Notes on the Holy Spirit

The Church calendar climaxes with Pentecost, before moving into the “off-season” of Trinity. Proper time moves through redemptive history: The Father sends the Son to be incarnate at Advent and Christmas; the Son lives, dies, rises again, and ascends; and He gives the Spirit at Pentecost.

There is a great deal of wisdom in this. The church calendar is theologically instructive. It teaches us things about our salvation, and particularly that our salvation is completed only when the Spirit is sent from the Son who was sent by the Father.

What if we concluded proper time with Good Friday? There would be no resurrection, and we would still be in our sins. What if we ended it with Easter? Jesus would not be exalted as King. What if we ended with Ascension? Jesus would have accomplished everything, but He would not have delivered it to us. Pentecost is absolutely necessary, as necessary to our salvation as the Cross and Resurrection of the Son. Pentecost means the coming of the Spirit and the Spirit is the connection we have with Jesus. If He had accomplished everything the Father gave Him to do, but not delivered the Spirit, we would have no share in it.

Pentecost at the climax of the church year also means that our coming to share in the work of Christ is also God’s work. From beginning to end, salvation is the work of God and not us. The Father sends the Son, who lives and dies and rises again; and this all becomes ours because the Spirit becomes ours. God doesn’t leave the messy business of dying and rising to a lesser figure; and He doesn’t leave the messy business of bringing us into a share of the death and resurrection of his Son to a subordinate either. He does the work Himself. God the Spirit gets into the grit of saving a fallen world just as much as God the Son.

One emphasis of the Nicene Creed is that the Spirit is fully and equally God with the Father and Son. This is already evident in the first statement about the Spirit, that He is the “Lord and Giver of life.” God is the God of life, and the Spirit is specifically said to be the agent who brings life. He gives life in every sense. Physical life is the product of the Spirit’s breath on dust. We are Spirit-animated dirt. And the life we have in the new Adam is the gift of the Spirit. The life that we will have in the resurrection will be life in Spiritual bodies, bodies conformed to and filled to the brim with the Spirit.

We can think about the work of the Spirit by examining places in the OT. The Spirit’s first appearance is in Gen 1:2, where He hovers over the formless and void and before long transforms the formless and void earth into a formed and filled heaven-and-earth. This is the Spirit’s work, to bring a world of darkness to light, to bring a formless world to perfected form, to fill an empty world with myriads of creatures. The Spirit brings the world to maturity and order. And this is one dimension of what we can see in the work of the Spirit in the NT. The Spirit work to bring us and the creation back into order, and to propel us on to maturity, to final perfected glory. The Spirit is the Alpha Spirit, who takes the creation to Omega.

This work of the Spirit is evident in several OT passages that deal with the Spirit’s work in creation, such as Is 32; Ezek 36. In these passages, the Spirit restores a disordered and infertile creation. The Spirit turns the desert into a garden. He is the water that flows from the Father and Son to renew the land. This is part of the background for Paul’s description of the fruits of the Spirit in Gal 5. Saying that the Spirit produces “fruit” alludes to Eden; because she is filled with the Spirit, the church is the new Eden, full of the fruit produced by the Spirit.

This is also evident in the story of Bezalel and Oholiab in Exodus 28:3 and 31:3. The Spirit who created and ordered the world gives Bezalel and Oholiab skill to make the furnishings of the tabernacle. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of creativity, and when we look at the creative work of the Spirit from the viewpoint of Genesis 1:2, we get an insight into the nature of genuine creativity. Creativity through the Creator Spirit doesn’t mean redirecting creation to a new path, but bringing the creation to its destined glory. That is the work of the Spirit, and that is the work of Spirit-filled human creators.

Another important dimension of the Spirit’s work is His equipping the saints for warfare. A number of judges and Saul were equipped by the Spirit to make war (Judges 3:10; 6:34; 11:29; 14:6, 19; 15:14). The Spirit incites a holy battle-rage in the saints. Jesus receives the Spirit and goes to battle Satan in the wilderness. The apostles receive the Spirit and become militant preachers of the gospel. We are all equipped by the Spirit with spiritual gifts (Rom 12; 1 Cor 12) for the edification of the church, and to battle principalities and powers.

The Spirit comes in the New Covenant as the Spirit of Christ, with resurrection power to renew dead humanity and the dead world. The Spirit is the means for Christ’s presence in the world. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3, the Lord is Spirit; as he says in 1 Corinthians 15, the Last Adam has become a life-giving Spirit. The Spirit in us is Christ in us; the Spirit feeds us Christ at the Lord’s table. Everywhere, the presence of Jesus in the world now is mediated through the Spirit who proceeds from Father and Son.