CHAPTER 5
TRADING PLACES: THE FAREWELL DISCOURSE
Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’ ” (John 20:17 ESV). As soon as this first resurrection appearance to Mary, Jesus is weaning his disciples from his bodily presence on earth—as John Owen notes, precisely so that they will “look after and trust unto the promise of the Holy Ghost.” He continues: “Hence is that of our apostle, ‘Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more,’ 2 Cor. v. 16; for although it was a great privilege to have known Christ in this world after the flesh, yet it was much greater to enjoy him in the dispensation of the Spirit.”1 Jesus has accomplished redemption, but it is he “whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago” (Acts 3:21 ESV). The great work of the Spirit is the proclamation of the gospel and the inward persuasion of its truth.
Jesus’s farewell discourse (John 14–16) is about trading places. As it unfolds, we begin to see more clearly the importance of the difference that the Spirit is and makes in the work that he shares with Jesus. Jesus impresses upon the hearts of his confused and fearful disciples that his departure is a net gain. We need Jesus Christ—enthroned in our glorified humanity—at the Father’s right hand, ruling and subduing the enemies of his kingdom and interceding for us. But we also need the Holy Spirit to accomplish what only he can: to work within us to bring about repentance and faith, and to intercede within us so that we relate to the Father in joy as his adopted children rather than in fear (Rom 8:15).
THE GIFT OF THE FATHER IN THE SON
Before his ascension, Jesus tells the disciples to wait in Jerusalem for “the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.” In just “a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. . . . You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you” (Acts 1:4–5, 8; cf. Luke 24:49). We do not have to speculate about what the disciples heard Jesus speak about concerning the Holy Spirit. Whatever else he said about the Spirit must have been an elaboration of what he had spoken to them in the farewell discourse.
Although John focuses on the sermon rather than the Supper, Jesus’s discourse occurs in the upper room during Passover and the institution of the Lord’s Supper as reported in the Synoptic Gospels: “For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt 26:28). And it is provoked especially by Jesus’s announcement of his departure. This setting already points up the importance of the Eucharist as a busy intersection of Christology and pneumatology and where the age to come breaks into this present evil age.
But the scene sets before us a problem, a nearly insurmountable obstacle to the disciples at the time. How can Christ promise to be present always among his people at the same time that he announces his departure? If we do not wrestle frankly with Jesus’s real absence in his ascension, we miss a crucial opportunity to appreciate the significance of his real presence in the power of the Spirit. It is of great importance that the sermon that Jesus preaches at the institution of the Supper is about “trading places,” since it is especially the purpose of this sacramental meal that places us at that precarious intersection between the two ages.
Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.” Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times.” (John 13:36–38 ESV)
Thomas then chimed in. “ ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’ ” (John 14:5–6 ESV, emphasis added). Nevertheless, Philip pleads, “Lord, show us the Father” (14:8). Philip’s question is the last straw. Jesus seems exasperated by the failure of the disciples to understand that he is the way. “Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (v. 9 ESV). Happily, for our sake, these questions provoked Jesus’s most thorough explanation of the Spirit’s mission. “Rise, let us go from here,” Jesus tells them (v. 31 ESV). The hour is drawing nigh and exodus is in the air. He will perform his exodus, assume his conquest-throne, and send the Spirit to distribute the spoils of victory.
We hear echoes here of the transition from the ministry of Elijah to Elisha. “Now when the LORD was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind,” some sons of the prophets told Elisha, “ ‘Do you know that today the LORD will take away your master from over you?’ And he said, ‘Yes, I know it; keep quiet’ ” (2 Kgs 2:1–3 ESV). Then Elisha swore to Elijah, “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you” (v. 4). Yet Elijah asked Elisha to make a last request “before I am taken from you” (v. 9 ESV). Elisha replied, “Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit” (v. 9). Then he watched mournfully as Elijah was taken from him in the mighty wind (v. 11). Tearing his own clothes in pieces, he put on Elijah’s cloak “and struck the water [of the Jordan] with it,” asking, “Where now is the LORD, the God of Elijah?” When he struck the water, “it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over” (2 Kgs 2:12–14 ESV). This is a little exodus, with a dejected Elisha discovering what his departed mentor meant when he said, “I will not leave you.” And the “double portion” of the Spirit was a little Pentecost.
The answer to the disciples’ anxious questions (John 14:1–14) is not to downplay the reality of his departure until he returns in the flesh; rather, it is to promise the Holy Spirit (14:15–31). Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah—and Jesus? They will know the answer fully at Pentecost. Jesus not only shows the way; he is the way. They cannot follow him now to where he is going. But they will be united to Jesus after his ascension in a new yet even more intimate way after Pentecost. Just as Jesus went to the cross alone and was raised alone, he ascended to the Father alone. Only he could perform this work. And yet he performed it not merely as a private person but as a public representative for us. Only when the Spirit comes in power will they—and we—become sharers in Jesus’s exodus.
Soon the disciples will no longer merely walk by Jesus’s side and eat and drink common meals with him “after the flesh” (2 Cor 5:16 KJV). The Spirit will unite them to Christ like branches to a vine (John 15:1–5). Because of his work, they will be truly able to eat his flesh and drink his blood unto eternal life, as he promised in John 6. The disciples are already clean because they belong to him; they are already fruit-bearing branches because they belong to the vine. They are, says Jesus, no longer to be called servants but friends. “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you” (15:16). The fruit is love, particularly for each other in the communion of saints (v. 17). They will be a new family, around which a new humanity will grow.
The Spirit is the answer to their anxiety about Jesus’s departure. Why would Jesus desert them in this hour where they are on the brink of establishing the Messiah on the throne of his father David in Jerusalem? The pattern of Jesus’s course over the next few days recapitulates the history familiar to the disciples: Israel’s story of exodus, conquest, and the distribution of the inheritance to each of the twelve tribes. However, it is no rerun of past episodes. Rather, it is the reality for which the old covenant pattern was merely a preview of coming attractions.
ANOTHER ATTORNEY
Jesus identifies the Spirit as “another advocate,” another paraklētos (John 14:16). Commentators—and even translators—have frequently sought to distinguish the Spirit from Jesus by identifying the former as a “comforter” rather than an “advocate.” Already in the early third century, Origen observed that “in the Greek [paraklētos] bears both meanings.”2 Nevertheless, “in regard to the Savior ‘paraclete’ seems to mean intercessor. . . . When used of the Holy Spirit, however, the word ‘paraclete’ ought to be understood as ‘comforter,’ because he provides comfort to the souls to whom he opens and reveals a consciousness of spiritual knowledge.”3
Though possible lexically, the translation “comforter” hardly catches the courtroom image with which this term was frequently associated. In rabbinical literature, the Greek word was transliterated into Hebrew and used as a loanword to mean “advocate” or “attorney,” contrasted with an “accuser.”4 Most translations render paraklētos as “advocate” in 1 John 2:1. Furthermore, Origen seems to have overlooked Romans 8:26–27 when he says that “in regard to the Savior ‘paraclete’ seems to mean intercessor.” After all, the apostle applies this intercessory role to the Spirit as well in those verses.
The decision for “comforter” in relation to the Spirit is therefore determined by a theological concern to distinguish Christ’s work from the Spirit’s. I think that this is the wrong distinction, and it opens the door to the kind of dangerous contrasts that we have encountered between an ostensibly Spirit-centered gospel of relational intimacy and a Christ-centered gospel of salvation through judgment. We saw in the previous chapter that the Son and the Spirit are engaged in the same judicial operation, and this fact comes into sharper focus in this discourse. Jesus himself said that the Holy Spirit is “another advocate” (allos paraklētos), and the role he attributes to the Spirit is obviously legal (John 14:16; see 16:7–8). If the Spirit’s ministry is no less judicial than Christ’s, it is also true that Christ’s is no less comforting than the Spirit’s. Far from excluding the idea of a “comforter,” the translation “advocate” provides a deeper and more specific grounding for it. It is precisely because we have God himself for our legal defense that we experience his comforting presence.
