IS THE HOLY SPIRIT A DISTINCT PERSON OF THE TRINITY

The cults insist that the Holy Spirit is just a mere impersonal force, but the Scriptural evidence shows us otherwise:

·       ACT 13:2 - As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, “Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

Impersonal forces do not have intelligence and do not speak. The Spirit intercedes for us according to His superior wisdom. Impersonal forces like the wind do not have wisdom:

·       ROM 8:26 – Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses.  For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groaning which cannot be uttered.

To intercede, the Spirit must be a distinct Person. It doesn’t make any sense that God would intercede with Himself.

Jesus referred to the Spirit as ANOTHER Helper. That suggests that He is distinct from the Father and the Son:

·       JOH 14:16 “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever –

·       JOH 15:26 “But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me.

“Spirit” (“pneuma” – Greek) is neuter, while “He” (referring to the Spirit) is clearly not. Of course, this is a masculine pronoun and, ordinarily, it is grammatically incorrect to be associated with a neuter noun. Instead, “pneuma” should take the neuter pronoun “it.” However, the writers of the NT opted to be theologically correct and grammatically incorrect to demonstrate that the Spirit is a Person and not an “it.”

The Spirit has His own authority. Impersonal forces do not:

·       JOH 16:7 “Nevertheless I tell you the truth.  It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you…16:13-14 “However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.  He will glorify Me, for He will take what is Mine and declare it to you.

·       1 Cor. 12:11 But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills.

This doctrine is not a NT invention. Instead, we find that the Spirit as a distinct Person even in the OT:
 

·       Isaiah 63:9-11 In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them; In His love and in His mercy He redeemed them, and He lifted them and carried them all the days of old. But they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit…Then His people remembered the days of old, of Moses. Where is He who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of His flock? Where is He who put His Holy Spirit in the midst of them,

·       2 Samuel 23:1-2 Now these are the last words of David: The oracle of David, the son of Jesse, the oracle of the man who was raised on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, the sweet psalmist of Israel: “The Spirit of the LORD speaks by me; his word is on my tongue.”

·       Ezekiel 11:5 And the Spirit of the LORD fell upon me, and he said to me, “Say, Thus says the LORD: So you think, O house of Israel. For I know the things that come into your mind.

The Spirit sends, speaks, and is rebelled against. We cannot rebel against an impersonal force, as we cannot rebel against the wind:

·       Ezekiel 2:1-3  And he said to me, “Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak with you.” And as he spoke to me, the Spirit entered into me and set me on my feet, and I heard him speaking to me. And he said to me, “Son of man, I send you to the people of Israel, to nations of rebels, who have rebelled against me. They and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day.”

PERSONALITY OF THE SPIRIT

The Spirit has emotions. Impersonal forces do not:

·       Ephes. 4:30 Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 

The Spirit is vulnerable to offense. Impersonal forces are not

·       Acts 5:3-4 But Peter said, "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control? Why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God [the Spirit]."

·       Acts 7:51 "You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did.

·       Hebrews 10:29 How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?

·       Matthew 12:31-32 "Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.”

Yet the cults call us “liars” and “deceivers” for maintaining this. They also claim that we have borrowed this doctrine from paganism. I hope that the above evidence will put such charges to rest.

EVIDENCE THAT CONSCIOUSNESS DOESN’T REQUIRE A LIVING PHYSICAL BODY

What if consciousness exists apart from a physical body? Many would then have to revise their worldview. They would have to acknowledge the reality of the world of spirits and surrender the worldview that they had held – naturalism, materialism, and perhaps even atheism. Instead, it is easier to dogmatically proclaim that spiritual realities are not within the purview of science.

However, it seems that science can speak to the question of consciousness existing apart from a body:

·            Of the 2,060 patients from Austria, the US and the UK interviewed for the study who had survived cardiac arrest, almost 40 per cent said that they recall some form of awareness after being pronounced clinically dead. http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/670781/There-IS-life-after-DEATH-Scientists-reveal-shock-findings-from-groundbreaking-study

·            Of those who said they had experienced some awareness, just two per cent said their experience was consistent with the feeling of an outer body experience – where one feels completely aware and can hear and see what’s going on around them after death. Almost half of the respondents said the experience was not of awareness, but rather of fear.

