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1 Corinthians 1:3
The most curious—and theologically significant—facet of these epistolary salutations is the wholesale absence of greetings from the Holy Spirit. In nearly every greeting, the writer sends greetings from God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ. A Bible reader brought up in traditional Christianity would expect that the so-called Third Person of the Trinity would get equal billing with the Father and the Son from the apostles, but the biblical text omits all mention of the Holy Spirit in terms of personal greetings to the churches. Is this just a mistake? An embarrassing omission? A slight? If greetings from the Holy Spirit were absent in some but not all the salutations, we might make a case for any of these explanations, but because they are entirely absent among the greetings of twenty epistles (not counting Hebrews) from five apostles, they make an implicit theological point: The Holy Spirit sends no greetings because there is no Third Person in the God Family to send them! Put simply, the Father and His Son are the only divine Persons, and in grace, mercy, and peace they send their personal greetings to the church. Not being an additional, distinctive entity, the Holy Spirit does not send any greetings. The clearest biblical explanation of this truth appears in John 14, where Jesus Himself provides the correct understanding: . . . I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. . . . If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. (John 14:16-18, 23) Jesus teaches here that the Holy Spirit is not another personality but the divine essence of both the Father and the Son that comes to and resides in each of God's chosen sons and daughters. Since Jesus Christ is the One who most often interacts with humans, the apostles single Him out most frequently as "the Spirit." In II Corinthians 3:17, Paul states this plainly, "Now the Lord is the Spirit. . . ." It does not get much clearer than that! The apostle also equates "the Spirit Himself mak[ing] intercession for us" (Romans 8:26) with "Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us" (verse 34). The "Christ in you" statements (see Romans 8:10; Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 3:17; Colossians 1:27; etc.) also have this sense: The Spirit of the Son lives, abides, or continues with us. Broadly, the Holy Spirit is the personality, mind, and power of God to do His will throughout His creation. But for those of us who believe and love Him, it is also the means by which the Father and the Son live in us, interact with us, empower us, and enable us throughout our developing relationship with them. In a way that we as humans cannot fully fathom, the Spirit is both of them in us, uniting us with them, as Jesus explains in His prayer in John 17:20-23: I do not pray for these [disciples] alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. Because the Father and the Son are fully united in all things, when Christ is in us, the Father is in us also, and we are thus united with both of them in spirit and growing to become united with them in character. There is no need for a Third Person of a Trinity. It is truly amazing what can be learned from realizing that we must live by every word of God—even what the salutations of the epistles do not say is instructive!
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Whither the Holy Spirit?
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