The holy spirit: God, Person & Gift

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This week’s passages

Isaiah 59:21

2 Corinthians 3:17

John 14-25-26

John 15:26

Acts 2:38

Meeting aim

To show that the Holy Spirit is God, a person and a gift to us.

Background preparation

Make sure you have printed out (or at least thought about) five random celebrities or characters for the game. You will also need flipchart paper, marker pens and Bibles.

Guess who

Get five photos of celebrities or famous characters but don’t show them to your group. See if your group can guess whose photo you are looking at by asking you questions that you can only answer yes or no to for one minute. Make one of the celebrities / movie characters a little obscure and hard to guess. Ask the group how hard it is to know someone when you can’t see them. Then make the point that you are going to be exploring the Holy Spirit over the next few weeks and that because we can’t see him he can be hard to understand.

Introduction

Grab a massive piece of paper and lay it on the floor in the middle of your group. Give out pens and ask each person present to write down words or phrases that come to mind when they think about the Holy Spirit. Perhaps ask them to try and come up with a definition of who the Holy Spirit is. As you undertake the rest of this session pay attention to anything on the paper that links into the ideas that follow.

Who is the Holy Spirit?

Read Isaiah 59:21 and 2 Corinthians 3:17 as a group and then discuss these questions:

• What do these verses say about who the Holy Spirit is and where he comes from?

• What do you think it means for the Spirit to be called Lord?

Key point 1

We can often find it hard to understand the Holy Spirit. It can be easier to picture God as a Father; and Jesus as the Son, but much harder to picture or imagine the Holy Spirit. It can make us think the Holy Spirit is simply a power or an experience. Yet these verses describe the Holy Spirit as being fully God and coming from God. The word ‘Lord’ in the Isaiah verse (and in the New Testament) is a translation of the Hebrew word Yahweh, the holy and intimate name for God. So when Paul uses the term ‘Lord’ to describe the Holy Spirit, he is using it knowing that this word is only to be used for God. The only way that calling the Holy Spirit ‘Lord’ makes sense is if the writers are saying he is fully God. This underlines that the Holy Spirit is not an add-on to God the Father and God the Son, but an equal and essential part of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit, in other words, isn’t just power, like electricity, but fully God.

How do we describe the Holy Spirit?

Read John 14:25-26 and John 15:26 as a group then discuss these questions:

• How does Jesus describe the Holy Spirit? What does this mean?

• Is there any other way Jesus describes the Holy Spirit?

• What does this tell you about who he is?

Key point 2

As we describe the Holy Spirit we often refer to him as ‘it’. Yet this is not how Jesus describes the Holy Spirit. In both of these passages (and throughout the Bible) what we see is Jesus referring to the Spirit as a ‘he’. This isn’t about male as opposed to female, but demonstrates that we should understand that the Holy Spirit is a person and so he acts personally towards us. Again, we often think of the Spirit as being an impersonal force that acts on us (a bit like gravity) and who makes us do crazy things like ‘The Force’ in Star Wars. These passages (and lots of others) show that the Holy Spirit is not a thing but a person. This is important because it highlights that the Holy Spirit is the same relational God who loves us, cares for us and helps us.

The gift

Read Acts 2:38 together as a group then discuss these questions:

• How does Peter describe the Holy Spirit?

• Why do you think Peter refers to the Holy Spirit as a gift? What do you think this means?

• How do we begin to receive this gift?

Key point 3

The Holy Spirit is given as a gift from God. He is given to those who believe in Jesus to help them live out their faith in Jesus. He is not just an experience that we need to seek and not something that we have to work hard at or be perfect to earn. Rather the Spirit is a gift that Jesus gives us to help us believe, to help us turn from our sin, and who equips us to live life in a way that points to and honours Jesus.

Reflection

Remind your group that the Holy Spirit is fully God, a person who we can have a relationship with and a gift that is given to help us live for God. Ask your group what has most struck them from their discussions about the Holy Spirit? Ask them if anything has surprised them or made them think differently. Go back to your big sheet of paper and see if there are any descriptions that people might change.