Divine Comforter:
The Work of the Holy Spirit Today
Selected Scriptures
© Mike Riccardi
Introduction
With the last-minute change, | I thought I would preach a message this morning | that I preached at G3’s Cessationist Conference back in October. Cessationism, as many of you know, is the doctrine that the miraculous gifts of prophecy, tongues, and healing have ceased with the apostolic age and thus are not normative for believers today. And because of the widespread abuses of the Charismatic movement, the brothers at G3 believed it was important to sort of piggyback on Grace to You’s Strange Fire Conference—11 years earlier—and bring Scripture’s teaching to bear on the issue of spiritual gifts; so that the truth of God would be exalted in the hearts of His people, and that error regarding Scripture’s teaching on the Holy Spirit would be repented of and put away.
It’s not that we regard ourselves as the doctrine police, but we have been commanded, 2 Timothy 1:13–14, to “Retain the standard of sound words which,” Paul says, “you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you.” We have been entrusted with a precious treasure. And when the glory of that treasure is being obscured, or its value demeaned, it falls to the servants of Christ to sound an alarm, to vindicate the truth, to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict.
We have no desire to be contentious. But we do desire to safeguard the sufficiency of Scripture from the necessary dilution that comes from suggesting that more special revelation outside of Scripture is necessary if the people of God are going to be complete and equipped for every good work. You cannot say that Scripture is sufficient to equip us for every good work in the Christian life, and then say, “But we still need extrabiblical revelation, because without it, the Bible is just a dry, dusty, dead letter.” That is to proclaim Scripture’s insufficiency.
And further, we also desire to honor the glory and the wonder and the beauty of the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit by not conflating them with cheap imitations. The biblical gift of prophecy is not often-erroneous gut-feelings and impressions. The biblical gift of tongues is not meaningless babble designed to edify oneself. The biblical gift of healing is not well-intentioned but ultimately ineffective prayer. And if we call these contemporary phenomena by the names of the biblical gifts, when the true New Testament gifts of prophecy, tongues, and healing were far more glorious and miraculous than the counterfeits of today, we denigrate the true value of the original, authentic gifts.
But because of that—because cessationists believe that the miraculous gifts have ceased with the apostolic age, and that the special revelation given in Scripture is sufficient to equip the believer in Jesus to live a God-honoring life—we are often accused of not believing in the Holy Spirit at all, or being devoid of the Spirit all together. I remember a story that Pastor John has told often about when he was invited to preach at a well-known Charismatic church not too far from Grace Church. The audience was skeptical as they anticipated his preaching, because they had heard of his outspoken cessationism and, as a result, believed that he wasn’t “anointed.” Well, he preached the Word faithfully unto the benefit of that congregation, and the people were impressed. Afterward, it was heard that someone said, “Imagine how well he could preach if he had the Holy Spirit!” Well, he did—and does—have the Holy Spirit! Believing the biblical teaching that the miraculous gifts have not continued into the present age does not mean that one doesn’t believe in the Holy Spirit.
But there are so many who think it does. And they accuse cessationists of being practical deists—those who believe in a supreme being but who deny His involvement with creation; who created the world, sure, but who has set up creation to run apart from His involvement and intervention. Now, this accusation implies that not to believe in the continuation of prophecy, tongues, and healing is to not believe in the Holy Spirit at all. This would mean that the Holy Spirit does nothing more than the miraculous. In a stroke of bitter irony, such accusers have so myopically limited the Holy Spirit’s work to the revelatory gifts, that they can’t imagine what it would mean for a cessationist to believe in a vibrant, active ministry of the Holy Spirit in the world. “If He’s not giving miraculous, revelatory spiritual gifts, what’s He doing?”
Well, it’s for that reason that I was assigned to address the topic of “The Work of the Holy Spirit Today.” If we cessationists do believe in the Holy Spirit—that He is intimately involved with and active in the church and the world today—but we don’t believe that the Spirit is gifting believers to prophesy, speak in tongues, and perform healings as in the days of the Apostles, what does the Holy Spirit do today?
The answer to that question fills volumes upon volumes of books. One Twitter user saw the title of my message and between crying-laughing emojis asked, “Wonder what he’s going to teach on!” But to tell you the truth, it was difficult for me to narrow it down. As I was studying, I initially found no fewer than eighteen categories of thought for what the Holy Spirit is doing today. And I toyed with trying to squeeze them all in and go rapid-fire. But ultimately, I was able to cut that in half and settle on nine.
So, in the rest of our time together this morning, I want to consider nine ministries that the Holy Spirit of God is still performing today, enriching the lives of believers and, by His own power, enabling us to enjoy the sweetness of communion with God in Christ. The Holy Spirit is no mere power or force; He is God of very God Himself. Jonathan Edwards said, “The Holy Spirit, in his indwelling, his influences, and fruits, is the sum of all grace, holiness, comfort, and joy; or, in one word, [the sum] of all the spiritual good Christ purchased for men in this world. And [He] is also the sum of all perfection, glory, and eternal joy that [Christ] purchased for them in another world” (WJE, 5:341).
The Spirit Himself is the sum of all grace, the sum of all perfection! For who He is, and for what He does, He deserves our worship—pure worship, offered in spirit and truth, through Christ alone. And in the providence of God, I think that’s a wonderful meditation upon which to bring 2024 to a close, and with which to look ahead to 2025: conscious dependence on and communion with the Holy Spirit. And so my prayer for this morning is that we would behold in the Scriptures the treasure that is the true ministry of the Holy Spirit, and that we would return to Him the worship that He is worthy of for all He continues to accomplish in the lives of Christ’s people.
I. Executes All Divine Operations
And the first ministry of the Holy Spirit that we’ll consider this morning is, number one, that He executes all divine operations. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Holy Trinity. Along with the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit fully subsists in the undivided divine essence. And that means that, though the persons of the Trinity can be distinguishedfrom one another, they can never be divided from one another. There is Tri-unity. The being of God is indivisible.
And the indivisibility of God’s being implies the indivisibility of God’s actions. All of God’s acts are grounded in the Trinitarian life of God Himself. In other words, God does what He does because He is who He is. And so if God’s being can never be divided, neither can God’s works be divided. This is what theologians have called the doctrine of inseparable operations. Because they subsist in the identical being, no one person of the Trinity ever acts without the other two. In every divine act, Father, Son, and Spirit each act in a manner appropriate to their distinct personhood.
And historic orthodoxy summarizes Scripture’s teaching by speaking of the Holy Spirit as the crowning or perfectingagent of all God’s actions (Swain, The Trinity, 91). The fourth-century church father, Gregory of Nyssa, famously said, “…every operation which extends from God to the creation…has its origin from the Father, and proceeds through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit” (NPNF2, 5:334). In everything that God does, the Holy Spirit brings to completion those acts which have their origin from the Father, and which are accomplished through the Son (cf. Owen, 3:93).
For example, in the work of creation, the creation comes from the Father, through His Son—through the Word by which the heavens were made. But it was the breath of God’s mouth—“breath” being the same Hebrew word for “Spirit”—it’s the breath of God’s mouth, Psalm 33:6, that carried God’s Word to its crowning and perfective end. Job 26:13 says, “By His breath the heavens are made beautiful.” Job 33:4 says, “The Spirit of God has made me.”
Or in the work of man’s redemption. Ephesians chapter 1: The Father elects, and so is the origin of man’s salvation. The Son redeems by His blood, and so is the One through whom redemption is accomplished. But the Spirit seals the redemption which the Father planned and the Son purchased by applying all of salvation’s blessings to those who believe—by sanctifying us and conforming us to the image of Christ.
