By Barnabas Piper
God the Father, God the Son, and that other guy who does some stuff…. If we’re honest, that’s often how we think of the Holy Spirit. We don’t understand the Spirit’s work, so we don’t consider His work often enough. And what we see of the Spirit in these verses is but a fragment of who He is and what He does.
The Spirit searches the depths of God and knows the thoughts of God—the same God whose knowledge is too wonderful for us and who no one can be His counselor. But the Spirit knows the wisdom and complexity and infinity of God’s mind, motives, and movements.
Now God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit, since the Spirit searches everything,
even the depths of God.
—1 Corinthians 2:10
This same Spirit is the power and clarity of God’s Word. The reason Scripture is living and active is because the Spirit communicates it to a believer’s soul. For someone who is in Christ and in whom the Spirit dwells, they can “evaluate everything” (v.15). That means, in part, that we have eyes to see and ears to hear what Scripture says and also a mind to understand it. Through this knowledge we can evaluate everything else we see and hear according to what the Spirit has spoken to us.
Lest you think the Spirit offers only distant knowledge or impersonal communication, consider what Romans tells us: He helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26). This means when we are unable to pray, lacking words to communicate with God, the Spirit who knows the mind of God takes our yearnings and carries them to God on our behalf. Ephesians 1 tells us that we are “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit” in Christ, and that the Spirit is a “down payment of our inheritance” (Ephesians 1:13–14). Every believer is sealed and guaranteed because of the Spirit dwelling in us. Our place in God’s family is guaranteed.
In these truths (and there are so many more throughout God’s Word), we see the Spirit woven into every aspect of our faith and Christian life as the Spirit imparts to us the wisdom of God and intercedes on our behalf before the Father. He is God indwelling us, sealing our faith, and guaranteeing the promise of eternal life with Jesus. This is the Holy Spirit at work in and for us.
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