A Classic Holiness Sermon

WHO IS THE HOLY SPIRIT?

By A. W. Tozer

We all use the word “spirit” a great deal. Now I want to tell you what I do and do not mean by it. In the first place, we rule out all of the secondary uses of the word “spirit.” I do not mean courage, as when we say, “That’s the spirit!” I don’t mean temper or temperament or pluck. I mean nothing so nebulous as that a Spirit is a specific and identifiable substance. If not definable, it can at least be described. Spirit is as real as matter, but it is another mode of being than matter.

We are all materialists to some extent. We are born of material parents into a material world; we are wrapped in material clothes and fed on material milk and lie in a material bed, and sleep and walk and live and talk and grow up in a world of matter. Matter presses upon us obtrusively and takes over our thinking so completely that we cannot speak of spirit without using materialistic terms. God made man out of the dust of the ground, and man has been dust ever since, and we can’t quite shake it off.

Matter is one mode of being; spirit is another mode of being as authentic as matter.
Material things have certain characteristics. For instance, they have weight. Everything that is material weighs something; it yields to gravitational pull. Then, matter has dimensions; you can measure the thing if it is made of matter. It has shape. It has an outline of some sort, no matter whether it is a molecule or an atom of whatever it may be, on up to the stars that shine. Then, it is extended in space. So I say that weight, dimension, shape and extension are the things that belong to matter. That is one mode of being; that is one way of existing.

One power of spirit, of any spirit (for I am talking about spirit now, not about the Holy Spirit), is its ability to penetrate. Matter bumps against other matter and stops; it cannot penetrate. Spirit can penetrate everything. For instance, your body is made of matter, and yet your spirit has penetrated your body completely. Spirit can penetrate spirit. It can penetrate personality – oh, if God’s people could only learn that spirit can penetrate personality, that your personality is not an impenetrable substance, but can be penetrated. A mind can be penetrated by thought, and the air can be penetrated by light, and material things and mental things, and even spiritual things, can be penetrated by spirit.

Now, what is the Holy Spirit? Not who, but what? The answer is that the Holy Spirit is a Being dwelling in another mode of existence. He has not weight, nor measure, nor size, nor any color, no extension in space, but He nevertheless exists as surely as you exist.
The Holy Spirit is not enthusiasm. I have found enthusiasm that hummed with excitement, and the Holy Spirit was nowhere to be found there at all; and I have found the Holy Ghost when there has not been much of what we call enthusiasm present. Neither is the Holy Spirit another name for genius. We talk about the spirit of Beethoven and say, “This or that artist played with great spirit. He interpreted the spirit of the master.” The Holy Spirit is none of these things. Now what is He?

He is a Person. Put that down in capital letters – that the Holy Spirit is not only a Being having another mode of existence, but He is Himself a Person, with all the qualities and powers of personality. He is not matter, but He is substance. The Holy Spirit is often thought of as a beneficent wind that blows across the Church. If you think of the Holy Spirit as being literally a wind, a breath, then you think of Him as non-personal and non-individual. But the Holy Spirit has will and intelligence and feeling and knowledge and sympathy and ability to love and see and think and hear and speak and desire the same as any person has.

You may say, “I believe all that. You surely don’t think you are telling us anything new!” I don’t hope to tell you very much that is new; I only hope to set the table for you, arranging the dishes a little better and a little more attractively so that you will be tempted to partake. Many of us have grown up on the theology that accepts the Holy Spirit as a Person, and even as a divine Person, but for some reason it never did us any good. We are as empty as ever, we are as joyless as ever, we are as far from peace as ever, we are as weak as ever. What I want to do is to tell you the old things, but while I am doing it, to encourage your heart to make them yours now, and to walk into the living, throbbing, vibrating heart of them, so that from here on your life will be altogether different.

So the Spirit is a Person. That’s what He is. Now, who is He?

