Drive past an old church at night and you will see the stone, the tower, and the tall windows glowing against the dark. What you will almost never notice is the lamp, sitting low in the grass and aimed up at the wall. Nobody pulls over to admire the floodlight. Its whole job is to make you look at something else.
That is a picture of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, “He will glorify me” (John 16:14). The Spirit loves to point us to Christ. But because he points away from himself, we can go years without thinking about him at all. We pray to the Father. We sing about the Son. And we talk about the Spirit as if he were a feeling in the room: “Did you feel it tonight?”
Charles Spurgeon saw the same thing in his day: “we are too much in the habit of talking of the love of Jesus, without thinking of the love of the Holy Spirit.” This short study has one aim: to meet the One holding the light, to see that he loves you, and to learn to love him back.
- He is someone, a person who knows, chooses, and loves.
- He is God, worthy of the same love we give the Father and the Son.
- He pours God’s love into your heart.
- He teaches you to pray, and prays for you when you have no words.
- He is gentle and holy, and he can be grieved.
1. He is someone, not something
Before we can love the Spirit, we have to know there is someone there to love. A person can know, choose, and love. The Bible says all three about the Holy Spirit.
- He knows. “The Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God” (1 Cor. 2:10).
- He chooses. He gives gifts “to each one individually as he wills” (1 Cor. 12:11). He even says “I” and “me”: “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (Acts 13:2).
- He loves, and he can be grieved. Paul speaks of “the love of the Spirit” (Rom. 15:30) and warns, “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God” (Eph. 4:30). You cannot hurt the feelings of electricity.
Many people picture him that way, like spiritual electricity you plug into. But the Bible speaks of “the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14). If the Spirit has power, he cannot simply be power. He is the One who holds all power and gives it as he wills. That is why the ESV says the Spirit “himself” bears witness that we are God’s children (Rom. 8:16). Something cannot tell you that you belong to the family. Someone can.
2. He is God, so love him like the Father and the Son
The Spirit is no high angel running errands for God. He is God himself.
- Lying to him is lying to God. Peter told Ananias he had lied “to the Holy Spirit,” then said, “You have not lied to man but to God” (Acts 5:3–4).
- He is everywhere (Ps. 139:7), eternal (Heb. 9:14), and he breathed out the Scriptures (2 Tim. 3:16).
- He shares the one Name. Jesus said to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). One name, three persons. You could never put an angel in that sentence.
So how much should we love him? Jesus answered that when he gave the greatest commandment:
The Lord is one, and the Lord is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To love God with all your heart is to love the Spirit with all your heart. The church has confessed for centuries that the three are “equal in power and glory” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 6). We usually pray to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit (Eph. 2:18), and love given to one is given to all three. Spurgeon said it simply: “Treat the Holy Spirit with the love and tender respect which are due to the Saviour.”
3. He pours God’s love into your heart
Paul does not say God’s love has been explained to our minds, though it has. He says it has been poured into our hearts. The cross proves God loves you (Rom. 5:8). The Spirit makes you feel it and treasure it. In the Greek the verb means the love was poured in and is still there. The flood came, and it stayed.
Jonathan Edwards said there is a difference between knowing honey is sweet and tasting it. You can read about sweetness in a book. Only a taste tells you what it is. The Spirit gives the taste. He takes what you know about God’s love and makes it real to you.
Jesus’ name for the Spirit, translated “Helper” or “Comforter” (John 14:16). It means one called to your side, like a friend who stands beside you in court. The night before the cross Jesus promised “another Helper, to be with you forever.” He had been their Helper for three years. Now he promised one more just like him. Spurgeon said only love can comfort a grieving heart, and that is why the Spirit is our Comforter: “surely he is the person to comfort thee, because he loves.”
4. He teaches you to pray
When God adopts you, he does not leave you feeling like an orphan in a new house. He sends the Spirit into your heart, and the Spirit gives you the family word. Abba is the word Jesus used when he prayed to his Father (Mark 14:36). It is the warm, everyday word of a child who belongs. Spurgeon put it like this: “As a mother teaches her child to speak, so he puts this cry of ‘Abba, Father’ into our mouths.”
And when you run out of words, he does not run out on you:
John Bunyan, who learned to pray in a prison cell, said, “The best prayers have often more groans than words.” Your weak prayers count. The Spirit is praying with you.
The Puritan Thomas Brooks said the Spirit usually comes “in a still small voice,” quietly, not with noise. Some believers wait a long time before they feel a strong sense of assurance. But every person who belongs to Christ has the Spirit (Rom. 8:9), and every believer is sealed with him (Eph. 1:13). His silence is not his absence. If you love Christ, trust his Word, and want to be holy, the Spirit is already at work in you.
5. He is gentle and holy, and he can be grieved
His name tells you his goal. He is the Holy Spirit, and he means to make you holy. He fights sin with you and in you: “if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13). You do not fight sin to be accepted. You fight it because in Christ you already are (Rom. 8:1).
And he is gentle with the weak. Richard Sibbes wrote, “there is more mercy in Christ than sin in us,” and he said the Spirit is willing to live in messy, struggling hearts and make them his home.
Paul could have said “do not anger the Spirit.” He chose the word for sorrow. A force can be blocked. Only a person who cares can be grieved. Look at the verses around it: we grieve him with cutting words, grudges, bitterness, and gossip (Eph. 4:29–31). He will never leave you, because he is God’s seal on you. But we obey because we love him too much to grieve him.
What about tongues and the other gifts?
Good Christians disagree on whether gifts like tongues and prophecy continue today. Here is a steady place to stand, borrowed from pastor John Piper: keep a deep keel and open sails. A ship with no sails goes nowhere. A ship with no keel tips over in the first strong wind.
- The keel: the Bible is final. Nothing anyone feels or says is ever equal to Scripture.
- The sails: stay open. Paul said, “earnestly desire the spiritual gifts” (1 Cor. 14:1). Some believers pray in tongues privately, and there is room for that.
- Tongues are not the proof. “Do all speak with tongues?” Paul asks, expecting the answer no (1 Cor. 12:30). If you never have, you have not missed the Spirit. Every believer has all of him.
- Test what you feel by where it points. Does it give you new love for Jesus, new hunger for his Word, and a new desire to tell others about him? That is the Spirit’s fruit.
Five ways to love the Spirit this week
- Say “he.” Catch yourself when you call the Spirit “it.”
- Thank him by name. At the end of each day, thank him for one thing he did.
- Ask for more of him. “How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13).
- Ask him to open the Word. He wrote it. Before you read, ask him to help you taste it.
- Guard your mouth. Before you say the sharp thing, remember who is listening from the inside.
For discussion
- Which person of the Trinity do you think about least? Why?
- Had you ever thought of the Spirit as someone who loves you? What changes if he does?
- Where do you know God loves you but have not yet “tasted” it?
- What is one way you will show love to the Holy Spirit this week?
Not sure the Spirit lives in you? Do not go looking for an experience. Come to Christ. Turn from your sin and trust him, who died for sinners and rose again. Everyone who believes is given the Spirit (Eph. 1:13), and the moment you want Christ at all, the Spirit is already at work in you. Jesus promised, “whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37). He is not an it. He never was. He has been holding the light this whole time, and he has loved you the whole time he held it.
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