The Person and Work of The Holy SpiritTorrey, R. A. (Reuben Archer)
Religion
The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit
Torrey, R. A. (Reuben Archer)
Holy Spirit
What are the distinctive characteristics, or marks, of personality?
Knowledge, feeling or emotion, and will. Any entity that thinks and feels
and wills is a person. When we say that the Holy Spirit is a person, there
are those who understand us to mean that the Holy Spirit has hands and
feet and eyes and ears and mouth, and so on, but these are not the
characteristics of personality but of corporeity. All of these
characteristics or marks of personality are repeatedly ascribed to the
Holy Spirit in the Old and New Testaments. We read in 1 Cor. ii. 10, 11,
“But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit
searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth
the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the
things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” Here knowledge is
ascribed to the Holy Spirit. We are clearly taught that the Holy Spirit is
not merely an influence that illuminates our minds to comprehend the truth
but a Being who Himself knows the truth.
In 1 Cor. xii. 11, we read, “But all these worketh that one and the
selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as _He will_.” Here will
is ascribed to the Spirit and we are taught that the Holy Spirit is not a
power that we get hold of and use according to our will but a Person of
sovereign majesty, who uses us according to His will. This distinction is
of fundamental importance in our getting into right relations with the
Holy Spirit. It is at this very point that many honest seekers after power
and efficiency in service go astray. They are reaching out after and
struggling to get possession of some mysterious and mighty power that they
can make use of in their work according to their own will. They will never
get possession of the power they seek until they come to recognize that
there is not some Divine power for them to get hold of and use in their
blindness and ignorance but that there is a Person, infinitely wise, as
well as infinitely mighty, who is willing to take possession of them and
use them according to His own perfect will. When we stop to think of it,
we must rejoice that there is no Divine power that beings so ignorant as
we are, so liable to err, to get hold of and use. How appalling might be
the results if there were. But what a holy joy must come into our hearts
when we grasp the thought that there is a Divine Person, One who never
errs, who is willing to take possession of us and impart to us such gifts
as He sees best and to use us according to His wise and loving will.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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