Is the Holy Spirit God?
Yes — the Holy Spirit is God. He is a Person, not a force: He speaks, loves, and can be grieved. Scripture gives Him God’s own name, attributes, and works — and to lie to Him is to lie to God (Acts 5:3–4). He is the third Person of the one Triune God, fully God and distinct from the Father and the Son.
A man in the early church named Ananias sold a piece of land. He kept back part of the money, then told the apostles he had handed over the whole price. Peter confronted him.
Acts 5:3–4 (NKJV)
But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.”
Peter begins by saying Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit. He ends by saying Ananias lied to God. Few statements in the Bible identify the Holy Spirit as God more plainly.
Those who deny that the Holy Spirit is God almost always deny something else first — that He is a person at all. Many people picture Him as a power God sends out. An influence. An energy. This is why He is so often called “it.” Scripture never speaks of Him that way.
He speaks. Paul says this with regard to the Old Testament:
Acts 28:25 (NKJV)
The Holy Spirit spoke rightly through Isaiah the prophet to our fathers,
Paul says that Isaiah wrote the words as the Holy Spirit spoke them. Peter in his letters describes Him the same way: “holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). The Bible is not a record of religious men doing their best to describe God. It is the speech of the Holy Spirit, delivered through men He carried along.
He loves, and He can be wounded. Paul appeals to Christians “through the love of the Spirit” (Romans 15:30), then warns them, “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God” (Ephesians 4:30).
A force does none of this. A force does not speak, or love, or take offence. You cannot lie to electricity.
Jesus said as much in the upper room, on the last night before He died.
John 14:16 (NKJV)
And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever.
For three years Jesus had been their Helper. He taught them, corrected them, defended them, and steadied them when they were afraid. Now He was going, and He promised another Helper who would be by their side and dwelling within them forever.
So the Holy Spirit is a Person. The question now is which Person. Scripture answers in three ways.
Scripture says of Him what it says of God alone. The writer of Hebrews calls Him “the eternal Spirit” (Hebrews 9:14), which means He had no beginning. David finds Him impossible to escape: “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?” (Psalm 139:7). John says He is truth itself — “it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is truth” (1 John 5:6). Paul also says the following about the Holy Spirit's knowledge:
1 Corinthians 2:10–11 (NKJV)
But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.
Paul says the Holy Spirit knows God's thoughts (because He is God) the way you know your own. A mere creature could be shown the mind of God, but no creature could know it from within.
He does what only God does. Job traces his own existence to Him: “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life” (Job 33:4). The psalmist says the same of every living creature: “You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; and You renew the face of the earth” (Psalm 104:30).
He is placed alongside the Father and the Son. Jesus commanded His disciples to baptise “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). One name, three Persons, no ranking among Them.
One thing must be said carefully. To call the Holy Spirit God is not to make Him a second God. Scripture is clear on this: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one!” (Deuteronomy 6:4). There is one God, and there has never been another.
Yet the three are not the same Person.
Matthew 3:16–17 (NKJV)
When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
Matthew describes the baptism of Jesus, where all three persons of the Trinity are present. The Son (Jesus) is standing in the water. The Holy Spirit comes down on Him. The Father speaks from heaven.
So in brief the Trinity is this. God is one in what He is, and three in who He is. One God — one being, one will, one power. Three Persons — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, each fully God, each distinct from the other two.
Something else puzzles people. The Spirit seems quieter in Scripture than the Father and the Son. Less is said about Him, and almost nothing is said to Him. But that is deliberate. Jesus said the Spirit's work is to take what belongs to Christ and show it to us (John 16:14), which means He is always pointing away from Himself. He draws little attention because He is busy drawing attention to Someone else. That tells us about His work, not about His rank.
Everything the New Testament says about your salvation rests on who He is. Your new birth is credited to the Holy Spirit. Your understanding of Scripture is credited to the Holy Spirit. Your slow growth into the likeness of Christ is credited to the Holy Spirit. Those are things only God can do inside a human being, and God does not hand His own work to a creature.