Preface to the Study
The work of the Holy Spirit is an often neglected area of Biblical teaching. Not neglected so in the area of theology but often in the area of application to the believer’s daily life. While Evangelicals hold to an orthodox view of the Holy Spirit, they have forgotten His work and ministry in their daily experience.
For instance, when we speak about the Trinity, it is often easier to speak about the work of the Father and the Son. But we are often uncertain in our descriptions of the Spirit and in our relationship to Him. Yet the person and work of the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential to all of the Christian life. It is through the work of the Spirit that we were brought to conviction and drawn to Christ. Through the Spirit, we were adopted as sons and sealed unto the day of our redemption. The Spirit is our counselor and our comforter. He enables us to pray and to understand the Scriptures that He inspired. It is the Holy Spirit who pours out the love of the Father into our hearts and it is the Spirit who works in us to transform us from glory to glory. It is He who takes up residence in the lives of believers so that our bodies are called the “temple of the Holy Ghost.”
To be deficient in our understanding of the Spirit is to be deficient in understanding much of what God has done for us and is doing in us. To be deficient in our love for the Spirit is to be deficient in our love for God. We pray that this issue of Teaching Resources might remind us of the person of the Holy Spirit and cause us all to love Him more and desire to walk and live in the Spirit.
In our lead article, A. W. Pink examines the general work of the Holy Spirit on both the elect and the non-elect. In a similar, but more detailed fashion, the article by John Owen, The Work of the Spirit in Believers, reminds the believer of all that the Holy Spirit was done in and for him. Thomas Watson’s article speaks about the evidences of the Spirit’s working in the life of a godly man while Thomas Boston reminds us of How the Holy Spirit Enables Us to Pray.
The final two articles emphasize the personal aspects of the Spirit’s person and ministry. The Holy Spirit’s Love by Horatius Bonar gently reminds us abut a forgotten aspect of the Spirit’s ministry and personality. And Spurgeon’s article on The Personality of the Holy Ghost lovingly reminds us that the Holy Spirit is a person, not a force or power.
We hope that these articles will direct your hearts to thanksgiving to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit because of their great love and ministry toward those who have been bought with a price. And we pray that you might find comfort and strength for each situation you face knowing that you have an all-knowing Father in heaven, an interceding Son at His right hand, and (praise God!) a Blessed Holy Spirit who is with you always and lives in you forever! Take time to thank the Trinity for all the ways that God’s grace, comfort and power is communicated to you through the work and person of the Holy Spirit!
By His Grace, Jim
