The Holy Spirit plays an active role in the lives of believers from salvation to glorification. Sometimes, it’s not always evident or clear what that role is. Over the next few weeks we’ll take a closer look at what the Spirit does, how He helps us and why Jesus said it was to our advantage that He go away and the Holy Spirit comes. (John 15:7) How does the Spirit help in our salvation? The short answer is:
The Spirit accomplishes our salvation.
We rightly focus on the work that Jesus did on the cross. His willingness to die in our place resulted in God’s highest exultation (Phil 2:5-8). But without our regeneration, our rebirth, that sacrifice doesn’t help us. It is the Spirit who regenerates us. Jesus told Nicodemus as much.
Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I told you that you must be born again. The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:5-8).
We can’t give physical birth to ourselves. But once we are born, we are part of the physical world. Likewise, we cannot cause ourselves to be born again. The Holy Spirit does that, and once He does, we become part of the the Kingdom of God.
Jesus doesn’t just save us and drop us. A second way the Spirit helps in our salvation:
The Holy Spirit indwells us after salvation.
Paul drops some dense doctrine about the Holy Spirit in Romans 8. It is worth a long slow read. However, we’ll focus on just a few verses.
You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through his Spirit who lives in you (Romans 8:9-11).
There is an inseparable connection between new life, eternal life that is, and the Holy Spirit living in us. You cannot have one without the other.
One final, critical way the Spirit helps in our salvation:
The Holy Spirit seals us in our salvation.
In the first century, the seal was the sign of authenticity, that the document could be trusted. Paul uses that as a metaphor for the church at Ephesus.
In [Christ] you also were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed. The Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance, until the redemption of the possession, to the praise of his glory (Ephesians 1:13-14).
The Holy Spirit is the guarantee that God will bring all His promises to pass. Our sins are forgiven. We will receive eternal life. We will live in heaven with Him. Not one of those promises will be rescinded or revoked. We can’t lose our salvation. We can’t lose our inheritance. And no one or nothing can strip them from us. The Holy Spirit is the seal. Nothing can overcome the Holy Spirit to undo the seal.
While it’s true that the Holy Spirit always points us to Christ, it is important to understand how active He is in our lives so we praise God for this amazing gift of the Helper He has given us. Next we’ll consider how the Spirit helps in our understanding.