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"I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth", we confess in article one of the Apostles' Creed. "I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord", we confess in article two. What must we first confess before we can confess these two? We must confess, "I believe in the Holy Ghost", as we do in article three.
Because here we confess, "I believe that I cannot. . .believe" either in Jesus Christ my Lord or in God the Father Almighty, not by my own reason or strength, not without the Holy Ghost. But by the Holy Ghost I can and do so confess because I can and do so believe. How, specifically, by the Holy Ghost, am I able to believe in and confess God the Father Almighty and Jesus Christ, His only Son, my Lord?
God the Holy Ghost, the living voice of God who is Himself God; God the Light, gifted Gift-Giver, Sanctifier and Preserver, giver and keeper of the faith and all the faithful "has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith., even as He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.
"In which Christian Church He daily and richly forgives all sins to me and all believers, and will at the Last Day raise up me and all the dead, and give unto me and all believers in Christ eternal life."
Who is the Holy Ghost? He is the Third Person of The Holy Trinity, The Holy Three-in-One and One-in-Three, true God with the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son He is the co-incorporator who incorporates believers, making them members of the Church in Holy Baptism. He is called the Spirit of God.
Insofar as He indwells believers, giving them the faith by which He abides in them, they are called the temple of God (1Cor 3:16). Inasmuch as He is the giver and keeper of the faith whereby the believer trusts in Christ for forgiveness, life and salvation, unrepented rejection of the Holy Ghost, also called the sin against the Holy Ghost, is the unforgiveable sin that damns the impenitent sinner in that it is the sin against the remedy and the rejection thereof.
To lie to the Holy Ghost, then, is to have rejected Him and to be filled with Satan in His place. To do so is to lie to God and be filled with His wrath. When St. Peter accused Ananias and his wife Sapphira, early disciples of Jesus, of this, they dropped dead on the spot!
How else do we know that, with the Father and Son, the Holy Ghost is God? We know because of the divine attributes God ascribes to Him in Holy Scripture, such as omnipresence. King David, for one, couldn't evade it. "Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up to heaven, Thou art there.
"If I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me" (Ps 139:7-10).
Or take omniscience, which St. Paul attributes to God the Holy Ghost, as in, "The Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God" (1Cor 2:10). Eternity is yet another divine attribute ascribed to the Holy Ghost by the Letter to the Hebrews. "Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God" (Heb 9:14).
Divine attributes belong to divine persons, namely, the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Divine persons perform divine works, such as creation, which Psalm 33 ascribes to the Holy Ghost as co-creator with Father and Son. "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host of them by the Breath" or Spirit "of His mouth" (v 6). So too with the divine work of sanctification unto eternal life. "He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost" (Titus 3:5).
Finally, to the divine persons of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost with their divine attributes and the divine works they perform belong divine honor and glory whereupon "The Spirit of Glory and of God resteth upon you" (1Pet 4:14) inasmuch as you receive them in faith.
So, what specifically is the work of the Holy Ghost? Answers A SHORT EXPLANATION OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER'S SMALL CATECHISM, "The Holy Ghost sanctifies me, that is, He 'makes me holy,' by bringing me to faith in Christ and by imparting to me the blessings of redemption."
This justification and sanctification in which the second and third persons of The Holy Trinity team up in baptismal regeneration and renewal is what the Apostle Paul is driving at when he exhorts baptized believers, "But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God" (1Cor 6:11).
Why must the Holy Ghost work this justifying faith and its fruit, sanctification, in me? Because, as we confess in article three of the Creed, I believe that I cannot believe, either in God the Father Almighty or in Jesus Christ, His only Son, my Lord, or come to them, not by my own reason or strength, since according to God's Word I am by nature spiritually blind, deaf and mute, because I'm spiritually dead and an enemy of God.
Hence, before the Spirit of God's kindling and illumination, "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1Cor 2:14). Similarly, apart from the Spirit's quickening, "[You] were dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph 2:1). Without His conversion, "The carnal mind is enmity against God" (Rom 8:7).
