What the Bible says about Holy Spirit as God's Mind
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Psalm 139:1-6

It is beyond our ability to understand how a Being could be at the center of His creation—and we know a little bit about the awesome size of His creation. We are able to see the earth and the billions of people on it. How does God keep track of all that? It is too great. It is too high. But He does it, we know, by His Spirit.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Right Use of Power

Psalm 139:7-10

The Holy Spirit is the power of God. It is the means through which He accomplishes His will. Verse 7 teaches us a great deal about this. God the Father is a Personality. He is located in one place at one time, just as we are. But His ability to insert Himself into and affect events anywhere in His creation is contained within the power that emanates from His mind.

It is His Spirit—which emanates from His mind—that enables Him to be everywhere all at once, if He so desires. It gives Him the ability to keep track of all of us. It gives Him the ability to be with a person in Charlotte or someone in Los Angeles or another in Chicago. Wherever we are, He can be there because by His mind He is able to concentrate His attention in those areas.

We lack power like that. We have limited imitations of it. We can concentrate our attention in a very limited way on certain things, events, or places. But He can concentrate His attention in many areas at the same time by the spiritual power that emanates from His awesome mind.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Holy Spirit

Isaiah 30:1

"Spirit" is ruach, and it is used in the sense of invisible force or power. Thus ruach, depending on the context, is used to express intelligence, will, truth, hope, faith, knowledge, wisdom, discernment, omnipotence, omnipresence, infinity, invisibility, or holiness. These words are different from those in reference to God's soul (see Leviticus 26:11), which had to do mostly with feelings, with emotional qualities. Here ruach covers aspects that have to do with mind power.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Image and Likeness of God (Part One)

Zechariah 4:6

An angel is explaining to Zechariah the work of the Spirit. God's Spirit, moving and producing works (or results, visible signs of God's inspiration and involvement in His servants' activities), is shown as flowing into the church. Here is a short quotation from Keil & Delitzsch.

Oil ... is used in the Scriptures as a symbol of the Spirit of God [notice this qualification], not in its transcendent essence. . . .

The Holy Spirit often appears in the Bible, not in is pure form (the essence of God's mind and power), not in its raw form, we could say. Here it appears as oil. Continuing:

. . . not in its transcendent essence, but so far as it works in the world, and is indwelling in the church.

The oil that is flowing through these pipes is not the raw Spirit of God, but it is His Spirit seen in its works, that is, in its manifestations. We are not seeing, necessarily, God's Spirit as God's Spirit. We are seeing God's Spirit as it manifests itself primarily in spoken and written words, but also in things like miracles, healings, casting out of demons, acts of faith, good works, etc.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
The Two Witnesses (Part Four)

John 6:44

Our calling, our life in Christ, begins when the Father directly interfaces with our mind for the purpose of revealing Himself, His ways, His purpose, His plan, His mind, His attitude, His perspective, His character, His love, His power, His mercy, His forgiveness, and on and on, that we might use our life and free-moral agency to choose life

But most important is that the Father Himself does this. God miraculously joins His own mind to ours! There is nothing mysterious about this at all. He begins to transfer His thoughts, His attitudes, His character—the Spirit of His mind—into our minds. When it tells us, "Grieve not the Spirit of God," he means, "Don't grieve the Father by resisting Him." He is transferring the invisible essence of His mind through the access that we have to Him by means of the death of Jesus Christ. He is by no means kidding about the importance of this process. He is helping us to understand that, even as we are influenced by those around us, unless we are in the presence of God, we will not be influenced by Him. This is why it is so vital for us to share life with Him.

This is where prayer and Bible study become important because we are literally in His presence and He can transfer the essence of His mind into ours. Nobody sees it. When we obey, we are giving Him permission to do this. We submit, using our free moral agency. There is nothing magical about this at all. It occurs when we respond to the influence of the interface that He creates between us when we believe His Word and submit, and when we strengthen the relationship through prayer, Bible study, and meditation.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Holy Spirit and the Trinity (Part One)

John 14:17

In other words, "the Spirit of truth" will take up residence. Do we have God the Son and God the Father running around inside of us? No. The mind of God, the Spirit of God, is in us, residing in us. It has taken up residence, and therefore the Father is there, as well as the Son.

The apostles were literally seeing the Holy Spirit of God, the essence of God's mind, in the action, in the life, of a fellow human being—Jesus Christ. He was the literal Word of God. He was with them, teaching, leading, guiding them into truth. He was truth personified. His word is truth (John 17:17). His word is spirit (John 6:63). They could literally, directly, see Him and hear Him, the Son of God, which is why He said the Holy Spirit was with them. It, the essence of God's mind, was in Him. What they witnessed with their eyes and ears was being fed directly into their minds, becoming part of their experience.

