The teaching of Jesus concerning the Holy Spirit

Front matter

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Book. T4-C7 Copyright^ .

Contents

I. The Spirit of God in the Old

Testament i

II. The Distribution of the Teaching 24

CHAPTER I The Spirit of God in the Old Testament

rHE allusions in the Old Testament to the Spirit of God fall naturally into three classes : First, those which refer to the Spirit's activity in creation ; second, those which indicate the relation of the Spirit to the redemptive purpose of God ; and third, those which express the superintendence of the Spirit over the spiritual lives of individuals.

The Spirit and the Cosmos

The Spirit is first revealed in the Old

Testament as the power of God working in creation. In Gen. i. 2 it was the Spirit of God that moved upon the face of the waters. The word by which this activity is described is an interesting one. It is found also in Deut. xxxii. 11, where it refers to the brooding of the mother bird over her young. So here we may understand that this action of the Spirit of God is not only that of protecting but that it produced results in the order and life of the Cosmos. God works in creation, according to the writer of Genesis, by the agency of His Spirit. Not only the inanimate and the brute creation but man himself must look to the Spirit as the source of being. We read that God breathed into man's nostrils the breath or the Spirit of life and he became a living soul (Gen. ii. 7). This creative energy of the Spirit is the general belief of the Old Testament writers. " Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created " ; referring to the brute creation (Ps. civ. 30). " By his Spirit the heavens are garnished " (Job xxvi. 13). " The Spirit of God hath made me and the breath of the Almighty giveth me life " (Job xxxiii. 4).

The truth seems to be that God works by His Spirit in the creation and preservation of His world. There is no distinction in person between God and His Spirit such as one familiar with the New Testament would expect. The Spirit of God in the Old Testament is rather God at work. God worked in the creation of the world and in establishing its order. God works since creation in the continual preserving of the order and harmony of His creation, in maintaining its life and in providing for the sustenance of His creatures. All this He does by His Spirit.

The Spirit in the Theocracy

A second and much more frequent employment of the phrase " Spirit of God " in the Old Testament is in relation to the purpose of God to make for Himself a people. Many of the uses of the term which seem otherwise difficult to explain become on this view plain enough. Why should it be said of Gideon and of Samson and of Saul that the Spirit of God came upon them, causing them, unworthy instruments perhaps, to triumph in battle, to display surprising feats of strength before the Philistines, to prophesy with the prophets ? (Judges vi. 34 ; xiii. 25 ; I Sam. x. 6). Simply because these men were in the theocratic line, being the agents of God in the establishment of His great redemptive purposes. The lesson that they teach is not that God in the Old Testament record is indifferent to personal character, but that He can and does use even wicked and careless men as the agents of His theocratic kingdom, to accomplish His almighty will. So then in the historical development of the redemptive purpose of God the Spirit of God was the agent. He was known even by Pharaoh to have possessed Joseph in Egypt (Gen. xli. 38). He was characteristic of Moses during the days of his leadership of the people, and He inspired the seventy men who assisted Moses in administering the laws to the people (Num. xi. 17, 25-30). The Spirit came upon Bezalel to endow him with wisdom and understanding and knowledge, and skill in all manner of workmanship ; to work in metal and stone and wood for the tabernacle, the cradle of worship for the infant people of God (Ex. xxxi. 3). Whether we are to regard this endowment as a special and new thing, so as to make Bezalel able for kinds of work of which he knew nothing before, as some hold, or whether it simply acted so as to enhance his own natural powers, as others believe, we are not told. Nor is it of much moment. The point is that Bezalel's fitness for this special service for the theocracy was due to God acting by His Spirit upon him. The lesson to be impressed upon Israel through all the history was that the nation was what it was because God had by His own grace chosen to call a people to Himself, and give them laws and provide them a home. The tabernacle was God's thought not Israel's. His Spirit used men to make it but it was His gift for their communion with Him which was their highest good.

The Inspiration of the Prophets

The guidance of the events which made history in the days of the old covenant, we are taught on every page of the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament, was due to God. That guidance was made concrete in the persons of an especial order of men called prophets. The prophet might be a fore-teller, but according to Old Testament belief he was preeminently a for-teller. He might and often did predict the future in the course of his prophetic work. But to be a prophet was to be the spokesman of God, to be God's representative on the earth, to declare His will. He knew God's thought — in part. He was in direct communion with Him — at times at least. To obey him was to obey God ; to reject him was to reject God.

