God the Holy Spirit

CORAM DEO

by Burk Parsons

Reprinted from the  January 2024 Issue of Tabletalk Magazine

Ligonier Ministries

The Holy Spirit is God. He is the third person of the Trinity, and He hovered over the waters at creation. He is God Almighty, infinite, eternal, immutable, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. Yet in many churches, the Holy Spirit is rarely mentioned. While it is rightly common for us to hear about what God does, what Christ does, what God’s Word does, and what the gospel does, some Christians rarely hear about what the Holy Spirit is doing. This isn’t just a problem in the broader church; it’s a problem in many Reformed churches. I believe that one of the reasons for this is an overreaction to the inappropriate emphasis on the Holy Spirit in many Pentecostal and charismatic churches. It seems that some pastors in Reformed churches think that they need to talk less about what the Holy Spirit is doing in the lives of believers individually and the church corporately.

We often hear people say that the sovereignty of God is on every page of Scripture, but so is the Spirit of God. For the Spirit of God cannot be separated from the sovereignty of God. Christ was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit made us alive in Christ. The Holy Spirit gives us eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to understand. The Holy Spirit sustains us, convicts us, comforts us, and preserves us, and He will be with us forever. He is the sanctifying Spirit who humbles us, leads us to repent, enables us to forgive, and opens our lips that we might praise our triune God.

With all the burdens that can overwhelm us, our only remedy is to cast ourselves on the Holy Spirit, who indwells us. Amid our doubts, we can know that our faith is real when the Spirit pricks our conscience and leads us to repentance. When we are sad, we must remember—especially in our prayers—that joy is not the absence of sadness but the presence of the Holy Spirit. And in times of weakness, we can rest assured that the Holy Spirit not only uses weak people, but He wants us to fix our eyes on the author and perfecter of our faith, Jesus Christ, as we live and breathe coram Deo, before the face of our triune God.

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Dr. Burk Parsons is editor of Tabletalk magazine and senior pastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Fla. He is a co-translator and coeditor of A Little Book on the Christian Life by John Calvin. He is on X at @BurkParsons.

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