The point is: the Spirit is the perfecting agent of the inseparable works of the Triune God. He executes all divine operations. This means that everything the Triune God does the Holy Spirit does. What does the Holy Spirit do today? Answer: Everything that God does! And the Spirit carries out those divine acts at their most immediate and intimate level, where they intersect with mankind in their closest relation to us.
And of course, we know that the Triune God is absolutely sovereign. Father, Son, and Spirit govern the world in meticulous providence. No purpose of His can be thwarted, Job 42:2. Isaiah 46:10: “My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure.” Psalm 33:11: “The counsel of Yahweh stands forever, the plans of His heart from generation to generation.” And Ephesians 1:11: we have “been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will.” The Triune God has ordained whatsoever comes to pass. Every event that takes place in time is according to God’s eternal, unconditional, immutable, and exhaustive decree. And that decree is carried out by the working of God’s providence—God’s continuous and intimate working in all of creation, whereby He governs all things unto His most wise and holy ends. And the Holy Spirit is the crowning and perfecting agent in every one of those acts.
This means that when it seems God has laid it on your heart to pray for someone, and you do, and later you find out that they were enduring a particularly difficult trial at that very moment, or that your prayer was suited to their need in a way you couldn’t have naturally anticipated, that is the work of the Holy Spirit. But it’s not a miracle, or a prophecy, or a revelation. It’s providence. It is the Holy Spirit working through ordinary means to providentially guide you to be a benefit to Christ’s church. When the cancer goes into remission, when the infertile couple finally conceives after years of trying, when a seemingly hopeless marriage is restored—all of that is the Holy Spirit’s work in divine providence. But it’s not necessarily miraculous. You see, we don’t deny the experience; we simply believe that we must let Scripture defineour experiences. And in many cases, we don’t call these experiences of divine providence “miracles,” because, one, Scripture constrains us not to; and two, because we don’t want to cheapen the genuine miracles the Bible does record by equating them with our finding a parking space close to the entrance at Costco.
So, yes: the miraculous gifts have ceased. But dear people, the miraculous God has not ceased. God may not be giving miracle workers to the church. But He does continue to perform miracles. And even when He doesn’t perform miracles which suspend the ordinary outworking of His goodness, He is immanently present in His creation, and is supernaturallyordering all things according to the counsel of His will. Yes, most of the time, He accomplishes His supernatural ends according to very ordinary means. But we shouldn’t let our impatience with the normal make us forget that, as Phil Johnson put it at the Strange Fire Conference: Providence is Remarkable.
The supernatural God is sovereignly working all things together for good in this world of His. And there’s a sense in which it’s more spectacular that He can accomplish His ends by working through ten thousand “ordinary processes” than by regularly suspending the natural order and doing the miraculous. O, let us worship the Holy Spirit of providence, because He is the same God as the God of the miraculous! What does the Holy Spirit do today? He executes all divine operations. He perfects every divine act of providence.
II. Baptizes Us into Union with Christ and His Church
A second ministry that the Holy Spirit performs today is, number two, He baptizes us into union with Christ and His Church. First Corinthians 12 and verse 13 says, “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”
Now, technically, I should say that the Spirit is the One with whom we are baptized into union with Christ and His Church. The Spirit is technically not the agent of this baptism, but the One with which Jesus baptizes His people. Everywhere else Spirit-baptism is mentioned in the New Testament, Christ is said to be the One who does the baptizing. John the Baptist says, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me…will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Just as John baptized you with water, or in water, so Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit, or in the Holy Spirit. Just as you’re plunged into the water, so that you are enveloped by it, so also you are plunged into the Spirit, imbued with His presence and influence.
And it is this immersion into the Holy Spirit that unites us to Jesus. Romans 6:3 and Galatians 3:27 speak of being baptized into Christ. Because the persons of the Trinity are each God, and because they mutually indwell one another, baptism into the Spirit is baptism into Christ. It is the means by which we are united to Him, so that all that is His becomes ours. John Calvin famously wrote, “As long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell with us … The Holy Spirit is the bond by which Christ effectually unites us to himself” (Institutes, 3.1.1).
