Holy Spirit

Heydiho everyone! The discussion we had on Sunday unveiled lots and lots of layers to God's spirit / Holy Spirit so hopefully what follows will make crystal sense!

The reason we decided to have a look at the Holy Spirit was because of a digression in a previous GRG where we wondered if the disciples only got the Holy Spirit after Jesus died? Before we went into this though we needed to go back to the basic basics and look at what actually is the Holy Spirit?

Simply put the Holy Spirit is God's power. Holy means set apart / sanctified / special and Spirit signifies power so the Holy Spirit is God's power used for a special purpose. The Holy Spirit comes from God and is used in various ways throughout scripture. A selection follows:

• Perform miracles (Romans 15 v 19 - “by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit”)

• The Bible was written by inspiration through the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1 v 21 - “For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit”)

• Jesus healed people by the Holy Spirit (Acts 10 v 38 - “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him”)

The first mention of Spirit appears in Genesis 1 v 2 - “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

We then considered whether the Holy Spirit is a separate entity?

• The above passage in Gen 1 describes the spirit as hovering

• Matthew 3 v 16 - “As soon as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him.” This shows that the Holy Spirit was given a bodily form for this vision.

• Another example is when Christ is described as being full of the Spirit

• Similarly Acts 2 v 17 - “I will pour out my spirit on all people”

The Spirit sometimes appears in a bodily form (eg like a dove), sometimes as flames of fire, and sometimes people are described as being full of the spirit! It is not directly referred to as a person, although it is personified in some places. But this does not necessarily mean it is a person. For example, wisdom is personified in Proverbs – referred to as she, and so on – but we do not propose that wisdom is a separate being. Likewise, from the evidence in the Bible, it takes a giant leap to conclude that the Holy Spirit is a separate entity. Rather, it is the power that comes from God.

We then looked at the difference between the Spirit and the Holy Spirit.

In both cases “spirit” is a translation of one original word. In the latter there is an additional word, translated “holy”. We discussed lots of passages:

2 Kings 2 v 9 - Elisha speaking to Elijah said “Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit” - Elisha knew God was with Elijah and wanted to have the same spiritual mind as Elijah so that he too could carry out God's purpose.

Ecclesiastes 12 v 7 - “the Spirit returns to God who sent it” - In this case Spirit is breath. God uses his power to keep us alive and takes breath away when we die. The same spirit is also in animals to keep them alive and when they die, breath is taken from them too – Ecclesiastes 3 v 20 “All go to the same place, all comes from dust and to dust all return.” So we can take from this that every living being has been given a portion of the Spirit of God – it is God's power that created us and sustains us.

Spirit means more than this as can be seen in Mark 2 v 8 - “...Jesus knew in his spirit...” - this is referring to Jesus' thoughts. The key to remember is that the root power of everything is God's power and so when “Jesus knew in his spirit” it was ultimately God that gave Jesus the ability to think and so here the spirit was given for Jesus to make up his mind.

Romans 8 is a great chapter for explaining more about the spirit. The first few verses describe two ways that we can choose – the way of sin (which is the fleshly way) or the way of the spirit (which is God's way). So we saw earlier that everyone has the spirit of God in them because God breathed into man's nostrils and keeps us alive. This chapter adds another aspect to the spirit in that, as verse 14 says “those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” Therefore we need to LIVE by the Spirit. Those who do not live by the Spirit are essentially just like the animals who have the spirit of God, in that they are alive and breathing, but they do not live by God's way or try to have the same mindset of God. And so they die, with absolutely no hope or future.

Another passage we looked at briefly was how to explain Rev 22 v 17 - “The Spirit and the bride say 'Come!'” Roy helpfully re-worded this to be God's power and God's people – God's purpose is that all people come to him to be his bride.

OK, so with all that, we tried to summarise the different layers of the Spirit

1. Spirit – is the power of God – everyone has this, from man down to mouses (as Rodge likes to say!) This is the spirit that gives us breath and keeps us alive.

2. We need to choose to live by the spirit to fulfil the purpose of God and that we might have

   life and peace (Rom 8 v 6)

3. The Holy Spirit which is used for a specific reason to advance God's purpose – it is special / separate.

We then had a look at specific examples of the Holy Spirit to find out what made these occasions separate.

The Holy Spirit occurs mainly in the New Testament but did exist in the Old Testament as Mark 12 v 36 says “David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared...”

A few examples of Holy Spirit

• Mary was with child by the Holy Spirit

• Jesus baptised with the Holy Spirit

• Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the unforgivable sin (that is denying God's power to save you, not acknowledging the need to repent – how can you be forgiven if you don't repent?)

• Apostles received Holy Spirit to be God's witnesses (Acts 1 v 8)

The Holy Spirit was given by God to the apostles in the New Testament so that they could preach effectively and spread God's word to all. The apostles also had the ability to pass on the Holy Spirit as can be seen in Acts 8 v 15-16 – Peter and John could pass on the Holy Spirit but Philip could not (Philip was one of the seven chosen to assist the widows in Acts 7 v 1-7 and not an “original” apostle, so to speak).

As a quick summary, the spirit is active today to keep us alive (James 2 v 26 says that the body without the spirit is dead). Everyone has the Spirit of God and can choose to live by it and seek to fulfil God's purpose. However not everyone has the Holy Spirit....

