Raymond Brown helpfully observes, “For the Christian the life-giving moment of the Spirit was not simply the descent of the Spirit upon Jesus in the form of a dove, but the Spirit flowing from within Jesus after his death. And the flowing blood, the sign of the sacrificial victim, showed that Jesus’ death was an atoning sacrifice for sin.”
If Jesus is just a container of Spirit, the life He has remains His alone. He has to be opened up, split and divided on the cross, in order to give the Spirit to us. Brown’s comments also suggest a neatly Trinitarian account of the atonement: Jesus had to die in order to release the Spirit His Father had poured upon Him.
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