This overarching characteristic of ordering describes much, if not all, of what the Holy Spirit does throughout Scripture, including giving revelation, creating life (both physical and spiritual), and sanctifying individual believers: “the Spirit orders (or re-orders) and ultimately beautifies God’s creation.”¹⁰

Ultimately, current expectations concerning the Holy Spirit’s work today must derive, not from experience, but from Scripture. How does the Bible characterizes the Holy Spirit’s activity?

Scripture contains roughly 245 explicit descriptions of the Holy Spirit’s actions, 80 in the Old Testament, and 165 in the New Testament.¹ Overwhelmingly, the dominant action ascribed to the Holy Spirit in both Testaments is the giving of revelation (37 times in the OT and 64 times in the NT). God the Spirit speaks through prophets and apostles, and ultimately inspires the Holy Scriptures themselves (2 Tim 3:16, 2 Pet 1:21).

Second in order of frequency in the OT and third in the NT is special empowerment given to individual leaders whom God has called to perform special ministry on his behalf, often closely associated with giving revelation. This act of the Holy Spirit occurs 20 times in the OT and 18 times in the NT. For example, the Old Testament describes the Holy Spirit being “upon” Moses and the elders of Israel (Num 11:17), Joshua (Deut 34:9), judges such as Gideon (Judg 6:34) and Samson (Judg 13:25), and prophets such as Elijah (1 Kgs 18:12). He also uniquely came upon Israel’s kings, Saul and David (1 Sam 16:13–14). This act of the Holy Spirit was never permanent (1 Sam 16:14; cf. Psalm 51:11) and was only given to special leaders of God’s people, often resulting in unique wisdom, physical strength, and revelation from God. It was even applied to non-believers on occasion (e.g. Balaam, Num 24:2 and Saul, 1 Sam 16:14).²

OT prophecy also foretells a similar empowerment given by the Spirit to the coming Messiah (Isa 11:2, 42:1, 48:16, 61:1). Not surprisingly, then, the earliest examples of this in the NT apply specifically to Jesus Christ, first pictured when the Holy Spirit descends upon him at his baptism (Matt 3:16, Mark 1:10, Luke 3:22, John 1:32). The Holy Spirit also uniquely empowers other spiritual leaders in the NT, such as John the Baptist (Luke 1:15) and the apostles (Acts 2:4, 4:31, 9:17, 13:9).

Actions of the Holy Spirit in the OT fall off considerably in frequency after the top two categories. They can be described as follows: The Holy Spirit participated in creation (Gen 1:2, Job 33:4, Ps 104:30), gifted Bezalel and Oholiab with skill to build the tabernacle (Exod 31:1–5, 35:30–35), and dwelt in the midst of Israel (Neh 9:20, Hag 2:5; cf. Exod 29:45).

In the NT, however, the second most frequent action of the Holy Spirit after revelation is the sanctification of believers, appearing at least 24 times. This work of the Spirit characterizes Spirit filling (Acts 6:3, 11:24, Eph 5:18) and describes the Spirit’s work to progressively produce holy fruit in a believer’s life (e.g. Rom 15:16, Gal 5:22). In the NT the Holy Spirit also indwells (17 times), regenerates (13 times), assures (5 times), convicts (2 times), and illuminates (2 times).

Finally, Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12–14 discuss gifts that are given to believers; although absent in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 explains that these gifts are given “through the Spirit” (v. 8) or “by the one Spirit” (v. 9), and chapter 14 calls them “manifestations of the Spirit” (v. 12). Since these passages explicitly ascribe the giving of these gifts to the Holy Spirit, other passages that discuss such gifts may also safely be attributed to a work of the Holy Spirit (e.g. 1 Tim 4:14, 2 Tim 1:6). These gifts are supernatural abilities “given for service within the ministry and outreach of the local church,”³ including miraculous gifts, which involves what Rolland McCune describes as “a suspension, a bypassing, or even an outright contravention of the natural order”⁴ (e.g. prophecy, miracles, healing, and tongues), and non-miraculous gifts, which Stitzinger describes as abilities that “operate within the natural realm of order even though God’s hand of providence is involved”⁵ (e.g. evangelism, teaching, mercy, administration, etc.).

Characterizing the Holy Spirit’s Work

This brief survey of the Holy Spirit’s activity throughout Scripture helps to lay an important foundation for what Christians should expect his ordinary work to be. Taking all of the biblical data concerning the Holy Spirit’s work throughout history into account, there is no doubt that he sometimes works in extraordinary ways. Yet extraordinary works of the Spirit are not the ordinary way God works his sovereign will through the course of biblical history. When extraordinary experiences occur, they happen during significant transitional stages in the outworking of God’s plan. Sinclair Ferguson helpfully explains:

In the Scriptures themselves, extraordinary gifts appear to be limited to a few brief periods in biblical history, in which they serve as confirmatory signs of new revelation and its ambassadors, and as a means of establishing and defending the kingdom of God in epochally significant ways. . . . Outbreaks of the miraculous sign gifts in the Old Testament were, generally speaking, limited to those periods of redemptive history in which a new stage of covenantal revelation was reached. . . . But these sign-deeds were never normative. Nor does the Old Testament suggest they should have continued unabated even throughout the redemptive-historical epoch they inaugurated. . . . Consistent with this pattern, the work of Christ and the apostles was confirmed by “signs and wonders.”⁶

In other words, to focus on the relatively few cases in biblical history of extraordinary works of the Holy Spirit and draw from those a theology that assumes this to be his regular activity fails to take into account the purpose of these works in the overarching plan of God. Furthermore, even the extraordinary works of the Spirit in Scripture, such as giving revelation or empowering for service, hardly resemble the kinds of extraordinary manifestations contemporary worshipers have come to associate with the Holy Spirit, such as emotional euphoria or “atmosphere.” Even if Christians in the present age should expect extraordinary works of the Spirit to regularly occur, what most contemporary evangelicals have come to expect does not fit the biblical pattern for how the Holy Spirit works.

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