Who Is The Holy Spirit? (Crucial Questions, #13)

by R.C. Sproul

“God is One in essence and three in person.” In other words, God is triune; He is a Trinity. This means there are three persons within the Godhead. These persons are understood in theology as distinct characters.

None of us can plumb the depths of the Trinity comprehensively, but we can take some small steps to understand it better. The words existence and subsistence can help us here.

So, subsistence is existence that is under something else. This idea is implied in the concept of the Trinity. God is one being with three subsistences, with three distinct persons. They subsist within the being of God.

We see in Scripture that the Spirit shares in the Trinitarian works of creation and redemption. Genesis 1 shows that the Father commanded the world to come into being. The New Testament tells us that the agent through whom the Father brought the universe into being was the Logos, the second person of the Trinity, our Lord Jesus Christ: “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). However, the Spirit also was involved in creation: “The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2). Out of this energizing work of the Spirit, life was brought forth.

Contending for the truth of God is an act of love, not a sign of an absence of love. If we love God, if we love Christ, if we love the church, we must love the truth that defines the very essence of Christianity.

It is very sad to me that in today’s sophisticated

Western culture, people are more familiar with the twelve signs of the Zodiac than with the twelve tribes of Israel or the twelve Apostles.

If we want to do the will of the Father, we need to study the Word of the Father—and leave the magic to the astrologers.