That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. The Giver is God, the Spirit. His gift is spirit. Failure to recognize the Giver and His gift has caused no end of confusion in the Holy Spirit field of study as well as in the understanding of the new birth. When you receive a gift, you don’t get the giver. God is holy and God is Spirit, therefore he is just that. What he gives you is holy and spirit, lower case spelling in the original Greek, and no article ‘the.’ You receive holy spirit. Pneuma, which is spirit, and hagion, is holy, are never capitalized. It is usually determined in the context. God is the Holy Spirit, so what you receive is not the Holy Spirit, the giver, you receive His gift, which is holy spirit.
Here are a few examples: In Acts 1 Jesus is instructing his Apostles that they are about to receive the promise of the Father and power from on high after he departs, those things pertaining to the kingdom. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. Acts 1:5. In the text there is no article ‘the’ and pneuma hagion is not in caps. It should read ‘you shall be baptized in holy spirit.” And when the time came, And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Acts 2:4. Again, there’s no article ‘the’ and no capitalization. They received holy spirit, not the Holy Spirit. The second reference, as the Spirit gave utterance is capitalized correctly because of context, it is God, the Spirit, who gives the utterance to our spirit. We’ll learn the mechanics of speaking in tongues, our prayer language, in greater detail in Chapter 6: Communion in the Spirit.
He that believes on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.) John 7:38-39 First of all, it’s hard to understand why a person would read this and think or understand how Jesus could be conceived by the Holy Spirit and yet the verse says the Holy Spirit was not yet given. That should immediately arrest our attention – how can it not be given yet the Holy Spirit is obviously mentioned throughout the gospels? It’s because the Holy Spirit is God, the giver, but his gift is holy spirit. No caps. No article the, and it is an ‘it’, not a pronoun he, unless it refers to God, the Holy Spirit.
Here are some scriptures that refer to holy spirit or spirit as an it: 1Corinthians 2:11 spirit of man which is in him
In all these cases, your NIV and new versions all translate a pronoun in place of it or which by replacing it with he or who. These are mistranslations on purpose, which I call forgery. They deliberately change the wording to make holy spirit out to be a person. A particular man-made theology from the 4th Century that became doctrine. If it was so obvious then why would they have to change the wording. All to sustain and support a false belief system. Notice the gift of holy spirit is also referred to as the spirit of Christ or the spirit of the Lord. That in no way fits their narrative of a third person, nor does anywhere else in Scripture. It’s God in Christ in you. You’re the third person, a holy spirit person!
Here is the Greek Interlinear which is the Stephens Manuscript Text from which the King James was translated from Greek to English. On page iii of the introduction it reads:
You can even read the warning from the Greek Interlinear Introduction that capitalization is a problem with the translation. The context determines if it’s referring to the Giver or the gift. If the translation had been truer to the original text in this instance, the third person theology may have never gotten off the ground.
There are dozens of verses in Scripture that mention Father and Son in relationship but none mention or include the Holy Spirit in the same verse or sentence. The Holy Spirit is never mentioned in the Book of Revelations. You would think the grand finale would unveil once and for all this mysterious so called third person. But it’s not a part of the big spiritual picture. The Great Mystery reveals all we need to know about the gift of holy spirit that ushered in this wonderful age of grace, the body of the church, the new birth, eternal life, and of course, the dynamic power now within us. What a gift! What a Giver!
This concludes our introductory section. You now have enough foundational basis to get a running start without having to stop and question or explain. Although no doubt, there will come many questions, feel free to put them on a shelf or ask when they arise. I will be highlighting and primarily focusing on what is written “to you.” In the next 20 Chapters, you will be amazed at what you have been given and the kingdom that awaits you.