This Week's White Horse Inn

The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit

This week on the White Horse Inn,  we’re continuing our series on the Holy Trinity. Now, many of us still remember the Holy Ghost from the old King James Version. For most modern people a “ghost” is associated more with All Hallows Eve, Halloween, rather than Pentecost Sunday. Especially, in our age, the Holy Spirit, when he is taken seriously at all, is the spooky member of the Trinity. If you are in to that thing, the paranormal, the sensational, then the Holy Spirit is for you. Now, I want to challenge this association of the Spirit merely with the spectacular. First, it distinguishes his work too sharply from the Father and the Son. After all, the Father is the origin of every work [of the Trinity] and the Spirit brings that work to completion. [The Father’s] work is no less supernatural. The Son purchased, by his active and passive obedience, every scrap of precious material that the Holy Spirit uses to build Christ’s kingdom.

Second, reducing the Spirit’s work to the exceptions distracts us from the vast range of his activity in our world and in our daily lives. On both sides of the Pentecostal divide, we too easily treat the Holy Spirit as a placeholder for the extra things in Christianity. Sure, we have the Father and the Son but we also need the Holy Spirit. The Word is vital but we can’t forget the Spirit. Doctrine is important but there is also experience.

Consequently, the Spirit becomes type-casted into predictable roles. He makes cameo appearances, especially in the Book of Acts. We think of him when we are talking about the application of redemption, especially regeneration and sanctification, and when we’re arguing about his more controversial gifts, like tongues and healing. Who is the Holy Spirit? Does he really matter today?

Join us this week on the White Horse Inn as we look at the person and work of the Holy Spirit and why we need to recover a vital vision of his activity in the word and in us.  This week's White Horse Inn