Understanding the Person and ministry of the Holy Spirit—His deity, personality, baptism, filling, gifts, fruit, and ongoing work in believers.
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04015 The phrase ‘the procession of the Holy Spirit’ sounds abstract enough that most Christians assume it belongs to the world of academic theology and has little to do with their daily experience of God. That impression is understandable but mistaken. What is at stake in this doctrine is the Spirit’s genuine identity as…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 7006 Few passages in Scripture have caused more anxiety among believers than Jesus’ solemn warning about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. People have come to me over the years, sometimes in tears, convinced they have committed this sin and are beyond hope. Before we even begin to unpack what this sin actually is, let…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 4099 Acts 19:1-7 is one of those passages that regularly surfaces in discussions about the Holy Spirit, and it is often read through the lens of Pentecostal or charismatic theology as evidence that a believer can be genuinely saved yet still lack the Spirit. The question is worth pressing carefully: when Paul encountered these…
Reading Time: 8 minutesQuestion 4105 When Philip the evangelist preached Christ in Samaria, the response was extraordinary. People believed, were baptised, and the city was filled with great joy (Acts 8:8). Yet something unusual happened — or rather, something unusual did not happen. The Holy Spirit had not yet fallen on any of them (Acts 8:16). They had…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 4059 Is the Holy Spirit actually God — or is He something less? A divine power, perhaps, or a spiritual force that emanates from God without being God Himself? The question is not merely academic. If the Holy Spirit is not fully divine, then the New Testament’s account of His work collapses, and our…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 4060 Few distinctions in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit carry more practical consequence than the one between His baptism and His filling. Confuse the two, and you end up either striving for an experience you already possess, or resting in a position without pursuing the power that flows from it. Scripture draws the…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 4061 Of all the biblical arguments marshalled in support of cessationism — the view that certain spiritual gifts have ceased with the apostolic age — the most frequently cited is 1 Corinthians 13:10: “when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.” The cessationist reading identifies “the perfect” as the completed New Testament canon….
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 4062 The cessationist and continuationist debate turns, at its heart, on a single exegetical decision: are prophecy and Scripture the same category of thing? If they are, then genuine prophecy today would mean adding to the Word of God — an obvious impossibility given that the canon is closed. But if prophecy and Scripture…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 4063 Paul identifies three conditions for Spirit-filled living in Ephesians 4 and 5, and 1 Thessalonians 5: do not grieve the Spirit, do not quench the Spirit, walk by the Spirit. They are simple to list and genuinely demanding to live. Understanding why each one matters — and where each one is most likely…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 4068 The gift of healings is listed plainly in 1 Corinthians 12:9 and 28, and the New Testament account of its exercise in the early church is vivid and specific. Lame men walk. The blind see. Peter’s shadow falls across the sick, and they recover. Paul lays hands on the father of Publius on…