I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the Forgiveness of sins, the Resurrection of the body, and the Life everlasting. Amen.
Question. What dost thou chiefly learn in these Articles of thy Belief?
Answer. Thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me, and all the elect people of God.
What Christ accomplished, in his death, resurrection, and ascension, he accomplished in his perfect humanity and for us. In him, we have already died, risen, and ascended. In him, nothing stands between us and the Father, nothing hinders our return to God. No longer the slaves of blind or hostile powers, in him we are free to live for God, set apart and consecrated to serve him in new lives of righteousness and holiness, which is the beginning of eternal life in us. Yet how are we in him? How does what he accomplished for us, as our representative, become accomplished in us, by participation in him?
This is the work of the Holy Ghost. For the realization of this freedom which Christ has won for us, we are entirely dependent upon God the Holy Ghost, who is called ‘Holy’ because he ‘sanctifies’ – makes holy – ‘me and all the elect people of God’. It is the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit to call by the gospel those whom God has chosen for Himself, ‘the elect people of God’, to gather them into ‘the Holy Catholic Church’, to knit them together in ‘the Communion of Saints’, and in that fellowship to impart to them ‘the Forgiveness of Sins, the Resurrection of the Body, and Life Everlasting’. The mission of the Holy Ghost is to apply to the elect all that Christ has accomplished in his redemption of mankind. What Christ has done for us, the Holy Ghost accomplishes in us.
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