(a) In connection with Christians; (b) in connection with Christ; (c) in connection with the Father and the Son. If the Father and the Son are persons, the Spirit must be a person also.
(a) Acts 15:28—“it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us.” (b) John 16:14—“He shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you”; cf. 17:4—“I glorified thee on the earth.” (c) Mat. 28:29—“baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; 2 Cor. 13:14—“the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all”; Jude 21—“praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Pet. 1:1, 2—“elect ... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” Yet it is noticeable in all these passages that there is no obtrusion of the Holy Spirit's personality, as if he desired to draw attention to himself. The Holy Spirit shows, not himself, but Christ. Like John the Baptist, he is a mere voice, and so is an example to Christian preachers, who are themselves “made ... sufficient as ministers ... of the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:6). His leading is therefore often unperceived; he so joins himself to us that we infer his presence only from the new and holy exercises of our own minds; he continues to work in us even when his presence is ignored and his purity is outraged by our sins.
C. He performs acts proper to personality.
That which searches, knows, speaks, testifies, reveals, convinces, commands, strives, moves, helps, guides, creates, recreates, sanctifies, inspires, makes intercession, orders the affairs of the church, performs miracles, raises the dead—cannot be a mere power, influence, efflux, or attribute of God, but must be a person.
Gen. 1:2, marg.—“the Spirit of God was brooding upon the face of the waters”; 6:3—“My Spirit shalt not strive with man for ever”; Luke 12:12—“the Holy Spirit shall teach you in that very hour what ye ought to say”; John 3:8—“born of the Spirit”—here Bengel translates: “the Spirit breathes where he wills, and thou hearest his voice”—see also Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 166; 16:8—“convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment”; Acts 2:4—“the Spirit gave them utterance”; 8:29—“the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near”; 10:19, 20—“the Spirit said unto him [Peter], Behold, three men seek thee.... go with them ... for I have sent them”; 13:2—“the Holy Spirit said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul”; 16:6, 7—“forbidden of the Holy Spirit ... Spirit of Jesus suffered them not”; Rom. 8:11—“give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit”; 26—“the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity ... maketh intercession for us”; 15:19—“in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Holy Spirit”; 1 Cor. 2:10, 11—“the Spirit searcheth all things.... things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God”; 12:8-11—distributes spiritual gifts “to each one severally even as he will”—here Meyer calls attention to the words “as he will,” as proving the personality of the Spirit; 2 Pet. 1:21—“men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit”; 1 Pet. 1:2—“sanctification of the Spirit.” How can a person be given in various measures? We answer, by being permitted to work in our behalf with various degrees of power. Dorner: “To be power does not belong to the impersonal.”
D. He is affected as a person by the acts of others.
That which can be resisted, grieved, vexed, blasphemed, must be a person; for only a person can perceive insult and be offended. The blasphemy against the Holy Ghost cannot be merely blasphemy against a power or attribute of God, since in that case blasphemy against God would be a less crime than blasphemy against his power. That against which the unpardonable sin can be committed must be a person.
Is. 63:10—“they rebelled and grieved his holy Spirit”; Mat. 12:31—“Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven”; Acts 5:3, 4, 9—“lie to the Holy Ghost ... thou hast not lied unto men but unto God.... agreed together to try the Spirit of the Lord”; 7:51—“ye do always resist the Holy Spirit”; Eph. 4:30—“grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.” Satan cannot be “grieved.”Selfishness can be angered, but only love can be grieved. Blaspheming the Holy Spirit is like blaspheming one's own mother. The passages just quoted show the Spirit's possession of an emotional nature. Hence we read of “the love of the Spirit” (Rom. 15:30). The unutterable sighings of the Christian in intercessory prayer (Rom. 8:26, 27) reveal the mind of the Spirit, and show the infinite depths of feeling which are awakened in God's [pg 325]heart by the sins and needs of men. These deep desires and emotions which are only partially communicated to us, and which only God can understand, are conclusive proof that the Holy Spirit is a person. They are only the overflow into us of the infinite fountain of divine love to which the Holy Spirit unites us.
As Christ in the garden “began to be sorrowful and sore troubled” (Mat. 26:37), so the Holy Spirit is sorrowful and sore troubled at the ignoring, despising, resisting of his work, on the part of those whom he is trying to rescue from sin and to lead out into the freedom and joy of the Christian life. Luthardt, in S. S. Times, May 26, 1888—“Every sin can be forgiven—even the sin against the Son of man—except the sin against the Holy Spirit. The sin against the Son of man can be forgiven because he can be misconceived. For he did not appear as that which he really was. Essence and appearance, truth and reality, contradicted each other.” Hence Jesus could pray: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). The office of the Holy Spirit, however, is to show to men the nature of their conduct, and to sin against him is to sin against light and without excuse. See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 297-313. Salmond, in Expositor's Greek Testament, on Eph. 4:30—“What love is in us points truly, though tremulously, to what love is in God. But in us love, in proportion as it is true and sovereign, has both its wrath-side and its grief-side; and so must it be with God, however difficult for us to think it out.”
E. He manifests himself in visible form as distinct from the Father and the Son, yet in direct connection with personal acts performed by them.