The historic church has said that He is God. Let me quote from the Nicene Creed: “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, Which proceedeth from the Father and the Son, and with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified.”
That is what the Church believed about the Holy Ghost 1,600 years ago. Let’s be daring for a moment. Let’s try to think away this idea that the Holy Spirit is truly God. All right. Let’s admit something else into the picture. Let’s say, “I believe in one Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who with the Father and the Son is to be worshiped and glorified.” For the “Holy Ghost” let’s put in “Abraham, the father of the faithful, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified.” That is a monstrous thing, and in your heart already there is a shocked feeling. You couldn’t do it. You couldn’t admit a mere man into the holy circle of the Trinity! The Father and the Son are to be worshiped and glorified, and if the Holy Spirit is to be included here, He has to be equal to the Father and the Son.

Now let’s look at the Athanasian Creed. Thirteen hundred years old it is. Notice what it says about the Holy Spirit: “Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost.” Once more let’s do that terrible thing. Let’s introduce into this concept the name of a man. Let’s put David in there. Let’s say, “Such as the Father is, such also is the Son, and such is the hymnist David.” That would be a shock like cold water in the face! You can’t do that. And you can’t put the archangel Michael in there. You can’t say, “Such as the Father is, such also is the Son, and such is the archangel Michael.” That would be a monstrous inconsistency, and you know it!

I have told you what the great creeds of the church say. If the Bible taught otherwise, I would throw the creeds away. Nobody can come down the years with flowing beard, and with the dust of centuries upon him, and get me to believe a doctrine unless he can give me chapter and verse. I quote the creeds, but I preach them only so far as they summarize the teaching of the Bible on a given subject. If there were divergency from the teachings of the Word of God I would not teach the creed; I would teach the Book, for the Book is the source of all authentic information. However, our fathers did a mighty good job of going into the Bible, finding out what it taught, and then formulating the creeds for us.

Now let’s look at what our songwriters and our hymnists believed. Recall the words the quartet sang this evening:
“Holy Ghost, with light divine,
Shine upon this heart of mine.”

Let’s pray that prayer to Gabriel, to Saint Bernard, to D.L. Moody. Let’s pray that prayer to any man or any creature that has ever served God. You can’t pray that kind of prayer to a creature. To put those words into a hymn means that the one about whom you are speaking must be God.
“Holy Ghost, with power divine,
Cleanse this guilty heart of mine.”

Who can get into the intricate depths of a human soul, into the deep confines of a human spirit and cleanse it? Nobody but the God who made it! The hymn writer who said “Cleanse this guilty heart of mine” meant that the Holy Ghost to whom he prayed was God.
“Holy Spirit, all divine,
Dwell within this heart of mine;
Cast down every idol throne,
Reign supreme – and reign alone.”

The church has sung that now for about one hundred years. “Reign supreme – and reign alone.” Could you pray that to anybody you know? The man who wrote that hymn believed that the Holy Ghost was God, otherwise he wouldn’t have said, “Reign supreme and reign all by Yourself.” That is an invitation no man can make to anybody, except the Divine One, except God.

Now the Scriptures. Notice that I am trying to establish the truth that the Holy Spirit is not only a Person, but that He is a divine Person; not only a divine Person, but God.
In Psalm 139 the hymnist attributes omnipresence to the Holy Ghost. He says, “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” and he develops throughout the 139th Psalm, in language that is as beautiful as a sunrise and as musical as the wind through the willows, the idea that the Spirit is everywhere, having the attributes of deity. He must be deity, for no creature could have the attributes of deity.

In Hebrews (9:14) there is attributed to the Holy Ghost that which is never attributed to an archangel, or a seraphim, or a cherubim, or an angel, or an apostle, or a martyr, or a prophet, or a patriarch, or anyone that has ever been created by the hand of God. It says, “Through the eternal Spirit,” and every theologian knows that eternity is an attribute of no creature which deity has ever formed. The angels are not eternal; that is, they had a beginning, and all created things had beginning. As soon as the word “eternal” is used about a being, it immediately establishes the fact that he never had a beginning, is not a creature at all, but God. Therefore, when the Holy Ghost says, “the eternal Spirit” about Himself, He is calling Himself God.

