No 9

(Holy Spirit promised by Jesus)

We are all familiar with the passages in the gospel of John where Jesus tells us that He will send us a Comforter, the Holy Spirit who : “..shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (14 : 26). Jesus said that the role of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life is to “testify of Me” (15 : 26) and to “..guide you into all truth” (16 : 13). To the rest of humanity “He will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment” (16 : 8) and, by doing so, will convict sinners and draw them to repentance. When the Spirit does this work of conviction, the person is faced with two choices : to repent and ask forgiveness for his or her sins or to resist the promptings of the Holy Spirit and remain in darkness; whatever the person chooses, we can be sure of one thing : God did His part. When a person does repent and accepts Jesus Christ as personal Saviour, the Holy Spirit indwells the new believer: “..shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Rom 8 : 11b) and seals him for eternity “..whereby ye are sealed unto to day of redemption” (Eph 4 : 30b). As a member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit ministers divine power to the Body of Christ that enables it to do God’s work here on earth and to stand up to persecution such as we have seen recently in Afghanistan where some aid workers were imprisoned because they were Christians. “And I gave them eternal life; and they shall never perish; neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand. My Father, which gave them Me, is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of My hand” (John 10 : 28, 29).