WHO IS THE HOLY SPIRIT?

The Holy Spirit has become something of an urban legend. Maybe you hear the name “Holy Spirit,” and your guard shoots up. That’s often because of unfamiliarity—you may have been shaped in a church tradition that brushed over topics like the Spirit, and an introduction to a new expression of a familiar spirituality can feel threatening. Or you may be recovering from a painful or manipulative spiritual experience under the banner of “Holy Spirit.”

Whether you are suspicious, curious, thirsty, or all three, I want to (re)introduce you to the Holy Spirit as a Person to know and be known by, not a power to wield, an experience to force, or a New Age, mystical teaching introduced after Jesus.

The Spirit was present at creation, named in the Bible’s opening lines: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (Genesis 1:1-2).

In Hebrew, the original language of Genesis, we read, “And the ruakh of God was hovering over the waters.” The Hebrew ruakh, like its Greek counterpart pneuma, can be translated into English as either “spirit” or “breath.”

Later in Genesis we come to this passage: “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Genesis often uses the phrase “the breath of life” to describe living creatures. We only have life because God breathes life into us.

Sometimes the phrase “breath of life” uses ruakh (the same Hebrew word used in Genesis 1:2 to talk about the Spirit of God) and sometimes it uses a roughly synonymous word. But the concept is clear: The same Spirit (or breath) of God that orders and fills all of creation in Genesis 1 fills people with his divine life—his spirit.

The Holy Spirit is not a myth or a divine “add-on” or a vague notion. He is a person who invites us to live, in the obligations and opportunities of ordinary life, clothed in his power—a power that has existed since the beginning.

How would you describe your relationship with the Holy Spirit?