How many Gods do you worship?
I. The pagan polytheistic people of the ancient world and the modern world had to choose which deity they would worship or how many deities they would worship.
II. Judaism and Christianity stand out as monotheistic religions—they reject polytheism to serve and worship one God.
III. As we consider if we should worship the Holy Spirit and if we should worship Jesus, then we must deal with the reality of Christian monotheism—that there is one God who exists as three persons. Briefly, we understand that there is one divine essence shared by the three divine persons.
If you are a Christian, the proper answer is that you worship one God.
I. Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the LORD is one.”
II. Nehemiah 9:6, “You are the LORD, you alone.”
III. Psalm 86:10, “you alone are God.”
IV. James 2:19, “you believe that God is one, you do well. The demons also believe and tremble.”
God must be worshiped.
I. Psalm 18:3, God is “worthy to be praised.”
II. Psalm 29:2, “worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness.”
III. Psalm 95:6, “O come let us worship and bow down.”
God is Trinity
I. The modern conception of God as three individuals leads to the question of whether the Holy Spirit should be worshiped.
a. This idea looks like three men sitting in heaven who each are divine much like each person sitting in the room is human.
b. This idea is called social trinitarianism or theistic mutualism.
II. Social trinitarianism is not the historic confession of God and does present us with the problem of tritheism or polytheism.
III. The problem of social trinitarianism is resolved with the recognition that Father, Son, and Spirit are the one God.
a. As the one God the persons of the Trinity share the same essence—John 1:1; Matthew 28:19-20. Since the three divine persons share the same essence:
1. They are interrelated—perichoresis.
2. They have the same glory.
3. They have the same will.
b. As the one God the persons of the Trinity do not have separate wills.
i. The Trinity is not a model for teamwork.
ii. The Trinity is not a model of society.
c. The doctrine of inseparable operations is based on this perichoretic nature of our Triune God. Since there is distinction but no division between the three, all that God does all of God does.
The Holy Spirit should be worshiped because the Spirit is one of the three persons who share the divine nature.
I. John Own, “The proper and peculiar object of divine worship and invocation is the essence of god, in its infinite excellency, dignity, majesty, and its causality, as the first sovereign cause of all things. Now, this is common to all the three persons, and is proper to each of them; not formally as a person, but as God blessed for ever.”[1]
II. The Holy Spirit has the same “name” as the Father and Son—Matthew 28:19-20.
III. The Holy Spirit’s names (Holy Spirit, Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ, etc.) are evidence of his deity.
IV. The Holy Spirit “proceeds” from the Father—John 15:26-27 and the Son John 20:22
V. The Holy Spirit is described with “an array of divine attributes are ascribed equally to God’s Spirit and to God himself—
a. eternity (Heb. 9:14),
b. omnipresence (Ps. 139:7),
c. omniscience (1 Cor. 2:10–11), and
d. omnipotence (1 Cor. 12:4–6)—a fact that again presupposes the essential unity of the Spirit with God himself.
e. The same is true of the divine works of creation (Gen. 1:2; Ps. 33:6; Job 33:4; Ps. 104:30) and of re-creation.”[2]
VI. The Holy Spirit’s presence makes Christians to be the temple of God—1 Cor. 3:16; 6:10; 2 Cor. 6:16
VII. The word which the Spirit gave is described as God’s word—2 Timothy 3:16; 1 Peter 1:10-12
VIII. The Spirit’s empowerment of individual’s was described as God’s empowerment of individuals: 1 Cor. 12:4-7; Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
IX. Basil said, “Should we not exalt him who is divine in nature, unbounded in greatness, powerful in his energies, and good in his deeds? Should we not glorify him?[3]
X. Wayne Jackson, “There are several New Testament contexts in which the cooperative activity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the scheme of redemption are set forth, and in those contexts an anthem of praise flows from the apostles’ inspired pens (see: Ephesians 1:3-14; 1 Peter 1:1-12). It is very difficult to see how anyone could reasonably conclude that only the Father is the object of such adoration.”
XI. Again, John Owen said, “I say that we are distinctly to worship the Holy Ghost. As it is in the case of faith in respect of the Father and the Son, John 14:1, “Believe in God, believe also in me,”—this extends itself no less to the Holy Ghost. Christ called the disciples for the acting of faith on him, he being upon the accomplishment of the great work of his mediation; and the Holy Ghost, now carrying on the work of his delegation, requireth the same. And to the same purpose are their distinct operations mentioned: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” Now, as the formal reason of the worship of the Son is not his mediation, but his being God (his mediation being a powerful motive thereto), so the formal reason of our worshipping the Holy Ghost is not his being our comforter, but his being God yet his being our comforter is a powerful motive thereunto.”[4]
XII. So, it seems right to agree with the ancient writers who believed: “That we worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence. For the person of the Father is a distinct person, the person of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit still another. But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty coeternal” (Athanasian Creed).
The Holy Spirit should be worshiped because of the great things the Spirit has done.
I. The Holy Spirit gave us the Bible
a. 2 Timothy 3:16, “all Scripture is inspired of God.”
b. 2 Peter 1:21, “For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
II. The Holy Spirit works in our salvation
a. 1 Peter 1:2, “who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
b. John 3:5, “born of water and of the Spirit”
c. Titus 3:6, “he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior,
III. The Holy Spirit makes his home with Christians so that Christians become the temple of God
a. Romans 8:9, “You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.
b. 1 Corinthians 3:6, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?
c. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
IV. The Holy Spirit is the Christian’s Helper
a. John 14;16-18, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.
b. Romans 8:26, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”
c. Ephesians 6:18, “praying at all times in the Spirit.”
The Holy Spirit shares in the divine essence. Therefore, the Holy Spirit should be worshiped because God must be worshiped.
[1] John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, n.d.), 269.
[2] Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 278.
[3] St Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, ed. John Behr, trans. Stephen Hildebrand, vol. 42 of Popular Patristics Series (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 93.
[4] John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, n.d.), 269–270.