In this series of articles, we began with an introduction to God as our Father, emphasizing Him tremendous love for His creation and His desire to be with us. We next introduced the Christ as the manifestation of the Father’s love and mercy in a way that humans can understand. We then introduced two spirit influences.
First, we revealed the secret of the divine spirit fragment of the Father that indwells His human creations and acts as a sort of homing device, creating in us a yearning for the Father and drawing us ever closer to Him. Then we introduced the spirit of truth that acts as a comforter in the physical absence of the Christ, bearing witness with the divine spirit fragment that we are indeed sons of the great universal Father, and guiding us into all truth. But there is yet another spirit influence identified in the Bible.
While both of the spirit influences that we have already discussed are accurately described as “holy,” there is another spirit influence that actually carries the title of “Holy Spirit.” We often refer to as “God’s active force.” The Holy Spirit serves a different purpose than the first two, and has been with mankind from the very beginning. Our first introduction to the Holy Spirit is in Genesis:
“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
– Genesis 1:2
It is the force that carried out the commands to ‘let’ creation be. (Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24) It is the actor that carried out the divine command to “Let us make mankind in our image.”(Genesis 1:26) And it is the divine contributor of the “breath of life.” (Genesis 2:7) As such, the Holy Spirit permeates our entire universe. Thus, we know that, except for the temporary interruption of rebellious spirit sons of God, our universe is “good.”
Since the Holy Spirit works in conjunction with the Father and the Son in the matter of creation, it might be referred to as a “mother” spirit. It moved the Bible writers to pen their historical accounts of the nation of Israel. It worked to develop in the animal-minded man the capacity of worship and wisdom, especially among the psalmists who demonstrated a special appreciation of the divine qualities of the Father, even before Christ. And it developed the nation of Israel in their evolving worship of Jehovah under the Law Covenant.
But with the advent of the Christ and the outpouring of the spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit took on a new quality. The Apostle Paul describes the change in a “symbolic drama:”
“Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise. These things are being taken figuratively: The women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.”
– Galatians 4:21-26
Yes, since the advent of Christ, the Holy Spirit manifests itself as Jerusalem Above! The mother of the anointed children of the Father! The gathering place for the sons of the Kingdom – the body of Christ. As Jesus said: “Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather.” (Luke 17:37) Indeed, the Holy Spirit is the spiritual manifestation of the Kingdom of the Heavens!
Nevertheless, to all who have not accepted their anointing, the Holy Spirit continues to act in the capacity of a fleshly mother working to develop in the minds and hearts of her earth-minded children the truth of their sonship. They were not immediately abandoned. But the time will come when they will be driven away, along with the fleshly minded system of things.
“At that time the son born according to the flesh persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now. But what does Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son.” Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.”
– Galatians 4:29-31
The Father has, in his great wisdom, provided several spirit channels to reach His children and help them find their way to the Father, though “he is not far from any one of us”. (Acts 17:27) We have identified three spirit circuits, in addition to the person of the Christ, that operate in our world – the divine spirit fragment of the Father, the spirit of truth of the Christ, and the nurturing Holy Spirit. Though they are separate and distinct spirit influences, for all practical purposes, we can refer to them all simply as holy spirit because they all work together in a symmetry of spiritual endowment and ministry such that together they lead spiritual men and women to consciously realize the faith-fact of their sonship with God – the ultimate divine relationship.
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
– Romans 8:28
