16 – 20 Mar 2024

As we study the Gospel of Luke in chapter one and two, do we notice that besides the mention of angels announcing to Zechariah, Mary, and to the shepherds the good news, the Holy Spirit is also mentioned, rather obscurely, it seems, but very obviously, indicating his presence and role in the birth, ministry, and life of Jesus on earth?
Note the following verses:

‘When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit ‘(Luke 1:41).

‘His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied ‘(1:67).

‘Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah’ (Luke 2:25-26).

In fact, the Holy Spirit is also present in the rest of Luke’s gospel, related to the person and ministry of Christ. After his baptism by John, Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness (4:1); the presence of the Spirit is ‘hidden’ often, nevertheless, Jesus was filled with the Spirit at his baptism.

The relationship of Christ to the Spirit; the role of Christ as mediator in salvation – all these are foundational in all of Calvin’s thinking about salvation.
Nothing is received in salvation that is not first accomplished in and through Jesus Christ; everything that is accomplished in Christ is done so, not for his own sake, but for ours. Moreover, everything that has been accomplished for us in Christ is to be applied to us and in us by the Holy Spirit.
In essence, the task of the Holy Spirit is to correlate our need and the salvation which is embodied in Jesus Christ; it is only through him that all that is for us in the head is diffused throughout the whole body. and Christ, clothed in the gospel, becomes ours existentially through faith. Thus when the Spirit sanctifies us he is simply bringing to us what is already found in Christ, so that we are formed into his image by the Spirit’s hidden operation.

Christ was first the recipient of the Spirit in the fulfilment of his Messianic ministry, in order that he might, as exalted Lord, become bestower of the same Spirit upon his people. The Spirit who dwelt on Christ, sanctifying him through the whole course of his obedience and mission, is given by Christ to us, with the authority of the Father, so reproduce in us what he first produced in Christ himself.
Christ is bearer of the Spirit not for his own sake but for ours. He bore the Spirit in order to bestow the Spirit; he receives the Spirit in order to accomplish his work so that the Spirit may communicate him in the virtue of his accomplished work to all who believe.

The Spirit is also present in the incarnation in order to keep Christ pure from the beginning.The chief work of the Spirit is to effect faith in our hearts. All blessings are ours in Christ, offered in and through him in the power of the Spirit, and now, likewise, effected in us by the power of the same Spirit. He brings us to be partakers of Christ.
Since the Holy Spirit is the bond of union between Jesus Christ and the whole church as well as the individual believer, the Spirit is the key to the church’s communion with the Lord Jesus, not least in the Lord’s Supper (Communion).
The great work of the Spirit is to unite us to Christ, in whom this justification by faith is grounded, and in union with whom sanctification is effected and develops.
Salvation is in Christ alone, by grace alone, by faith alone, also by the Spirit alone. The Spirit proceeds personally from both the Father and the Son within the internal union and communion of the Trinity. When the believer receives the Spirit, he also receives the Father and the Son.
The Holy Spirit applies the work of Jesus Christ to those who believe in him in the old covenant and bridges the gap in space and time between the historical anticipation and the actual accomplishment of our Lord Jesus Christ’s saving ministry and the present time, in which God justifies sinners and transforms them into saints. So while the Spirit worked through the old covenant, his ministry came to marvellous consummation in the new covenant (note this affirmation in the Magnificat, Benedictus, and particularly the prayer of Simeon).

The major areas in the Spirit’s ministry in the ChrIstian believer:

Illumination
The Spirit who gives us Scripture also convinces us of the truth of Scripture through that truth. The Scripture is God’s Word not by the use of arguments extraneous to Scripture, or by any of its impressive external characteristics, but by the reading and exposition of Scripture itself. The Holy Spirit uses the very Scriptures that we read to persuade us that what we are reading is the very word of God. HIs testimony is not separate from the word, but comes with and through the word. The fundamental need is for people to hear it and read it for themselves. Scripture itself, through the ministry of the Spirit, brings inner certainty that it is the very voice of God, as if there the living words of God were heard. That is why the fruit of the Spirit’s ministry is that we give the Scripture the reverence that we give to God himself, because it is his word. Illumination of Scripture is an inward persuasion of and a yielding to its truth.

