What Does The Bible Say?

Mike Owens


docbrat@yahoo.com


Holy Spirit
Who or what is the Holy Spirit?
Most Christians today talk about the Holy Spirit in one form or another. It is perhaps one of the most controversial topics in the Bible. This group over here say, The Holy Spirit is some empowering force used by God during Creation.
The group across Town say, The Holy Spirit is the third member of the Trinity .
This group over here say, Yes God gave His Spirit on Pentecost for the early Church so they could evangelize the world, but the Holy Spirit is no longer needed in the Church since we now have the completed Bible.
The group across Town say, Yes God gave His Spirit on Pentecost to the early Church, and we still have the same access to power as they did.

Who is right? Perhaps the answer to this lies in understanding exactly who or what the Holy Spirit is.

In the first chapter of Genesis we have our first encounter with the Holy Spirit. This is the Creation week, and God is describing how He created all that is from the beginning. In verse two we read:

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

The best way to understand this verse is to see the earth and the rest of Creation as unformed and unfilled, all the material is there but without substance. The word for hovered is rachap and is only found in the piel, or in the intensive form in the active voice of the simple verb. It gives the idea of a mother hen fluttering over her nest1. So God's Spirit hovered over the waters, stirring and mixing and forming and filling. It is not necessary to explain here that an inanimate force can not hover.

The word here for spirit is ruach. The basic idea behind this word is the movement of air. From this we derive the idea to breathe in living creatures. Breath is that which gives life, in the case of man it is that which was imparted from God2 which gives life, that which sets him apart from the animals which do not have this breath of life from God. That this breath is the Spirit of God can be seen in the Gospel of John:

And with that He breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit.
Jn 20:22

This would imply that the ruach is an active and creative movement from God which gives life, but still something inanimate. So let's look at a few other verses where ruach is used.

The connotations of breath include power (1Kg 10:5), with this verse in mind, we read that the Disciples were to wait until they received power.
Breath also signifies courage, to lose one's spirit is to lose one's courage (Jos 2:11, 5:1), and value, as in someone sighing out in pride or adoration (La 4:20).

It also suggests emotions such as aggressiveness (Is 25:4) or anger (Pr 29:11) 3. These are all things found in an animate being, not an inanimate force.

The unique feature of man as found in Genesis 2:7, is that he is a spiritual being. Man is comprised of flesh, or that which has substance (the dust of the ground); spirit, or that which imparts life (breath of life); and soul, or that which is formed when life is imparted to flesh (the man became a living being).

Because of this closeness of spirit and soul, many would make the two synonymous terms, and indeed many verses do suggest this idea, but they can be shown to be two seperate and distinct parts of the human makeup. We read that man descends to hell when he dies.

What man can live and not see death, or save himself from the power of the grave? Selah
Ps 89:48

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.
Ec 9:10

The word for grave here is sheol, and is the same as the Greek word hades. This is the place of the dead, whether of the righteous or unrighteous, whether of torment or pleasure. It is an intermediate state (as if a subterranean retreat), including its accessories and inmates, between death and resurrection, divided into two parts where the righteous go to Paradise and the unrighteous go to Torment4. Yet man's spirit returns to God who first gave it to him.

and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
Ec 12:7

Thus we can more fully understand the statements in the Bible where we read that the dead in Christ will rise first (1Th 4:16), but Christ will bring with Him those who had fallen asleep in Him (1Th 4:14). In other words, those who have died in Christ have descended into Sheol, while their spirit has returned to God. When Christ returns to earth to establish His kingdom, He will at that time bring their spirits back with Him and re-unite them with their souls when they rise to meet Him in the air.

In conclusion, we see that the spirit of man is that which imparts reason, will, and conscience, and makes man immortal. It is that life-power which has its vitality grounded in itself. It is that which gives the soul, or the seat of man's emotions and desires, its distinctive personality, the soul being subjective to the spirit. Therefore the spirit is personal, in other words, an individual being, and in like manner the Holy Spirit is that individual Being comprising the third member of the Trinity.

Next
Home


1) like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions.
De 32:11, This is the only other place this word is used in the Bible.

2) the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Ge 2:7

And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so.
Ge 1:24

The words for breathed and living soul are from the same root napach: the concept of blowing forcefully. The word for living soul is nepesh and is a derivative of napash, a denominative verb of this root found in the niphal and means to take breath. There is no suggestion here that man shares in the divine nature of God, only that he is a spiritual being like God.

3) The actual wording here is all of his spirit ruach brings out a fool but the wise holding back quiets it. Some other translations are:

A fool uttereth all his mind: but a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards. KJV
A fool uttereth all his anger; But a wise man keepeth it back and stilleth it. AS
A fool always loses his temper, But a wise man holds it back. NAS
A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control. NIV

4) Lk 16:19-31