which nearly ninety cases pertain to the wind. Although this use is of secondary importance to our subject, it illustrates two characteristics of the view of a believing Israelite, who was also important for his belief in the working of God's Spirit. In both the various phenomena of the natural world and in the course of human society, he saw a cause: the living God. Seeing the wonders of the natural world awakened the glory of God in his creation (Psalm 104: 31). The separation of the waters of the Red Sea, as well as the lightning flashes and thunders in thunderstorms, were striking manifestations of the power of God for him. A violent storm, for example, gave rise to this praise, a song in which God's majesty is sung:

"The voice of the Lord is full of power ... full of glory" (Psalm 29: 4).

He knew the wind as a power that the Lord had created (Amos 4:13), of which He had established the strength (Job 28:25) and kept it under control (Proverbs 30: 4, Psalm 135: 7). Where one today observes a system of impersonal and unchanging laws of nature, he saw the hand of God. Because of this he had a strong sense of his dependence on Him:

"For in Him (the Creator God) we live, we move and we are" (Acts 17:28).

The wind, constantly blowing through the valleys and over the hills of his country, was an elementary and mysterious force for the believing Israelite. It came from all sorts of directions and turned in an inexplicable way. Sometimes he brought blessing, but sometimes also suffering. He could whiz across the fields like a soft, refreshing breeze, cool and pleasant for the laborers who were toiling and sweating on land. But also blowing a strong, destructive power, shedding unripe fruit from the trees and a proud cedar in the Lebanon mountains, or breaking a majestic oak in the meadows of Basan, as if they were fragile cane stalks. When the believing Israelite saw the trees moving, he said, "He is blowing his winds" (Psalm 147: 8). Every day people felt surrounded by this mysterious power, invisible and unpredictable, and therefore used the word ru'ach for both 'the wind' and 'breath' and for 'the Spirit of God'. The wind here was not so much the symbol or the likeness of the Spirit as the working of the many different inscrutable influences of the Lord in the natural world and in his dealings with his people. Precisely by always seeing the hand of the Lord in his surroundings, he was open and receptive to other workings of the Spirit of God. After all his observations, Solomon wrote:

"As you know no less about the way of the wind than the bones in the womb of a pregnant woman, you do not know the work of God, who makes everything" (Ecclesiastes 11: 5).

All text entries from the NBG Translation of 1951, unless otherwise stated
Studies

• Christ in prophecy
• Isaiah, basis of the gospel
• Angels, and other heavenly beings
• The Holy Spirit
• Foundations of faith
• The performance of Jesus
• Bible and Science
• Reading comprehension
• Explanation specific verses
• Kids and the Bible (4 - 6 years)
• You and the Bible (7-11 years)

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