Of all the controversial subjects in the church over the years, as well as today, is the subject of the Holy Spirit. Some overemphasize its presence and work. There are some modern preachers today who abuse it and use it to make themselves rich by claiming to have supernatural healing powers and other gifts that draw hurting people to them. Others minimize it or simply ignore it. Both of those approaches are wrong. Martin Lloyd-Jones says, “Because of certain exaggerations, excesses and freak manifestations, and the crossing of the border line from the spiritual to the scientific, the political and the merely emotional, there are many people who are afraid of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, afraid of being too subjective. So they neglect it altogether. I would also suggest that others have neglected the doctrine because they have false ideas with regard to the actual teaching concerning the person of the Holy Spirit.”
There are three persons in the Godhead: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These are the only persons in the Godhead. They all are omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. These characteristics of divinity soundly establish their character and nature. A quick look at various passages in the bible demonstrates that they all have these divine characteristics. All three are Omnipotent, which means “all-powerful.” Only three Persons have the attribute of omnipotence. God the Father is omnipotent in 1 Peter 1:5. The Son is omnipotent in Hebrews 1:3. The Holy Spirit is omnipotent in Romans 15:19. All three are omniscient. That means “all-knowing.” The Father is omniscient in Jeremiah 17:10. The Son is omniscient in John 16:30; 21:17, and Revelation 2:23. The Holy Spirit is omniscient in 1 Corinthians 2:10–11. All three are omnipresent, meaning that “God is everywhere.” The Father is omnipresent according to Jeremiah 23:24. The Son is omnipresent according to Matthew 18:20 and 28:20. The Holy Spirit is omnipresent according to Psalm 139:7–10.
A fourth characteristic that all three persons in the Godhead share is eternality. This is another divine attribute that the Scriptures ascribe to all three of the persons of the Godhead. Hebrews 9:14 establishes this trait for the Holy Spirit. It says, “…how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” Only three persons possess all four of these attributes of God. John Owen, the renowned Puritan theologian, tells us (according to Stephen Olford) that if the sin of Old Testament times was the rejection of God the Father, and the sin of New Testament times was the rejection of God the Son, then the sin of our times is the rejection of God the Holy Spirit.”
We are instructed by the Bible to worship God only. Since we are Trinitarians in our faith, we worship the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Letham says, “We worship the Holy Spirit, who gives life and breath to all, who grants us the gift of faith, who sustains us through the difficulties of life as Christians in a world set in hostility to God, and who testifies of the Son. And we worship with one act of adoration the one undivided trinity, for as we cast our minds and hearts before the three persons of the holy trinity, we acknowledge the one indivisible God.”[1]
[1] Letham, Robert. 2013. “How the Triune God Transforms Worship.” Credo: The Trinity & The Christian Life (April 2013), 2013.