Who Is the Holy Ghost?
Letting the Scriptures speak for themselves (all quotations KJV)
Most of us were taught that the Holy Ghost is one part of God, a separate "person" alongside the Father and the Son. This study walks through the Scriptures to make a simpler point: **the Holy Ghost is the Spirit which is God the Father, the Creator himself.** He is not a part of God. He is God.
1. The Holy Ghost is the Father of Jesus
When the angel told Mary she would bear a son, she was told how it would happen:
"The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." (Luke 1:35)
Matthew says the same: "When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost." (Matthew 1:18)
The child is conceived of the Holy Ghost, so the Father of Jesus is, quite literally, the Holy Ghost. Scripture says it plainly.
2. The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of God, poured out at Pentecost
On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit was poured out. People spoke in tongues, prophesied, and praised God. Asked what this meant, Peter answered:
"But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams." (Acts 2:16–17)
Notice who is speaking: **God** says, "I will pour out of **my** Spirit." Joel recorded the same promise:
"And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions." (Joel 2:28)
The Spirit poured out at Pentecost is the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God is simply God.
3. God is a Spirit
Jesus said it point blank: "God is a Spirit" (John 4:24). The Father is not a physical thing. Everything physical, the whole universe, was made by him, and he is not part of it. He is entirely outside creation, and he is Spirit.
That is why Genesis introduces him as it does:
"And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." (Genesis 1:2)
The Spirit of God is the Creator. He is the Father of Jesus, and he is our Father too, because he made us. Whenever we think of God the Father, the Creator, we are thinking of the Spirit which is God.
4. One word, one meaning: the original languages
In the New Testament, sometimes the King James Version says "Spirit" and sometimes "Ghost." Looking up the original Greek shows these are the same word. Both "Holy Ghost" and "Holy Spirit" translate **Strong's G4151, pneuma**: a current of air, a breath, a blast or breeze, and by analogy or figure, a spirit, like the human soul.
The Hebrew of the Old Testament carries the same idea: wind or the resemblance of breath, a sensible or even violent exhalation, and figuratively, life. So the Spirit of God is the **life** which is God. It is the same basic concept in both Testaments, and "Holy Ghost" and "Holy Spirit" are interchangeable.
5. The Comforter
People often raise Jesus' promise of the Comforter. Look at what he says:
"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. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you." (John 14:16–18)
Having promised the Comforter, Jesus says, "I will come to you." He identifies himself as the one who will not leave them comfortless. And again:
"But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me." (John 15:26)
This makes sense once we remember what a spirit is. Our spirit is our being, our soul, who we really are. The flesh is just the body our spirit lives in. The Spirit of God is in Jesus. It is the Spirit that caused Mary to conceive, and the Spirit that did everything Jesus did. Jesus himself said it was the Father, the Spirit, who spoke and worked in him.
6. The Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ
Paul puts the two together without a seam:
"But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." (Romans 8:9)
The Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ are one Spirit, because the Spirit of God is in Jesus. The same is true of the Spirit we receive:
"And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." (Galatians 4:6)
When we are saved, we receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, the same Spirit that is in Jesus.
7. How Jesus was conceived
Consider how God made Adam. There was no insemination, no natural spark of life as we know it today. God created Adam with a spirit, and he created that spirit from scratch. The same goes for Eve: God took a rib from Adam, but he made her a separate, living spirit.
Today, when a woman conceives, a new life begins inside her and the spirit comes into being at that point. When the Holy Ghost came upon Mary, it was God fertilizing the egg with his own Spirit. He created the spirit of Jesus from his own Spirit, and became a man by indwelling the body that grew in her womb. From conception, Jesus had the Spirit of God in him.
8. The Spirit of Christ in the prophets
Peter shows this is the same Spirit that guided the prophets of old:
"Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into." (1 Peter 1:9–12)
The Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of God, because God became Christ. He became a man.
9. The image of the invisible God
"Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature." (Colossians 1:15)
You cannot see a spirit with your eyes. Jesus is the visible, physical image of God the Father, the manifestation of God in the flesh. It is hard for finite beings to grasp what God did and how he did it. But the body of Jesus is the finite form of the infinite, the visible form of the invisible, the limit placed on the unlimited. It is what God created so that he could manifest himself in the physical realm.
We ourselves have both a spirit and a body, yet we are one person. In the same way, God is Spirit, and Jesus is the body of God manifest in the flesh. He walked among us as a man to fulfill his purpose, to rescue us, and ultimately to dwell with us forever.
Paul says it directly:
"For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." (Colossians 2:9)
Jesus is not a part of the Godhead. The whole Godhead dwells in him. He is God manifest in the flesh, whole and undivided.
10. Why this matters
The point of all this is to shape your concept of who God is. When you picture God, what do you see?
In reality, God is the Spirit that created all things, and he became a man in Christ Jesus. When we reach heaven, the one we will see as God the Father, the mighty God, is Jesus. John's vision in Revelation 4 and 5 describes a throne surrounded by elders and living creatures, with God himself appearing as a swirling mass of brilliant color. That is an apt picture of a God who is Spirit manifesting himself within the visible range.
Most churches teach that the Holy Spirit is a part of God. But the Holy Spirit is God the Father, the Creator himself, and all of him, not a portion. Those who were raised in church have often been taught otherwise their whole lives. Simply believing the Scriptures dispels that programming.
Teaching that God exists as separate persons only breeds confusion, and the author of confusion is Satan. His aim is to turn people from the truth of who Jesus really is. If Jesus were only some lesser god, we would all be looking past him toward the Father. But Jesus *is* the Father, and that is what we need to understand.
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