Is the Holy Spirit the Word of God? Is the Spirit a pervasive influence of righteousness, or the spirit of man consecrated to a service to humanity, simply because "holy is as holy does"? The only source from which to obtain an answer to these questions is the revelation of God. Revelation, from the Greek apokalupsis, means laying bare, making naked, or uncovering. It relates to God's unveiling that which otherwise must remain a mystery to man.
There is a sphere beyond the ability of man's intellect to probe and penetrate. Being finite, man is circumscribed in the range of knowledge to what he can apprehend by his senses and to what he can deduct by rational thought processes. By memory he can recall the past, and by imagination he can project himself into the realm of fantasy, but he cannot know divine thought without divine revelation.
One who postulates that man is the creation of an intelligent Being will accept as a corollary that such a Creator will communicate to His creation. Thus, the fact of revelation is substantiated by the nature of God and man, since only God can supply the need of man for that knowledge which is beyond his grasp.
The apostle Paul declares that what could not be ascertained by the eye, or learned by hearing or rational perception, has been revealed to man by the Spirit. He affirms that the Holy Spirit sustains the same relationship to the mind of God that the human spirit does to the human mind and that, therefore, the Holy Spirit alone is able to reveal the thoughts of God.
Revelation is the uncovering for man by the Holy Spirit of what man cannot discover for himself. There is a difference between the undiscovered and the undiscoverable. The first is capable of being found out by additional research, while the last is beyond man's power to fathom without divine assistance. God never reveals to man what he can learn by his own study or be taught by another, for to do this would be to circumvent the very rational powers He gave to man. These are the means by which man is distinguished from the rest of the animal kingdom and exhibits the image of God.
The Holy Spirit is a subject for and of revelation. We can grasp the nature and identity of the Spirit only from a study of the Word of God. We cannot do research into the existence of the Spirit by means of our sensory apparatus, nor by use of our perceptive powers. In clarifying for us the identity of the Spirit, God's revelation will also disabuse our minds of false concepts and free us from mistaken ideas.
To begin with, it seems obvious to me that the Spirit is not the Word of God. These two bear a close relationship to one another and work together in a harmonious way, but they are not identical in any sense. The Word of God has been manifested in three forms: the living Word, the oral word, and the written word. In none of these forms is the Word to be confounded with the Spirit.
The Greek term for the living Word is Logos. This was the term for both reason and word. If we think of these in a purely contemporary sense, as we now employ them, we will not do justice to them, nor assign to them the values that they exhibit when employed in the Scriptures. We generally think of reason simply as an intellectual process, and of a word as a mere symbol of thought. But the ancient philosophers regarded both in a much more profound light. A recognition of this will enable us to understand their use in God's revelation. Reason was creative. The origin and order of the cosmos were attributable to it. Before the material universe existed, reason was. It gave form and meaning to all else. It was the only primal reality, the first cause. As everything existed in an idealistic concept before it was translated into being, reason was the womb out of which all else was delivered. The sculptor could summon the form of reason from marble and give it a body as he did other qualities and attributes of deity, and when he did the statue was worshiped as a god.
In the same way the wise-men of old regarded words. Words were not carelessly used as they often are now, because they were looked upon as possessing life. Indeed, they were thought of as having souls and bodies. The soul was the thought, the vital imagery given birth in the mind, while the sounds or written characters constituted the body in which it was encased. Words could be mutilated by ridicule and distortion of the thought, or they could be murdered by destruction of their message.
Various forms of illustration were devised to portray the power of words to effect change in the universe. They were as arrows shot forth from an unseen bow, and sometimes they were poison bringing death to those who received them into their hearts. Sometimes they were aflame, setting on fire the passions of men and consuming them. They were also looked upon as birds winging their way from a mental dovecote and carrying messages to distant realms. Certainly they were not "dead letters" or dry material, although they might be referred to as chaff.
