No 8

(The Role of the Holy Spirit in the Bible)

The role of the Holy Spirit of God is different in the Old Testament than in the New Testament. God’s Spirit was at work from the very beginning (Gen 1 :2) and continued to be active in all of the undertakings of His people in the Old Testament, but not in an individual and indwelling sense but more on a corporate “amongst” sense (Isa 63 :11). There were several occasions in the Old Testament where the Holy Spirit indwelt people but it always was for a specific task or undertaking : The Seventy Elders – Num 11 : 25; Balaam – Num 24 :2; Othniel – Jud 3 :10; Gideon – Jud 6 :34; Samson- Jud 14 :6; Saul 1 Sam 10 :10; David 1 Sam 16 :13; Saul’s messengers – 1 Sam 19 :20. David, when he penned Psalm 51, he wrote in verse 11 : “Cast me not away from Thy presence; and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me”. In the Old Testament, there was a sense in which the Holy Spirit could be removed from someone and there is no verse to indicate that a believer was permanently indwelt by the Holy Spirit. This is much different in the New Testament when a person turns his or her life over to Jesus Christ, is immediately empowered by the Holy Spirit : “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost” (Rom 15 :13. The Bible commands believers to be filled with the Spirit – Eph 5 :18 “And be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit”. The verb“filled” is in the aorist form in the Greek and really means “to continue to be filled”. In other words, we must continue to be filled with the Holy Spirit. You ask how does that work? If a believer says to the Lord ;“Lord fill me with your Spirit”, the Lord will fill him. But, then you ask : how long does the filling last? It lasts just as long as we let the Word control us, just as long as we confess known sin, just as long as we die to ourselves and just as long as we surrender to God’s will. This has nothing to do with the indwelling or the baptising of the Spirit; that occurs at the time of salvation and the Spirit comes once and for all and is never lost. The Bible says in Romans 8 : 9 – “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his”.