For "no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost" (1Cor 12:3). Faith comes by the Holy Ghost by hearing, and hearing, by the Word of faith, such that if you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead and confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord you shall be saved.
For it is with the heart that you believe and are justified. And it is with the mouth that you confess and are saved. For it is out of the overflow of the heart that the mouth speaks. And the Word of God is in your mouth because it is in your heart, because God the Holy Ghost puts it in both.
Salvation, then, being His doing, is His free gift in accordance with His undeserved favor or unfailing love and steadfast mercy shown the undeserving wherein "By grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast" (Eph 2:8-9).
Salvation, the work of God, through faith, the gift of God. It has a nice ring to it, does it not? It ought to. It is the ring of truth: salvation by God's grace through God-given faith for Jesus' sake mediated by the Holy Ghost through God's Word alone.
By all means ask for whom this liberty bell tolls. It tolls for thee! What, simply put, has the Holy Ghost done to bring you to Christ and thus sanctify you? Again, THE SHORT EXPLANATION OF THE SMALL CATECHISM: "The Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, that is, He has invited me to partake of Christ's blessings, which are offered to me in the Gospel."
What is more, by the same gospel He has induced me through the faith He thereby produces to take Him up on His invitation and obtain the proffered blessings. This is what Luther meant in his explanation of article three of the Creed when, due to the fact that we cannot by our own light believe in either the Father or the Son or come to them because by nature we're spiritually blind in that we're spiritually dead, he wrote that, besides calling us by the gospel, the Holy Ghost enlightens us with His gifts, sanctifies and keeps us in the true faith, just as He does for the whole Christian Church on earth.
We call this work of the Holy Ghost conversion, wherein the penitent beseeches his Confessor, who is God, "Turn Thou me, and I shall be turned; for Thou art the Lord, my God" (Jer 31:18). We also call this divine work of the Spirit regeneration, that is, new birth, about which Jesus instructed Nicodemus, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:5-6).
St. Paul affirms this when he states, "According to His mercy [God] saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost" (Titus 3:5). The gospel, again, being the Holy Ghost's means to this end, is the vehicle through which He confers the blessings and works the faith by which we believers accept them.
As we have already mentioned, faith comes by hearing, and hearing, by God's Word which is the Word of faith or the gospel. It is through this throughway in Christ that the Holy Ghost begets us anew (1cor 4:15) so that we are born again, as St. Peter reminds us, "not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever" (1Pet 1:23).
Of this conversion or regeneration and the ongoing fruit the Holy Ghost bears in terms of sanctification in the life of the believer the Bible bears ample witness. Says Paul, "This is the will of God, even your sanctification" (1Thess 4:3) and "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature" (2Cor 5:17) and again, "We are [God's] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them" (Eph 2:10).
It is this for which the penitent, believing psalmist and we repentant believers, in the Offertory each Sunday, appeal to God. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from Thy presence and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation; and uphold me with Thy free spirit" (Ps 51:10-12).
Because, dead in trespasses and sin and spiritually blind by nature, we cannot under our own steam believe in the Father or the Son much less come to them, besides calling us by the gospel and calling forth faith in us by the same, or sanctifying us, the Holy Ghost, finally, keeps us in the true faith, the faith by which, believing in and confessing the Holy Ghost, we believe in and confess God the Father Almighty and Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.
Kept unto what, we ask? Answers Peter, "[Ye] are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation" (1Pet 1:5). This divine keeping, St. Paul emphasizes, besides being an ultimate fruit, is a continuing work whereby, "He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the Day of Jesus Christ" (Phil 1:6).
And so, on the Festival of the outpouring and coming in fullness of the Holy Ghost, the Day of Pentecost, we pray, "O God, on this day you once taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending them the light of your Holy Spirit. Grant us in our day by the same Spirit to have a right understanding in all things and evermore to rejoice in his holy consolation; through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in communion with the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever." Amen.
- Pastor Erickson