Recognition of these things will help us appreciate more fully the testimony of the apostle John, who wrote to counter the inroads of Gnosticism, a dangerous philosophy that threatened the existence of "the Way" in the Greek world. Our present purpose will not be served by lengthy explanation of this pernicious doctrine, but prominent among its tenets was advocacy of the idea that all matter is inherently evil, and God could not involve himself directly with man in the flesh. The Gnostics, who took their name from gnosis (wisdom), had much to say about the Logos as the impersonal creative wisdom out of which the world was conceived.
John begins his testimony of Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God by the affirmation, "In the beginning was the (Logos), and the (Logos) was with God, and the (Logos) was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made" (John 1:1-3; KJV). The Logos is here portrayed as personal, and not impersonal. He was Creator and not created. When the beginning occurred He was already existent. Place the beginning where you will, but He was already there.
The Logos was with God, so there existed God and the Logos. But the Logos was God. He was Deity. He was not one who existed with God as of a different nature and character. He existed not from the beginning, but in the beginning, uncreated and creating, so the Logos was God.
John then makes an interesting commentary about the Logos' relationship to man. "In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not" (vv. 4, 5; KJV). The expression, "in him was life," does not mean merely that He was alive. Such a statement would have been unnecessary. The Logos was the repository of life. He was the origin of all life as we know and experience it, but He was not the creator of life. Life is uncreated and eternal. In a sense God is life, for just as there was never a time when God was not, so there was never a time when life was not. Of course, like Paul, I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of the flesh. The expression "a time" as used here is awkward because Deity is not subject to time or space.
The light that was in the beginning in the Logos is the light of men. Life, then, is more than existence. It is illumination. It is a sharing of the divine with the human, a bestowal of the divine energy, the creative urge upon man as a rational being made in the image of God and the Logos. It is the life that is the light, and man by his very nature--his human nature--is instinctively within the range of that light.
Sin brought a pall of darkness upon the universe. It was not created to be in darkness, but in light. Sin changed "the course of this world" and surrendered it to the dominion of the prince of the power of the air, under whose reign the children of disobedience produce "the unfruitful works of darkness." Still, the life, which is the light, continues to bring its impact upon the darkness, and the darkness is not able to overcome it. It cannot engulf or swallow up the light. Just as light is superior to darkness, so life is superior to death. When one moves in, the other must surrender its tenancy.
We come now to the capsheaf of John's witness. "And the (Logos) was made flesh, and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth" (v. 14; KJV). This statement bewildered the Greek world and challenged its thinking as nothing did. Even in our own day many persons find it extremely difficult to accept. The word for "dwelt" in the original means tent or tabernacle. What John is saying is that the Logos was made flesh and brought His own tent (body) with Him. He came to share our nomadic life as strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
The Holy Spirit is not the living Word. That Word became incarnate as the Son of God, and when the sonship was publicly recognized, the Spirit descended upon Him as a divine attestation of His relationship. It all happened when Jesus presented himself to John the baptizer to be baptized in the Jordan River. Here is the account of what happened: "The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me. And I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel therefore am I come baptizing with water. And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God" (John 1:29-34; KJV).
We cannot determine whether or not John was personally acquainted with Jesus before He came to be baptized. It is possible that the expression, "I knew him not" referred to recognition as the Messiah who should be presented to Israel. John had instructions to prepare the hearts of the Jews by giving them knowledge of salvation through the remission of their sins. He was informed that when he would see the Spirit of God descend in the bodily form of a dove and remain upon the One whom he was baptizing, he would know that He was the Son of God.
At the beginning of Jesus' personal ministry there was a distinction between the Spirit and the Son. The two are never confused in the New Covenant Scriptures. In a disputed passage (1 John 5:7) occurs the statement, "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one" (KJV). Even though this does not appear in the oldest and best manuscripts, and may be in interpolation from the marginal notes of an early translator or transcriber, its message is true. There are three, and yet they are one.
