(upbeat music) - Welcome back to the podcast. Well, God is happy in himself, amen. And God wants us to be happy in himself, amen. And if you start to apply biblical categories here to this topic, you begin to ask this question. How does God's joy become my joy? That's our question today.

A really good one from a listener named Heather in Chicago. Hello, Pastor John, thank you for this podcast, she writes. My question for you is about the nature of who God is and how he relates to our joy. Can you explain to me from the Bible, the person and work of the Holy Spirit as the love and joy shared between the Father and the Son?

I don't quite understand this without making his person seem more like a force or a cosmic energy. And then how does the person of the Spirit enable us to experience God's joy within us? It seems like those two realities connect to the person of the Spirit and the joy in us, but it doesn't connect for me, not yet.

Can you help me understand these two dynamics from the Bible? - I think it's crucial as we try to understand our relationship with the Holy Spirit, that we fix it firmly in our minds that we are dealing with a distinct person. Just fix it. So that, whatever else is uncertain, don't let that be uncertain.

A person, a divine person, the third person of the Trinity. In fact, I've been struck recently, even before I heard this question, I've been struck recently how the New Testament encourages us to enjoy fellowship with each of the three divine persons of the Trinity. Not just fellowship with God in the abstract or general way, but fellowship with God, the Father, fellowship with God, the Son, fellowship with God, the Spirit.

For example, 1 Corinthians 1.9 says that God called us into the fellowship of his Son. 2 Corinthians 13.14 refers to the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. 1 John 1.3 says our fellowship is with the Father. So we're taught to have fellowship, communion, personal relations with the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

And you know what book I would recommend, Tony. John Owen, "Of Communion with God." Nobody, I don't think, in the history of the church has helped people come to terms with what it means to relate to each person of the Trinity like John Owen. I would recommend "Of Communion with God" by John Owen.

Now that implies that the Holy Spirit is a person, someone you can relate to, talk to, which is exactly the way Jesus spoke of him. He says in John 14.26, "The helper, the Holy Spirit, "whom the Father will send in my name, "he, and yes, it is masculine, "not neuter to agree with spirit, pneuma, "he will teach you all things." So he is distinct from the Father because the Father sends him, and he's a teacher when he comes, not just a force or gas.

And the apostle Paul picks up on this very reality of the Spirit as distinct from the Father and a very personal teacher in 1 Corinthians 2.10 and 13 where he says, "The Spirit searches everything, "even the depths of God." What an amazing statement. "The Spirit searches the depths of God, "and we impart things of God in words taught by the Spirit." So just like Jesus, Paul picking it up and continuing what Jesus taught.

So Jesus and Paul treat the Holy Spirit not as an impersonal force or power, but as a person who comes and teaches and indwells believers and who can be related to personally. Then consider that Jesus said in John 4.24, "God is Spirit, and those who worship him "must worship him in spirit and in truth." In other words, God is not material, he's not physical, he is Spirit.

Which means when we say that one of the persons of the Trinity is the Spirit of God, we are saying he is the Spirit of a Spirit. Now, what does that mean? What does it mean to say the Spirit has a Spirit? We are not saying he's the image of the Spirit or the radiance of Spirit or the logos or word of Spirit, all of which are said about the Son.

So what are we saying when we refer to the Holy Spirit of God who is himself as Trinity Spirit? Here's what Edwards says, Jonathan Edwards, who has helped me so much, quote, "The word spirit in scripture, "when used concerning minds or spirits, "is put for the disposition, inclination, "or temper of the mind." For example, when Ephesians 4.27 says, "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind," the disposition or temper of your mind.

So I suppose, I'm still quoting Edwards, so I suppose when we read of the Spirit of God who we are told is a Spirit, it is to be understood of the disposition or temper or affection of the mind. Now, the sum of God's temper or disposition is love, for he is infinite love, 1 John 4, 8, end of quote.

Now, when he says that, we must resist, we must resist, as Heather pointed out, the temptation to think of love as a mere force or power rather than a person. Edwards is not denying the personhood of the Holy Spirit when he talks of him as the temper or the disposition or the love of God.

Edwards is simply trying to put all the biblical pieces together. The New Testament doesn't just come out and tell us in a doctrinal statement, the Holy Spirit is a person. He doesn't say that, or the person is the very embodiment of the love of God. The various statements of the New Testament point in this direction, but you have to put the pieces together, which means we need to be careful.

Oh, how careful, lest we go off the rails and become heretics. I think all of our human efforts, I'd say this in general now about Edwards, myself, or anybody else, all of our human efforts to conceptualize the relationships within the Trinity need to confess that we see through a glass darkly until we know even as we are known, which means be careful.

Now, here's another point, pointer to the question that Heather's concerned about. 1 John 4, 12 and 13 points to the Holy Spirit as the love of God in us. Here's what it says. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this, we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us of his spirit.

So if you put all that together, God in us, his love in us, his spirit in us, all seem to point to the fact that the way the love of God abides in us is by his spirit, that is his disposition, his temper, that is his love in person abiding in us, by the person of the Holy Spirit.

Now, the piece that remains to be added for Heather's question is joy. And this is added by pondering that the love that God is from all eternity is not a sacrificial love between the Father and the Son. They are infinitely beautiful, infinitely worthy of each other's love, which means that they delight in each other infinitely.

That's what their love is. This is my loved son in whom I am totally delighted. That's my paraphrase of well-pleased. To say that the love of the Father and the Son for each other is embodied in the spirit is to say that the spirit in his essence is God's joyful love, loving joy in person because God's loving from eternity has been his enjoying from eternity.

That's how the persons of the Godhead have related to each other. They're not disappointed. They don't have to overcome any obstacles to delight in each other. So when Jesus says, "My joy I give to you," John 15, 11, or when he says, "Enter into the joy of your master," Matthew 25, 11, he is welcoming us into the fullest experience of the Son's love for the Father.

And it seems right then to say this is experienced by being filled with the Holy Spirit, who is the very person who is the love of God and the joy of God. Paul speaks in 1 Thessalonians 1, 6 of the joy of the Holy Spirit, the joy which the Holy Spirit gives by coming himself to live in us as the very love and joy of God.

So I pray that God would help you, Heather, and all of us, as we humbly and carefully try to faithfully put the pieces of God's precious word together. - Amen. Yeah, these are some profound pieces, too, some of the most precious pieces, precious realities that we can ever try to wrap our brains around.

Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for joining us today. If you want to ask Pastor John, email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Well, we will be back next week to look at the challenges posed by our own personal doubt. Can we struggle with doubt and experience joy in God as well?

That's Monday. Thursday, we look at how to fight off the inner skeptic when we have doubts about what we read in the Bible. Monday, can I doubt God and have joy in him? Thursday, fighting off the inner skeptic in our Bible reading. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you next week.

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