Who is the Spirit? The Spirit is God (Acts 5:3-4, 2 Cor. 3:16-18, John 4:24). In 1 Corinthians 2:11, a spirit is to man as the Holy Spirit is to God. As man has a spirit, so does God. The Spirit is of God the Father and He is also the “Spirit of Christ” (Rom. 8:9, 1 Cor. 2:10-11, 1 Pet. 1:11). The Spirit is both the Spirit of the Father and of the Christ. How can this be? How can God be manifested as three persons? To ask “How can God…” is to ask a question that may not be answered here or in the hereafter. The Spirit is also the “Comforter” or in Greek the parakleitos, which means He is “one who is called beside” being the Helper, the Comforter, and the Advocate (John 14:26, 15:26).

No man can fully comprehend the Universe and certainly not the Creator of the Universe. All one can say is that it is true. God has a Spirit yet the Spirit of God the Father cannot be completely comprehended. See, the Spirit operates somewhat apart from God the Father and somehow outside of the known laws of nature (Gen. 1:2, Acts 8:39, Rom. 8:11). How is this? As affirmed before, it is impossible to fully comprehend God the Father, and this is certainly true of the Spirit and Christ, and to fully understand how the Spirit operates apart from God the Father while being the Spirit of God is something we can only understand as much as the Scriptures reveal. This is not to say that the Holy Spirit should not and cannot be understood to some extent, but that there are secret things that belong unto God (Deut. 29:29).

Apparently, the Spirit of God is not completely parallel to the spirit of man. We would not refer to our spirits as operating apart from ourselves as another person, but the Spirit of God does act separate from God the Father and as another person as is presented throughout the Scriptures in Matthew 3:16-17, 28:19, Acts 5:3-4, and Hebrews 9:14. These Scriptures also present the Spirit being one of the three persons of God, which is another fact that is not completely comprehensible.

John 17:17 teaches that the Word is the Truth while 1 John 5:7 teaches that the Spirit is the Truth. Which is it? With these Scriptures, one could err in claiming that the Word and the Spirit are completely the same. Are the Word and the Spirit the same? Evidently from these Scriptures, the Word and the Spirit are the same in some sense though these two are separate being that the Word is the sword of the Spirit and that the Word is God became flesh being Jesus Christ, who the Spirit ascended upon (John 1:1, 14; Eph. 6:17; Heb. 4:12). The Word in the flesh is the person Jesus Christ and the Word is also an instrument of the Holy Spirit, the sword of the Spirit. Still, the Spirit of God is hard to understand even when revealed in Scripture such is also true of the Word in the flesh being God and man. All one can know is the truth that both the Word and the Spirit are the Truth while the Word is the sword of the Spirit and the Word in the flesh is Jesus. As the Scriptures reveal, the Spirit and the Word have some parallels in Scripture by indwelling and operation, but these are not the same. The connection between the Word and the Spirit is undeniable.

It is certainly clear that the Spirit is a person of God. He is of the Father and the Son while yet separate. The Spirit is not fully comprehensible, and He has a very close relationship to the Word of God. More can certainly be understand about the Spirit in knowing the works that are characteristic of Him. Let us continue to study how the Spirit uses miracles (part 3) and God’s Word (part 4).