The difference between Christ and the Spirit, then, is not to be found in that between legal judgment and relational comfort. Rather, it is to be found in the fact that Christ’s courtroom role is exercised for us, outside of us, while the Spirit’s is exercised within us, bringing us to acknowledge our guilt and to receive pardon in Christ before his return in judgment at the last day. Furthermore, it is significant that Jesus represents the Father as the one who sends the Spirit. Jesus as the mediator prays to the Father to do this (John 14:16), but the Father will send the Spirit in Jesus’s name (v. 26). This underscores the point that all of the external works of the Godhead proceed from the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit. In this aspect of Jesus’s discourse, the Spirit’s arrival will provoke judgment.
First, there is the world’s judgment of the church (John 16:2). Jesus had already told them in this discourse that as the world falsely accused him, it will do the same to his disciples (15:18–20). For all of the marvelous work of the Spirit in common grace, his saving grace is associated with bringing those whom he has chosen into union with his Son through the gospel. There is little support here for the notion that a Spirit-centered soteriology is more universalistic than the particularity attached to faith in Jesus Christ and being united to his ecclesial body. He will give them “the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you” (14:17, emphasis added). Surprisingly, at least to the disciples, no doubt, Jesus identifies “the world” here with unbelieving Israel. His disciples will be excommunicated, cast out of the synagogues, and harassed—even killed (cf. Rev 2:8–10). The apostate church will expel the true church—and will even regard this persecution as an act of religious devotion, a “service” to God (latreia; John 16:2). (An obvious example of this will be the zeal of Saul of Tarsus: Acts 8:3; Phil 3:6.) The world’s hatred and false accusations against Christ and his people are evidence that the Spirit is at work in the church, just as he was in the earthly ministry of her Lord.
Second, Jesus promises that the Spirit will judge the world. This is not the final judgment, which is given into Jesus’s hands at his bodily return. Rather, this Spirit-executed judgment is worked within us, convincing us of our guilt and of Christ’s righteousness that we receive through faith. Those who will receive the Spirit’s judgment now will be justified and will therefore be able to stand before that great future tribunal without fear. This is why the Spirit’s judicial work is so essential—and particularly suited—to this present phase of redemption. Only he can work within creatures to raise them from spiritual death and unite them to Christ so that they can stand in the final judgment without fear. As Paul also explains, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Rom 8:1–2 ESV).
So the Spirit’s work in the church through the Word will become, says Jesus, the anticipation of the great judgment in the future. The Spirit will not only bind them to the Jesus of the past but to the Jesus of the present and the future. The same Spirit who ushered into this present evil age the future resurrection of the dead by raising Christ will also raise those spiritually dead in anticipation of their bodily resurrection on the last day. The future has arrived, but, paradoxically, only when Jesus leaves are we swept into the wake of his triumph as he is enthroned in the age to come (see also 1 John 2:1–2).
Jesus’s “hour” (a reference to the crucifixion throughout John’s Gospel) means his defeat as far as his enemies are concerned, but in reality it means his victory. Not even the disciples understand this now, but they will when the Spirit brings Jesus’s words to mind. They did not have to worry when he was with them because he would not be taken prisoner until he chose to be. But now is the “hour”—for himself, and then afterward for them. They are not just afraid of losing their friend and master but of losing their own lives when he leaves.
But he will send “another advocate,” another paraklētos (John 14:16). When this other attorney comes, Jesus says that “he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (16:8 ESV). He will “convict” (elenxei), which means to expose as guilty. Satan is judged already (vv. 10–11). Through Jesus’s victory, the prosecutor of the church is defeated so that the prosecutor of the world and justifier of believers can begin his recovery mission. The “strong man” is bound so that Jesus and his followers, empowered by the Spirit, can loot his cruel estate and liberate his prisoners (see Matt 12:28–29 and par.).
