Today's sermon: "God the Self-effacing Spirit"

Key word for today: "Paraclete" (from Greek παρακλητος): Counselor (one who defends or offers counsel in a court).

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Triune Godhead, that He is ever-present and efficiently active in and with the Church of Christ, convincing the world of sin, regenerating those who repent and believe, sanctifying believers, and guiding into all truth as it is in Jesus.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, one of the three persons of the Godhead. The Holy Spirit is always present and at work within His people—the Church. The Holy Spirit exposes sin, convicts sinners, and gives new life to those who admit that they are guilty of sin and, as a result, trust in Jesus’s promise of the forgiveness of sin. The Holy Spirit makes believers holy. And the Holy Spirit assures believers of the fact that all truth is found in and, therefore measured by, the work and person of Jesus. And the Spirit compels and emboldens believers to proclaim that truth.

2 Jn 8: “they are destroying what we worked for…”

3 Jn 9: “Diotrephes”

3 Jn 5-8: “the brothers”

3 Jn 11: “Demetrius”

2 Jn 1: “the Elect Lady”

Key Word: Paraclete

Greek term meaning “Counselor”

(as in “Legal Counselor” or “Lawyer”)

What the Spirit Does: 15 Cs

1.co-labors/collaborates (with Father & Son);

2.creates (the world, Jesus’ humanity);

3.catches (your interest);

4.convicts (your conscience);

5.confirms (truth about Jesus’ identity as Messiah);

6.calibrates (your heart);

7.cleanses (you);

8.camps (in you);

9.conveys (spiritual gifts);

10.counselor (defends, emboldens proclamation);

11.cries out (to Father and Son for you);

12.carries (you to the Father and Son);

13.catalyzes (believers to preach the Gospel);

14.conceals (himself); and,

15.calls attention (to Father & Son).

Like Christ the Holy Spirit is one in being and of the same being as the Father, but unlike Christ the Holy Spirit is not one being and of the same being as we are, for He incarnated the Son but does not incarnate Himself, He utters the Word (Jesus) but does not utter Himself. He directs us through Himself to the one Word (Jesus) and Face of God in Jesus Christ in accordance with whom all our knowledge of God is formed in our minds, knowledge of the Spirit as well as of the Father and of the Son. This is the diaphanous (hidden) self-effacing nature of the Holy Spirit who hides Himself, as it were, behind the Father in the Son and behind the Son in the Father, but also the enlightening transparence of the Spirit who by throwing His eternal Light upon the Father through the Son and upon the Son in the Father, brings the radiance of God’s Glory to bear upon us. (T.F. Torrance, Christian Doctrine, 66.)

I believe the infinite and eternal Spirit of God, equal with the Father and the Son, to be not only perfectly holy in Himself, but the immediate cause of all holiness in us: enlightening our understandings, rectifying our wills and affections, renewing our natures, uniting our persons to Christ, assuring us of the adoption of sons, leading us in our actions, purifying and sanctifying our souls and bodies to a full and eternal enjoyment of God.

-John Wesley, Letters to a Roman Catholic