Regeneration; Adoption; Communion
All the above three have been covered in more details previously.
In Regeneration, union with Christ becomes ours through faith. This union involves mortification and vivification. We highlight here some of the other more controversial points in these areas of the Spirit’s ministry.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Adoption; he brings us into God’s family and makes us his children.

In the Communion (Lord’s Supper), we have communion with Jesus in the Spirit, not communion with a spiritual Jesus. The role of the Spirit is to bring us to where the Lord Jesus is. He closes the gap in the space-time continuum between ourselves and Christ. By the ministry of the Spirit, we are ‘lifted up’, as it were to heaven, where we find the incarnate Christ now glorified and have communion with him.
It is on Christ the Spirit shines, and to him we come by the same Spirit. Since everything we need is found in Christ, it is into union and communion with him that the Spirit brings us and keeps us.The Spirit then, as the bond of union between the Father and the Sonis also the bond of union between the Son and his people. It is through the Spirit that all that is in Christ for us becomes ours.

(2A)

In our recent bible study, the person of the Holy Spirit was brought up, as well as the subject of theTRINITY.
As we approach these various subjects, we should not abandon faith in anything God has taught us merely because we cannot solve all the problems which it raises. Our own intellectual competence is not the test and measure of divine truth. It is not for us to stop believing because we lack understanding, or to postpone believing until we can get understanding, but to believe in order that we may understand.
We should hesitate to commit ourselves to faith in the Trinity, or to faith in the Incarnation, or to faith in Scripture as the infallible Word of the infallible God, even though we cannot solve all the puzzles, nor reconcile all the apparent contradictions. On all these subjects or articles of faith, we have God’s positive assurance, and that should be enough.

With these assurances and clarifications, we now look at the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus when he was on earth. There is no doubt in the minds of God’s people that Jesus is fully God and fully man; he is the God-man. Although our Lord lived in the power of the Spirit, he ‘acted grace as a man’, that is, as a man, fully man, truly man and in every aspect of his humanity.

We see this expounded in two ways in the Gospels (in Luke’s Gospel as well).
There is a progress in our Lord’s humanity and corresponding progress in his holiness – not from sin to holiness as such, but from holiness to holiness, in a manner commensurate with the natural progress within his humanity. This is implied in the statement of Luke 2:52 that as he grew in stature and in favour with men, he also grew in favour with God as he grew in wisdom.
As his natural capacities developed so the Spirit of God worked in the Lord Jesus, gradually and incrementally training him in the development of perfect godliness at each stage of his life.

In this sense, Jesus obeyed the law of God perfectly and did so in the power of the Holy Spirit, ‘naturally’ in the sense of ‘in a fully and truly human way’. There was nothing inhuman or superhuman about the obedience of Jesus. The Spirit of God led him into a full, perfect and ‘natural’ humanity. Correspondingly the mind of the Lord Jesus, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, was illumined by the Scriptures to guide him on each step of his way, as he lived in the general obedience to God required of man as creature, and the specific obedience to God required by Jesus as Messiah.

The Messiah who died on the cross did not come immediately from heaven to the cross. Rather, he developed from his (literally) embryonic condition in the womb, through the natural processes of growth, accompanied by the development of holiness in the power of the Spirit, to become a mature man in his thirties. In him,uniquely, ongoing growth in obedience and in the fruit of the Spirit were perfectly commensurate with the natural development of all human characteristics.

It is pertinent to understand the above in Jesus’ human development, for Jesus had to remain fully human on earth in order to fulfil his mission on the cross as a substitute for mankind, and we shall see how the enemy sought to dislodge him from this so as to prevent him from fulfilling God’s mission as the Messiah and the true Lamb of God.

