AI-assisted analysis for orientation; read the source transcript or listen to the sermon to evaluate the interpretation.
The sermon defends the personality of the Holy Spirit by pointing to His understanding, will, power, actions, and susceptibility to grief or resistance. Spurgeon presents Trinitarian faith as essential to a coherent gospel because Father, Son, and Spirit act together in salvation, with distinct offices. The Spirit permanently indwells true believers, making His presence a defining mark of Christian life. The sermon therefore calls the church to earnest prayer for the Spirit’s blessing and warns sinners to stop resisting or despising His testimony.
Theological center: The Holy Spirit is the divine third Person of the Trinity, united with the Father and Son in salvation and personally present within every believer.
Applications: Pray earnestly to the Holy Spirit · Stop and examine your response · Recognize the Spirit as Person · Consider Trinitarian salvation
Primary texts: John 14:16-17 · 1 Corinthians 2:9-11 · 1 Corinthians 12:11
“And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever: even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.” John 14:16-17 You will be surprised to hear me announce that I do not intend this morning to say anything about the Holy Spirit as the Comforter. I propose to reserve that for a special Sermon this evening [See Sermon #5, The Comforter]. In this discourse, I shall endeavor to explain and enforce certain other doctrines which I believe are plainly taught in this text and which I hope God the Holy Ghost may make profitable to our souls. Old John Newton once said that there were some books which he could not read—they were good and sound enough, but, said he, “They are books of halfpence—you have to take so much in quantity before you have any value. There are other books of silver and others of gold, but I have one book that is a book of bank notes, and every leaf is a bank note of immense value.” So I found with this text, that I had a bank note of so large a sum that I could not tell it out all this morning. I should have to keep you several hours, before I could unfold to you the whole value of this precious promise—one of the last which Christ gave to His people. I invite your attention to this passage, because we shall find in it some instruction on four points, first, concerning the true and proper personality of the Holy Ghost. Secondly, concerning the united agency of the glorious three persons in the work of our salvation. Thirdly, we shall find something to establish the doctrine of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the souls of all believers. And fourthly, we shall find out the reason why the carnal mind rejects the Holy Ghost. I. First of all, we shall have some little instruction concerning the proper PERSONALITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. We are so much accustomed to talk about the influence of the Holy Ghost, and His sacred operations and graces, that we are apt to forget that the Holy Spirit is truly and actually a person—that He is a subsistence—an existence, or as we Trinitarians usually say, one person in the essence of the Godhead. I am afraid that, though we do not know it, we have acquired the habit of regarding the Holy Ghost as an emanation flowing from the Father and the Son, but not as being actually a person Himself. I know it is not easy to carry about in our mind the idea of the Holy Spirit as a person. I can think of the Father as a person, because His acts are…