Methodism affirms the full divinity and personhood of the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity. The Methodist Articles of Religion (Article I) confess the Spirit as co-equal with Father and Son. A distinctive Wesleyan emphasis is the assurance of salvation through the Spirit: Wesley taught the doctrine of 'assurance' — the Spirit directly witnesses to the believer's spirit that they are a child of God (Romans 8:16) — as a normal and expected aspect of Christian experience. This was closely related to Wesley's own conversion experience on May 24, 1738.

The Holy Spirit is also central to Wesleyan sanctification: it is the Spirit who works the progressive and (in Wesley's view) potentially completed transformation of the believer's character into Christlikeness. The Wesleyan-Holiness tradition that grew out of Methodism, and later Pentecostalism (which has Wesleyan roots), developed Wesley's pneumatology further. The United Methodist Church affirms the Spirit's transforming work while not endorsing all charismatic expressions of spiritual gifts as normative.