Now the prophets were regarded as the peculiar recipients of the Spirit of God. Our word inspiration is our record of the strength of the impression gained from the Bible that the prophets were breathed into by the Holy Spirit and that what they said they said under the impulse of God. This was not only the case with the prophets who lived and worked before the time from which we have written prophecy. It is no less true of those who have left us the records of their activity. We may say then that the oral and written guidance of Israel during all the time of their national life was directly due to the Spirit of God. It may not yet be perfectly clear to us just what effect the influx or efflux of the Spirit had upon a man selected to be a prophet. What hints Scripture gives us are evidently not given for the purpose of satisfying our curiosity. They are meant to conserve the facts, not to add to the data for abnormal psychology. Yet we may believe that these men, faulty men of their time, were so acted upon by the Spirit of God as to make them different, as to make them the mediators of truth which had it been heeded would have caused a new history of Israel to be enacted.

The Spirit and the Messianic Age

But these men not only sounded forth a futile warning to Israel under the influence of the Spirit of God. They testified of a new era coming to Israel and to the world. They were the heralds of a new day which should succeed the night of national apostasy. A personal Messiah was to appear. A Messianic age was to dawn when a king should rule in righteousness. And from the beginning that new day was associated in a very peculiar manner with the Spirit of God. Isaiah (xxxii. 15) connects the time of the regeneration of Israel, when the wilderness should become a fruitful field, with the outpouring of the Spirit of God as from on high. " Then justice shall dwell in the wilderness ; and righteousness shall abide in the fruitful field. And the work of righteousness shall be peace ; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and confidence forever" (xxxii. 16, 17). Again, " Fear not, O Jacob my servant ; and thou, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen. For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and streams upon the dry ground ; I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed and my blessing upon thine offspring " (Isa. xliv. 2, 3). The time of revival when all the evil effects of the sin and apostasy of the old Israel should be forgotten and overcome io The Holy Spirit

in the obedience and joy of the new Israel, was to be preeminently a day of the Spirit of God. The Spirit was to be the agent and accompaniment of this glorious work of restoration and renewal. Ezekiel (xxxvi. 27) makes the advent of the Spirit a time of moral and spiritual renewal in Israel. " I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean . . . a new heart also will I give you. . . . And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep mine ordinances, and do them" (see also xxxvii. 14). The well-known passage in Joel (ii. 28 ff.) expresses the same thought. In this case, however, we have the New Testament's express identification of the time of Jesus with the time of which the prophet spoke (Acts ii. 16).

So that we may freely say that the glorious era of Israel's history when their backsliding should be healed and the redemption long promised should be real-

In the Old Testament u

ized was to be brought about by the Spirit of God. He was to be the agent of the change.

The Spirit and the Messiah

But we can go still further ; for this new day was made still more definite by these old men of God. They were given to see not only a new epoch for the nation when all their sorrows should be passed and the days of their weeping should be ended, but they were given the vision of the One by whom and through whom all this was to be accomplished. For the redemption of Israel was to be effected by a Redeemer. The course of the development of the conception of the personal Messiah is familiar to all Bible students. We know how this figure in prophecy at first dim and shadowy gradually became to the vision of the seer more definite until in the later days of the great prophet there stood before the nation the presentment of the suffering Saviour, the One who was to be led as a lamb to the slaughter — " wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities." But the significant thing for our study is that the same Scriptures represent this personal Messiah as in a very peculiar and sympathetic relation to the Spirit of God. If Isaiah tells of the shoot out of the worn-out stock of Jesse and the fruit-bearing branch out of his roots, he adds as quite in natural order, " and the Spirit of Jehovah shall rest upon Him," which is " the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Jehovah" (xi. 1). That is, the equipment of the Messiah for His great work shall be due directly to the Spirit of Jehovah.

