Who Is the Holy Spirit? God, the Third Person of the Trinity

The Holy Spirit is God. Christian teaching calls the Spirit the third person of the Trinity, one God with the Father and the Son, equal to them yet distinct. The Bible describes a person who comforts, prays for believers and can be grieved, not an impersonal power. Acts 2 tells how the Spirit came at Pentecost.

Who is the Holy Spirit in the Bible?

The Spirit appears in the Bible’s second verse: “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). In the Old Testament the Spirit comes upon particular people for particular tasks. When Samuel anointed David, “the Spirit of the LORD came upon David from that day forward” (1 Samuel 16:13). Isaiah foresees a king on whom “the spirit of the LORD shall rest,” “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD” (Isaiah 11:2).

In the New Testament the Spirit descends on Jesus at his baptism “like a dove” (Matthew 3:16). Before his death Jesus promises his disciples “another Comforter,” “even the Spirit of truth,” who “dwelleth with you, and shall be in you” (John 14:16–17). Fifty days after Easter, at the feast of Pentecost, the promise is fulfilled. Acts 2 describes a sound “as of a rushing mighty wind” and “cloven tongues like as of fire,” and the disciples “were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues” (Acts 2:2–4). From then on the New Testament speaks of the Spirit living in every believer, not only in chosen leaders.

The King James Version, quoted here, often says “Holy Ghost.” It is the same name: in older English “ghost” meant spirit. The difference is explained in Holy Ghost vs Holy Spirit.

Is the Holy Spirit a person or a force?

Christian doctrine holds that the Spirit is a person. The New Testament gives the Spirit a mind: God “knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit” (Romans 8:27). The Spirit has a will, giving gifts “to every man severally as he will” (1 Corinthians 12:11). The Spirit can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30), teaches (John 14:26), testifies about Jesus (John 15:26) and prays for believers (Romans 8:26). When Ananias deceives the apostles in Acts 5, Peter first says he lied to the Holy Ghost and then that he lied “unto God” (Acts 5:3–4), so the passage treats lying to the Spirit as lying to God.

Many Christians do not hold this view. In a Barna Group survey of 1,871 self-described Christians in the United States, conducted in 2008 and published in 2009, 38% strongly agreed and 20% agreed somewhat that the Holy Spirit is “a symbol of God’s power or presence but is not a living entity.” A third disagreed (25% strongly, 9% somewhat), and 9% were not sure.

How is the Holy Spirit different from the Father and the Son?

Christianity teaches that God is one in essence and exists eternally as three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each is fully God. They differ in their relations to one another and in their missions in the world.

The Father is the source. He sends the Son, and Jesus prays to him as Father. The Son is “the Word” who “was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14): he became human as Jesus of Nazareth, died and rose again. The Spirit did not take a body. Jesus describes the Spirit as one “whom I will send unto you from the Father,” who “proceedeth from the Father” (John 15:26). Churches describe this procession in two ways. Western churches recite the Nicene Creed with the words “and the Son” (filioque) after “proceeds from the Father.” Orthodox churches use the original wording of 381, without them. Paragraphs 246–248 of the Catholic Catechism set out both traditions.

Both forms of the Creed treat the three persons as equal: the Spirit receives the same worship and glory as the Father and the Son.

What are the characteristics of the Holy Spirit?

The Bible describes the Spirit through titles and images.

• Comforter, Helper or Advocate. The Greek parakletos in John 14–16 means one called to someone’s side. The Catholic Catechism (paragraph 692) notes that it is commonly translated “consoler.”
• Spirit of truth. “When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).
• Spirit of God and Spirit of Christ. Paul uses both names in one verse (Romans 8:9).
• Eternal. Hebrews 9:14 speaks of Christ offering himself “through the eternal Spirit.”

The images come from particular scenes: a dove at Jesus’ baptism (Matthew 3:16), wind and fire at Pentecost (Acts 2:2–3), and breath when the risen Jesus “breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost” (John 20:22). In Hebrew and Greek the words for spirit, ruach and pneuma, also mean breath or wind.

What are the gifts and fruit of the Holy Spirit?

The gifts are abilities the Spirit gives for the good of the church: “the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal” (1 Corinthians 12:7). Paul lists “the word of wisdom,” “the word of knowledge,” faith, “the gifts of healing,” “the working of miracles,” prophecy, “discerning of spirits,” “divers kinds of tongues” and “the interpretation of tongues” (1 Corinthians 12:8–10). In Romans 12:6–8 he adds ministry, teaching, exhortation, giving, leadership and showing mercy. Catholic teaching also speaks of seven gifts drawn from Isaiah 11:2: “wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord” (Catechism, paragraph 1831).

The fruit is the character the Spirit produces: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22–23, KJV). Modern translations render the same list as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Paul writes “fruit,” not “fruits”: one harvest with nine qualities. Every Christian is meant to show all of them, while the gifts are distributed differently to different people. The fruit of the Holy Spirit has its own article.

What did the Church Fathers teach about the Holy Spirit?

The Spirit’s divinity became a live dispute after the Council of Nicaea in 325, which had settled the Son’s. A party later called the Pneumatomachi, the “Spirit-fighters,” denied it. Basil of Caesarea replied in On the Holy Spirit. According to Torey J. S. Teer (2021), Basil’s case turns on inseparable operations: the three persons never act apart, and a Spirit who does God’s work alongside the Father and the Son must be God. Yuliia Rozumna’s doctoral thesis (2018) argues that Basil’s proof of the Spirit’s divinity cannot be separated from the ascetic life he taught.