Just as the Holy Spirit is not the living Word, so the Spirit is not the oral word as delivered by the apostles and prophets. In a memorable section of his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul discusses his initial approach to their city. It had given its very name to licentiousness and vice of the lowest degree. Here lust was worshiped as homage to the goddess of love, and deviant sex was regarded as a means of expressing religion. In this setting Paul came with a message of cleansing, sanctification, and justification in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of God (6:11).
When the apostle arrived in the city, which prided itself upon the very philosophy that had resulted in an urban sprawl of immorality, he refused to engage in the kind of rhetoric so popular in the Greek world. He specifically affirmed, "When I came to you to present the evidence for the secret of God which it was my purpose to declare, I rejected the eloquent vocabulary associated with philosophy" (paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 2:1).
The difference between the philosophers and the apostle is simply stated. The philosophers took what was plain and left it a mystery; the apostle took what was a mystery and made it plain. To Paul, the string that unraveled the secret of the ages was the cross. Thus, he declared, "I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2).
Having committed himself to this course, Paul freely admitted that he personally felt a sense of his own weakness, accompanied by dread and great trembling. This does not mean that he was ready to "press the panic button," nor does it imply that he was frightened by what might happen to him personally. He was deeply concerned about the reception of his testimony. Accordingly, he declared that his language and message were not set forth in plausible words of wisdom.
It is a common trick of hucksters to conceal inferior and unacceptable fruit in the bottom of a container and the better fruit on top. In much the same way the philosophers were masters in the art of enticement through carefully planned usage of vocabulary. The apostle scorned the employment of such methods. He wrote: "For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word; but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ" (2 Corinthians 2:17). He did not put the cross in the bottom of the basket to be discovered later by those who were attracted to Jesus. Christ's death on the cross was placed on top for everyone to see. That death, not a higher degree of moral conduct, made redemption a fact. The speech and message were, therefore, in demonstration of the Spirit and power, in order that the faith of those who heard would not rest in human philosophy, the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Men were to be captured for Christ, not by being blindfolded or hood-winked by persuasive eloquence, but by the influence of the Spirit and the dynamic of the thing proclaimed. The content of the message, not the wrapper in which it was packed, was to transform profligate Corinth.
A realization of this will preclude a common error created by the King James Version, which renders 1 Corinthians 1:21, "For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." Many students conclude that this merely refers to the act of preaching. But nothing in the mere act of proclaiming will save anyone.
The original word for "preaching" is kerygma, which refers to the thing proclaimed, the message announced. The thesis of the apostle is that the Jews were waiting for a demonstration of power to save them as their fathers were rescued from enslavement in Egypt. Meanwhile, the Greeks were seeking to transcend the human experience by the sheer attainment of logic.
God allowed man to get to the point where he realized the futility and powerlessness of human rationality to effect a change. It was not until human wisdom had exhausted its possibilities and man had sunk to the depths of degradation that God intervened. Paul described what happened: God waited until the divine wisdom dictated that man had sufficiently demonstrated that human wisdom was incapable of discovering the divine, and at that time it pleased Him by the proclamation of a historical event, which seemed foolish, to save them that believe.
The event was the death of Christ. The thing preached was the crucifixion. To the Jew the cross was a scandal; to the Greek it was simply absurd. It was foolishness. Thus, those who were saved by trusting in the cross manifested a faith that was not grounded in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
In 1 Corinthians 2:6, Paul speaks of "the wisdom of this world," that is, of this passing age. In the following verse he contrasts it with the wisdom of God, which is not transitory but was ordained before the world, that is, decreed before the ages. While man was seeking to penetrate the veil of the future God was biding His time, waiting in infinite patience for the right moment to draw aside the veil of His own secret. Finally, what man could not ascertain by visual or audible testimony, and what he could not deduce by his rational processes was revealed by the Spirit. The Spirit sustains the same relationship to God as the human spirit does to man. Only the inner man is aware of the thoughts, intents, and purposes of the man. Likewise, no one outside knows or comprehends the thoughts of the Infinite except the Spirit of God.