In the latter part of the book of Isaiah where we read of the Servant of Jehovah the same combination is found (xlii. 1). There is of course no doubt that the Servant is in some passages not thought of as a single person, that He is identified so to speak with the Messianic people, but from the whole drift of the teaching concerning the Servant we gather that the Messianic people were to be gathered up in one personal representative. What He does, He does as the idealized head of the true Israel, the Servant of Jehovah as Israel will come to be in Him, in the new time of which the prophet speaks. So also the Servant speaking in the 48th chapter of Isaiah in a remarkable passage whose meaning is not altogether clear, claims the accompaniment of the Spirit in a work of judgment upon the enemies of Jehovah and of chastening for Israel. " Behold, I have refined thee, but not as silver ; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. . . He whom Jehovah loveth (Israel) shall perform his pleasure on Babylon, and his arm shall be on the Chaldeans. . . Come ye near unto me, hear ye this ; from the beginning I have not spoken in secret ; from the time that it was, there am I : and now the Lord Jehovah hath sent me and his Spirit' ' (vv. 10, 14-16). We are probably to take "his Spirit " here as object and not as subject of the sentence, and if so it simply corroborates our previous findings as to the relation between the Servant and the Spirit of God.

The Spirit and the Individual

The third function of the Spirit in the Old Testament was the promotion of fellowship with God and the cherishing of the spiritual life of the individuals whom God called to Himself. That there was a personal religious life taught and practiced by the Old Testament saints it is impossible to deny without disregarding the plain teaching of the Psalms and much of the prophets. There are passages which indicate that the Spirit was the guide and helper of the man who was ambitious after holiness. " Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy Spirit from me" (Ps. li. 11). " Teach me to do thy will ; for thou art my God : thy Spirit is good" (Ps. cxliii. 10). This sanctifying agency of the Spirit is not yet fully developed. It needed the fuller teaching of Jesus and His apostles to bring it to maturity ; but as surely as sanctification was possible under the old covenant so surely was it the Spirit who effected it. Much could not be revealed about the way of sanctification until its means were provided for all men. God's sacrifice for sin must first be offered, and the Old Testament from first to last is primarily concerned with the preparation for a Redeemer. We must expect therefore, to find that the function of the Spirit of God on which most stress is laid is the function which is most intimately related to the purpose of God to provide a Redeemer.

What then have we found as to the teaching of the Old Testament about the

Spirit ? Chiefly this. That the Spirit is God active in the world. That He is especially the divine principle working for the redemption of men. God in the Old Testament works, at least from within, on the hearts of men, by His Spirit. We should doubtless find that He exercised His rule from without, by external manifestations, by the Angel of Jehovah. But the redemptive agent that worked in men's hearts was His Spirit, His good Spirit, His holy Spirit, as it is variously called. From the beginning of the manifestations of the Theocracy, in the life and work of Moses, in the building of the tabernacle, in the work of the prophets of Judah and of Israel, and lastly and most gloriously in the mission of the Messiah and in the promised wonders of the Messianic age, it is the Spirit who is God active, equipping lawgiver and artificer, prophet and king to do God's work to prepare Israel and the world for the great work of redemption through the Messiah of Jehovah.

Other functions of the Spirit are not dwelt upon. The cosmic Spirit is given his true place and left in order to describe his more important function of guiding the progress of the Kingdom toward Jesus Christ. So also we have found the Spirit to be the agent of God in sanctification, but as already indicated this function could not as yet be revealed in its maturity. The Old Testament looks toward Christ. It is therefore natural that the chief function of the Spirit of God should be the superintendence of the plan of salvation whose preparatory stages it was the purpose of the Old Testament to describe.

We have found also that there was foretold a time when the Spirit then working within limits which were prescribed by the historical necessities of the case, would be poured out without measure. This thought of the two eras of the Spirit's power and influence we must keep clearly in mind as it is not possible to understand the teaching of Jesus without giving it its full weight.

The Trinity in the Old Testament?

But what shall we say as to the Trinity in the Old Testament ? Merely this, that the doctrine is not therein revealed. The Spirit is God active in the hearts of men to accomplish His glorious purposes, chiefly of redemption. In the same way the doctrine of the Son of God is not specifically revealed in the Old Testament. This does not affect our attitude to the very explicit teaching of the New Testament concerning the eternal Sonship of Christ. We can by the aid of the later teaching trace His working in the days of the older revelation and find a fine harmony between the dim and shadowy outlines of the past and the clearly defined presentation of the present era. So with respect to the doctrine of the Spirit. There were no doubt reasons which we cannot fathom why God chose so to unfold His nature step by step to His people. The weak and faulty minds of men could not receive the whole truth at once. Particularly in Israel where there was so much inclination to idolatry He no doubt revealed Himself in His unity rather than in His triune nature to save His people from further temptation to this sin.

