I heard my [Protestant] pastor
say that the biblical narration recorded in Chapter 5 of the Books of Acts
affirms, among others, the deity of the Holy Spirit. I verified it with my own
Bible and I found this:
“But
Peter said, ‘Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit …? … You
have not lied to men but to God’.”
What
can you say about this?
Answer:
These
verses you quoted (Acts 5:3-4, New King
James Version) undeniably point out that to lie to the Holy Spirit is to
lie to God. But does this mean that the Holy spirit is God? No, it does not.
For it did, then it would contradict the essential truth about God. As Apostle
Paul clearly stated, “there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things
came” (I Cor. 8:6, New International
Version). The Almighty Father Himself said, “I alone am God and that there
is no one else like me” (Isa. 46:9, Today’s English Version).
Why,
is it, then, that if one lies to the Holy Spirit, he also lies to God? To
answer this, let us quote the following statements of Christ concerning the
Holy Spirit:
“But
the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name,
He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I
said to you.” (John 14:26, NKJV, emphasis ours)
“But
when the Helper comes, whom I shall send
to you from the Father, the Spirit of
truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me.” (John 15:26, Ibid. emphasis ours)
“Most
assuredly, I say to you he who receives
whomever I send receives Me; and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me” (John 13:20, Ibid. emphasis ours)
The
Lord Jesus Christ taught that “the Helper” or the Holy Spirit is sent both by
the Father and the Son. Furthermore, Christ declared that anyone who receives
whomever He sent equally receives the one who sent Him-the Father who is the only true God (John
17:1,3). Hence, whatever a person does to the one sent by Christ and by the
Father, he likewise does it to God Himself. And since the Holy Spirit is sent
by Christ and the Father, lying to the Holy Spirit necessarily means lying to
God Himself. It is not surprising therefore, that when Ananias lied to the Holy
Spirit, the Bible teaches that he, in effect, lied to God.
The
problem with believing that the Holy Spirit is God is just because lying to the
Holy Spirit is tantamount to lying to God the Father is that this would have
several erroneous ramifications. For example, the apostles would then be Gods
also because when Christ was commissioning the apostles, to them He proclaimed:
“He
who hears you hears Me, he who rejects you rejects Me, and he who rejects Me
rejects Him who sent Me.” (Luke 10:16, NKJV)
Here,
Christ Himself says quite clearly that rejecting the apostles is the same as
rejecting Him and God. If we were to follow the line of thinking of those who
argue that the Holy Spirit is God, then we would be forced to accept that the
apostles and all other messengers are God as well!
Historically,
the erroneous belief that the Holy Spirit is God became an article of faith of
the Catholic Church through the Council of Constantinople only in 381 A.D.,
more than three centuries after the Bible had been written (Discourses on the
Apostles’ Creed, p. 206).