If the Holy Spirit Is a Person, Why Does the Bible Talk About Him Impersonally?

By: Becca Whipple
May 19, 2026

Have you ever watched a video on YouTube or read a certain Bible verse that makes you doubt something you thought was certain?

Same!

This can happen a lot if you’re a Christian, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It can be good for us to take a closer look at our beliefs and see why we believe them in the first place.

So, in this article, we are going to test a Christian belief that I wrote about not too long ago — the personhood of the Holy Spirit.

Christianity teaches that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, coequal and coeternal with the Father and Son. But the belief in the Spirit’s personhood has not gone without criticism. For example, Jehovah’s Witnesses deny the personhood of the Holy Spirit. Instead, they see him merely as God’s active force or power.

But why would they think this way? And are they right?

Laying Out the Argument

A common objection to the Spirit’s personhood is that the Bible often speaks about him in impersonal ways. Here is a quote taken from some Jehovah’s Witness writings:

“In harmony with this is the Bible’s general usage of “holy spirit” in an impersonal way, such as paralleling it with water and fire. (Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:8) People are urged to become filled with holy spirit instead of with wine. (Ephesians 5:18) They are spoken of as being filled with holy spirit in the same way they are filled with such qualities as wisdom, faith, and joy. (Acts 6:3; 11:24; 13:52) And at 2 Corinthians 6:6 holy spirit is included among a number of qualities. Such expressions would not be so common if the holy spirit were actually a person.”¹

The tension with reading something like this is that the Bible does talk about the Spirit in ways that are impersonal. To add a few more examples…

We can be baptized by the Spirit (Matthew 3:11)
People have been clothed by the Spirit (1 Chronicles 12:18)
He has been called “the finger of God” (Luke 11:20, compare Matthew 12:28)
He can be “poured out” (Joel 2:28; Acts 10:45)

Critics will also point out that we don’t see much (or any) personalization of the Spirit until the New Testament. And, Jehovah’s Witnesses often point to Christian resources for support. For example, one of their booklets states:

“Various sources acknowledge that the Bible does not support the idea that the holy spirit is the third person of a Trinity. For example… The New Catholic Encyclopedia: ‘The O[ld] T[estament] clearly does not envisage God’s spirit as a person… God’s spirit is simply God’s power… It also says: ‘The majority of N[ew] T[estament] texts reveal God’s spirit as something, not someone; this is especially seen in the parallelism between the spirit and the power of God.’”²

Because of these points, some come to the conclusion that anytime the Bible does use personal language to describe the Spirit, it’s simply using poetic license so we can understand how it works. To support this, they point to instances where impersonal things are personified:

“In the Scriptures it is not unusual for something to be personified. Wisdom is said to have children. (Luke 7:35) Sin and death are called kings. (Romans 5:14, 21) At Genesis 4:7 The New English Bible (NE) says: ‘Sin is a demon crouching at the door,’ personifying sin as a wicked spirit crouching at Cain’s door. But, of course, sin is not a spirit person; nor does personifying the holy spirit make it a spirit person.”³

So, do these arguments doom the Christian belief that the Spirit is a person?

Before I go on, I want to extend some grace to those that would put these arguments forward, because I genuinely think they are fair concerns to have. I still struggle with doubts about the Trinity myself. And, these arguments should make us carefully consider the personhood of the Spirit because it’s directly related to how we understand God.

However, there are three reasons why these objections fall short:

The Bible talks about persons impersonally
The Bible presents a gradual (or progressive) revelation
Mere personification does not make sense of the Spirit

1. The Bible Talks About Persons Impersonally

We’ve looked at some examples of how the Bible uses impersonal language to describe the Spirit (he can fill and be poured out, he can clothe, etc). However, the Bible also uses impersonal language to describe persons.

Jesus described himself as a door (John 10:9), bread (John 6:48), and a vine (John 15:1). John the Baptist calls Jesus the Lamb of God (John 1:36). Paul calls him the cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20) and instructs Christians to clothe themselves in Christ (Romans 13:14).

God is compared to a shield (Genesis 15:1; Psalm 28:7) and a fortress (Psalm 46:7). He fills the heavens and the earth (Jeremiah 23:24).

The Apostle Paul says of himself that he is poured out like a drink offering (Philippians 2:17; 2 Timothy 4:6).

Any one of us would read these verses and correctly understand that God is not a literal shield, Jesus is not a piece of clothing, and Paul is not a liquid that can be poured out. But why? We know that they are persons because of the rest of Scripture! We read that Jesus has emotions (John 11:35; Mark 3:5), God the Father has a will (Ephesians 1:5), and Paul has a mind (Acts 22:3) — and we can likewise affirm that the Spirit possesses all of these things by reading other parts of the Bible (see my previous article on how you can know the Holy Spirit is a person).

Additionally, it isn’t reasonable to discredit the Spirit’s personhood simply because he’s listed alongside impersonal things, since he’s listed alongside persons as well:

He is listed alongside the Father and Son in the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19)
He speaks along with the Church and “the one who hears” (Revelation 22:17)
He testifies and witnesses with the disciples (John 15:26-27; Acts 5:32)
He intercedes along with Jesus (Romans 8:27, 34)

The Bible’s instances of impersonal language attributed to the Holy Spirit do not rule out that he is a person.

Therefore, the Bible’s instances of impersonal language attributed to the Holy Spirit do not rule out that he is a person. As John Owens (cheekily) said in his book Pneumatologia, “[this], therefore, doth not in the least impeach our argument, unless this assertion were true generally, that whatever is spoken of figuratively in the Scripture is no person; which would leave no one in heaven or earth.”⁴

2. The Bible presents a gradual revelation

The next argument to consider is that the Spirit is scarcely referred to as a person in the Old Testament.⁵ Rather, the Spirit is typically portrayed as God’s power. While we do see more personality attributed to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, should we assume he is just a force because his personal traits seem absent in the Old Testament?

God didn’t reveal everything about himself and his redemptive plan at the beginning of time. Many things were hinted at in the Old Testament that were not made plain until the New Testament.

The answer is… no. This actually isn’t a problem because God didn’t reveal everything about himself and his redemptive plan at the beginning of time. Many things were hinted at in the Old Testament that were not made plain until the New Testament. For example, while it was foreshadowed that Gentiles would be included in God’s salvation plan (Genesis 12:3), the fact that Gentiles and Jews would be brought together into one body of Christians under Christ was a “mystery” that wasn’t revealed until the New Testament (Ephesians 3:1-6).

Likewise, while we learn about the Spirit in the Old Testament, the New Testament gives us a fuller picture of what (and who!) he is. In the Old Testament, we read that God uses his Spirit to do his work on earth (Genesis 1:2; Exodus 31:2-3) and that the Spirit creates life (Psalm 104:30). We even get hints that someone’s spirit is connected to their very self (Psalm 143:4; Job 7:11). The New Testament affirms all these things, but then reveals that God’s Spirit is also a person, alongside the Father and the Son. This revealed truth especially makes sense in light of our salvation in Christ. Now that our relationship with God (relationship being a personal thing) has been restored after mankind’s fall into sin, he now dwells in us in the person of the Holy Spirit.

So, just because we don’t see much evidence for the Spirit’s personhood in the Old Testament doesn’t mean he’s not a person. It just wasn’t revealed yet.

3. Mere personification does not make sense of the Spirit

The last point we must consider is personification in the Bible. It’s true that personification is used as a writing device to describe impersonal things. Some commonly pointed-to examples include:

Wisdom - personified as a parent in Luke 7:35 (“And yet wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”)

Death - personified as a ruler in Romans 5:14 (“Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the violation committed by Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.”)

So, when the Bible presents the Holy Spirit as a person, should we interpret it as metaphorical?

First off, it’s important to take the whole Bible into consideration when considering this question. There is evidence for the Holy Spirit’s personhood in many places in the New Testament. We can also look at other biblical instances of wisdom or death to discern whether or not they are persons. To this point, Leland Ryken notes, “…personifications are always localized or limited to a specific passage; they are never elaborated into a coherent system that extends across a whole span of texts.”⁶

But to keep things brief, let’s see if personification fits well in the context of the verses above and also John 14 where Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit as a “Helper” or “Advocate” (those who deny his personhood often point to this passage as an example of personifying the Spirit).

