Jesus and the Spirit December 2, 3 & 6 2007
Jesus Who?
When we looked at Jesus the Divine Son of God, one of the response questions was, “To you, what is the most compelling argument that Jesus is Divine?” When the question came around to me, I had to say that none of the arguments that I had just given was the most compelling. What most impacts my mind and heart was something that Bono (surprise, surprise) said in the video clip. “God so loved the world that he tried to explain himself to the world by becoming like us and I am so fascinated by the idea of the child born in, you know, “straw-poverty.” for me there is a poetic power to that. It is a remarkable story, the Christmas story, and, I … it never fails to amaze me.”
In my heart and mind it is my most compelling argument – the beauty of the incarnation. And the beauty of the Trinity, that God is three and God is one – that we worship a relationship.
I confessed that this was not a watertight intellectual argument, but my Scientist friend Andrew came to my aid and said that there are arguments in mathematics and physics that say that something is so beautiful, that it must be true.
I like that: because I do believe that the idea of the Trinity is so beautiful it must be true.
The Trinity, along with grace, is one of the major distinctives of the Christian faith. We do not believe in three Gods, we believe in one God who is three.
Luke 3:21-22
When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
Jesus’ Baptism may be one of the most Trinitarian pieces of scripture there is. It is a beautiful scene: Jesus, the Son has come among us, and now, at the start of his ministry, he is baptized and all three persons of the Godhead show up at the very same time. The Son being obedient to the Father; The Father honouring the Son; and The Spirit empowering the whole scene.
From earliest days, Christians have had a triune faith. The earliest of creeds speaks of it:
I believe in the Father
I believe in the Son
I believe in the Holy Spirit
Images of the Trinity
Christians believe in the Trinity, but we have a hard time explaining it.
We are told that Patrick introduced the idea of the Trinity to the pagan Irish through the Shamrock – its leaf is has three sections, and yet it is one leaf
Others have used an egg to describe the trinity – it is one cell, but it has the shell, the white and the yolk
Some people compare the Trinity to fire having a flame, giving off both heat and light.
These Illustrations might be helpful to get our minds around the idea of something being three and being one, but the analogies cannot be pushed too far before they break down.
The Egg and the Shamrock make God appear very static, and they do not express any idea of the personhood of the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit.
It is not that we need to find a new image, but more that we need to rediscover an old image.
Brian Mclaren writes in a passage about what Eastern Orthodoxy taught him about Jesus:
“I learned that the early church leaders described the Trinity using the term perichoresis (peri-circle, choresis-dance): the Trinity was an eternal dance of Father, Son and Spirit sharing mutual love, honour, happiness, joy and respect.
As I meditated on this Idea of the circle-dance of the trinity, this painting the Dave Chapman painted was always in my head. He painted it, not as a painting of the trinity, but as a painting of the children in our church. But it is an amazing image
Pinnock writes:
Gregory of Nanzianzus captured the mystery of triune life using the image of dance (perichoresis)… The metaphor suggests moving around, making room, relating to one another without losing identity. The divine unity lies in the relationality of Persons, and the relationality is the nature of the unity. At the heart of this ontology is the mutuality and reciprocity among the Persons. Trinity means that shared life is basic to the nature of God. God is perfect sociality, mutuality, reciprocity and peace. As a circle of loving relationships, God is dynamically alive. There is only one God, but this one God is not solitary but a loving communion that is distinguished by overflowing life.
You can see this ongoing relationship often in the Gospel like in Luke 10:21
“At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.”
We often talk about Jesus’ deep connection with the Father. We say that the reason that he was able to do the miraculous things that he did, teach the amazing things he taught, obey even to the point of death is his intimate relationship with the Father
This intimate relationship is spoken of and pointed to all through the Gospels and the New Testament, but Jesus’ statements in John really speak of that intimate relationship.
He says things like…
John 5:19
Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does
But Jesus coming among us is not just about Himself and the Father. The incarnation is a Trinitarian event, and we need to understand the relationship that Jesus has with the Spirit if we are truly going to understand who Jesus is, and who God is.