One man was able to recall the events in the hospital with “eerie accuracy” after he had “died temporarily.”

This finding has often been reported but often ignored. Why? Perhaps Dr. Parnia’s response is illuminative:

·            “The detailed recollections of visual awareness in this case were consistent with verified events."

·            "This is significant, since it has often been assumed that experiences in relation to death are likely hallucinations or illusions.”

These findings are not unusual. Wikipedia reports:

·            In a review article B. Greyson refers to Van Lommel's study (as well as other sources) and mentions that there have been "documented and corroborated accurate perceptions by near-death experiencers of incidents that occurred during the time when the brain was fully anesthetized or deprived of blood flow, as during cardiac arrest or respiratory arrest". B. Greyson also mentions that apparently some patients reported events that occurred beyond what their sense organs could perceive and that would have been impossible for them to perceive even in a conscious state. (Greyson, Bruce (2015-11-09). "Western Scientific Approaches to Near-Death Experiences". Humanities. 4 (4): 775–796. doi:10.3390/h4040775.)

·            Another review article reports that 41 (12%) of the cardiac arrest patients interviewed provided accounts similar to the Sam Parnia's 2001 study. Also, the same review article. One patient had a conventional out of body experience where he reported being able to watch and recall events during the time of his cardiac arrest. His claims were confirmed by hospital personnel. “This did not appear consistent with hallucinatory or illusory experiences, as the recollections were compatible with real and verifiable rather than imagined events”. (Parnia, Sam (2014-11-01). "Death and consciousness--an overview of the mental and cognitive experience of death". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1330: 75–93. doi:10.1111/nyas.12582)

These findings point powerfully to another reality, a spiritual reality, outside of the physical. If this is so, then the existence of a supreme Spirit Being from which all the spiritual entities derive their existence, becomes very probable.

P. van Lommel concluded:

·            How could a clear consciousness outside one's body be experienced at the moment that the brain no longer functions during a period of clinical death with flat EEG?... (the) NDE pushes at the limits of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind-brain relation. (van Lommel P, van Wees R, Meyers V, Elfferich I. (2001) "Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A prospective Study in the Netherlands" in The Lancet, December 15; 358(9298):2039–45)

However, such findings are ignored, because they do not fit into the prevailing materialistic paradigm – that nothing exists outside of the physical world. To suggest otherwise opens the door to considerations about the existence of God – an inconvenient and uncomfortable truth.

IF I AM SAVED, WHY DO I STILL SIN?

If you are anything like me, you have doubted that your life has measured up to the Biblical portraits of a life buried in Christ (Galatians 2:20). Here is one verse that might cause us to doubt our conversion:

·       Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Corinthians 5:17; ESV)

While encouraging, this verse can also be discouraging. We tend to wonder if we are really a new creation. Why? It seems that “the old” has not passed away, and that we are still tormented by many of the same sins that had afflicted us before we came to Christ. We are left to wonder, “Is Scripture is wrong or am I not saved.” Both of these possibilities are distressing.

However, I think that there is another possibility – that this verse refers to a renewed heart/spirit within us and not to our sin infested flesh; one part is born again, while the other part is not. This idea suggests that God has made a beachhead in our spirit, but not yet in our flesh, even though our body serves as both the temple of our spirit and the Holy Spirit.

First, let’s observe the evidence that we are comprised of two parts. We find this illustrated as early as creation:

·       Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (Genesis 2:7)

Paul illustrated these two parts – one that loved God, while the other part did not:

·       So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. (Romans 7:17-20)

Paul made a distinction between the “I” which does not sin and the “sin that dwells within me.” This distinction illustrates a struggle between the two. Even after he cries out, “Who will save me from this body of death” and invokes the name of Jesus, the two parts do not mysteriously vanish:

·       Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (Romans 7:24-25)

We, therefore, shouldn’t be surprised that one part of us gladly serves God, while the other part is bent on sin. Consequently, the Christian life is a pit-bull on a leash. It wants to bite and destroy, but we have to restrain it. If we let it lose, and it bites someone, we must take responsibility, since it is our pit bull. But this doesn’t mean that we should abuse it. Instead, we nourish it and give it rest so that it is less inclined to act-up.

