John 15:26-27 says, “But when the Comforter is come, Whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, Which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me. And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with Me from the beginning.” Any time I hear someone speak about the “Holy Ghost”, or “Holy Spirit”, as if the message believers are to deliver were a message chiefly about the Holy Spirit, I cringe on the inside. It is not that many of those who place so much emphasis on the person of the Holy Spirit are not good people, even good Christians, rather it is that they are emphasizing a person of the Godhead Who does not want to be emphasized, for His job is to magnify Jesus! I certainly understand that the Holy Spirit is as much God as is the Father or the Son, but the work of God is seemingly divided in different ways by the Trinity. For example, Jesus is the only member of the Godhead Who died on a cross, yet the Father and the Spirit are as much a part of the plan of salvation as the Son, yet the work is divided between the three members of the Godhead. So, the work of the Holy Spirit is to magnify the work of Christ, as Jesus Himself said in our verses above. So, it is not for you or me to decide how God does His work, or which member of the Godhead does which part of the work. After all, the whole work of God involves all three members of the Godhead, at least in some way.
Notice several things that Jesus said about the Holy Spirit. First, He called Him the Comforter, and indeed all who are really saved know something about the comfort of the Holy Spirit. Notice a second thing, that is, that Jesus said He would send the Holy Spirit to believers, and that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. I think all of us could say that there are many things about how the Trinity works that we do not understand, but we do not have to understand all about God to enjoy what He is doing, for we will never understand all about God. Another thing that Jesus said is that the Holy Spirit, or the Comforter, would testify of Him, that is of Jesus. So, when the Holy Spirit has control in a believer’s life, or when a church is having a true worship service, the Spirit will be making Jesus known. Then we see that the disciples would also bear witness, but their witness was not a witness about the Holy Spirit, rather it was a witness about Jesus, as they were empowered by the Holy Spirit. Some people seem to have missed what Jesus taught here, for He never gave the disciples, or the early church, any admonishment to be sure that they made the Holy Spirit known to their congregations, or to the people of their communities. Rather, He gave them admonition to bear witness of Him. Acts 10:43 says it very well: “To Him give all the prophets witness , that through His name whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins.” Acts 4:11-12 says, “This is the Stone which was set at nought of you builders, Which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” If we keep the emphasis where God has placed the emphasis in the Bible, that is on Jesus our Savior, then we will be in line with what God is seeking to convey to the human race! It might be worth noting that men often have a way of emphasizing what the Bible actually does not emphasize. None of this is to indicate that the one member of the Godhead is more important than another, for such is not the case, rather it is an attempt to bring us back to emphasizing what the apostles and the early church emphasized. We never hear anyone in the Bible saying, “We had a Holy Ghost meeting last Sunday at our church”. I have good friends who use this terminology, but that does not make it the thing that God emphasizes in His Word, for the term “Holy Ghost meeting” is never used there!
By J. Briggs King, Rainsville, AL (678) 451-0921