Wisdom (Luke 7:35)

In Luke 7, Jesus has been speaking to the crowd about John the Baptist’s teaching — that he is a great prophet and man of God. Then he moves on to speak about the foolish men of the day who neither liked John the Baptist’s nor Jesus’ ministries. Jesus says that they are like foolish children, and he then follows up by saying, “But wisdom is vindicated by all her children.” By this, he means that those who follow godly wisdom will prove it to be right and good in the end. In this way, they are “wisdom’s children”, not foolish children. In the context of the passage, wisdom being metaphorically associated with being a parent makes sense.

Death (Romans 5:14)

In Romans 5, Paul compares how sin came into the world through one man (Adam) to how salvation came into the world through one man (Jesus). Before Jesus, “death reigned from Adam until Moses” despite there not being any law yet. In context of the passage, personifying death as a ruler makes sense, because, in a way, mankind was subject to death and could not escape it.

Holy Spirit / “Helper” (John 14:16-18)

Now let’s look at John 14. I would encourage you to read John 14-16 in your own time, because the Holy Spirit is described as a Helper throughout those chapters.

The setting of John 14 is the Last Supper, where Jesus gives his final teaching to his disciples before his crucifixion. Jesus knows he will be going to the Father after his death, so he is comforting and preparing his disciples for what lies ahead, since they are concerned that he will be leaving them (John 13:37; 14:5). Therefore, Jesus tells them,

“And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever — the Spirit of truth. The world cannot receive Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you do know Him, for He abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”

Perhaps this could be interpreted that the Spirit is a force that will help the disciples in the future, and therefore is a “helper” or “advocate”. But there are a few things that do not make sense with this interpretation.

First, Jesus intends to comfort his disciples. The sending of the Spirit is connected with his promise that he will not leave them as “orphans” after his return to Heaven, but he will come to them. This comfort would ring hollow if the Holy Spirit were not an actual person coming to be with them after Jesus leaves.

Secondly, Jesus calls the Spirit “another Helper”. The Greek word Jesus uses for “another” is allos, which “generally denotes numerical [distinction]”⁷ in contrast to a “qualitative difference”⁸. Jesus is saying “a helper like me is coming to be with you.” From this, we would expect that he is referring to another person.

Third, when reading John 14-16, it feels natural to understand this “Helper” as a real person. He hears, teaches, takes/receives, speaks, and guides (John 16:12-15). It might be possible to come up with metaphorical ways that these could refer to a mere force, but it certainly wouldn’t be a natural reading.

This passage aside, mere personification of the Holy Spirit does not seem to be a natural fit for many other verses in the New Testament. It’s difficult to conceive of how grieving the Spirit (Ephesians 4:30), the Spirit interceding for believers (Romans 8:27), or the Spirit having a will (1 Corinthians 12:11; Acts 15:28) could be personifications. If the original writers were using writing devices to convey something about an impersonal thing, it’s not apparent what they meant.

Conclusion

After going through these objections, it’s evident that they don’t dismantle the personhood of the Spirit. Since these arguments are not enough to show that the Spirit is simply a power or force, and we have evidence of the Spirit’s personhood across the New Testament, it’s safe to conclude that the Spirit is a person.

We can know that God has come near in the person of the Holy Spirit. He is not distant.

Because of this, we can know that God has come near in the person of the Holy Spirit. He is not distant. If you are in Christ, you can delight in Jesus’ words in John 14:16: “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, so that He may be with you forever”.

Footnotes

¹Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. “The Holy Spirit—God’s Active Force.” JW.org, www.jw.org/en/library/brochures/Should-You-Believe-in-the-Trinity/The-Holy-Spirit-Gods-Active-Force/. Accessed 4 May 2026.

²Ibid. (since we format our quotations with italics, the words in bold are what the Watch Tower italicized for emphasis)

³Ibid.

⁴Owen, John. The Life and Works of John Owen. A.co, 9 Apr. 2016, a.co/d/06Hrut4v.

⁵The Holy Spirit’s personhood could potentially be perceived in Isaiah 63:10, which recounts Israel grieving God’s Holy Spirit.

⁶Ryken, Leland. “Is the Holy Spirit a Personification?” Christian Research Institute, 11 June 2009, www.equip.org/articles/is-the-holy-spirit-a-personification/. Accessed 4 May 2026.

⁷(1889). A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (J. H. Thayer, Trans.; Corrected, p. 29). Harper & Brothers. (Original work published 1885)

⁸Ibid.