This article is the twelfth installment in our series "Christian, What Do You Believe: The Belgic Confession of Faith". Find the whole series here.
Jesus began his longest speech about the Spirit with these words: “Let not your hearts be troubled.” Sorrow had filled the disciples’ hearts because Jesus was leaving them, and they would face tribulation (John 16:6, 33). For the same reasons that Jesus’ first disciples needed the Holy Spirit, you need the Holy Spirit.
You, too, might feel lonely and scared. You get frustrated, making the same mistakes over and over. You are indecisive or over-confident. Your prayer life is weak, at least sometimes. More fundamentally, you know that you aren’t half as good as you want people to think you are. How can you live faithfully, finish well, and enter God’s glorious presence?
These concerns are common to all believers. And each one is answered by the gift of the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus called “the Helper” (John 16:7).
Although the Belgic Confession’s article on the deity of the Spirit isn’t nearly as rich as the previous article on the deity of Christ, it still gives us the opportunity to meditate on what “the Holy Scriptures teach us” about the Holy Spirit.
How Do We Know That the Spirit Is God?
The holy Scriptures teach us that the Holy Spirit “is the third person of the Trinity” who “proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son.”
The Spirit is a divine person. Jesus refers to him in personal terms. He can be known and sent (John 14:17, 26). He can teach (14:26) and be lied to (Acts 5:3). He lives, moves, and has being (cf. Acts 17:28). The Holy Spirit is not a mode of the Godhead, but a distinct person in the Trinity. He is the third person, not because he is in last place but simply because he is not the first or the second person. The Spirit is “of one essence, and majesty, and glory, with the Father and the Son” He is not created. He co-created the world with the Father and the Son (Ps. 33:6; Job 26:13, 33:4).
To describe the Spirit’s relation in the Godhead, the Nicene Creed says that he “proceeds from the Father and the Son?” Procession is the church’s way of understanding texts like John 15:26: “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.” As with the begottenness of the Son, the procession of the Spirit expresses relationship rather than origin. The Spirit’s procession in time, at Pentecost, is an analogy of his eternal procession. The Spirit never acts on his own; he is always sent by the Father and the Son. He always performs the will of God.
The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son in that he is the Spirit of God and of Christ. To deny the Spirit’s procession from the Father and the Son is to divide the inter-Trinitarian fellowship and work.
The Holy Spirit also leads us to the Father and the Son. Unlike Christ, the Spirit does not draw people to himself (see John 12:32) but points people to Jesus. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” and “will glorify me” (John 16:13–14). So, the Spirit partners in the work of Christ. Believers are “sanctified” and “justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11).
How Does the Spirit Help Us?
Noting the Spirit’s work in God’s children can encourage us as it encouraged Jesus’ first disciples.
Believers Are Regenerated by the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5)
The Christian life is “begun by the Spirit” (Gal. 3:3). To enter God’s kingdom you must be born again (John 3:3, 5). You can’t do that. But the Spirit can soften your heart and replace your love of sin with love for God (Rom. 2:29). He alone can give you all the benefits of a new life, earned for God’s people by Christ.
Believers Are Indwelt by the Holy Spirit (John 14:17)
Paul assures believers that “God’s Spirit dwells in you” (1 Cor. 3:16). The Spirit brings God close to his children. As a believer you are truly never alone.
Believers Are Unified by the Spirit (Eph. 4:3)
God’s people are “being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Eph. 2:22). For this reason, “You are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (2:19). If God is your Father, every other believer is your brother.
Believers Receive the Gifts of the Spirit
The Spirit is the “eternal power and might” of the godhead who shares his virtue with those he indwells. God’s Spirit bestows upon believers “diversities of gifts” for the benefit of the body (1 Cor. 12:4). We love each other in the Spirit by using his gifts (Col. 1:8).
Believers Walk in the Spirit (Gal. 5:16, 25)
By the Spirit, we put to death the deeds of the body (Rom. 8:13). The Spirit both teaches us and causes us to remember the things we’ve learned about God, and helps us to live more consistently with what we know (John 14:26).
Believers Rejoice in the Spirit (Rom. 14:17)
Even in “much affliction” Christians can receive God’s word “with joy in the Holy Spirit” (1 Thess. 1:6; cf. Luke 10:21). The Spirit is comparable to wine that buoys one’s spirit, even in hard times (Eph. 5:18).
Believers Pray in the Spirit (Eph. 6:18)
The Spirit teaches us to pray and assures us that our prayers are answered by our heavenly Father. No one can truly pray apart from fellowship with the Spirit (Rom. 8:26–27).
Believers Will Be Raised from the Dead by the Spirit
We can be comforted by the promise of life after death because “he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through the Spirit who dwells in you” (Rom. 8:11).
What we confess of the Son, we can confess of the Spirit. He is “that true, eternal, and almighty God whom we invoke, worship, and serve.” The Spirit does not draw attention to himself. Instead, he quietly, sometimes imperceptibly helps us to come to God and find our life in him. We honor the Spirit when we thank him for his work and trust him to continue working in us.
Footnotes
This is the confession’s second shortest article. It quotes no Scripture and offers no explicit application like that found in article ten on the deity of Christ. However, the previous three articles relating to the Trinity powerful articulate the deity of the Spirit. And at least twenty-five other times the confession mentions the Spirit by name, highlights his works, and refers to him in Scripture quotations.
