Spirit of God

Journey Into the Mystery of God’s Presence

Contents
The Spirit of God, or Holy Spirit, is God’s personal life-giving energy and presence. The Spirit sustains everything and partners with humans to renew creation. Trace the theme of God’s Holy Spirit through Scripture in three parts.

The Main Idea

As God's invisible, personal presence, the Spirit of God animates and sustains all creation, infusing the world with God's active presence. The story of the Bible points us toward a humanity filled with and empowered by God’s Spirit to bring order and life.

Part 1

The Spirit in the Hebrew Bible

The Bible introduces the “Spirit of God” (Hebrew: ruakh Elohim) as God’s personal, invisible, animating presence that creates and sustains all life. God’s Spirit empowers individuals like Joseph, Bezalel, and Israel’s judges for wise leadership, creative craftsmanship, and powerful rescue. And figures like Moses and David offer previews of what Spirit-empowered leadership can look like.

Podcast Episodes
Episodes 1 and 2 introduce the topic of the Spirit of God and the Spirit’s role in bringing life. Episodes 3 and 4 focus on the Spirit empowering people for specific tasks in the Hebrew Bible. Episodes 5-7 explore the topic of the Spirit of the Messiah in the stories of Moses, Saul, and David, while also looking at the prophetic expectation of the Spirit one day filling all people. And Episode 8 offers a recap of the series to this point.
Related Videos
Our Genesis 1 video explores the Spirit’s role in the creation story. And The Prophets video examines the biblical literature written by prophets, whom the Spirit empowered to speak on God’s behalf.
Part 2

The Spirit and Jesus

In the Gospels, the Spirit’s activity centers on Jesus, who is conceived, baptized, and led by the Spirit.

Podcast Episode
This episode looks at the Spirit’s work through Jesus and his followers.
Related Videos
Our Isaiah 61 video shows how the Spirit of God anoints the Messiah and his followers. Then this video from our Luke-Acts series highlights how Jesus identified himself as the Spirit-anointed leader of Isaiah 61.
Part 3

The Spirit and Us

The Holy Spirit fills Jesus’s followers on the day of Pentecost, creating the unified and diverse community of the Church. The believers receive Spirit-empowerment in the form of spiritual gifts and prophetic insights so that they can all contribute to the flourishing of the community. Ultimately, the Holy Spirit is revealed to be not just God's life-giving presence and power, but a divine person, distinct from yet unified with the Father and the Son.

Podcast Episodes
Episodes 10-12 cover the birth of the Church and the nature and purpose of spiritual gifts, focusing on the role of prophecy. Episodes 13-15 examine the unique portrayals of the Spirit in Paul's and John's writings and trace how the early Church developed a theology of the Holy Spirit from the Scriptures.
Related Videos
The Pentecost: Acts 1-7 video unpacks how the Spirit of God takes up residence in Jesus’s followers. And our God theme video explores how the Bible portrays the one God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Continue the Journey

Keep exploring the Spirit of God on your own or in community. Below you can find a guide, two articles, and a reading plan to help you go deeper. (The second article is the same topic exploration as the reading plan but in a different format.)

Bonus Material

Meet the team behind the Spirit of God video, download some wallpapers, and go deeper with relevant sessions from a BibleProject Class.

Behind the Scenes
These two videos share the story of how our theme video on the Spirit of God came to be.
Wallpapers
Download these wallpapers for your phone, tablet, or desktop.
BibleProject Class
Study alongside guest instructor Dr. Lucy Peppiatt and fellow learners in these five sessions from our 1 Corinthians class that explore the practice of spiritual gifts in the Church.