Q & A with McGee

 

A: The Word of God is very clear in making the Holy Spirit a person. We are told that you are to “grieve not the holy Spirit of God” (Ephesians 4:30). Well, you can’t grieve an influence, an impersonal force, at all. You can only grieve a person. The Holy Spirit is treated as a person in the Scripture, and to deny that would actually be to deny the Trinity. The Trinity is one of the unique and greatest doctrines of the Christian faith. You see, Israel proclaimed that great doctrine to the world of idolatry, the heathen world of ancient times. God said to Israel, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God [Jehovah, thy Elohim, the plural God — the Trinity, if you please] is one Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:4). In the midst of idolatry, they were to declare the unique person of God — that God is one. We are to present one God to a world of atheism. Because it’s changed today — there are not many idolaters with images up in their homes; most homes today have no God at all. But we are to declare before a world of atheism the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.