It is important for us to remember that thought cannot be conveyed from one mind to another without a medium of communication. Thought occurs as imagery in the mind, but that imagery cannot be projected without one's employing mutually accepted symbols. With the use of such symbols the imagery is reproduced in the receptive mind.
The highest form of communication known to rational beings is that of speech. It is a God-given faculty, for God not only created the organs of speech, but apparently taught man the use of them. No man has ever spoken who was not first spoken to, and it is evident that man did not invent or develop speech. God spoke to man, and man learned to speak.
Speech makes use of language, and all language was at first oral. The very word is from lingua, tongue. When God was ready to unravel the secret of the ages, the revelation was given by the Spirit, as the divine agent. And the Spirit, in conformity with God's recognition of man as a rational being, capable of receiving and understanding messages conveyed in language, made use of words to unveil the mystery.
Paul wrote that he spoke the things God freely revealed to us, not in words taught by human philosophers, but as revealed by the Holy Spirit, who enables us to interpret spiritual truths in spiritual language (v. 13).
We need to be careful in our approach to this statement. It does not mean that the Spirit invented a new or sacred vocabulary, and used it as a vehicle to transmit the divine message. To have done this would have defeated the purpose of God, for it would not have been a revelation at all. What is meant is simply that the words used by men were adopted and adapted to communicate or transmit divine thought. This is in harmony with the practice and purpose of God.
When God was ready to allow the Living Word to be made flesh, He did not create a new type of body, just as when the written Word was recorded it did not require a new body of type. The Word became flesh by being conceived in a human womb and delivered by the same birth process as every human being. Jesus stripped himself in order to assume the guise of a slave in that He became like men and was born a human being. And the spoken word came in the linguistic form of everyday existence.
The difference in the body of Christ and the bodies of other men was not in composition but in the spirit within. The difference in the words of revelation and those of ordinary communication is that the Spirit infused the first. It would appear that anyone could see that the Spirit was not identical with the words of the apostles. There is a difference between a teacher and the words he employs, and Paul is quite plain in saying, "We speak these things in the words the Holy Spirit teaches" (v. 13).
Why do some men eagerly seek to identify the Spirit with the spoken word? It is possible that they want to be able to control, to manage, and manipulate the Spirit. Men can exercise control of words and make them their servants. If the Holy Spirit can be equated with the spoken word, then the Spirit comes under the management of men. The Spirit will be dependent upon the will and volition of men.
What has been said about the oral message is also true of the message committed to writing. There is no difference. What the apostles taught while they were present with the brethren is the same thing they wrote when they were absent from them. Consider such expressions as the following: "Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you this? . . . For even when we were with you, we gave you this command" (2 Thessalonians 2:5; 3:10). For this reason the admonition could be given, "So then brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter" (2:15).
The Holy Spirit never was the Word of God and is not now bound into a volume. The Spirit cannot be set in type, or placed on tape. The Spirit cannot be imprinted on a press or purchased at a bookstore. The written Word is the effective instrument, or word of the Spirit. "And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God" (Ephesians 6:17; KJV).
Our responsibility is to study the revealed Word made available to us through the grace of God and by the Holy Spirit. No one can be true to his Christian commitment who derogates either the work of the Spirit or the need for knowledge of the Word. It is not a matter of the Spirit or the Word, but rather of the Spirit and the Word. One can never get a sufficient measure of the Spirit that he no longer needs the Word, nor can he attain to such a degree of knowledge that he no longer needs the Spirit.
It is true that the more one thinks about and appreciates the work of the Spirit, the more ardent will become his desire to acquaint himself with the words of the Spirit. The greater one's knowledge of the Word becomes, the more fervently will he seek the glorious companionship of the Spirit. It is a strangely warped view of God's program for our spiritual growth when one concludes that, because of his acquaintance with the Spirit, he can ignore further research into the Word that the Spirit delivered as God's will for mankind.