All that Christ purchased for us by His glorious work of atonement remains outside of us until the Holy Spirit applies those blessings to us and puts us into personal possession of the riches of salvation. The Father plans redemption by His electing love; the Son accomplishes redemption, and purchases for His people all the blessings of our salvation; but every single day—every time a sinner is converted—it is the Holy Spirit who applies the redemption planned by the Father and purchased by the Son to our individual case, and makes us partakers of Christ. One writer says, “the Spirit irrigates all believers’ souls with the heavenly graces of Christ” (Beeke and Smalley, RST, 3:140).
And so, believer, do you treasure the blessings of your salvation? The regeneration that opens your eyes to behold Christ’s loveliness? That is the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5). The justification that enables you to stand before God in the righteousness of Christ? Your spirit is alive because of righteousness because the Spirit of Christ is in you (Rom 8:10). The adoption that makes you sons and daughters of God? That is the work of the Spirit of adoption, by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Rom 8:15). The sanctification that purifies you from your uncleanness and transforms you into the likeness of Christ? That is the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22–23). Athanasius said, “When we are ‘made to drink of the [one] Spirit,’ we drink of Christ” (Letters concerning the Spirit, 1.19). And that’s because it is the Spirit that unites to Christ.
And that baptism unites every believer to Christ, at conversion—look at it again: “For with one Spirit we were allbaptized”; no one is left out. And because of that, this baptism unites every believer to one another. “For with one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.” That’s the church: the assembly of the redeemed; the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven; the city of the living God; the palace beautiful; the family of God. No matter what country you come from, what language you speak, what color your skin, what degree you hold, what paycheck you earn, you are united to a spiritual family of brothers and sisters, who bear your burdens, who rejoice with you and weep with you, who strengthen your hands in the battle against sin, and who employ their Spirit-given gifts to help you press forward on your journey toward heaven. That glorious privilege is the work of the Holy Spirit.
III. Empowers Us to Serve the Body
And that leads, quite naturally, to a third ministry of the Holy Spirit. Number three: the Spirit empowers us to serve the body. The original outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost—the initial fulfillment of the promise that Christ would baptize with the Holy Spirit—is spoken of in Acts chapter 1. In verse 5, the ascended Lord says again, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” What does that mean, Lord? Acts 1:8: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” The power that the saints receive in Spirit-baptism is the power to fulfill the ministry of the Word—to testify as witnesses to the Gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins in the name of Jesus to all the nations (Luke 24:47–48).
It is no accident that Spirit baptism is mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12, in the context of the Spirit empowering each member of the body of Christ with spiritual gifts in order to serve the rest of the body of Christ. After speaking of the varieties of gifts, Paul says in verse 7, “But to each [believer] is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to anther the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit.” And He keeps repeating, “by the Spirit, by the Spirit.” Until verse 11 where he summarizes, “One and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills.”
And while, yes, we acknowledge that certain of those spiritual gifts were extraordinary, whose purpose was designed specifically for the infancy of the church—revelatory gifts which have passed away given the sufficiency and finality of God’s revelation in Scripture—nevertheless, there is no reason to maintain that all spiritual gifts have passed away. The gifts of pastoring, teaching, exhortation, helps, service, giving, mercy, leadership, and several others all continue to be given as gifts of grace from Jesus Christ “for the common good,” Paul says. In Ephesians 4:12, he says those gifts are “for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, to the building up of the body of Christ.”