The Spirit, the essence of God's mind, was on the verge of residing in them, but it was not yet firmly lodged in them where it would consistently manifest the characteristics of the God Family. This is why Luke 24:49 says, "Tarry in Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high." Power to do what? To submit to the will of God. He gave them the power to keep God's law in the spirit, not just its letter. Any human being with enough willpower can keep the law of God in the letter, but God must empower us to keep it in the spirit. We need more power than what we humanly have to keep God's law in the spirit. God is looking for people who will worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), and He has empowered us to do that by His Spirit.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Holy Spirit and the Trinity (Part Five)

John 14:23

The meaning is so clear: The Father and the Son live in us, not a Third Person of a Trinity. This is in context just after Jesus says, "I will send another Comforter, . . . even the Spirit of truth" (John 14:16-18).

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Holy Spirit and the Trinity (Part One)

Galatians 3:3

The NIV translates it this way: "Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?" The word for "foolish" here is the same one used in Galatians 3:1. Paul sounds incredulous that a group of people could be so blind in terms of spiritual understanding, especially after they had had the gospel preached to them and appeared to have fully comprehended it. Paul is saying, in essence, "Is it possible that you have completely stopped thinking?"

Our relationship with God is initiated by Him. He calls us (John 6:44) and causes us to approach Him (Psalm 65:4). Our minds are spiritually opened when we receive His Holy Spirit, and it is only then that we can truly obey God (in the letter and the spirit). The Holy Spirit is the essence of God's mind—His thoughts, motivations, attitudes, principles, mood, frame of mind. When we repent and are baptized, we receive a small measure of the Spirit—of the mind of God. As we grow and mature spiritually, we are growing more into God's image. We are beginning to think like Him. Thus, we are getting more of God's perspective and mindset—God's Spirit.

It is ludicrous to think that our spiritual lives began with God giving us His Spirit, but then we take over the reins and are in control from that point on. Yet this is what Paul is chastising the Galatians for—believing that their works and righteousness would carry them through this life and into the next. This notion completely denies what Christ did for us in sacrificing Himself for us, what God does in allowing Christ's sacrifice to cover our sins, and what God does in making us into the spiritual image of His Son and ultimately bringing our salvation to pass. Similarly, to negate the part the Holy Spirit plays in our life is to negate the owner and source of that Spirit. If we begin trusting in ourselves to bring our own salvation to pass, we are exhibiting the epitome of pride and presumptuousness—and we are also severely deceived.

David C. Grabbe

Galatians 4:6

Because we have been adopted, because God has redeemed us from our former father/owner, He gave us a measure of the same Spirit—that vital, animating essence that He and the Son share (John 15:26). The Holy Spirit links our mind to God's (Romans 8:16; I Corinthians 2:10-16) and allows us to begin to see things as He sees them—to discern spiritually.

David C. Grabbe

Revelation 11:6

Like Revelation 11:4-5, verse 6 has obvious references to the Old Testament. The first miracle—no rain falling in the days of their prophecy—refers specifically to Elijah's 3½ year drought (I Kings 17-18). The second—waters turning to blood—is an obvious reference to the first plague that Moses brought upon Egypt (Exodus 7:14-25). This seems to be a return to the way God's servants worked before Jesus Christ came—specifically focusing on Elijah's and Moses' works.

The word "power" appears three times in the description of the Two Witnesses, once in Revelation 11:3 and twice in verse 6. When somebody says, "These have power," we think in terms of energy or force or strength to do something. However, the implication of "power" here is authority. God gives them the authority, or the right, to cause these things to happen. In a way, they are given carte blanche to do what needs to be done.

In studying the lives of Elijah, Moses, and others of the prophets, we do not often see them going to God and saying, "Now, what should I do at this point? God, you know our enemies are coming, and I'm not sure what I should do." No, they just do whatever needs to be done. In II Kings 1, when the groups of fifty men and their captains come upon Elijah, the prophet was not sitting there and praying at the top of a hill, saying, "Oh, they're getting close. God, tell me what to do." He just called for fire from heaven and destroyed them. So, the Two Witnesses are given much the same authority at the time of the end. These two will have been trained and prepared by God to such an extent that they will know what to do. They will call upon God, and He will answer with power.

We do not find Jesus, for that matter, beseeching God for instruction about what to do. If someone came to Him for healing, He healed him. If someone needed a demon cast out, He cast out the demon. Once one has God's Spirit—and is in line with God's will—then these decisions are easier to make because, as Paul says in I Corinthians 2:16, "We have the mind of Christ." As we grow, we develop more of that mind of Christ, and we should be able to make decisions as Christ would make them.

So these Two Witnesses will be very much like Christ. They are witnesses of Him, as it says in the literal translation of verse 3. They are, in a way, some of the best representatives of Jesus Christ and His character that will have ever walked this earth. They will act like Christ as much as any two men can, and people in the world will see these two people as like Christ—and eventually treat them as they treated Christ.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
The Two Witnesses (Part Six)


 

©Copyright 1992-2024 Church of the Great God.   Contact C.G.G. if you have questions or comments.