Who is the Spirit

How many of you know about the five love languages? Quality time, physical touch, acts of service, words of affirmation, and gifts. All of these are ways that we can express love to people around us and how we receive love — the love languages.

But as a parent of kids — or if you interact with kids, you’re a grandparent, a teacher, a daycare worker — I think there’s a sixth love language. My kids give me all the words. Judah has three distinct words that he knows so far: Mama, Dada, and no. The other day he comes up to me and gives me this big hug right around my legs, looks up at me and goes, “Dada!” And I felt loved. My daughter Lily loves to draw me pictures: “This is for you, Daddy.” She gives me gifts. Lily also loves to help — sometimes her helping is not helping, but I appreciate the thought.

But imagine she draws me a picture, and then I say, “Okay, sweetheart, it’s time to clean up all of our art supplies and go to bed.” And she goes, “No, I’m not going to do that.” If she’s drawn me a hundred pictures but refuses to do what I ask, the pictures — the love expressed through the picture — starts to feel hollow. Or if they say, “Oh Daddy, I love you, I love you, I love you,” and then when I say, “Could you help me clean up from dinner?” they go, “No.” All the words start to feel hollow.

So I think the sixth love language is obedience. Obedience makes you feel loved when they do what you ask. But obedience isn’t just for children — it’s for disciples of Jesus as well. We are called to love God through our obedience.

“If you love me, keep my commands.”

— John 14:15

Notice in that short verse there are no caveats. It’s not, “If you love me and you’re feeling good, keep my commands.” There are no asterisks. What Jesus is pointing out is that love should equal obedience to his commands.

Now just a raise of hands — how many of you love Jesus? Amazing. Now raise your hands: how many of you keep his commandments all the time? What is wrong with us? Because Jesus clearly states, “If you love me, then keep my commands.” This isn’t just an individual experience — this is all of us. We love Jesus, but we often fail to keep his commands.

So let me run through three options of what might be wrong with us. Let’s diagnose the problem.

Option one: We don’t obey because we don’t love God. We say we love God — maybe we like the idea of God, we want God’s gifts — but when it comes down to it, we really don’t love God. I’m assuming if you raised your hand that you do love Jesus, so for most of us we can rule out option one.

Option two: We don’t obey because we don’t love God enough — we end up loving things more. We love comfort more. We love security more. Or the big one: we love ourselves more. And so when it comes to God saying, “Would you do this?” and it’s going to cost us something — our comfort, our desires, our will — we go like Judah and say, “No, not this time, God.”

Option three: We don’t obey because we face opposition. The Bible says there are three enemies of the soul.

The first enemy is the flesh — our sinful human nature. When God created us, he created us in the image of God and said, “It is very good.” Then sin entered and maligned the image of God within us. So while we are made to do good, we are now bent toward doing evil. Paul in Romans 7 says, “I don’t do what I want to do, and I do what I don’t want to do.” That is the flesh, our sinful nature within us, in opposition to our love and obedience of Jesus.

The second enemy is the world — human culture aligned against God. There are so many things in our world that will push us away from loving God, distract us from loving God, or tamp down our love for God. It’s in my pocket. How often does this phone distract us from loving God? This is part of that human system in alignment against God.

The third enemy is the devil — a personal and powerful enemy who has been defeated on the cross, but who still battles to take as many down with him as possible. The tempter, the accuser, will come against us in moments to draw us away from God with temptation, and will accuse us over and over again and say, “This is who you are.” But we have to remember to say, “That’s who I was. That’s no longer who I am because of Jesus.”

So for most of us it’s probably a combination of option two and three — we don’t love God enough, and we face opposition.

Point 1: Following Jesus Is Impossible on Your Own

In and of ourselves, we don’t have the strength to keep all of his commands. We don’t have the willpower. We clearly don’t have the wisdom. The Christian life isn’t difficult — it’s impossible. On your own strength and your own power, you will fall short, you will give up, and you will back out of your best intentions.

Think about Peter. The night Jesus was going to be crucified, Peter said, “Even though all of the others abandon you, I would never do that, Jesus. I would even die with you.” And Jesus said, “In a few short hours, you’re going to deny me three times.” Peter had good intentions, but he didn’t follow through because he was doing it on his own strength.

