Holy Spirit

Reformed Baptists affirm the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity, coequal with the Father and Son, fully divine, and actively working in creation, salvation, and sanctification. The 1689 London Baptist Confession presents the Spirit's role as essential to every phase of Christian experience. He regenerates the sinner, creating spiritual life in the elect; he indwells every believer at conversion; and he progressively sanctifies believers, transforming them into Christ's image throughout their earthly lives.

Reformed Baptists hold a cessationist view of sign gifts (miraculous healings, tongues, prophecy in the apostolic sense). These extraordinary gifts authenticated the apostolic office and message in the early church but ceased with the completion of the canon and the apostolic age. The Spirit still works through ordinary means — the Word, prayer, the sacraments, and Christian community — producing genuine spiritual transformation and mortification of sin.

The Spirit works through believers as instruments of righteousness, producing the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control). His indwelling assures believers of their adoption as God's children and their future inheritance. The Spirit's witness to the spirit of the believer confirms assurance of salvation, yet this assurance is not based on emotional experience but on the objective work of Christ and the promise of Scripture.