At Pentecost we see precisely what Jesus meant when he said that the Spirit “will convict the world concerning sin.” Peter’s Pentecost sermon in Acts 2 reveals each aspect of the work that Jesus here attributes to the Spirit as the inner witness to his external word. Peter prosecutes the case against them (“You crucified,” v. 23 ESV) while also proclaiming God’s righteousness (“But God raised him from the dead,” v. 24) and judgment (“it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him,” v. 24). Therefore, through the external word of conviction, righteousness, and judgment, the Holy Spirit inwardly convicts and assures. Without this work of the Spirit within, the external proclamation would not have led to its profound effect: “Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ ” (v. 37 ESV). And “about three thousand were added to their number that day” (v. 41).5 Everything that Jesus promised Peter and the other disciples in his discourse was actually fulfilled at Pentecost—and is still being fulfilled today.
This is the prophets’ role: to witness to God’s righteousness and the covenant partner’s violation of the stipulations of the covenant. This is why the work of the prophets is always preceded by a report of the prophet’s having been taken up into the Spirit, from whom he received his commission and his authority—his power of attorney—to speak in God’s name. It is little wonder that the Spirit is called “the Spirit of prophecy” (Rev 19:10). “For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet 1:20–21). It is the same preaching in the church that Paul says brings conviction upon all, especially unbelievers who are present (1 Cor 14:24). We should also recall the repeated events throughout the ministry of Moses when God spoke his words in the cloud. At Sinai God tells the prophet, “Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you forever” (Exod 19:9). Given the identification of the Spirit with the glory cloud, the inseparable connection is made between the Spirit and the word that God speaks. Prophets speak “in the Spirit.” Echoes of Exodus 19 are heard in Revelation 1:10–11: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,” says John, “and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, ‘Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches. . . .’ ”
Jesus tells the disciples that they are qualified as apostolic witnesses, “for you have been with me from the beginning” (John 15:27). Unlike the false shepherds of Jeremiah 23, who proclaim words from God that they never received, the Twelve had been in the immediate presence of God incarnate. Yet Jesus also teaches here that the Spirit has been with him “from the beginning” in a far more primordial—indeed, eternal—sense. Jesus is not now primarily a witness but the one concerning whom witness is offered. He will send out into the world those who have known him from the beginning of his earthly ministry, but not until they are “clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49; cf. Acts 1:4–5, 8) by the Spirit who has been with him from all eternity. Jesus has been sent from the Father by the powerful working of the Holy Spirit. The Servant has been endowed with the promised Spirit. “And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you” (Luke 24:49). The Spirit is the divine witness who will make Christ’s disciples witnesses to the ends of the earth and will ensure that his elect will hear the voice of Christ.
The Spirit’s ministry is not to add something to Jesus’s work but to remind the disciples of what Jesus has said (John 16:13). This is the basis for the New Testament as revealed Scripture. These words were spoken first of all to the Twelve, not to the whole church. As Jesus didn’t speak on his own authority but spoke what his Father told him, so the Spirit will speak the word of Christ and keep the church in the truth. The Trinitarian fellowship is obvious: the Father sent the Son, and the Son took what belonged to the Father and gave it to his people; the Son will return to the Father and then send the Spirit who “will take what is mine and declare it to you” (v. 14 ESV). Then his disciples, taken up into the fellowship of the Trinity, will be sent out in the power of the Spirit as witnesses in God’s court.
We can therefore be certain where the Spirit is active in power: it is wherever Christ is being proclaimed in his saving office for the forgiveness of sins, justification, and an inheritance in the new creation. As Gordon Fee observes, “Thus, Paul’s ‘high christology’ does not begin with doctrinal reflection but with experienced conviction. . . . Those who have received the Spirit of God have been enabled to see the crucifixion in a new, divine light. Those who walk ‘according to the Spirit’ can no longer look on Christ from their old ‘according to the flesh’ point of view (2 Cor 5:15–16). They now know him to be their exalted Lord, ever present at the Father’s right hand making intercession for them (Rom 8:34).”6 The Holy Spirit is therefore the first person of the Godhead we experience in our life—and yet when he comes to indwell us it is Jesus whom we confess to the glory of the Father (1 Cor 12:3).
