The Christian who receives the Holy Spirit after conversion is filled with his presence and power. The Holy Spirit is the eternal, the uncreated life of God, self-generating and self-perpetuating, incapable of depletion. His power depends on nothing outside of himself. He is the source and sustainer of all that exists, and when he comes to live in a person, that person carries within himself the one who has no need of anything to continue.
This means that the life of God in the believer is steady and inexhaustible. It draws no strength from human effort to continue. The Spirit never feeds on us. He is never nourished by our zeal or sustained by our effort. He feeds us. He strengthens and renews us. He is the well that never runs dry, the spring that never ceases to flow. The Spirit in us remains in full measure at all times. His presence is constant and his capacity is infinite.
Because he is God, the Spirit brings with him the very attributes of God. He works alongside us and transforms us. He makes us like God in holiness, wisdom, and power. This is the reality of his work. He shapes our thoughts to reflect the mind of Christ. He produces in us the character that belongs to God alone, such as love, righteousness, faithfulness, and truth. He imparts abilities that come from his own nature, enabling us to do what we could never accomplish by human means.
This is why the coming of the Spirit marks a decisive change in a person’s life. When he enters, we are joined to the supernatural, the infinite, and the almighty. This union is complete and real. The Spirit withholds nothing from the one he indwells. He is fully present, fully active, and fully committed to making the believer a living expression of God’s own life and works.
To understand this is to see why the gift of the Holy Spirit is beyond comparison. God forgives our sins and gives us a place in his kingdom, and these blessings are great. Yet he goes further. He gives us himself. The Spirit is not an impersonal force or a temporary aid. He is the Lord, the giver of life, dwelling within us to sustain us with the same power by which he sustains the universe. He operates from within so that his life becomes the life by which we live.
Nothing else in creation works this way. Every created thing depends on something else for its existence and strength. Every living thing must be nourished from without. The Spirit alone has life in himself, and he alone can place that life within another. When this happens, the believer becomes a vessel of divine life, upheld by a power that does not diminish, animated by a Spirit who does not grow weary, and shaped into the likeness of the God who gave him.
This is why the apostles could speak of the Spirit’s presence as the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise to his people. All that God had pledged in the covenants and the prophets finds its reality in him. The indwelling Spirit is the guarantee that God will complete his work in us, because his presence is itself the power that accomplishes it. He does what God declares.
To receive the Spirit is therefore to receive the greatest possible gift. Nothing can surpass it, because nothing is greater than God. It is a gift that exceeds human expectation and that continues to confound faithless theology. God places his own self-generating, self-perpetuating life into creatures who once opposed him. It is the highest expression of grace and the surest proof that his purpose for us is more than survival. His purpose is transformation into his likeness.
The believer who understands this will never treat the Spirit as an optional comfort or a marginal influence. He will see that every thought, word, and action should be empowered by the Spirit’s wisdom and ability. He will expect that the life of God in him will produce results that can be explained only by God’s presence. He will live in confidence and appreciation that the eternal Spirit, the same Spirit who hovered over the waters at creation and raised Jesus from the dead, now lives in him, needing nothing from him to sustain himself, yet giving everything to sustain him.