The purpose of the Holy Spirit

A summary of the Bible Hour presentation at the Christadelphian Hall, Blackpool Street, Burton-upon-Trent on Sunday 13th February 2010.

This blog uses Bible references. If you don’t have a Bible, you can find the Bible text online.

We believe the Holy Spirit referred to in the Bible is God’s power.

Definition: ‘Holy’ means set apart, sanctified, special, and ‘Spirit’ signifies power. Hence, the Holy Spirit is God’s special power.

“God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power.” Acts 10v38.

The Bible calls the holy spirit ‘He’ so the churches think it has to be a person, when in actual fact it was the translators who called the Holy Spirit ‘He’. Wisdom in the book of Proverbs (particularly chapter 9) is often called ‘she’, but we don’t think of wisdom as a person or separate entity so it doesn’t make sense to think of the Holy Spirit as a separate entity either.

Shortly before Christ was crucified he said to his disciples that ‘I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth’ (John14v16-17) Here Jesus promises to give the disciples another comforter in his place after he dies, a helper for them. When we read down to verse 26 of John chapter14 we see the helper and comforter Christ was referring to is the Holy Spirit. ‘...the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you’. So, the purpose of the Holy Spirit is to teach all things and for the disciples to remember everything that Christ had said to them. This alone is a miracle. Can you remember word for word what a friend said to you last week, last month, last year?

2Peter1v21
‘...No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.’