Wind, Water, Fire

The Father has a name revealed in Scripture. The Son received, at his birth, the name Jesus. But when we look for a proper name for the Holy Spirit, we find none. What we do find, instead, is a rich variety of titles and symbols, each revealing a different facet of who he is. This is not a gap in revelation but an invitation. Just as no one sees the wind, though everyone feels its effects, we likewise do not see the Holy Spirit acting, yet Scripture teaches us to recognize him through images drawn from the most common experiences of life. No theoretical treatise could accomplish this with the same force. A symbol speaks directly to human experience: everyone has felt the wind, drunk water, and seen fire. It is through these simple, everyday experiences that the Bible leads us to profound truths about who the Holy Spirit is.

The first of these images is wind. Speaking at night with a respected teacher of Israel, Jesus said: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). No one commands the wind, and no one commands the Holy Spirit. He blows where he wills and upon whom he wills. Just as we cannot fully explain where a gust of wind comes from, neither can we fully understand how the Holy Spirit accomplishes, within a person, the miracle of the new birth. What we do see, however, is the result: a life that was once dead and now lives.

The second image is water. At the edge of a well, Jesus said to a Samaritan woman: “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). This is not water that satisfies for a moment and soon leaves a person thirsty again, as happens with the ordinary water of a well. It is a spring that rises up from within the person and never runs dry. When the Holy Spirit dwells in someone, he is not a passing visitor. He becomes a living, constant spring, sustaining spiritual life every day, even through the driest seasons.

The third image is fire, and in it we find three effects at once: fire illumines, purifies, and warms. On the day of Pentecost, this image became visible: “Divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them” (Acts 2:3). It was not a fire meant to consume, but a sign of God's presence descending individually upon each disciple. Men who, only days before, had been afraid even to be identified as followers of Jesus went out from there preaching boldly before crowds. The same fire that illumined their understanding and purified their fear continues, today, to kindle hearts that seem cold or indifferent in the faith.

A fourth image, that of oil, completes this picture of empowerment. In the Old Testament, priests, prophets, and kings were anointed with oil for the service to which God had called them. The very title Christ means Anointed One, and Peter summarizes Jesus' baptism by saying that God “anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38). It is this same Spirit who continues to empower every believer for the service to which God has called him, whatever that service may be.

The last two images go together: the seal and the guarantee. In the ancient world, a seal identified, indelibly, what belonged to the king. A down payment, in turn, was the first installment of a larger payment, a guarantee that the rest would be delivered. Paul brings these two ideas together when he writes: “You were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it” (Eph 1:13-14). To receive the Holy Spirit is to receive God's own mark upon your life, a sign no one can erase, and, at the same time, a real down payment, experienced in the present, of the complete inheritance that is still to come.

None of these images, by itself, exhausts who the Holy Spirit is. Wind, water, fire, oil, seal, and down payment are different windows through which we behold the same divine Person, never substitutes for knowing him. Each one, though, leads us to a practical question: have you felt the wind blowing, the spring welling up, and the fire burning in some cold corner of your faith? If the answer is no, begin today with the simplest prayer there is: ask God to rekindle what seems extinguished, and thank him for the seal that is already upon you. Today and always, you belong to him, and that mark no one can erase.

Each of these images exists for a single purpose: not to satisfy our curiosity about how the Holy Spirit works, but to draw us, with greater confidence, closer to the One who already lives in everyone who believes.