Why is the Holy Spirit never stated to love anybody?
What could be the cause of the omission? Take a moment with your bible to learn the reason why.
The Bible tells of the Father’s love for Christ as plainly as “the Father loveth the Son.”1 It tells of Christ’s love for the Father, so “that the world may know that I love the Father.”2 The keynote of all Scripture is John 3:16, which openly declares the love of God for all mankind.
Much is written about the Spirit of God, yet it is not once said to love the Father, neither is there any mention of its love for the Son. The love of God for man is the very theme of the Bible, but nowhere in it is the Holy Spirit ever stated to love anyone.
What is to account for this omission? Does the Holy Spirit not love Christ or the Father? Does it not love you or me? Has someone tried to keep from us a knowledge of the love of the Spirit of God?
The Holy Spirit in the bible, as God’s divine power or influence, is never stated to love anything. Instead, it is typified by non-sentient figures of fluidity such as wind,3 water,4 or fire,5 and in one case, a dove.6
None of these have any human attributes at all, so it’s no surprise to find it not said to be loving anybody. Of these symbols, you should not be alarmed, but consider the meaning they provide to learn of the Holy Spirit. These are mainly the elements of nature, known and experienced by all. Sometimes it’s represented as a balm, salve or oil—but often under some representation of invisibility, fluidity, or motion to indicate the transmission of power.
Thus, the Holy Spirit is shown to be an unseen force like the wind blowing the sail on a ship in the sea— a divine power, or influence which might result in a new spiritual birth7—produce an effect like powering8, guiding,9 providing a supernatural ability10 or that which results in sanctifying effects on them which believe.11
In Romans 5:5 we read, “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost,” with the preposition ‘by’ being so placed as to indicate the Spirit of God to be the conveyance of this love and it’s shedding, and not that of a conscious entity which loves things independently.
In Ephesians 4:30 we are told ”grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption,” which also shows the idea of a divine conveyance, as is seen in the adverb “whereby” which indicates the means by which, or through which a thing is accomplished. If you grieve the Holy Spirit, you’re grieving God himself, and doing it by or through the very conveyance whereby He he had hoped to influence you.
[There are a lot of dumb things a person might do, but one you certainly don’t want to do is to grieve away the conveyance of the influence of God.]
Next someone will shout out “By the LOVE of the SPIRIT! Romans 15:30!” and I will shout right back “BY, THROUGH, WHEREBY!”
The Holy Spirit is never said to be a person in the Bible, nor is it ever stated to be anything even like one. In no place do we read of it to be like “a sower” who “went forth to sow” or a “man traveling into a far country.” The only way the Holy Spirit might be said to be personified, is as a personification of Christ, or of the Father. But what we read normally is that the Spirit of God is not personified, but powerful, fluid, and pneumatic:
“And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost” John 20:22.
If this is meant for one to receive a complete person, we’d receive not the divine influence alone, but a multiple personality, for we would have received another sentient being to live inside of us, instead of the sweet, gentle yearning, longing, or empowering Spirit of God. Instead of the signs of contrition and sanctification, we’d show signs of insanity.
In Joel 2:28, God’s Spirit is “poured out”—to denote the fluidity of an abundant spiritual empowerment. In Revelation 16:1 God’s wrath is also “poured out”—the idea expressive of an expansive, comprehensive judgment.
The strength of these metaphors is not about persons at all, but is of fluid matter—by which we mean those things which are capable of being poured. They point not to any idea of personality whatsoever, but to suggestions of movement, spread, and saturation, making them apt descriptors of forces which flow freely and powerfully to perform certain specified actions upon their associated recipients.
You might be surprised to read, and may feel discomfited to hear the Holy Spirit to described in this way, but that’s really all the Bible has to offer. You’ve likely been told you require some “third Person of the Godhead” in which to believe— feeling perhaps that you’d be lost without it— yet what I’m explaining here is really what the Word of God clearly teaches on the subject of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is not a person, but an influence, power, disposition, demeanor or feeling (hence “spirit”) that proceeds forth from God. It’s an invisible spiritual projection of some kind into our earthly realm— and it’s an awesome thing to consider that the very active power of creation also works by gentle, dove-like pleading upon our own human hearts.
At times it may bring a feeling of nostalgia for a better time12— a heart-longing to repent, a restoration of union with God, or merely to do the right thing in any given situation.
