Covenant Reformed News – April 2009 • Volume XII, Issue 12
This article from Covenant Reformed News explores the biblical command not to grieve the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30), explaining that the Spirit's personality and deity mean He abhors sin while maintaining His infinite blessedness. The author develops a pastoral understanding of how believers grieve the Spirit through sin and unfaithfulness, emphasizing the Spirit's sanctifying work and His hatred of iniquity in those He is transforming.
Grieving the Holy Spirit (1) In Ephesians 4:30, we are commanded, “And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” This exhortation well accords with the Spirit’s being a person, even the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, for a stone or a blind, impersonal force cannot be grieved. Only a person, one possessed of reason and will, one who can think and choose as a moral agent, can be grieved. This grieving of the Spirit must also be understood in the...