I was asked the follow question…

How can Jesus be God and also be Holy Spirit…?

I felt the Holy Spirit guiding me to answer this way:

This is a good question. First, I don’t believe they are the same in “manifestation.” What I mean by that is that the Holy Spirit is able to be everywhere at once. I don’t think Jesus is able to do that. Even though His body is glorified and is a spiritual body now, I believe that is more of a metaphorical analogy. Jesus said (John 14:16), “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Helper, that he may abide with you for ever.” Jesus was speaking of both the Father and the Holy Spirit in 3rd person as other than Him.

At the same time, we need to remember that Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Father are merely 3 expressions of the same entity (some have made the comparison of the 3 forms of water: Water, Ice, and vapor/humidity). They have the same mind, but they have different purposes. The purpose (or expression, if you prefer) of the Father is to oversee all and work His sovereign will in all the earth. The purpose of the Son is to be an intermediary in all things, forgiving, interceding, advocating, judging, etc. The purpose of the Holy Spirit is to interact with us on a daily basis, leading and guiding and teaching us in all things. He is the one working with us in performing miracles and healings; He is the one speaking to us about other people to prophesy; He is the one working with us to make sure that in all things we are out to glorify Christ and bring the gospel to the whole world. Their purposes overlap and interact, but because they are 3 expressions altogether, they can easily melt one into the other, so to speak (like ice in water… still separate, but merging together and working together). 

One way you can think of the three is this: imagine that you have a bucket of water. You take some of that bucket of water, pour it into a cup and freeze it. It becomes a solid, encapsulated in an earthen material (God poured out Himself into a fleshly body: His Word became flesh). One that water has completely solidified, and you take it out of the freezer, typically 2 things will happen: it will usually start putting off a vapor (like the Holy Spirit) and it will start melting, becoming water again. This is similar to what happened after the Resurrection. Jesus went to the Father to “melt” (so to speak) the purposes of the two, and sent us the vapor of His Holy Spirit. It’s all still the same water, but 3 different expressions of it.