Next time we will be looking at the Holy Spirit gifts and also discussing the challenge which Graham set for us at the end of the evening:

Challenge

Harry Whittaker wrote a pamphlet entitled, “Why I am not a Pentecostal” and put forward an interesting suggestion in it. Pentecostals basically believe that they have the Holy Spirit, that they can cast out demons and they believe in faith healing. Here is the suggestion:

When Jonah went to Nineveh, God said that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days. However this did not happen. The people repented of their wickedness and so the destruction of Nineveh was deferred.

Using this pattern of thought, Harry's suggestion is that God's original plan was for Jesus to come back in AD70, using passages such as Matt 24 v 34 - “I tell you the truth, this generation shall not pass away until all these things have happened.” There was a sense of urgency about the return of Christ, so now 2000 years later, the question is asked was the return of Jesus deferred? Discuss...

Amanda (signed in as Rodge!)

More on paradise

Just to add to Phil's wonderful post, a couple of further points that help with the thief on the cross passage. First of all the context! The thief asked Jesus to remember him when He came in His kingdom - the thief's understanding and expectation was that the kingdom was to be established at a time future to him. This then helps with the next point. The thief asks Jesus to remember him at this future time. Allow me to paraphrase Jesus' reply: "Remember you when I come? I'll remember you NOW. You will be with me in paradise.

Paradise and Stuff

Hey there! Please cast your minds back to when we last had getting ready group (VERY far back as this post is ridiculously late, sorry folks!) when we had a wee look at mentions of 'Paradise' in the bible - although, being naturally deviant and chaotic people, or discussions led elsewhere also!

Which is why we started with Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12 instead!

The verse reads:

"How art thou fallen from heavan, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!"

Now, with a little closer inspection, this 'Lucifer', which is only mentioned ONCE in the bible, can be seen to be something other than a supernatural devil. 'Son of the morning' implies that a metaphor is being made using nothing other than the morning star, Venus! In verse 16 the word 'man' is used - whereas the supernatural devil is not seen to be a man, but a fallen angel with close to god-like power. In fact, the context indicates that this 'Lucifer' is none other than the King of Babylon! Falling from 'heaven' can be more accurately translated as falling from a high place, i.e. falling from power. This is also the case in Luke 10:18 and Isaiah 34:4. So rather than this being a fallen angel, Isaiah is simply talking of the King of Babylon falling from power and metaphorically describing him as the morning star!



We then looked at Luke 10:15:

"And thou, Capernaum, which are exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell."

The idea of condemnation in the sense of heaven/hell after death is unlikely here, as we know that we are individually judged, and not as a city.



Then we had a little digression and discussed whether the disciples were given the Holy Spirit during Jesus's lifetime or only after he died. We resolved to discuss this next time along with the Holy Spirit and Spirit Gifts.



The next point we discussed was Luke 23:43.

"And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day thou shalt be with me in paradise."

There were a few possibilities here. One of them was that as there is no punctuation in the original Hebrew, the verse could have actually read:

"Verily I say unto thee today, thou shalt be with me in paradise."

Another point is that in Genesis 2:17, God tells Adam and Eve that they will die the same day that they eat the fruit - this does not happen, but when they eat the fruit, that day it becomes a reality and a certainty that they WILL die! Therefore the same could be argued in Luke: that Jesus was saying in that day it had become a certainty that the thief would be in 'paradise' with him! From Revelation 2:7, we can see that 'paradise' seems to mean 'Eden'. As we know the kingdom will be just like before the fall of man (i.e. Eden) then we can see that Jesus is telling the thief that today it has been decided that the thief will be in the kingdom with him! Another point is that once the thief had died, it would feel like the same day when he was resurrected, as we know nothing when we die.

Another point we looked at was the 'third heaven' in 2 Corinthians 12:2-4:

"I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one cought up to the third heaven."

Perhaps the third 'heaven' indicates the third order of things, or way in which the world works - i.e. before the flood, after the flood, and in the kingdom.

The next thing we looked at was on old favourite, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-21.
The first point we had was that neither 'heaven' nor immortal souls are mentioned in this parable. Souls are supposed to be insubstantial - yet Lazarus is 'carried', so it must be talking about an actual body. Also in v 26 we read that there is a big gulf between where the rich man is and where Lazarus is. Yet they speak to each other! Also Abraham is mentioned in Hebrews 11 - a chapter of people of faith who haven't yet received their reward. If he hasn't received his reward, he must be dead and in the ground - meaning he has no body and no bosom! We can conclude that this is a parable, and should not be read simply and taken literally - we don't take any of Jesus's other parables literally, why should we do that with this one? The lesson the parable conveys is far more important than the literal story. In this case, the lesson is that we should care for those around us in need, because we would want them to do that for us if our situations were reversed.

Lastly, we had an addendum to last week about eternal fire -

In Jude v7, Sodom and Gomorrha are said to be suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. But we know that they are under the salt sea and definitely not on fire! Therefore they are not everlastingly on fire, but were everlastingly DESTROYED by fire! Which ties in with the explanation we had for eternal fire we had last week!

Ta for reading folks! I may mave missed things out, so any additions, questions or general annoyance, please post on this very forum!