A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life in a Year:
Given all the manifold work of the Holy Spirit in God’s elect, what does it mean to have communion with the Spirit? What is the essence of His consolation and comfort? The Spirit comforts believers by bringing them into fellowship with the Father and the Son. [John Owen (1616-1683)] wrote,
“All the consolations of the Holy Ghost consist in his acquainting us with, and communicating unto us, the love of the Father and the grace of the Son; nor is there any thing in the one or the other but he makes it a matter of consolation to us; so that, in deed, we have our communion with the Father in his love, and the Son in his grace, by the operation of the Holy Ghost.”
This explains the binary description of communion in the Scripture with which Owen opened this treatise on trinitarian communion: “Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3b; see also John 14:23; 17:3). The Holy Spirit is implied, and not excluded; He is the immediate agent of fellowship with the Father and the Son.
(A Puritan Theology, p. 113)
