Holy Spirit, eternal gift to believer in Christ

Posted on June 26, 2024, 10:24 a.m. by Rev. Shobayo Kayode, The Gospel Study Centre

A young church member called me one good afternoon with vexation in his voice to inform that he has found a Bible passage that says, God can take the Holy Spirit away from someone. His call was as a result of a previous study concerning grieving the Holy Spirit (Ephesians.4:30). We learnt during that study that grieving the Holy Spirit does not make Him to depart from believer. But, this time, the young man was referring to (Psalm.51:11), where David prayed that God should not take His Holy Spirit from him. “Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.” To the young man’s understanding, if David could pray such prayer, it means that God can take away the Holy Spirit from believer. We both wasted no time to go into the Scriptures once again to learn from the Word of God. We went straight to the Bible passages in (Numbers.11:16-17), we were able to establish that, the way the Holy Spirit was giving during the Old Covenant dispensation, is not the same in the New Covenant. In the Old Covenant, God gives His Spirit to specific person or persons that He uses for His assignments and purposes, including to anointed kings over the Israel nation. Whereas the Holy Spirit is given in the New Covenant as a gift when one believed in the name of Jesus Christ. We also read the bible passage in (1 Sam.16:14) where the Spirit of the Lord departed from King Saul when God rejected him as King over Israel as a result of sin of disobedience. By our conclusion from the study of the Scriptures, God’s taken away His Spirit from King Saul may have prompted David to say the prayers “And do not take away Your Holy Spirit from me.” (Psalm.51:11b) when he was pleading with God for the forgiveness of his own sin. The young man asked further whether believers in the New Covenant can also lose the Holy Spirit given to them when they believed by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ if they sin. We also found out the following biblical facts regarding the question. The Holy Spirit is the seal that was given as a mark of ownership to those that believed in Jesus Christ. It is not by any work that it was received, but by the grace of God through Faith in Jesus Christ (Eph.2:8). This is well explained for clear understanding in (Eph.1:13) where the scripture says, “In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”. We also found the scripture which affirms that, whoever that does not have the Holy Spirit does not belong to Jesus. (Rom.8:9b). From the above scriptures, it is clear that Holy Spirit is the seal of salvation in the life of believer, and it is the down payment of believer’s inheritance until when Christ comes the second time to take possession of His own people. The Bible says, it is the Holy Spirit of promise, “who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.” (Eph.1:14) The Oxford dictionary define Seal as “a device or substance that is used to join two things together so as to prevent them from coming apart or to prevent anything from passing between them.” It therefore means that The Holy Spirit indwells the believer permanently. Whether a believer sin or grief the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will never leave a true believer of Christ. It is a mark of ownership that guarantees believer sonship and inheritance. It is permanent and it is not removeable. But He can be silent, dormant and inactive in the life of a believer when grieved. Evangelism Explain who God the Holy Spirit is to an unbeliever today. Tell him or her it can come into his or her life if only he or she can accept Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. Rev. Shobayo Kayode The Gospel Study Centre