There are times at random when in passing I will just pick up my bible off the desk, hold it to my chest and breathe it in with my eyes closed. There is a unique and centering sense about it. That the totality in the meaning of its words brings certainty about truth, life, assurance, and renewal. The cool of the pages and the holiness of its words reach through to take the heat, confusion, and distress off. To soothe the uneasiness for another stretch of the day. Until back again inside for what it brings. Even better sometimes is my head down at my desk supported by His Holy book. I belong at home in those words.
Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37:1–14)
Can such things be? In Ezekiel’s vision, he saw before him a valley of dry bones. A multitude of God’s people dead, scattered, and dried out to bones. Then suddenly the bones began to come together among them with flesh, tendons, and muscle. Yet still dead, but just corpses, as a multitude of the dead before Ezekiel. God’s people were dead from their rebellion before Him. Laid to waste without life.
Until thereafter the Lord breathed again the breath of life to them all. As with creation and with Pentecost, to revive them. To give them life. A new life unlike anything before. His promise that He would restore the people of Israel. That “He would deliver them from the grave of exile, place His Spirit among them, and settle them once more in the promised land.”
A precursor of what was to come as written about in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:2-5). As now the Holy Spirit dwells within His people today.
Chisholm, R. B. (1998). The Major Prophets. In D. S. Dockery (Ed.), Holman concise Bible commentary (p. 327). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
Likewise, the Holy Spirit dwells in each believer (Romans 8:9; 1 Corinthians 6:19). Scripture sometimes represents His presence and activity through the imagery of fire, as when tongues “as of fire” appeared at Pentecost and the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:3–4). He desires to express His holy work through our actions and attitudes. When believers do not allow the fruit of the Spirit to be evident in their conduct, and when we knowingly do what is wrong, we grieve the Spirit and resist His sanctifying work (Ephesians 4:30; Galatians 5:16–25). We therefore fail to display in our lives the holiness and character that He produces in those who walk by Him.
To understand what it means to grieve the Spirit, we must first understand that this indicates that the Spirit possesses personality. Only a person can be grieved; therefore, the Spirit is not an impersonal force but a personal being who speaks, teaches, wills, intercedes, and may be grieved (John 14:26; Acts 13:2; Romans 8:26–27; 1 Corinthians 12:11; Ephesians 4:30). Scripture also reveals that He is divine, for lying to the Holy Spirit is identified with lying to God, and He searches and knows the depths of God (Acts 5:3–4; 1 Corinthians 2:10–11). Once we understand that the Holy Spirit is a divine person, we can better understand how our sin grieves Him.
Ephesians 4:30 commands us not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom believers are sealed for the day of redemption. The surrounding passage shows that He is grieved when conduct within the body of Christ contradicts His holiness and the unity He creates. Falsehood violates the truth that binds believers together (Ephesians 4:25); sinful and prolonged anger gives opportunity to the devil (Ephesians 4:26–27); theft opposes honest labor and generosity (Ephesians 4:28); corrupt speech tears down rather than gives grace (Ephesians 4:29); and bitterness, wrath, clamor, slander, and malice oppose the kindness, tenderheartedness, and forgiveness that reflect God’s grace in Christ (Ephesians 4:31–32). Sexual immorality, impurity, covetousness, and filthy speech likewise contradict the holiness proper to those who belong to Christ (Ephesians 5:3–5). To grieve the Spirit, therefore, is to act against His holy character, His sanctifying work, and the life of unity and righteousness He produces among God’s people.
Both quenching and grieving the Holy Spirit describe sinful resistance to His work, though Scripture uses the terms in distinct contexts. We grieve the Spirit when our conduct opposes His holiness and sanctifying work in us and among the people of God (Ephesians 4:30–32; 5:1–5). We quench the Spirit when we suppress or reject His genuine activity rather than receiving and testing it faithfully; in 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul immediately connects this warning with not despising prophecies, testing everything, holding fast what is good, and abstaining from every form of evil (1 Thessalonians 5:19–22). In both cases, the concern is not merely that our behavior becomes less godly, but that we are resisting the Holy Spirit Himself—the One who indwells, sanctifies, leads, and forms believers into the likeness of Christ (Romans 8:9, 13–14; Galatians 5:16–25).
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