Pentecost signifies a qualitative difference. Even with Jesus among them, the disciples stand on the old-covenant side of the great divide of the two ages. Jesus distinguishes between the Spirit’s presence now (“he dwells with you”) and his presence after Pentecost (“he will be in you”; John 14:17). This is the day promised by the Lord through the prophets: “I will put my Spirit in you . . .” (Ezek 36:27). Jesus speaks in the future tense of the Spirit indwelling all of God’s people. Indeed, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you,” Jesus pledges (John 14:18). As Ferguson observes, Jesus refers here to Pentecost rather than to either his resurrection or his second coming. “So complete is the union between Jesus and the Paraclete that the coming of the latter is the coming of Jesus himself in the power of the Spirit.”7 Jesus will be with his people in a more intimate way after his ascension than before because his Spirit will live within them and unite them to Christ.
The Spirit was in the wings, waiting for the cry, “It is finished!” He must first raise and glorify the true temple and then he will fill its living stones, beginning with those gathered in the upper room. Before the final judgment he will execute on a global scale the arraignment, conviction, and justification of sinners, sanctifying them in anticipation of their sharing in Christ’s glory.
CHRIST AND THE SPIRIT: DISTINCTION WITHOUT SEPARATION
In relating the Son and the Spirit, there are two dangers to be avoided: confusing and separating them. It is certainly true that the Son and the Spirit exist eternally in an ineffable union of essence. There is also a perichoretic indwelling of the persons in each other, as Jesus teaches in this discourse and also in the concluding prayer in John 17. Remarkably, Jesus teaches that his people will share by grace in this mutual indwelling that the divine persons share by nature. “In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:20; cf. 17:21–23). Let us pause to absorb this arresting truth: the persons of the Godhead live and move in each other. The Son rests in the bosom of the Father with the Spirit, and this same Spirit gives us rest in the Father through the Son. Because of the Spirit, we are in Christ and Christ is in us even as the divine persons are in each other. Believers do not—and will never—step over the boundary from creature to Creator. The ineffable perichoresis of the divine persons will never be shared univocally with believers, but there is nevertheless a real analogical participation in God’s uncreated energies.
The stress at this point in the sermon is not on the eternal relations of the immanent trinity but on the association of the Spirit with Jesus in the economy—in “these last days.” The two are engaged in one mission, yet differently, as befits their distinct persons and roles. The Holy Spirit is “the Spirit of Christ”—but not with a lowercase “s,” as if to identify the third person with Jesus’s human soul or his divinity. While remaining a distinct person from Christ, the Spirit’s presence in these last days nevertheless is Christ’s presence. But they have distinct job descriptions befitting their distinct persons. Jesus says, “But when the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning” (15:26–27, emphasis added). The Spirit never confuses himself with Jesus. On the contrary, it is by focusing his ministry on the work of Christ that the Spirit’s difference as well as unity with him is demonstrated. Yet precisely in doing so, the presence of the Spirit is identified as the presence of Christ himself. If the Spirit never confuses himself with Jesus, we are ill-advised to imagine that the church replaces Jesus. On the contrary, it is Jesus’s difference from the Spirit that paradoxically makes it possible for us to be united to Christ in the most intimate way possible, and it is the difference of both Christ and the Spirit from the church that allows the body of Christ to be redeemed and renewed at all. The announcement of Jesus’s ascension—his real departure—is precisely what provoked our Lord’s most focused discourse on the Spirit.
Therefore, we must not run too quickly past the ascension to Pentecost. Where is Jesus? He has ascended bodily to the right hand of the Father, whence he will return at the end of the age to judge the living and the dead. The same docetic logic that sees the Son taking his humanity from heaven rather than from the virgin Mary will turn the exalted Christ into a cosmic phantasm other than “this Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven,” but “will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11 ESV). As Douglas Farrow argues, if we explain away his real departure in the flesh, all particularity of Jesus is lost. The question, “Where is Jesus?” is not speculative. It determines the larger question, “Who is Jesus?” If the answer to the first question is “everywhere,” then the answer to the second must be, “everything.” Claiming to be Irenaean, incarnational, and antignostic, such an approach becomes much nearer to Gnosticism. “Its chief characteristics are to be found in its universalism, its synergism, and its panentheism, all of which justifies us in labeling it as Origenist rather than Irenaean.”8
Everything that Jesus had taught the disciples in the upper room before his death is now about to be fulfilled. And yet, just at this point when they are prepared for conquest—with the greater Joshua as their leader, Jesus leaves.