There are, however, not lacking indications which in the light of the later teaching we may translate into manifestations of the advanced doctrine of the nature of God. There are passages where God and the Spirit are distinguished. The Spirit is sent from God as if it were a distinct entity. Men are said to grieve the Spirit of God. Further, God in creation speaks in the plural, " Let us make man in our image. " Some have held this to be an indication of the other persons in the Godhead.

Others have regarded it as a plural of majesty. But God never hesitates to say " I." Others again have thought that it was addressed to the angelic host. But we lack any other hint that the angels were God's agents in creation or that we are made in their image. The first interpretation is therefore the safest. Finally, the passage which we have already quoted contains, if our reading of it is the true one, a grouping of the persons of the Trinity which in the light of later teaching is most striking. The Servant of Jehovah says (Isa. xlviii. 16) " Now the Lord Jehovah hath sent me and his Spirit/ '

The so-called " historical " interpretation of the Old Testament will of course reject these discoveries of latent New Testament truth in the older writings. Its advocates insist that we are to find nothing in the Old Testament but what was currently known and believed at the time of the composition of the books.

But on the contrary, it is the view of the New Testament that these " holy men of old " were frequently used by the Spirit to utter truth which they did not themselves fully grasp (I Pet. i. 10-12). If indeed the prophets themselves are competent witnesses as to their relation to the Spirit of God we need not be surprised to find them far in advance of their day in the teachings that they utter.

No doubt we are to treat these intimations, if they are such, as nothing more. We are not to seek for the full-rounded teaching of the New Testament in these preparatory days, but nevertheless it is instructive to one who believes in the progress of revelation to find that the Old Testament has left room for the more specific teaching of the New.

If you go into a modern printing office where the full-color illustrations for one of our great magazines are prepared you will find that as many plates are required as there are primary colors. First, the yellow values of the artist's conception are printed. A little here and a little more there, deep or pale according to the degree of intended combination with other colors to be later applied. Then the red values are added in the same way, superimposed upon the first printing so as to furnish all the red and yellow tones which will exist in the finished proof. What the picture will be like no one except an expert can tell. But when the blue values are applied in the third process and the lines are more perfectly defined by the black ink of the fourth process, the full glory of the artist's idea appears. It is somewhat the same with the picture of the Spirit's nature and work in the successive revelations of the Old and New Testaments. It is not easy to read the final state of the doctrine from the first impression. The first values to be applied are necessary to the full and final form. But they can only be perfectly understood by a glance at the finished truth made complete at the hands of the Christ and His apostles. For when with delicate and sure articulation those later hues have been applied we gain the full-rounded and mature idea of the Master Artist.

CHAPTER II. The Distribution of the Teaching

TJyT' HEN we come to examine the ^)r four Gospels which are the main sources of our knowledge as to the teaching of Jesus, we are struck with a significant fact. We discover that in the Synoptic Gospels there is little if any advance upon the teaching of the Old Testament. We know little more about the Spirit of God when we have read the first three Gospels than we do when we have studied the passages of the Old Testament which refer to the Spirit. There are only two or three passages in these Gospels in which appreci- 24 able progress is made and these would not be intelligible had we not other sayings of Jesus by which to interpret them. The new teaching is almost all found in the Gospel of John and in that Gospel almost all in the last discourses of Jesus which are characteristic of it.

The Teaching of the Synoptic Gospels

In the Synoptic Gospels we have emphasized with some force the relation which we marked in our review of the Old Testament doctrine, of the Spirit to the Messianic age and to the personal Messiah. Jesus appears at Nazareth and claims to be the one foretold in the prophecy of Isaiah. " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He anointed me " (Luke iv. 18) to do the things which from of old have been promised of the Messiah (Isa. lxi. 1). In a controversy with the Pharisees in which they ascribe His power to cast out demons to the spirit of evil He replies, " If I by the

Spirit of God cast out demons, then is the kingdom of God come upon you " (Matt. xii. 28). These are simply identifications of the predictions of the Old Testament concerning the relation of the Spirit to the Kingdom and the Messiah. They point to the fulfillment of prophecy.