And more than that, not only is every believer baptized with the Holy Spirit at conversion, but Paul commands believers, in Ephesians 5:18, to be continuously being filled with the Spirit. That’s a present imperative, indicating “the obligation of all the saints continuously or repeatedly to receive the influence of the Spirit so that he fills them” (RST, 3:759). Just as a drunkard comes under the mind-altering, behavior-changing influence of wine, the believer in Jesus is to come under the mind-altering, behavior-changing influence of the Holy Spirit (ibid.). Which results in what? Barking and laughing and babbling and rolling around on the floor? No! Ephesians 5: “Be being filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father, and being subject to one another in the fear of Christ.” What is the result of being filled with the Spirit? Biblically-rich, heartfelt, grateful worship that is submissive to divinely-ordained authority.
And so any time you employ your spiritual gifts unto the edification of the body of Christ, you can be sure that the Holy Spirit is at work through you, because those are His gifts that He has given you. Any time you are under the influence of the Word of God, so that you worship God in Scripture-saturated, heartfelt gratitude, you have reason to praise the Spirit for His work in your life. He empowers you for service to the body of Christ, filling you, so that, 1 Peter 4, you would speak as one speaking the utterances of God, and so that you would serve by the strength God supplies, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.
IV. Opens Our Eyes to Behold the Loveliness of Christ
Well, not only does the Holy Spirit execute all divine operations, baptize us into union with Christ and His church, and empower us to serve the body. He also, number four, opens our eyes to behold the loveliness of Christ. And here I’m speaking of the doctrine of regeneration—that purifying renovation, that definitive cleansing from sin and powerful creation of spiritual life where there was only death. We see both concepts ascribed to the Spirit in Titus 3:5, where Paul says, “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit.” Regeneration is that spiritual heart surgery performed by the Holy Spirit of God, wherein He removes your sinful heart of stone and totally transforms you, from the inside out, so that your mind, your heart, and your will are entirely renewed.
In 2 Corinthians 4:4, Paul describes our natural state in sin when he says, “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” This is what it means to be spiritually dead: it means to be devoid of the spiritual life that allows you to see the value of the glory of Christ as He is revealed in the Gospel. Our spiritual perception is so disordered by sin that we look upon the beauty of the glory of Jesus, and we’re repulsed by Him. And yet we look upon the filth of the false glory of sin and self, and we’re in love with it. We love darkness and hate the light. We pursue what is worthless because we are blind to its detriment, and we refuse what is most precious because we’re blind to its value. What a hopeless, miserable condition we were all in.
But what happened? Second Corinthians 4:6: “God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” He gives us new spiritual eyes, so that we see the ugliness and futility of sin, and so that we see the beauty and loveliness of Christ. And with our eyes finally opened, in repentance we turn away from the fruitless joys of sin and self, and in faith we lay hold of the One fairer than the fairest of ten thousand. O, that first glance of the regenerate heart upon Christ, when the things of earth grew strangely dim, as we looked full in His wonderful face! That, dear friends, is the work of the Holy Spirit!
V. Illuminates His Own Word to Our Minds
A fifth ministry of the Holy Spirit that He performs today is: He illuminates His own Word to our minds. Even though God has opened our eyes to the loveliness of Christ in regeneration, and even though the Bible that the Spirit Himself inspired is clear, the sin that remains in us clouds our spiritual sight. It muddies our spiritual understanding, so that this precious Word that is the rule of our life becomes unclear to us. We misinterpret it. We have difficulty disciplining our minds to understand its intent. God has spoken to us a perfect Word, a Word incapable of error. And yet we struggle to understand its truth.
And so we cry out with David, Psalm 119 verse 18: “Open my eyes, that I may behold Wonderful things from Your law.” “Yes, Lord, You’ve opened my eyes in regeneration, but now open my eyes so that I can see what’s in Your Word!” Psalm 119 verse 27: “Make me understand the way of Your precepts.” Verse 34: “Give me understanding, that I may observe Your law and keep it with all my heart.” This is the cry of every student of the Word: “Open my eyes! Make me understand! Give me understanding!”