And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:9–11 ESV)
The stunned disciples must have felt as if they had been bereaved of their Master again. We must join the disciples in their anxiety over the Lord’s heavenly repatriation before we can experience the full impact of the Spirit’s advent. Raymond Brown comments, “The Paraclete is the presence of Jesus when Jesus is absent”—indeed, “another Jesus.”9 I concur with the main proposition. The Holy Spirit is truly the vicar of Christ. The apostles were ambassadors, but the Spirit is the one who not only represents Christ but makes him present and makes us present to him. However, with the secondary clause, “another Jesus,” an important aspect of my argument is elided. Precisely what we do not need is “another Jesus.” We need the same Jesus who lived, died, rose, and ascended to return in the flesh. We need him at present at the place of all authority and power, ruling and interceding. The Spirit did not become incarnate, win our redemption, and claim his glory as the mediator between God and humans. We do not need another Jesus, but “another advocate”—a different attorney, one who presses his case within us even as Jesus makes his outside of us, as one of us.
In one sense, Jesus is absent, and the church has to fully accept this fact. We cannot evade his departure in the flesh by talking about the church as his ongoing incarnation or the pope as his vicar or the Spirit as his replacement or “Jesus in my heart.” His absence from us in the flesh underscores the difference of the head from his members of this new commonwealth. Not even his omnipresent deity can save us from the longing for his bodily return. Instead of looking away from the absent Jesus, taken up from us in the cloud, we must reckon fully with this fact if we are to appreciate the glorified humanity that we share with him by the unique work of the Holy Spirit.
In another sense, though, Jesus is present—and not simply in his omnipresent divinity; still less, an omnipresent humanity. Again, these too are ways of evading the reality of the ascension that downplay both Christ’s true humanity and the work of the Spirit. It would require the Spirit’s descent at Pentecost for the disciples to realize the comfort of Jesus’s earlier instruction: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:18–20 ESV). The promise given to Elisha of a double portion of the Spirit that was upon Elijah is far exceeded, “for [the Spirit] dwells with you and will be in you” (v. 17).
At Pentecost the disciples will come to know Jesus in a way that had completely eluded them. They will know Jesus not simply as a unique individual but as the eschatological vine, head, cornerstone, and firstfruits of the new creation in whom they share. Jesus can even say, “I will come to you,” (John 14:18) because the Holy Spirit is the one who “will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:14). Though he departed in the flesh, he is present not only in his divinity but in the power of his indwelling Spirit who unites us to his glorified humanity in heaven.
Once we accept the real difference between the ascended Savior and the indwelling Spirit, the real unity between them and their work becomes visible in the different things that they do in one and the same work of salvation. The Spirit is responsible for both the Son’s departure in the cloud and for uniting us to the Son who has departed—in a new way never experienced until this point by the disciples.
This intimate relationship that Jesus divulges in the farewell discourse of John’s Gospel is also apparent in the Pauline corpus. Strictly speaking, Jesus does not indwell believers. And yet, Jesus and the Holy Spirit become somewhat interchangeable characters in the Epistles. The Spirit by whom the Son became incarnate was also present at the cross, though differently from the Father and the Son. We are redeemed not by the Spirit’s sacrifice but by “the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God . . .” (Heb 9:14, emphasis added). The Spirit raised Jesus from the dead (Rom 1:4; 1 Tim 3:16; 1 Pet 3:18). Once more, the external works of the Godhead remain undivided: Christ’s resurrection is attributed also to the Father (Acts 2:32; 17:31; Rom 6:4; 8:11; 1 Cor 15:15) and to the Son himself (John 2:19-21; 10:17–18). However, each is responsible for the resurrection according to his own distinct attributes and actions. The Spirit’s role in the resurrection was to make Jesus’s humanity the life-giving firstfruits of the new creation (Rom 1:4). Adam became “a living being” by the Spirit’s breath, but the last Adam is for us “a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor 15:45–47). It is the Spirit who creates a body for Christ, the eschatological head. Otherwise, he is a head without a body, a forerunner without a team, a firstfruits without a harvest, a husband without a bride.
