The Doctor: The Spirit is Not a Liquid

Surely this other teaching, thought it reminds us that the Holy Spirit is a person, nevertheless seems to forget that fact at this point.  It falls into the error of talking of the Spirit as if He were a liquid that could be poured out, or as if He were like the air which can be breathed in.  But the Holy Spirit is a Person!  He is God, the third Person in the blessed Holy Trinity; and we Christians cannot take Him just as we breathe in the air, whenever we like, and whenever we choose.  What we are taught is that we have to be subject to the Spirit, we have to surrender to the Spirit, and we have to be very careful not to ‘grieve’ or to ‘quench’ the Spirit.  But there is never any suggestion anywhere in Scripture that we can take Him in this simple and almost casual manner.  This teaching seems to me to do violence to the very Person of the Holy Spirit Himself.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 7, p. 253