2506.—Personality of God.
Who is meant by this, the Father, the Son, or both? If both are meant, should it not be personalities of God? God who talked with Moses at the burning bush is God the Son, God who gave His only-begotten Son is God the Father; and then there is the Comforter, the Spirit of God. B. B. No. 1410. The term “personality of God” almost invariably is used with reference to the invisible God, the Father, concerning whom no image or representation should be made by His children. Thru all Biblical times the Son was in subjection, a representative of the Father. He “gave Himself” “from the foundation of the world,” “became a servant;” and in all the manifestations of Him, either as the “Angel of the covenant” or as Jesus of Nazareth, He was still in the capacity of a servant, the representative of God. During all this time He did not reveal Himself; that was not His object. The purpose of Satan was to reveal himself; the purpose of Christ to reveal the Father, and therefore He tells us, “No man knoweth the Son save the Father; nor knoweth any man the Father, save the Son and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.” The Spirit of God is common both to Father and Son, “the Spirit of God,” “the Spirit of Christ.” It is that which brings both the Father and the Son to the individual, and this is so stated in those wonderful discourses in John 14 to 16. “I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He [the Father] may abide with you forever.” John 14:16. Verse 17 states the Spirit “dwelleth with you, and shall be in you;” but He brings Christ, for the eighteenth verse declares, “I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you.” And again in verse 23, “If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.” They do this by the Spirit which brings Their presence. That Spirit is said to be “poured out,” “shed forth.” “The Holy Spirit is the breath of the spiritual life of the soul. The impartation of the Spirit is the impartation of the life of Christ.” “It is thru the Spirit that Christ dwells in us, and the Spirit of God received in the heart by faith is the beginning of the life eternal.” The expression, the “Godhead bodily,” is found in Col. 2:9. It simply means that dwelling in the flesh of Jesus Christ was all the power of the Godhead; simply an equivalent of chapter 1:19, “For it pleased the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell.”