So how do we fight this problem? Some people fall into the just try harder camp. But if you strain and exert all of your will, you will still fall short, end up exhausted, and eventually give up. I have a friend from high school who did just that — he tried as much as he could in his own strength, but his own strength eventually failed him, and he burned out from following Jesus. That’s why we have Zechariah 4:6:

“Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty.”

— Zechariah 4:6

It’s not our strength. It’s not our power. It’s by the Spirit that we follow Jesus.

Some people fall into the just do you camp — hold on to your ticket to heaven, do whatever you want, and God will just forgive everything in the end. And yet we know this does not lead us where God wants us to go. Romans 6:1–2 says:

“What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means. We are those who have died to sin. How can we live in it any longer?”

— Romans 6:1–2

Some people fall into the just love him more camp. But you can’t force love for God, can you? You can’t just muster love for God. Love for God can’t be forced — it is experienced and then reciprocated. First John 4:19:

“We love because he first loved us.”

— 1 John 4:19

Friends, the more we experience his love, the more we can love him back. If you want to love God more, you need to receive more of his love.

Let me use a simple illustration. I asked Mel to come up here to help picture what it looks like to receive God’s love and then give him love back. I’ve got some twenties here, and I asked Mel to give me money — but she didn’t have any. Once I gave her money, she could give me money back. Could Mel give me anything she didn’t have? No. But once she had it, she could return it. As simple as that illustration is, that’s the point. We cannot give to God what we have not received from him. It is God’s love that has been poured into our hearts that we are able to give back to him. So where do we receive God’s love?

“God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

— Romans 5:5

God’s love has been poured into you through the Holy Spirit. So if you want to love God, you need the Holy Spirit to be poured into you so that you can love God back with the love that he has given you.

Point 2: The Solution — The Holy Spirit Will Help Us

If the problem is that we can’t follow God on our own, the solution is the Holy Spirit will help us. We read John 14:15 — now let’s read verses 16 and 17, the verses that follow directly:

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever — the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you, and he will be in you.”

— John 14:16–17

The Spirit of truth will live in you. He will help you. He’s an advocate.

When you read this, you might misunderstand it at first. It almost sounds conditional — like, if you love me and keep my commandments, then I’ll send you the Holy Spirit. But it’s actually not Jesus making a conditional promise. It’s Jesus recognizing our problem. It’s Jesus saying, “I know you can’t keep my commandments on your own, which is why I’m going to ask the Father to send you the Holy Spirit.” He knows we need help. He’s not blind. He knows everything. He knows how much you and I need help. And so he says, “I’m going to send you a helper, an advocate, the Holy Spirit.”

To love and obey Jesus, simply put, we need the Holy Spirit. We cannot do it without the indwelling power, help, strength, wisdom, and guidance of the Holy Spirit.

When Jesus says we’re to be filled with the Holy Spirit, it’s sort of like this: this is you and me, and this is God and the Holy Spirit. He pours the Holy Spirit into us — and then he doesn’t stop there. God keeps going until we are overflowing with the Holy Spirit. That’s what God wants to do in you and me — so that we splash the Holy Spirit on other people. He doesn’t want you to keep the Holy Spirit just for yourself. He wants you to be so filled with the Holy Spirit that other people experience the Holy Spirit through you.

Now, it would be nice if we looked all clean on the inside. But in reality, there’s a bunch of gunk in there. And when the Holy Spirit fills us, it’s not because we’re perfectly clean — the Holy Spirit fills us when we’re dirty. But God doesn’t stop there. As he pours the Holy Spirit, the Spirit purifies you and me. The Spirit’s work is to fill us with his love, and as God fills us with his love, he also purifies us from our sin. He changes our mind. He changes our habits. He takes the gunk out of our lives. Friends, we are to be filled with the Holy Spirit. He wants to fill you with his love, transform you, and change you. And we cannot follow Jesus without the Holy Spirit’s help.

Who Is the Holy Spirit?

We simply look at what Jesus says in this passage. Jesus says, “I will send you another advocate.” Those two words are really important. The word advocate in Greek is Paraclete, which means a helper, a counselor, an advocate — someone who comes alongside you and helps you. But he says another advocate, meaning one who is like himself. Jesus is saying someone strong, someone powerful, someone like me is going to come and help you.