As Sinclair Ferguson observes concerning Romans 8:9–10, “Here, clearly, the statements ‘Spirit of God lives in you,’ ‘have the Spirit of Christ,’ and ‘Christ is in you’ are three ways of describing a single reality of the indwelling of the Spirit.”10 No longer a body of death, Christ’s humanity has become a body of glory (Phil 3:21). It is now “spiritual”—not as opposed to physical, but as glorified and life-giving spirit. “Such is the fullness of the Spirit into which Jesus entered at the resurrection that Paul is able to say that ‘the last Adam [became] a life-giving Spirit’ (1 Cor. 15:45).”11 “Thus, to have the Spirit is to have Christ; to have Christ is to have the Spirit,” Ferguson observes.12 He writes:
In this sense, through the resurrection and ascension, Christ ‘became life-giving Spirit.’ The explanation for this is found in a further remarkable statement: ‘Now the Lord [the antecedent is ‘Christ,’ 2 Cor. 3:13] is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit’ (2 Cor. 3:17–18). . . . In effect, Paul is teaching that through his life and ministry Jesus came into such complete possession of the Spirit, receiving and experiencing him ‘without limit’ (John 3:34), that he is now ‘Lord’ of the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18). With respect to his economic ministry to us, the Spirit has been ‘imprinted’ on the character of Jesus. This is precisely what it means for Jesus to send him as allos paraklētos.13
Paul prays that the Father “may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Eph 3:16–17 ESV, emphasis added). Only by acknowledging Christ’s departure—and his difference from the Spirit—can we recognize their inseparable unity in the one mission of salvation. Jesus does not indwell us immediately, but because the Spirit unites us to him, Jesus is said to indwell us by his Holy Spirit.
From now on, the Son’s identity is shaped by the Spirit; the Spirit’s is shaped by the incarnate Son’s ministry, and now we are being shaped into Christ’s likeness by the Spirit “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:17–18 ESV).14 Though the Godhead remains immutable in its essence, the relationships in the economy have changed. The Father welcomed back his Son in a triumphal procession in a way that even surpassed the glory that they enjoyed together before all ages. Now the Son has taken his rightful throne not only as God but as one of us, as the faithful Servant as well as Lord of the covenant. And it was the Spirit who clothed him in our humanity, equipped him throughout the execution of his mission—even in the offering of himself for our sins—and raised and glorified him in our nature.
The Spirit has changed the Son’s identity forever, not by changing his divine nature but by clothing him in ours and then glorifying his humanity as our covenantal head. Yet in so doing, the Spirit’s identity is now forever inseparable from the ministry of Jesus Christ. Moreover, our identity is forever changed; we are no longer isolated individuals who may join other individuals in a club or affinity group but are living stones in a temple, members of one body, branches of the vine. The Father has an adopted human family, the Son has a bride, and the bride is united to the bridegroom. Because of the Spirit’s work of uniting in love, Christ does not consider himself complete as head apart from his body, and we cannot consider ourselves fully “humanized” until we are glorified with him. The Spirit will complete the work that the Father began and the Son accomplished.
1. John Owen, A Discourse concerning the Holy Spirit, in vol. 8 of The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, 16 vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1965), 25.
2. Origen, First Principles, translated by G. W. Butterworth (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1973), 119.
3. Ibid.
4. Cf. BDAG 519.
5. Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit, Contours of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 70.
6. Gordon D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009; repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 62.
7. Ferguson, Holy Spirit, 56.
8. Douglas Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2004), 220–21.
9. Raymond Brown, “The Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel,” NTS 13:2 (1967): 128.
10. Ferguson, Holy Spirit, 37.
11. Ibid., 53–54.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.