Person of the Holy Spirit Flashcards
How does our Lord’s teaching concerning the Holy Spirit indicate that the Holy Spirit is a person?
John 14-16 Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit as if He is speaking of a personal friend. He refers to Him as that One (Greek: ekeinos) using the masculine personal pronoun. Jesus described the Holy Spirit as “another helper” who would follow Jesus’s and take up the tasks of teaching, guiding and leading, Finally, the Holy Spirit engages in behaviors and has emotions of a person. The Holy Spirit communicates, can be grieved, has a will and takes initiative.
Why is belief in the personhood of the Holy Spirit essential to orthodoxy?
The personhood of the Spirit is essential to orthodoxy because it preserves the triune nature of God. This establishes that acts of relationship worship, and prayer by the believer towards God the father or God the son is conducted in obedient relationship with the Spirit, for He is as personal as the Father and the Son.
What are the gifts of the Holy Spirit?
The gifts of the Holy Spirit are empowerments for building up the church and extending the Kingdom of God.
How are these gifts given to the Church?
These are given to the individual believers who serve as stewards of them with the obligation to use them for the good of others and the witness of the church.
Differentiate between the fruit and the gifts of the Spirit
The fruit of the Spirit is a demonstration of the development of a person’s character being transformed to the image of Christ. The gifts of the spirit are demonstrations (literally a showing forth) of divine power performed by the Holy Spirit through the believer.
In what measure are the gifts that were exercised by the Apostles manifest today?
Because spiritual gifts were given to build up the church, the body of Christ, as long as the church is under construction, and since the church is still under construction, spiritual gifts are needed in the same breadth and measure as they were in the days of the apostles. A day will come when spiritual gifts will no longer be needed (1 Corinthians 13:8). However, I do not believe that this day has yet come.
What is the relationship between the baptism with the Holy Spirit and the filling with the Holy Spirit? Give biblical support to your answer.
Every believer is baptized with the Holy Spirit.
1 Corinthians 12:13 “For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”
The baptism sets the stage for the filling of the Holy Spirit.
Acts 4:31 “After they (the believers) prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
Every believer is commanded to be filled with the Holy Spirit. But the need for this experience is continual and not everyone who has been baptized will be filled at every moment.
Ephesians 5 “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit…”
