One my professors years ago said that we did the Holy Spirit a disservice when we pay too much attention to him. Some of you were shocked by that and spend a great deal of time discussing it. Well to help out I had another professor says that the Holy Spirit has a vibrant and pulsating ministry. That doesn’t diminish the idea that he spends most of his time pointing to the Father and the Son. His work is important in deed so we will spend some time on that. I’ll tell you the name of my professor later .
The ministry of the Spirit is a pulsating and powerful ministry. He is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, no less. He is the “Lord and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified.” He associates Himself with the Father and the Son in the great acts of God in behalf of mankind, creation, redemption, sanctification. In these divine acts the “Trinity in Unity” is magnified, but in them each Person of the Trinity also assumes a dominant role. Creative activities and functions are assigned to the Son and the Spirit (Col. 1:16; Ps. 104:30), but both in Scripture (Mal. 2:10; 1 Cor.8:6) and in two of the Ecumenical Creeds a major role in Creation is attributed to the Father. Again, the Father’s love and the Spirit’s mediation make the redemption a personal reality in our lives, but the act of redemption itself (incarnation, suffering, death, resurrection) was accom-plished chiefly by Christ Jesus. Likewise, the Father and the Son are closely linked with regeneration and sanctification. At times Scripture even attributes our regeneration to them (James 1: 17, 18; 2 Cor. 5: 17), but it is the Holy Ghost “who has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.”