Gregory of Nazianzus, called “the Theologian,” put the question directly in his Fifth Theological Oration (Oration 31): “What then? Is the Spirit God? Most certainly.” Eirini Artemi (2013) studies how Gregory presents the Trinity in another of his orations, the twentieth. In 381 the Council of Constantinople expanded the creed of Nicaea to call the Spirit “the Lord, the giver of life,” to be worshipped alongside the Father and the Son.

The New Testament also links the Spirit with the unity of the Church. Paul urges believers to keep “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3), and the Nicene Creed confesses the Spirit and “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” in the same article of faith.

How do you receive the Holy Spirit?

The New Testament presents the Spirit as a gift. In Luke 11:13 Jesus compares God to a father giving good things to his children, and promises the Holy Spirit to those who ask. At Pentecost Peter tells the crowd, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38). In Samaria the apostles “laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost” (Acts 8:17). Jesus tells Nicodemus, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5).

Churches read these passages in different ways. For Catholic and Orthodox Christians the sacraments are the ordinary way: baptism first, then confirmation, known in the East as chrismation (Catechism, paragraph 1289). Most Protestants say a person receives the Spirit on coming to faith, and point to Romans 8:9, where anyone without the Spirit of Christ is “none of his.” Pentecostals hold the same about conversion but add a later experience, the baptism in the Holy Spirit, covered in the next sections.

What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit?

Paul writes, “be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). The comparison is with something that takes hold of a whole person. In Acts the same people are filled more than once: the disciples were “all filled with the Holy Ghost” at Pentecost (Acts 2:4), and after a prayer meeting some time later “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31). For this reason most Christian teachers treat being filled with the Spirit as something repeated and ongoing, not a single event.

What is the difference between being filled with and baptized in the Holy Spirit?

John the Baptist said Jesus would be the one who “baptizeth with the Holy Ghost” (John 1:33), and before his ascension Jesus told the disciples, “ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence” (Acts 1:5). Christians disagree about what that baptism is for believers today.

In Pentecostal teaching it is a second experience, following conversion, that equips a believer for service. The Assemblies of God list it among their Fundamental Truths as “subsequent to the experience of the new birth,” with speaking in tongues as its “initial physical sign.” On this view a believer is baptized in the Spirit once and filled many times.

Most other churches place Spirit baptism at the start of the Christian life, reading 1 Corinthians 12:13 to mean that all believers were baptized by one Spirit into one body. The debate runs inside Pentecostalism too. In a 1985 article in Pneuma, the Pentecostal biblical scholar Gordon D. Fee concluded that a separate, later Spirit baptism is hard to establish from the New Testament texts, while defending the experience of empowerment that Pentecostals describe.

What are the signs of the Holy Spirit’s presence?

Paul’s own test is the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23): a character growing in love, joy, peace and the rest. The New Testament also names the Spirit’s gifts (1 Corinthians 12:4–11), given “to profit withal,” for the good of others. Jesus promised that the Spirit “shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26), so churches also point to a growing understanding of Christ’s teaching.

Pentecostal and charismatic Christians give particular weight to gifts such as tongues, prophecy and healing. Much of the early Pentecostal movement grew out of the 1906 revival at the Azusa Street mission in Los Angeles under the preacher William J. Seymour; Gastón Espinosa’s 2014 biography of Seymour reprints many of his writings. Other traditions place more weight on steady change of character than on any single experience.

How can you tell the Holy Spirit’s leading from your own emotions?

“As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Romans 8:14). Scripture also warns, “believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1). Christian teachers commonly give four tests.

• Scripture. Jesus calls the Spirit “the Spirit of truth” who guides “into all truth” (John 16:13), so a prompting that contradicts Scripture is not the Spirit’s.
• Counsel. “Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14). Churches encourage believers to test decisions with mature Christians.
• Peace. Paul promises “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). Many teachers take lasting peace as a sign of the Spirit’s leading, and ongoing confusion or anxiety as a reason to wait. Feelings alone are not treated as proof.
• Fruit. Guidance from the Spirit leads toward love, patience, kindness and self-control (Galatians 5:22–23), not away from them.

What does it mean to grieve or quench the Holy Spirit?

“Grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30). The next verse names what grieves the Spirit: “bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking,” “with all malice” (Ephesians 4:31). The Old Testament uses the same language of Israel in the wilderness: “they rebelled, and vexed his holy Spirit” (Isaiah 63:10). Grieving the Spirit, then, is sinning against the one who lives in the believer.

“Quench not the Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19) uses the image of putting out a fire. The verses that follow, “Despise not prophesyings. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (5:20–21), suggest that Paul has in mind a church suppressing the Spirit’s work among them, such as prophecy, while still testing what is said.

How does the Holy Spirit work in a believer’s life?

• New birth. “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6).
• Indwelling. Paul describes believers as “in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you” (Romans 8:9).
• Teaching. The Spirit teaches and reminds believers of Christ’s words (John 14:26).
• Prayer. “The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26).
• Assurance. Believers are “sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance” (Ephesians 1:13–14). An earnest is a first payment that guarantees the rest.
• Character. The Spirit produces the fruit of Galatians 5:22–23 over a lifetime.

Related reading

• What Does It Mean to Be Baptized in the Holy Spirit?
• What Does the Bible Say About the Holy Trinity?
• Blaspheming the Holy Spirit