Again, the baptismal formula in Matthew 28 says, “Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Now try to imagine putting the name of a man in there. “Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Apostle Paul.” You couldn’t think it! It is horrible to contemplate! No man can be admitted into that closed circle of deity. We baptize in the name of the Father and the Son, because the Son is equal with the Father in His Godhead, and we baptize in the name of the Holy Ghost because the Holy Ghost is also equal with the Father and the Song.

You say, “You are just a Trinitarian and we are Trinitarians already.” Yes, I know it, but once again I tell you that I am trying to throw emphasis upon this teaching.

How many blessed truths have gotten snowed under. People believe them, but they are just not being taught, that is all. I think of our experience this morning. Here was a man and his wife, a very fine intelligent couple from another city. They named the church to which they belonged, and I instantly said, “That is a fine church!” “Oh, yes,” they said, “but they don’t teach what we came over here for.” They came over because they were ill and wanted to be scripturally anointed for healing. So I got together two missionaries, two preachers, and an elder, and we anointed them and prayed for them. If you were to go to that church where they attend and say to the preacher, “Do you believe that the Lord answers prayer and heals the sick?” he would reply, “Sure, I do!” He believes it, but he doesn’t teach it, and what you don’t believe strongly enough to teach doesn’t do you any good.

It is the same with the fullness of the Holy Ghost. Evangelical Christianity believes it, but nobody experiences it. It lies under the snow, forgotten. I am praying that God may be able to melt away the ice from this blessed truth, and let it spring up again alive, that the Church and the people who hear may get some good out of it and not merely say “I believe” while it is buried under the snow of inactivity and nonattention.

Let us recapitulate. Who is the Spirit? The Spirit is God, existing in another mode of being than ourselves. He exists as a spirit and not as matter, for He is not matter, but He is God. He is a Person. It was so believed by the whole Church of Christ down through the years. It was so sung by the hymnists back in the days of the first hymn writers. It is so taught in the Book, all through the Old Testament and the New, and I have given you only a few proof texts. I could spend the evening reading Scripture stating this same thing.

Now what follows from all this? Ah, there is an unseen Deity present, a knowing, feeling Personality, and He is indivisible from the Father and the Son, so that if you were to be suddenly transferred to heaven itself you wouldn’t be any closer to God than you are now, for God is already here. Changing your geographical location would not bring you any nearer to God nor God any nearer to you, because the indivisible Trinity is present, and all that the Son is the Holy Ghost is, and all that the Father is the Holy Ghost is, and the Holy Ghost is in his Church.

What will we find Him to be like? He will be exactly like Jesus. You have read your New Testament, and you know what Jesus is like, and the Holy Spirit is exactly like Jesus, for Jesus was God and the Spirit is God, and the Father is exactly like the Son; and you can know what Jesus is like by knowing what the Father is like, and you can know what the Spirit is like by knowing what Jesus is like.

If Jesus were to come walking down this aisle there would be no stampede for the door. Nobody would scream and be frightened. We might begin to weep for sheer joy and delight that He had so honored us, but nobody would be afraid of Jesus; no mother with a crying babe would ever have to be afraid of Jesus; no poor harlot being dragged by the hair of her head had to be afraid of Jesus – nobody! Nobody ever needs to be afraid of Jesus, because He is the epitome of love, kindliness, geniality, warm attractiveness and sweetness. And that is exactly what the Holy Ghost is, for He is the Spirit of the Father and the Son. Amen.

From, How To Be Filled By the Holy Spirit, by A.W. Tozer (Christian Publications, Camp Hill, Pennsylvania NO PUBLICATION DATE WAS LISTED).