GOT QUESTION?ORG-QUESTION OF THE WEEK-”What does it mean to grieve / quench the Holy Spirit?
Question: “What does it mean to grieve / quench the Holy Spirit?”
Answer: When the word “quench” is used in Scripture, it is speaking of suppressing fire. When believers put on the shield of faith, as part of their armor of God (Ephesians
6:16), they are extinguishing the power of the fiery darts from Satan.
Christ described hell as a place where the fire would not be “quenched”
(Mark 9:44, 46, 48). Likewise, the Holy Spirit is a fire dwelling
in each believer. He wants to express Himself in our actions and
attitudes. When believers do not allow the Spirit to be seen in our
actions, when we do what we know is wrong, we suppress or quench the
Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19). We do not allow the Spirit to reveal Himself the way that He wants to.
To
understand what it means to grieve the Spirit, we must first understand
that this indicates the Spirit possesses personality.Only a person can
be grieved; therefore, the Spirit must be a divine person in order to
have this emotion. Once we understand this, we can better understand how
He is grieved, mainly because we too are grieved.
Ephesians 4:30 tells us that we should not grieve the Spirit. We grieve
the Spirit by living like the pagans (4:17-19), by lying (4:25), by
being angry (4:26-27), by stealing (4:28), by cursing (4:29), by being
bitter (4:31), by being unforgiving (4:32), and by being sexually
immoral (5:3-5). To grieve the Spirit is to act out in a sinful manner,
whether it is in thought only or in both thought and deed.
Both quenching and grieving the
Spirit are similar in their effects. Both hinder a godly lifestyle.
Both happen when a believer sins against God and follows his or her own
worldly desires. The only correct road to follow is the road that leads the believer closer to God and purity, and farther away from the world and sin.
Just as we do not like to be grieved, and just as we do not seek to
quench what is good—so we should not grieve or quench the Holy Spirit by
refusing to follow His leading.
Recommended Resource:The Wonderful Spirit-Filled Life by Charles Stanley.
Bible Questions Answered by GotQuestions.org
With over 3,000
answers to frequently asked Bible questions published online,
approximately 75% of the questions we are asked already have answers
available to you instantly. We offer several options for finding the answers to your questions.
You can search our site, which does a search of all of our articles based on the search terms you enter.
You can browse our Top 20 most common Bible questions and Top 20 most visited articles, which together account for around 15% of the questions we are asked.
You can look through our Frequently Asked Questions Archives, which divides questions and answers based on Biblical categories.
You can examine our What’s New section to find out what articles have recently been added to the site.
If you are unable to find your answer online, you can ask us your Bible question on our Bible Questions Answered page.
No comments:
Post a Comment