Is this really what the normal Christian life looks like? Yes! Elsewhere, Paul illustrated it as an ongoing struggle between our two constituent parts:

·       For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. (Galatians 5:17; Romans 8:5-6; 2 Cor. 4:16; 1Cor. 5:5; Philippians 1:22)

Consequently, the reborn spirit, to which the Holy Spirit communicates (Romans 8:16), must be nurtured with prayer, Bible, and a faith-walk to strengthen it against the flesh.

Jesus made this same distinction between spirit and flesh:

·       Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41; John 3:6)

The flesh is weak and opposes us because it is not yet redeemed. This sounds very strange. How is it possible that the spirit, the real “I,” is redeemed but not the flesh? I don’t think that I can explain this, but this conclusion reflects the teaching of Scripture:

·       And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:23)

Not only is the flesh unredeemed, but it is also un-adopted. Instead, this is something that we await when Christ returns for us and gives us our resurrected bodies. It is only then that the struggle will come to an end. At this time, we will become entirely a new creation. Meanwhile, we are miles away. For now, we groan along with the rest of creation:

·       For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. (Romans 8:22)

We have not yet arrived. John had confessed that we cannot even envision what we will be like when liberated from this body of sin:

·       Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2)

We are not yet like Him. Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised by our discouraging struggle against sin. Instead, it is preparing us to meet Him:

·       Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:12-13)

Our present struggles against sin make us long for Him, as they should. They endear us to Him. How? They teach us that our hope can only be found in Him, as we perceive that we have no righteousness in ourselves, no merit. Instead, it is all about His love for us.

How do we understand those verses that teach that we are free from sin?

·       We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. (Romans 6:6-7)

This certainly doesn’t teach that we are free from the temptation to sin. Instead, Paul warned that we still can sin and must remain on guard against its temptations:

·       Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. (Romans 6:12-13)

If sin was no longer alive in the life of the believer, there would be no need for such a warning. However, since this kind of warning is found throughout Scripture, we should assume that verses 6:6-7 do not represent a freedom from the temptation of sin, but a freedom, first of all, from the penalty of sin.

The context equates the death of Christ to the Law with our death to the Law, We were crucified together with Him and rose together with Him. As Jesus is now free from the demands of the Law for the death of the sinner, so are we free from the Law and from the penalty of sin. This doesn’t mean that we will no longer be tempted or even fall to the power of sin, but our new life in Christ has given us the grace to get back up.

We are now a new creation. We want the things of God. When we fall, we confess and repent and are washed clean. We are no longer blinded and deceived by it (Romans 7:11), but this is a process. As Jesus taught, we are gradually being set free from the dominion of sin:

·       So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32)

To not have the truth is to be blind to sin, to practice sin, and to become its slave (John 8:34).

Yes, the new “I” is a new creation of the Spirit and in the spirit. However, our bodies are still contaminated by sin and unredeemed. Consequently, an intense battle rages and will continue to rage until our Savior returns for us. If we are not fortified with this truth, we will wonder, “Why do I still sin?”

THE EXISTENCE OF THE NON-MATERIAL SOUL

Is there any evidence against the existence of a spirit or soul? Atheist Michael Shermer offers one piece of evidence. When someone has a stroke, they can lose their ability to speak. Therefore, when the physical brain is damaged, so too is any related functionality.

This is certainly true with a TV. When one physical element goes bad, so too the picture! However, does this mean that watching is TV show is just about what is contained within the TV? Of course not! The TV is merely a receiver of programming originating from the outside.

Could the brain also be a receiver for something non-material?