And it’s the Holy Spirit that answers this prayer. First Corinthians 2 says, “The Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. … The thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received … the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God.” The Spirit, who knows the thoughts of God, has been given to us, so that we may know what God has said to us in His Word—so that we might understand its meaning and learn how to walk in its application.
You see, the Spirit doesn’t give new revelation, but He does give fresh illumination. And so when you’re looking for “a word from God,” you don’t pray for a new word. You pray for light to be thrown upon the sufficient Word that has already been revealed once and for all in the Scriptures. You pray, like Paul in Ephesians 3:14–19, to be “strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that…you…may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth” of “the love of Christ.”
VI. Leads Us in the Path of Holiness
A sixth ministry of the Holy Spirit is: He leads us in the path of holiness. Sanctification is said to be “by the Spirit,” 2 Thessalonians 2:13. If you “walk by the Spirit,” “you will not carry out the desires of the flesh,” Galatians 5:16. Romans 8:13 tells us that we “are putting to death the deeds of the body” “by the Spirit.” The virtues cultivated in the Christian life whereby we exhibit likeness to Christ are called “the fruit of the Spirit,” Galatians 5:22–23. And in 2 Corinthians 3:18, we read, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the sameimage from glory to glory,” and this whole glorious process is said to be “just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”
And that last text really exposes this glorious mystery of the Spirit conforming us into the image of Jesus. “Beholding, we are transformed.” When we apprehend the glory of Christ with the eyes of faith—saturating our minds with the truths of Scripture that the Spirit illuminates to us—the sight of Christ’s beauty satisfies our souls in such a way that we don’t go on seeking satisfaction in the false and fleeting pleasures of sin. In regeneration, the Spirit overcame our spiritual blindness by opening our eyes to the filth of sin and the loveliness of Christ. In sanctification, the Spirit works the same way, strengthening that holy disposition that was born in regeneration. John 16:14: Jesus says, the Spirit “will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.” And that’s exactly what He does in sanctification.
The Spirit shines the glory of Christ into the eyes of our hearts through the means of grace. And the spiritual sight of Christ, by virtue of the delightfulness and beauty of His glory, causes us to admire Him in such a way that we are satisfiedby Him, and therefore we don’t seek satisfaction in lesser, sinful pleasures. The glory of Christ captures our affections, and causes us to love what He loves and to hate what He hates. Then, our renewed affections—our new loves and desires—direct our wills. We want to do what we love, and we want to get away from what we hate. And then, when our wills are thus properly informed by sanctified affections, we do what we want—we joyfully obey the commands of God, which, 1 John 5:3 says, are not burdensome.
And, interestingly, this is what it means to be led by the Spirit. The concept of the Spirit’s leading is often employed to rubber stamp personal feelings and impressions with the authority of God. “The Spirit is leading me to move in with you and sleep on your couch.” But the only two New Testament occurrences of the phrase “led by the Spirit” are in Romans 8:13–14 and Galatians 5:16–18—both in the context of the mortification of sin. The Holy Spirit’s own testimony about how He “leads” believers is explicitly set alongside the putting away of the desires and deeds of the flesh. To do that is to walk by the Spirit; that is, to walk by means of Him: to be led by Him. J. I. Packer said, “the guidance in view here is not a revealing to the mind of divine directives hitherto unknown; it is, rather, an impelling of our wills to pursue and practice and hold fast that sanctity whose terms we know already” (Keep in Step with the Spirit, 118). And so being led by the Spirit is not, “I feel led by the Spirit to… follow this impulse of my own heart that I’m trying to stamp with the authority of God.” But rather: “The Spirit led me to put off my anger and bitterness.” “The Spirit led me to mortify my lust for attention and recognition.”
This is what spiritual power is. It’s not knocking people over with a coat, or flailing around a church speaking gibberish. Colossians 1:11 says we are “strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience.” Paul says in 2 Timothy 1:8, “join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the powerof God.” The Spirit-empowered life is the life of sanctification, of godliness, of holiness. It is the pleasantest life there is.
