If you could either have God’s Spirit inside you or God’s Son beside you, which would you choose—and why? What might it look like to experience the Holy Spirit not as a doctrine or a force but as a real, living person? What practical difference would a relationship with him—not “it”—entail? What would it demand?
In Jesus, Continued . . . : Why the Spirit Inside You Is Better than Jesus Beside You (Zondervan), J. D. Greear draws from Scripture, history, and experience to provide an accessible introduction to the godhead’s most overlooked member. Whether you are in the throes of ministry burnout or trying to figure out what to think about the Holy Spirit, this new book will help you better appreciate—and perhaps experience—his guiding, gifting, empowering ministry in your life.
I spoke with Greear, pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, about how this topic transformed his ministry, why Spirit-led believers interpret the Scriptures so differently, and more.
“Why the Spirit inside us is better than Jesus beside us” makes for a catchy subtitle, but how is that statement actually true?
Ha . . . well, that’s blunt! Good question. In saying, “the Spirit inside you is better than Jesus beside you,” I’m actually just rephrasing a promise Jesus made: “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you” (John 16:7). How absurd must that statement have sounded to the disciples? Was Jesus really telling them that his departure was to their advantage if they got the Holy Spirit? Apparently so.
If you ask the average Christian which of those two options they would choose—the Spirit inside or Jesus beside—would most even hesitate to choose Jesus? Doesn’t that show you how far we are from grasping what Jesus was offering to us?
The Holy Spirit makes the presence of God real to us, a presence that gives us joy (1 John 1:3; Ps. 16:11), intimacy (Rom. 5:5; 8:15), and victory over sin (Gal. 5:16). He enables dynamic ministry by replacing “good ideas” with “God ideas.”
Even as a pastor you didn’t grasp the concept of a relationship with the Holy Spirit. How did coming to understand this change your ministry? 
It changed what I pointed people to. Dynamic relationship has always been God’s plan for his people. He walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of each evening. He led his children through the wilderness with a pillar of cloud and fire. He didn’t have to do that; he could just have given them a map. But he wanted his presence to be with them. Jesus was called Immanuel, “God with us.” Now, through the Holy Spirit, God is supposed to be more present with us than ever.
Knowledge of that presence gives victory in the Christian life. A friend of mine struggled for years with a dark sexual sin and, despite reading all the books, memorizing an army of verses, and endless hours of counseling, he was never able to gain victory. Recently he told me God had given him a measure of victory. When I asked what made the difference, he told me he’d been mentored by someone who related to the Holy Spirit like a person. “This man helped me see the Holy Spirit as a real presence, beckoning me each day to follow him,” he remarked. “I realized that this struggle wasn’t something God wanted me to overcome for him, but something about which God was telling me to trust him as he overcome it through me. That changed everything.” It’s like the apostle Paul says, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16).
Paul said that going deep in the gospel would lead to “all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19). Most Reformed Christians want to go deep into the knowledge of the gospel, but do they realize that depth yields fullness with a person?
Finally, walking with the Holy Spirit is the key to avoiding burnout in ministry. The Great Commission can feel overwhelming. With so much to be done, how can you ever feel like you’re doing enough? Jesus did not tell us to go and do the Great Commission for him, but to yield ourselves to him as he does it through us. The first command Jesus gave to his disciples after giving them the Great Commission was to wait—to do nothing until they had received the Spirit (Luke 24:49). I think he was emphasizing that their responsibility was not to “accomplish” the mission, but simply to follow him as he pursued this mission through them. Jesus continues his ministry through the church, Luke says (Acts 1:1). Thus, we are to ask the Spirit what he wants from us and then follow him. We’re all responsible to pursue the mission, but the Spirit shows us where and how.
If the Holy Spirit illuminates Scripture for believers, why do we have such varying interpretations?
That’s a great question. The variances have more to do with our own biases—the sinful corruption of our hearts, the weight we give to our traditions, our unintended cultural prejudices—than any inconsistency in the Bible or ambiguity in the Spirit.
Let’s also keep in mind that the core doctrines of Christianity (the deity of Christ, justification by faith, and so on) are mostly agreed upon in our churches. Those with ears to hear and the humility to receive these doctrines by faith can always perceive them accurately. Moses told the people that the word God had for them was accessible, not hard to understand, and ready to be obeyed (Deut. 30:11–14).
Yet we were never promised absolute knowledge of everything (Deut. 29:29), and we would be wise to view certain convictions—like the finer dimensions of eschatology or the specifics of how God created the earth—with a heavy dose of humility. If God had wanted us to be more dogmatic in those issues he probably would have included more detail.
God says his Word is sufficient, and sufficiently clear, to make us “complete, thoroughly equipped for every good for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:17). So we should approach these “revealed things” with the humility that confesses our need for the Spirit’s help in interpretation and the confidence that God has made the Word accessible, “in our mouth and heart, that we might do it.”
Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?
In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
