Holy Spirit: He Is, He Can

by Jared Johnson

He put out the form of a hand and took me by the hair of my head, and a wind lifted me between the earth and the heavens and brought me to Jerusalem with a great appearance of God…  

Ezekiel 8.3, The First Testament 

Just last week I heard a preacher say this about Holy Spirit: “he does stuff.” He expounded on that basic comment with lots of biblical backup, but I loved his distillation into such a simplistic, “straight-through-the-front-door” line.  

Plenty of great content from our other authors this month has preceded today. Because so much good has already been said, this may feel a bit disjointed, but here goes anyway.  

First, “Holy Spirit” is His Name, as best as we can understand in our limitation. As has already been said, Holy Spirit is God Almighty, one “person/aspect” of the Holy Trinity, just as God the Father and Jesus the Son are. Holy Spirit is not an impersonal “it,” but “He,” Yahweh. I get that it seems a bit awkward both linguistically and grammatically to skip “the,” but so be it. Always including “the” subtly de-personalizes Him. If we exclusively referred to a personal friend who happens to coach baseball as “THE baseball coach,” and we never addressed him as “Mike,” yes, obviously, it would be awkward! Imagine the scene: a mom, dad, and kid are all standing in their kitchen, when the kid asks mom a question, which she’d prefer he pose to his dad. Rather than saying “ask your dad,” what if she said instead, “ask the baseball coach?” Holy Spirit is always “standing right there” with us, so…

Anyway, very few people have trouble addressing someone as “coach,” so maybe just think of using “Holy Spirit” in a similar way to when we say “Hey, Coach.”

I started with Ezekiel 8.3 as I have never heard it used as an example when a preacher speaks about Holy Spirit, but goodness, what a jarring story! Why would He grab Ezekiel’s hair? Ouch! So much for Jabez’s prayer “to be spared from all pain.” In Hebrew, “visions of God” is in verse 3, but I wonder in which “direction,” grammatically, does “vision” point? Was Zeke “carried to Jerusalem in a vision,” or was he carried to Jerusalem and then, “in a vision [saw] God?” Various English translations are more or less clear about it and the few commentaries I picked up were, likewise, mixed. Ezekiel had plenty of visions in his eponymous book – dry bones (ch 37), the perfected temple, land divisions and river of life (chs 40-48), psychedelic angels (chs 1, 10), God’s glory visibly leaving Israel’s Temple (ch 10) – so chapter 8’s opening certainly could be another vision. But we also know Holy Spirit can do physical “stuff,” like visible flames at Pentecost and visibly alighting on Jesus at His immersion. In chapter 11, verse 1, “the Spirit lifted me and brought me to the east gateway of [Yahweh’s] Temple.” That sounds much less metaphorical. Maybe all this happened to Ezekiel in a way greater than merely “in his headspace?” To my ears, it’s just ambiguous enough to continually prick my thinking.  

Here's my last thought for today: Romans 8.26. Jesus is rightly attributed intercession on our behalf (Hebrews 7.25), but Holy Spirit helps us through prayer as well.   

…Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that can’t be expressed in words. (NLT) 

Now, I’m not saying both Jesus and Holy Spirit intercede for us as if I’m contradicting the contrast between Heb. 7.25 and Rom. 8.26 – but there’s that whole Trinity thing again – but I am saying that Holy Spirit’s interjection is just as pastoral as Jesus’s direct and intercessory prayer for us.  

When we’re at our wit’s end, when we’re speechless in prayer before God’s Throne of Grace, when we just can’t, Holy Spirit can. He perfectly expresses what’s utterly unknown or even “just on the tip of my tongue.” When I’m stuck in prayer, when I’m emotionally spent and can’t form a coherent thought, He’s perfectly aware of my state and He’s perfectly capable of expressing exactly what needs to be said on my behalf among the Godhead. To be overly simplistic: Jesus always prays for me; Holy Spirit always prays with me.