And whatever else remains to be described of the Holy Spirit isn’t left to be explained by theologians, but can be plainly read in the Word of God. We can accept what we can plainly read there, which is clear on this subject. This must be sufficient, and everything else be thrown away. Christians should immediately discard all non-biblical notions about the Holy Spirit of God.
And this reform will harm no divinity, for we have but one God— the Father of all, and we have his son Jesus Christ— fully human, fully divine,—begotten and pre-existent, both. We also have a fully divine conveyance or means for the power of God by which we are influenced, or brought into God’s presence, and by which, we might commune, anywhere, at any time.
What we do not find is any third “Person” of the Godhead. Any divine or human attribute which can be said of the Spirit, are only attributes of God the Father or of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And we were indeed intended to believe in a third independent personality of God, the idea was mistakenly left out of the bible, which seems to have taken great pains to avoid it. The Holy Spirit is never figured as a person, and is notable in having no specific name to be called— such as does every other person— with only a name given clearly indicating it to be a possession of someone else. This is noted by the preposition “of”.
Neither, in any instance, is the Spirit ever called “Light.” This appellation is reserved for the Father and Christ alone, and only by reflection is the church ever called this. The Spirit of God may bring light (metaphorically, knowledge, or understanding) to the mind of the child of God, being the very means appointed to do this, but as to it being “Light” itself, it is never called that in any passage.
All other ideas than this are merely Pagan survivals. This is often called the doctrine of the Trinity— a thing which has never been useful or needed by any Christian at any time, and much harm has come by it. The Trinity obscures the individuality of the Father and the Son, and introduces a spurious, extra-biblical, third-person God.
The Trinity doctrine arises from ancient myths of a great severed phallus being cast into the sea— the triune portion symbolic of the male generative organs, which are known anthropologically as the Masculine Triad. Philosophers like Plato believed the entire universe to be a living being, and developed a spiritual idea for its origin similar to that of human procreation.
This idea is later described as something of a Living Temple.
Consider:
“The universe itself can be called a god, and the whole of nature is its temple” Cicero in De Natura Deorum 2.15 1st century BC.
Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher blended Platonism and Hebrew thought, and described the universe as a "holy temple" in On the Creation of the World (De Opificio Mundi 137): “The whole world is a temple of God” (trans. Yonge).
But to understand these things fully, you must understand the application spiritually and metaphorically, because a similar, sexual conception of creation is transmitted by the Divine Marriage (hieros gamos) of the Eleusinian Mysteries. This was a ritual act of sexual intercourse, and continues as a literal practice in Occultism.
In the third century AD, the Neoplatonist philosopher Ammonius Saccus from Alexandria, hoping to reconcile all religions, considered the works of Plato in Timaeus regarding the origin of the “World-soul.”
Later theologians found this “reconciliation” which comes to us by a depiction of the masculine triad, in the beliefs that anthropologists call Nature Worship, or Phallicism. It is a depiction of the male reproductive organs as symbolic of “creation”— the same tradition that places the steeple or spire upon a church—just like the obelisks of ancient Babylon and Egypt, where the practice arose from the ancient worship of a divine, severed Phallus.
[In occultism and in literature, the feminine aspect of God is represented as Chaos, the sea, the lower-world, or subconscious, thus associated with hypnotic or trance-like experiences— the veritable underworld, is found to be the low hanging left-testicle of the divine genitals, and we indeed have many references into this material.
And that is the true origin of this mysterious and notorious “third person,” of the Godhead, which cannot possibly describe any authentic manifestation of the true Spirit of God.
Thus Pagan Philosophy, Phallic Worship, and the Ancient Mystery religion—are the true origins of the doctrine of the Trinity. And if you want to find the Holy Spirit as a person, you’ll need to find that some other book or religion..
And this is why you’ll never find the Spirit of God loving anyone in the bible. Because in it, the Holy Spirit is not a person, but a divine influence, which proceeds forth from God.
John 3:35.
John 14:31.
John 3:8: Acts 2:2.
Isaiah 44:3; John 7:38-39.
Acts 2:3-4; Matthew 3:11.
It is depicted like a dove, and specifically not as a person. Clearly not to be worshiped in such a form, but as a figure indicative of union, gentleness, and ease of movement through a fluid medium. Matthew 3:16.
John 3:8.
Acts 1:8.
John 16:13 “he will guide you into all truth”
Acts 2:4-11.
Galatians 5:22 “the fruit of the Spirit is love”
See in Luke 15:18— the longing of the Prodigal Son to arise and return to his father.