Likewise the passage in regard to the sin against the Holy Spirit, which follows in the same connection in Matthew's Gospel. As we shall attempt to show, (ch. v.) the sin of the Pharisees was against the Spirit as the superintending agent of redemption. It was not that the Holy Spirit was more inviolable in His person than the Father or the Son, but because His work was the preparation of a salvation for men, and rejection of that salvation was therefore peculiarly sin against Him. He was the accompaniment of the kingdom of God — to oppose it was to oppose Him, and this was the climax of ingratitude to God.

We have also the corroboration of Jesus of the Old Testament view of the source of the power of the prophets. He attributes the prediction of David in which he testified of the Messiah, to the Spirit (Ps. ex. 1 ; Matt. xxii. 43, 44 ; cf Mark xii. 36). This simply reiterates the earlier teaching that when the Old Testament prophets worked and wrote it was in the power of the Spirit of God. We find therefore thus far no advance upon the former conceptions of the Spirit.

Transition to the later Teaching

A connecting link between the earlier and the later teaching is, however, probably to be seen in the passage in Matt. x. 19, 20, (cf Mark xiii. 11 ; Luke xii 12). " When they deliver you up, be not anxious how or what ye shall speak ; for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you." Here is continued the earlier idea that God's called servants are equipped with the Spirit for the work which is given them to do. But the passage contains the further notion which we have not as yet seen that there was a day coming in which the Spirit would be the personal helper and guide of God's messengers. No explicit mention is made of His personal character to be sure. But the sort of help which is here promised would be unintelligible unless this speaking Spirit were personal. As such the passage becomes a foregleam of the Johannine promise of the Paraclete or Advocate who should plead their cause before men. It is at least an intimation of the time when the Spirit should be revealed in His personal and sympathetic character.

The two remaining references in the Synoptic Gospels to the Holy Spirit were spoken by Jesus after His resurrection. We should naturally expect them to be tinged with the thoughts of the last discourses uttered just before His crucifixion. One of them is indeed couched in language in which direct allusion is made to the promise of the Paraclete (Luke xxiv. 49 ; Acts i. 4). The other could not be understood except on the basis of that promise (Matt, xxviii. 19).

The Teaching of John s Gospel

Turning now to the Gospel of John we find that the teaching that is characteristic of that Gospel is that which we have found by allusion only in these last three passages of the Synoptic Gospels. Especially in the chapters which contain the farewell discourses of Jesus is it particularly developed (xiv-xvi). " He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth. But the Paraclete, even the Holy Spirit . . . He shall teach you all things," etc. This Comforter, Advocate, Paraclete, is to take Jesus' place;

is to be the personal helper and friend of the disciples ; is to be the superintendent of the work which Jesus introduced and founded ; is to convince the world of the truth of the claims which He made, and in general to be the power of God in developing and carrying on the gracious work which Jesus had begun in the world. It is just at this point that the teaching of the apostles concerning the Holy Spirit begins. We should be at a loss to account for the advanced truth which these men, and particularly Paul, utter concerning the loving, tender and thoroughly personal aid and comfort of the Spirit, were it not for these precious words which the apostle John records for us in his Gospel. Do we need any explanation of this fact ? Is it not plain for us on the face of the Gospel record that Jesus was leading these men step by step as they could grasp His teaching ? He was teaching them not only by His words, but by His example and by His life. That teaching could not be finished until the supreme act of His life by which He made all the rest intelligible, was accomplished. The prophets had joined the new era of the Spirit to the Messianic age, but according to their custom they did not, even if they were able, distinguish between near and far. The Messianic day for them was the day of the regeneration of the world through the Messiah. But the Messiah came in the course of history. His life had to be lived among men. His teachings about the Father must go forth. The wonderful credential which His miracles furnished had to be presented to the world, culminating in the stupendous sign of the resurrection, before the world was ready for the outpouring of the Spirit of God. The Spirit was intended in the divine economy and according to the teaching of Jesus to carry on the redemption of the Father, but He could only do so when redemption was accomplished.