And as Jonathan Edwards said, “Holiness is a most beautiful, lovely thing. Men are apt to drink in strange notions of holiness from their childhood, as if it were a melancholy, morose, sour, and unpleasant thing; but there is nothing in it but what is sweet and ravishingly lovely” (WJE, 10:478). Friends, think of it. We who by nature are the epitome of ugliness—lost in the uncleanness and the putridness of sin—are made lovely. We’re made to resemble the One who is worshiped in the beauty of holiness. We’re made fit for converse with the King, so that we have the privilege of walking with Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth, in daily communion. What greater work can the Spirit of God accomplish than to purify my sinful soul, and deliver me unto the sweetness of a life of communion with Jesus Christ, the lover of my soul, and the apple of my eye!
VII. Testifies to the Truth of Our Adoption
Well, a seventh ministry that the Holy Spirit performs today is, number seven: He testifies to the truth of our adoption. What a privilege to be the adopted sons and daughters of God! I’ve said it before: It is one thing for a Judge to pardon a guilty criminal because a sufficient penalty has been paid in that criminal’s place. But it is another thing—it is abundant grace—for that Judge to step down from the bench, to walk over to the defendant’s table, and then take that criminal into His own home; to provide for that criminal, to give him a seat at His own dinner table, night after night after night; to put His own name upon that criminal. Think of it: to give him the family name! This lowlife who had no name. To take him from gutter, and to make him an heir of all of His inheritance!
Friends, God does not merely justify us, which would be enough. He does not merely declare us righteous with respect to the law, which is unspeakable grace. He adopts us into His own family, to be His sons and daughters—with all the protections, provisions, blessings, and privileges that belong to being children of God. As one writer put it, “To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is [even] greater” (Packer, 207). “See,” or Behold! Stand back and observe! “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God!” Once, no people. But now, the people of God.
Well, dear friends, the Holy Spirit is called in Romans 8:15 the “Spirit of adoption,” by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” And in Romans 8:16 it says, “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.” And oh, don’t we need this testimony of the Holy Spirit? You could imagine, couldn’t you, that an adopted child might live with some doubt, at times. “Am I really part of this family? I know I’m not their biological child. I know that by nature I don’t belong here. Do they really love me like their own?” And you, if you have any awareness of the depth of your own sin, you struggle, at times, with the assurance of God’s love for you. “Am I really part of God’s family? I know I’m naturally a child of wrath; sadly, my remaining sin all too often reminds me of my natural father. I know I don’t belong here, with Him. Does He really love me as His own?”
And He says, “Dear child, I’ve sent my own Spirit into your very heart, to drive all fear from your heart, so that you can address Me in the very same way as My Son Jesus addresses Me: as your Abba. Do you think I’m pleased with Him? Do you think He belongs in My house? Dear one: You’re united to Him by faith. I see you as I see Him. And so you may call Me what He calls Me. I call you what I call Him.”
The Spirit gives us assurance of our salvation. That’s why Ephesians 4:30 says we are sealed by the Spirit of God for the day of redemption. We don’t have time to get into it, but the ancient practice of sealing is such a rich study. A seal was given (1) to authenticate what was sealed, (2) to mark what was sealed as one’s unique possession, and (3) to make secure what was sealed. The Jews asked Pilate to “make secure” the grave of Jesus, lest His disciples steal His body and claim resurrection. And Pilate says, “You have a guard; go, make it as secure as you know how.” And Matthew 27:66 says, “And they went and made the grave secure, and along with the guard they set a seal on the stone.” If you break the seal, you subvert the authority of the Emperor. Well, the resurrection power of God broke that seal, but Almighty God has sent His seal into our hearts—the Holy Spirit Himself—and nobody can break that seal. Which means that we who are sealed by the Spirit are secure until the day of redemption!