Jesus says the Holy Spirit is a person — he uses the pronoun him. He says the Holy Spirit is eternal — “he will be with you forever.” He says the Holy Spirit is omnipresent — with all of you, not just one of you. He says the Holy Spirit is all-knowing — he is the Spirit of truth. And the Holy Spirit is powerful — he is another like Jesus.

Who is eternal, all-powerful, omnipresent, and all-knowing? God. That’s how Jesus describes the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God. As Christians, we believe in the Triune God — one God who has revealed himself in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Something really cool is that in 1 Corinthians 6, we — our individual bodies — are referred to as the temple of God, the temple where the Holy Spirit dwells. Each believer is the home of the Holy Spirit. But in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul says that you (plural) are the temple of God — talking to a local church. So we are the temple of God together. And in Ephesians 2, the global church — built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, on the chief cornerstone Jesus Christ himself — is the temple of God where the Holy Spirit dwells.

We experience the Holy Spirit in different ways: in our individual prayer time, when we come together corporately, and when we partner with believers around the world to advance the Kingdom of God.

So that’s who the Holy Spirit is — he is God, and we experience him in different ways.

How Do We Receive the Holy Spirit?

“And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.”

— Ephesians 1:13

When do you receive the Holy Spirit? When you believe. Really simply — when you believe, you receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is poured into your hearts.

Now, the truth of the matter is that the Holy Spirit will occupy as much of you as you give him. Even though you have received the fullness of the Holy Spirit, you may not have surrendered the fullness of you to the Holy Spirit yet. Many of us have received the Holy Spirit when we believed, but we are still living unsurrendered to him. There are areas of our lives that we have kept out of his reach — we’ve locked the door and said, “You’re not coming into this area of my life. I’m going to do it my way, not your way.” And because we have not surrendered to him, we’ve failed to let him fill those areas so that we could love God even more in obedience.

Friends, the Holy Spirit wants to indwell every single area of your life. All of you. And to do that, you’ve got to surrender to him.

“But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.”

— John 16:13

“For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.”

— Romans 8:14

“So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”

— Galatians 5:16

If instead of walking in your own path you decide to walk in the path of the Holy Spirit, you’ll obey God instead of obeying your own sinful nature.

I want to make really clear that the Holy Spirit isn’t something we have or control. The Holy Spirit is a person who has you and me — bought at a high price: the blood of the Lamb. He is not someone we have; he has us. He’s not something we control; he leads you and me.

In Acts 2, the Holy Spirit shows up as fire and the sound of wind. In Matthew 3, the Holy Spirit alights on Jesus in the form of a dove. In John 7, Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit as living water that will flow out of us. What do fire, wind, doves, and living water have in common? They’re all wild. You ever heard of a wildfire? When you try to control a fire, when you box it in, it goes out. Wind — if you close the windows, the wind stops. A dove in a cage can’t fly. Living water put in a cup is no longer living water; it becomes stagnant. In the same sense, when we try to control the Holy Spirit, when we try to box him up, we keep him from doing what he wants to do. We don’t control him. We surrender to him.

When you believe, you receive. The simple question is: do you believe? And if you have, then you have received. Once you receive the Holy Spirit, the next part — the harder part — is surrender.

I believe the culmination of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is the giving of the Holy Spirit. What God meant to do was get the Spirit in you — not just save you out of this world and bring you to him, but deposit him in you in this world to transform this world while you’re here. And this isn’t just about informing our understanding of the Holy Spirit. This is about practicing his presence.

Practice: Surrendering to the Holy Spirit

Right where you are, I want to invite you to pray and ask the Holy Spirit this question — then listen to him:

“What area of my life do I most need to surrender to your leadership?”

Holy Spirit, we hear you speaking. But we need your help. Would you help us to surrender this area of our lives that you’ve called us to? And as we surrender, fill us with your love, with your wisdom, with your peace, as we walk in obedience to you.

Holy Spirit, we surrender and we say we need your help to obey you and love you, Jesus. God, would you fill us and would you lead us? Would the joy of the Lord, the peace of God, the wisdom of God overflow out of each one of us so that people would see and want to know you, Jesus? Make us witnesses, Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ name, amen.