Our Discomfort with the Spirit…
It may be that we’ve avoided talk of Jesus relationship with the Holy Spirit because the idea of the spirit freaks us out a little…
Why we avoid the Spirit
- Fear – We can’t control the Spirit, and He made lead us into strange places
- Embarrassment – because the old translations use the word “Ghost” instead of Spirit, because talk of the Spirit is often time associated with the Holy Rollers or TV preachers.
lack of (human) image: We can easily picture Jesus – he is a real Jewish man of flesh and blood, we have artists’ renditions of Him, and actors who play him. It is the same with the Father – we can picture a benevolent father, people have painted their idea of the Father, actors have played him, but the Spirit is harder to portray. How do you paint the wind?
JESUS AND THE SPIRIT
Born of the Spirit
You may remember how Gabriel came to Mary and told her that she would have a son, and she said, “How will this be since I am a virgin?”
The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Luke 1:35
The picture harkens back to how the Spirit hovered or brooded over the chaos in Genesis 1 and brought about the creation. And now that God is doing a new thing in creation by sending his son to walk among us, The Spirit comes once again to bring order to the chaos, and create a child without the help of a man. The Father sends the Son into the world, and the Spirit brings him there.
Anointed by the Spirit
We call Jesus the “Christ”, which is the Greek word for the Messiah, which means “the anointed one”
What makes Jesus the Christ is his anointing by the Holy Spirit
Peter explains to Cornelius’ household that Jesus is the Messiah with these words:
Acts 10:37-38
You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached – how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.
Jesus himself describes his ministry and his mandate in his first recorded public speaking in Luke 4:18-19.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
His ministry and mandate is closely connected to his relationship with the Holy Spirit and his anointing by the Spirit.
By the Spirit he set people free from entrapment. He brought them hope and liberated their relationships. Demonic powers were driven out, and creaturely life was restored. All this happened because the energies of the life-giving Spirit were at work in Jesus. – Pinnock p.89
Directed by the Spirit
As soon as Jesus is anointed at his baptism, the Spirit takes the lead and brings him out into the desert to do battle with the devil.
“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.”
- Matthew 4:1
You may wonder why Jesus heals when he does, teaches when he does, goes off to pray, waits before he goes to his sick friend Lazarus. He always stays in step with the Spirit.
Jesus exists in Trinity; always doing what the Father is doing; always instep with the Spirit
Empowered by the Spirit
In Luke 4, Jesus is taken out into the desert by the Spirit, and then after defeating temptation, verse 14 says, “Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside.” - Luke 4:14
The term “in the power of the Spirit must mean the relationship that he has with the Spirit, and, since word about him spreads everywhere, it must also mean the power to perform miracles and heal.
In Matthew 12:28, Jesus describes the power that he has as coming from the Spirit. He says, “If I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”
It may offend you to say that Jesus’ power is the power of the Spirit. You might say, “Doesn’t Jesus have his own power?”
We have a cultural bias that says that independence is strength. If I can do something without help, then I am strong. The trinity gives us another picture – a three-stranded cord is not easily broken. Jesus’ strength does not come from his individual power, but from his relationship with the other persons of the Trinity.
We see persons often in competition with the others with them, so we hear that God has three persons, and immediately we want to know who is on top, and what roles the different persons have. The trinity exists not in competition, but in a glory giving cooperative circle dance.
St. Patrick begins his great prayer of protection called the breastplate or the lorica or the deer’s cry with these words:
For my shield this day
A mighty power
The Holy Trinity!
Affirming threeness
Confessing oneness,
In the making of all
Through love
The Trinity is the strongest thing that Patrick could have called to his guard, and Jesus exists in that trinity – nothing can stand in front of him.
Raised Up by the Spirit
Rom 8
11And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.
It was the power of the Ruach of God, the life-giving Spirit who breaks through the wall of death and raises Jesus from the dead.
Just as God breaths on the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37 and brings the vast army to life, the Spirit’s breath comes on the body of Jesus, heals him and raises him up to eternal life. And if he did it with Jesus, he will do it with us as well.
Passing on the anointing…
John 20:21-23 (Today’s New International Version)
Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of anyone, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."
What does all of this have to do with us? Remember what Rob Bell said about being a disciple – you are training to do what the Rabbi does. Jesus actually says this – he says, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."
I’ve argued here that Jesus is only able to do what he does, only able to be Jesus because of his relationship with the Holy Spirit.
In order for Jesus to do the things he did – the things that we as his followers are supposed to do, we must be in that same indwelling, empowering relationship with the Holy Spirit that he was. Even if we want to ignore the miraculous in Jesus life – in order to have his character, we must have his Spirit.
Offer prayer for the filling of the Spirit.