(2B)

Jesus grew strong in the Holy Spirit during his hidden years from 12 to 30. At his baptism he entered into the fullness of the Spirit, not for progress in holiness, but to be equipped to fulfil his Messianic ministry (John Owen and the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit). His willingness to be baptised by John the Baptist suggests his complete identification with humanity.
As fully man, Jesus entered the fullness of the Spirit to be equipped to fulfil his role as the Second Man and the true Israel; gifts were now given to him by the Spirit to engage in the age-old conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness; in this battle and conflict, he took the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, in order to overcome the enemy. In his use of Scripture, he obeyed the Father, maintained his own integrity, and followed the Spirit’s guidance to cause Satan to flee.

The ministry of the Spirit in the life of our Lord Jesus will serve as a paradigm for the ministry of the Spirit in the life of the believer; the believer can never be like the Lord in his sinlessness, in his fulfilment of God’s mission, but the full objective of salvation to mould the believer into the image of the Master suggests the ‘similar role’ of the Spirit in the transformation of the believer into the likeness of the Son.

It was through the eternal Spirit that the Lord offered himself without blemish as a sacrifice to God (Heb. 9:13-14) Hence, from womb to tomb, the devotion of the Spirit on the enfleshed Son was constantly evident. The ministry of the Spirit in the life of the Lord is also revealed at the point of our Lord’s exaltation. It is true that the Father raised up the Son (Acts 2:32); it is also true that the Son has power to lay down his life and to take it up again (John 10:17-18); but it is equally true that the Spirit declared him Son of God with power through the resurrection – the Spirit vindicates him in the resurrection – it is a work of transformation and glorification. He (the Spirit) who first made his nature holy, now made it glorious – from womb to tomb, the Spirit is powerfully present in the life of our Lord Jesus – the Spirit has been the companion of our Lord every moment of his human experience.

It is revealed in Scriptures that the bestower of the Spirit on the believers is Jesus Christ (together with the Father); it is the same Spirit who was the constant companion of the Lord Jesus while he was on earth; the bearer of the Spirit is also the bestower of the Spirit. In other words, it is the very Spirit he has borne as incarnate, and no other, whom he pours out upon the church on the Day of Pentecost.
The identity in which the Spirit comes to the church and the believer is defined by his intimate relationship to the life of the incarnate Saviour. The Spirit is able to take from what is Christ’s and made it known to us, because he has been dynamically active in Christ’s incarnate life and ministry – hence the goal of the Spirit’s ministry is to transform us, the believers, into the likeness of Christ!

The Holy Spirit is then the agent of illumination, the author of regeneration, the sanctifier, the author of spiritual gifts, the Christian’s consolation in affliction. The Spirit indwells the believer mysteriously; he is always, under all circumstances, at all times making us holy. He uses every situation – joys, trials, successes, and failures – to conform us to the image of God’s Son.
The Spirit comes to give the believer direction and guidance – a guidance that is moral and objectively in the Word he had authored; a guidance that is internal and efficient as the Spirit illuminates our understanding of the Scriptures. In addition, he enables us to embrace the teaching Scripture gives us as well as the providences that govern our lives under the sovereign hand of God.

The leading of the Spirit is according to Scripture, never against it; it is always in harmony with the Word. The leading is also orderly and it always tend to glorify God according to his word. The Spirit is given to believers as a pledge, a down-payment on final redemption. He is thus here and now both the forerunner to future glory and also an indication of the incompleteness of all present spiritual experience.

The Spirit is the third person of the Godhead (Trinity), the one who proceeds from the Father and the Son, the Eternal Spirit – he is to be worshipped, loved and adored.
He can be grieved by our lives; he is not to be grieved. To grieve him is to disappoint him who has loved us with an eternal love. We ought to return to him the holy lives he seeks from our hearts, the full obedience he desires to work in our lives. He who dwells in us loves our Saviour; he who dwells in us loves us, because Christ is our Saviour. Those who love us most are more grieved by us when we fail. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God (Eph.4:30).