Two Shall Become One

"A new heart also I will give you, and a new spirit will I put within you ... and I will give you an heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26)

How can one personality enter another? The candid reply would be simply that we do not know, but a near approach to an understanding may be made by a simple analogy borrowed from the old devotional writers of several hundred years ago.

We place a piece of iron in a fire and blow up the coals. At first we have two distinct substances, iron and fire. When we insert the iron in the fire we achieve the penetration of the iron and we have not only the iron in the fire but the fire in the iron as well. Two distinct substances... have co-mingled and interpenetrated to a point where the two have become one.

In some such manner does the Holy Spirit penetrate our spirits. In the whole experience we remain our very selves. There is no destruction of substance. Each remains a separate being as before; the difference is that now the Spirit penetrates and fills our personalities and we are experientially one with God.

The Christian is in correspondence with God. He walks "in newness of life." Indeed, the deeper walk of the Holy Spirit in sanctification quickens every spiritual sense.

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The Holy Spirit is God

"I will put my spirit within you ... and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them" (Ezekiel 36:27)

How shall we think of the Holy Spirit? The Bible declares that He is God. Every quality belonging to Almighty God is freely attributed to Him. All that God is, the Spirit is declared to be. The Spirit of God is one with and equal to God just as the spirit of a man is equal to and one with the man.

The historic Church when she formulated her "rule of faith" boldly wrote into her confession her belief in the Godhood of the Holy Spirit. The Apostles' Creed witnesses to faith in the Father and in the Son and in the Holy Spirit and makes no difference between the three.  The fathers who composed the Nicene Creed testified in a passage of great beauty to their faith in the deity of the Spirit:

And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified.

All that the Son is the Holy Spirit is, and all that the Father is the Holy Spirit is, and the Holy Spirit is in His Church.

~A. W. Tozer~