The "He " and "It" syndrome

Romans 8

“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” (v. 26)

Much has been said about this verse, and I doubt if I could add anything to you who have been saved for awhile and have heard many sermons and lessons on this same verse. For that reason, I will key on one word in the verse, and a different approach from the “norm”.

Many opponents of the King James Bible like to point out the word “itself” here, as it refers to the Spirit of God. They say that the Holy Spirit is a Person, and not an “it” and that the translators got it wrong (or else the Lord did when He inspired it!), but I wish to explain this rare usage of the pronoun when referring to the Holy Spirit of God. I call it the “He” and “it” syndrome.

The Holy Spirit is a power as well as a person. Usually, when a writer refers to the power of the Spirit, he uses the terms “Holy Ghost”, and when referring to the Person, he uses the words “Holy Spirit.” Check it out for yourself, and see if it is not so. Now, as we refer to a power as a “thing” or a noun, it is correct to say “it”, we do this all the time when we ask about a newly born baby and say “how much did “it” weigh?” No one is offended that we call their baby an “it”, but until we know the gender, and often afterward, we use the word correctly, because it refers to the word “baby” and not “he” or “she”. The word “it” then, in our verse, refers to the power of the Spirit, and not merely the Person (although they are one and the same); the Power is an “it”! When we speak of the work of the Holy Spirit, we can properly use the word “it” in describing it. The Kings men translated it right, and they knew exactly what the Lord had given them to say. This is merely one of the darts of Satan to undermine the Word of God, which is magnified even above the name of the Lord, (Psa. 138:2), and attempt to confuse the children of God. Some of you are not going to like my next statement, but I believe that the devil cannot deceive the true children of God in this matter, I think the Lord reveals Truth to His own. What could be more sacred than the Word of God? What could be more important than Jesus, the Living Word?

We see that Peter also made the same “mistake” if it were truly a mis-translation, (which it is not), in 1 Peter 1:11, where we read:
“Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.” “When IT testified…” did you see that? Peter called the Spirit of Christ an “It”! Amazing that both these instances were translated wrong when so many others were translated correctly, isn’t it? Apparently the same group of men translated both books, or else the same God dictated both of them! Stick with the tried and true Word, the King James Bible, and you can’t go wrong.