And not only that, but Paul says in Ephesians 1:14 that the Holy Spirit of promise “is given as a pledge of our inheritance.” The word is arrabon, and is just another soul-enriching study. The word is a commercial term that refers to an earnest or down payment. It was the first installment of a payment that served as the guarantee that the rest would follow. If the purchase wasn’t completed, the down payment was lost, and so the earnest bound the one who gave it to make good on his promise. Paul’s saying that the indwelling Holy Spirit is God’s pledged guarantee that the believer will receive all the promised future blessings of his salvation! In giving the earnest of the Spirit, God has bound Himself to bring to full completion the salvation He has begun in every believer (Ryrie, Holy Spirit, 32).
And in times of doubt, and loss of assurance, in a way that is beyond explanation, the Spirit of God testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. He floods the heart with a sense of the sweetness of the Father’s love, with the sweetness of particular promises of the Gospel. He illuminates the mind with the willingness of Christ to receive the weary and heavy-laden who come to Him in faith. He throws light upon His own works of grace in our obedience, as if to say, “Holy Spirit was here!” “You couldn’t have produced that fruit on your own; I did that. And if I’m at work to sanctify you, I’m at work to keep you. I have sealed you, and I will bring you all the way home. You’re real!” It’s not private revelations. But it isthe supernatural, experiential sense of the Spirit’s presence and work within you.
VIII. Intercedes for Us in Our Weakness
We’re out of time, and so I’ll have to just mention these last two. Number eight: the Spirit intercedes for us in our weakness. Romans 8:26–27 says, “The Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
When we feel like we can’t pray, the Spirit strengthens our faith and stirs us up to enduring prayer. When we don’t know how to pray, the Spirit providentially guides our minds to understand our needs, and He gives us words to call out to the Father. And when there can be no words, the Spirit sustains the soul even in our groanings, where we cry out to our Abba and throw ourselves upon Him for mercy.
IX. Ensures Our Glorification
And then, finally, number nine: He ensures our glorification. As we’ve said, He is our seal unto the day of redemption and the pledge of our inheritance. But just to punctuate it, Romans 8:11: “If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”
This will be the perfection of our sanctification—the consummation of all the promises of salvation brought to completion—“when in the integrity of body and spirit, the people of God will be [perfectly] conformed to the image of the risen, exalted, and glorified Redeemer, when the very body of [our] humiliation will be conformed to the body of Christ’s glory” (Murray, RAA, 175). Think of it! Free from even the presence of sin! We will have a heart undisturbed by the deceitful lusts of sin, truly godly ambitions and aspirations, and a physical body that is able to carry out those holy impulses without a moment’s distraction or weariness. And because that’s true, we will be able to fully enjoy the bounties of the new creation God has prepared for His people, perfectly fitted for eternal life on the new earth in unhindered, face-to-face communion with God our greatest treasure and joy. After “this poor, lisping, stammering tongue / [has laid] silent in the grave,” we’ll be raised to life, given a glorified tongue, and “then in a nobler, sweeter song, I’ll sing Thy pow’r to save”—through His Spirit.
Conclusion
Dear brothers and sisters: What does the Holy Spirit do today? Oh, we can barely scratch the surface! Don’t believe the lies that to be a cessationist is to cease to believe in the powerful, day-by-day ministry of the Holy Spirit. Nothing could be further from the truth. But also: don’t contribute to the caricature by being a cessationist who ignores the glories of the Spirit’s work. Press into the fellowship of the Spirit, the consolation of the Spirit. Have communion with the third Person of the Trinity by savoring Him in all the sweetness of His ongoing work in your life.
Before you resolve to do anything else in 2025, resolve to live in conscious dependence on, and in vital communion with, the Holy Spirit, your Comforter—left with you by your Lord Himself. “I will not leave you as orphans,” Jesus says in John 14. “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever.” Has the Holy Spirit of God chosen to dwell in your poor, sinful, broken heart? O, press hard, by grace—by His own power—to make your heart a suitable habitation for Him.