Let us see, then, whether we can offer any further defense of the usage handed down by our fathers, since those who first employed the expression are even more exposed to our opponents’ accusation than we are.
Paul says to the Colossians, “You, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision ... he made alive together with Christ.” Did God grant an entire people and the Church the gift of life together with Christ, yet the Holy Spirit has no life together with Christ? If even thinking this is impious, is it not reverent to confess them as joined together according to their nature?
What immeasurable insensibility it shows to confess that the saints are with Christ—for Paul, when absent from the body, is present with the Lord, and when he departs he is with Christ—while refusing, as far as one is able, to allow the Spirit to be with Christ even in the way human beings are.
Paul calls himself a “fellow worker with God” in the ministry of the Gospel. Will they accuse us of impiety if we call the Holy Spirit a fellow worker, through whom the Gospel bears fruit in every creature under heaven?
The life of those who have trusted in the Lord “is hidden with Christ in God,” and “when Christ, who is our life, appears,” they too “will appear with him in glory.” Is the Spirit of life himself, who “set us free from the law of sin,” not with Christ both in that hidden life and in the manifestation of glory that we await in the saints?
We are “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” Is the Spirit to have no share or lot in communion with God and his Christ? “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” Are we then not to grant to the Spirit even the fellowship with God that we have learned from the Lord?
The height of folly would be this: through faith in Christ, in the Spirit, we hope to be raised together with Christ and seated together in the heavenly places, when he changes our lowly body from natural to spiritual, yet we refuse the Spirit any share in being together, in glory, or in any of the gifts that we ourselves have received through him. Of all the blessings that, by the unalterable promise of the one who promised, we believe ourselves worthy to receive, are we to grant none to the Holy Spirit, as though all of them were above his dignity?
It is promised to you, according to the gift bestowed on you, that you will be “always with the Lord.” You hope to be caught up “in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so always to be with the Lord.” Yet you declare intolerably impious the person who numbers and ranks the Spirit with the Father and the Son. Can you really deny that the Spirit is with Christ?
I am ashamed even to continue. You expect to be glorified together with Christ—“if indeed we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him”—yet you refuse to glorify the “Spirit of holiness” together with Christ, as though he were unworthy to receive equal honor even with you.
You hope to “reign with” Christ, yet you insult “the Spirit of grace” by assigning him the rank of a servant and subordinate. I say this not because the Spirit is owed only this much in the ascription of glory, but to expose the injustice of those who refuse him even so much and recoil from the fellowship of the Spirit with the Son and the Father as though it were impious.
Who could speak of these things without grieving? Is it not plain even to a child that the present condition already foreshadows the threatened eclipse of the faith? What was unquestioned has become disputed. We confess faith in the Spirit and then fight against our own confession. We are baptized and immediately begin contending again. We call upon him as the Prince of life and then despise him as though he were a fellow servant. We receive him together with the Father and the Son and then dishonor him as part of creation.
Those who “do not know what they ought to pray for,” even if reverence sometimes compels them to utter some word about the Spirit that approaches his dignity, immediately cut it down to fit the narrow measure of their speech. They should instead mourn their weakness, because we are unable to express in words adequate thanksgiving for the benefits we actually receive. He “surpasses all understanding” and exposes the natural impotence of speech even to approach his dignity.
As it is written in Wisdom: “Exalt him as much as you can, for even then he will far exceed you. When you exalt him, put forth all your strength and do not grow weary, for you can never reach far enough.”
Terrible indeed is the account that must be given for words such as these by those who have heard from the God who cannot lie that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness.