Reflecting on the Holy Spirit
By John Gavazzoni

Since God is Spirit, therefore the Spirit OF God is the Spirit which IS God. Similarly, the Lord Jesus speaking to His disciples of the Spirit of Truth that He would send to them from the Father, said in the same context that He, Himself, would not leave them comfortless (better, orphans), but that He, Himself, would come to them, and since He had previously referred to Himself as THE truth, the only conclusion re: Who the Spirit of Truth is, is that He is Jesus. Paul added his inspired support to that conclusion in referring to the Last Adam (Jesus), as a Life-giving Spirit. (Actually, Paul referred to Jesus both as "A Life-giving Spirit" and "THE Life-giving Spirit.")

This fits with our Lord saying, "the words I speak to you are Spirit and life" for, as the Spirit of Truth and as a/the Life-giving Spirit, He was able to transmit the very Spirit of Himself to others in and by His words. Later that transmission of Himself would be raised to a higher level upon and by His resurrection and glorification. Add to this that Paul wrote of God sending the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, and remembering that Jesus said He would send the Spirit of Truth FROM the Father, we must conclude that the Spirit of God IS the Spirit OF (which IS) the Father, AND the Spirit OF (which IS) the Son. The Holy Spirit must not be thought of as divinely autonomous in respect to the constitution of Deity.

The concept of God as the holy trinity, no matter how trinitarians struggle to avoid it, tends to paint a picture in the mind of the average Christian of three gods sitting in a row on their thrones. The Holy Spirit is God available, God receivable, God knowable, God within and among us all. He's the Breath of God. He's the out-breathing of God to be in-breathed by us as life. He's the Life and Breath God gives to everyone. He's the Bond of the Family OF God, and the Bond which IS God. By Him we have the Life of God as breath, and the power of God as that "mighty Wind that filled all the house" where the early disciples awaited His coming.

I must be bold: The Person of the Holy Spirit is the very Personness of our Father, God, and of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior and Elder Brother. By the communion of the Holy Spirit, as John wrote, we have fellowship with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ. We ought not to think of the Holy Spirit as having any kind of distinctiveness apart from the Father and the Son. He is quite distinctly the One Spirit who is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Jesus. He is that dynamic of Personhood by which God is a Father to Himself as a Son, and a Son to Himself as a Father.

The Holy Spirit is the essence of Their relationship. He is the communion OF, and which IS God, for communion is the life of Deity. "He" is truly "He" as per above. When Jesus said He would send another Comforter, the Spirit of Truth (Reality) to the disciples, what He meant by "Another," was An Other of Himself (look up "another" in a good dictionary). For upon His resurrection and glorification He would be able to be transmittable into each and every man and woman as their "due time" arrived to experience their election to be conformed into His image. He would be able to be sown into the hearts of many, and ultimately all, as the Divine Seed of a New Humanity that would partake of the very relationship within the Nuclear Family which IS God. This is the final, complete transmission of His glorified Humanity that goes beyond that of His former pre-resurrection transmission by words of Spirit and life.

If the reader is thinking, "but brother John, what you've written doesn't fit with the orthodox (actually pseudo-orthodox) doctrine of God as trinity." No, frankly, it doesn't, and I have no wish to try to make it fit. But neither am I attempting to describe the Deity as a Jesus-only kind of Oneness. As I've written several times, God's Oneness is not a Oneness of aloneness, but of a Unity of Family. (Back when the Lord first called me to Himself back in the 50's, what is now generally referred to as the doctrine of Oneness in describing God's Being, was more often referred to as "Jesus only" teaching, and those who embraced that concept as Jesus-only people.)

Godness/Deity is relational at its core with a love that is passionately desirous of extending that relationship to the whole of humanity, in fact, the whole of humanity has come to be out of that relationship. It is that Holy Spirit communion of loving within and among the Godhead (Godness) to which we owe our being. Jesus, who Paul describes in Colossians, as the Son of His (God, the Father's) Love, was begotten from that conjugal love, and we, in Him, have the same Source of being. "That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ."