What is the main work of the Holy Spirit?

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If we ask what is the most characteristic and comprehensive work of the Holy Spirit, according to the New Testament, there can be little doubt that we should answer in the one word, “fellowship”. When the Apostle expands his usual simple benediction—“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you”—into the triple form which we employ,2 he does it by going behind the grace of Christ to the love of God which inspired it, and by coming forward into the Church’s experience of fellowship with the Father, through that grace, a fellowship created by the Holy Spirit. 

But fellowship with God so essentially means fellowship with men (since men are inevitably drawn closer together as they approach God) that he makes this fellowship of Christians with one another in the Spirit the basis of his appeals for humble and helpful service.3 The charismatic gifts of the Spirit are all imparted for the service of the fellowship, and His greatest of all gifts is love.4 

The peculiar fruit of the Spirit is displayed in qualities of character and conduct chiefly affecting fellowship.5 Pentecost itself was the practical discovery of the fellowship of believers (cf. Acts 2:42 ff.). Thus the Apostles’ Creed is fully warranted in its third article, where “I believe in the Holy Ghost” opens into “the holy catholic Church” and “the communion of saints”. We must not confine the work of the Holy Spirit to the creation of fellowship, and still less, of course, to its ecclesiastical expressions; but we are justified in saying that the Spirit of Jesus Christ always works towards the end of fellowship, and finds His highest expression within its realization

2 1 Thess. 5:28, etc.; 2 Cor. 13:14. See further in Ch. X. The underlying meaning of koinonia may be a “common possession” of Holy Spirit, but this implies what is said above.

3 Phil. 2:1.

4 1 Cor. 12:28 ff.; Eph. 4:11 ff.

5 Gal. 5:22, 23.



Robinson, H. W. (1928). The Christian Experience of the Holy Spirit. (J. Marchant, W. R. Matthews, & H. W. Robinson, Eds.) (pp. 141–142). London; New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers.


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