B M Palmer
The very name given to the third Person of the Godhead, Spirit or breath, implies that He is the manifestation of life, in its secrecy and power. The sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost was the sound “as of a rushing mighty wind” (Acts 2:2). So the Lord, on His first appearance to the collected disciples after His resurrection, breathed upon them and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost” (Jn 20:22).
Again, if we reflect the light of the New Testament upon the Old, we read in the history of the creation that “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Gen 1:2) – indicated under the term wind. Thus, brooding over chaos as the principle of life, He became the separating force which “divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament” (Gen 1:7).
In the same history, when God created man He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Gen 2:7). Who but the Spirit, or breath of God, should breathe this life into the inanimate clay; and through the infusion of an immortal soul, make the indwelling of this spirit the necessary condition of the life of the body through all time? We may stretch our conception even beyond this. The most marvellous feature of our modern knowledge is that it discloses the hiding of God’s power throughout nature. What are all these mysterious forces of nature but the products of His secret power in matter itself? What is force but the expression of will? And what is will but the property of a being that has life? And what is life but the breath of the Creator Himself? And who should be the breather of this life, whether in nature or in grace, but He whose title is the Spirit or Breath of God?
Whatever may be thought of this as merely human speculation, it is certainly true that God reveals His secret power through the scheme of grace in the salvation of men. And the Holy Spirit is the immediate agent by whom this power is wrought, lifting the soul of man out of death itself into the life of God for ever. In the possession of this spiritual life, and in all its conscious activities, the renewed soul must recognise its fellowship with the Spirit.
^1^Taken with editing from The Threefold Fellowship and the Threefold Assurance. Palmer (1818-1902) was a Presbyterian minister in New Orleans.