Amen, Hi Carry_Your_Name
We now come to a central question: Who or what is the Holy Spirit? Many people answer this in the following way: “He is the third person of the Trinity.” However, close examination of Scripture reveals a totally different picture.
Satan counterfeits
every aspect of true Christianity. The truth about who and what the Holy Spirit is would be no exception. It serves the devil’s purpose to deceive people into believing that the Holy Spirit is a person. He knows that if he can convince people to believe this, they will never learn their own awesome potential. Satan knows that human beings will ultimately be offered an opportunity that he will never receive.
Is the Holy Spirit a Person?
We saw that the supposed three members—“persons”—within the trinity are actually
one being. But is the Holy Spirit a separate person? As in previous chapters, earlier points will be repeated in a different context. To explain the full truth of the matter, we must examine many scriptures.
Simply put, a person is a person. Three persons cannot be more or less than three persons. Each is separate and unique. If the Holy Spirit is a person, it cannot be part of a triune godhead of one being. Some will say that it is not accurate to label God as a person, however, most trinitarians do. Of course, they then wander off into abstract, philosophical ideas. Again, many ignore II Corinthians 11:3: “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the
simplicity that is in Christ.”
To understand the fallacy of the argument that the Holy Spirit is a person, we start by examining I Kings 3:16-27. In this well-known account, there was a dispute over who was the rightful mother of a baby. Solomon offered the following solution: Cut the baby in two and give each woman half. Obviously, a person cannot be cut in half and live. Likewise, individual human body parts do not regenerate, and will eventually corrupt, if they are cut off.
Here is the point. We have already explained how the trinity concept does not permit Christ to “extricate” Himself to come to Earth as Savior. Neither can the Holy Spirit be locked into the Father and Son in the same way. If it is a person, it is separate.
God expects Christians to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (II Pet. 3:18). If the Holy Spirit is a person, how would it be
increased within the Christian who has it? For a person to increase the amount of God’s Spirit within him, he has to exercise it. How could this be done if the Spirit were a person? It is either present or it is not, with no way to be increased or decreased. Take a moment and read the parable of the pounds found in Luke 19:11-26. In this parable, Christ is instructing His listeners to increase the amount of the Holy Spirit within them.
(To learn more about how the Spirit of God grows in a person, read our vital article
“Exercise God’s Spirit!”)
In Psalm 51:11, confessing his sin, King David implored God, “Take not Your Holy Spirit from me.” If the Holy Spirit were a distinct person, with a mind and consciousness of its own, would David have not said, “Holy Spirit, do not leave me”? Would the Holy Spirit not have the power to come and go as “He” pleases? Luke 11:13 makes plain that the Holy Spirit is
given by God to those who ask for it. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is not a person that comes of its own volition, but rather is seen to be something that God gives.
In this regard, notice that in Acts 8:18-20, Peter did not rebuke Simon Magus for referring to the Holy Spirit as
power, as opposed to a person, when this man sought this “power” for himself. He rebuked Simon because he thought he could “purchase” such a power with money.