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Scripture Reading: 1 Pet. 1:1-2, 10-12; 4:13-14; 2 Pet. 1:20-21
Thus far, we have seen that the twenty-seven books of the New Testament reveal a wonderful person. This person is mysterious, excellent, marvelous, and wonderful. The focus of the New Testament is this living person.
Since we all believed in the Lord Jesus, we became members of this marvelous person. We were chosen by God the Father in eternity past. This was done according to God the Father’s foreknowledge and is carried out in time in the sanctification of the Spirit (1 Pet. 1:1-2). All the believers in Christ were chosen “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit unto the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ” (v. 2). God chose us before the foundation of the world, in eternity past (Eph. 1:4). The divine foreknowledge was exercised, and the sanctification of the Spirit follows unto the obedience of faith in Christ. Our believing in Christ results from the Spirit’s sanctifying work. We were sanctified, separated, by the Spirit unto the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. The issue of the Spirit’s sanctification is our participating in the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Sanctification brought us to the sprinkling of the blood shed by the Savior on the cross and separates us unto this divine provision. We are now the redeemed ones. We were chosen by God the Father, sanctified by the Spirit, and sprinkled by the blood of Jesus Christ. This is marvelous and wonderful in the full, complete, perfect, and eternal salvation of and by the Trinity. We are no longer people who were merely created by God, but we were chosen by God the Father, sanctified by God the Spirit, and sprinkled by God the Son.
First Peter 1:10-11, furthermore, tells us that the Spirit of Christ in the prophets made clear to them concerning Christ’s sufferings and glories. The Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God, who is the Holy Spirit, is also called in the New Testament age the Spirit and the Spirit of Christ. This is the same Spirit with different divine titles, and every title carries a particular denotation. The titles the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ denote that the Spirit conveys God and conveys Christ. For example, a cup of coffee or a glass of milk denotes that the cup conveys coffee and the glass conveys milk to the one who drinks. In like manner, the Spirit of God conveys God, and the Spirit of Christ conveys Christ. The title the Spirit is an all-inclusive title. This is the unique, complete, perfect, and full Spirit. Also, the Spirit of God denotes that the Spirit is God, and the Spirit of Christ denotes that the Spirit is Christ. Expressions like the life of God or the love of God denote that life is God and that love is God. The Son of God also denotes that the Son is God (John 5:18). On the one hand, the Lord Jesus was the Son of God, and on the other hand, He was God because the Son of God means that the Son is God (v. 18).
John 7:39 tells us that “the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.” The Spirit of God was there from the very beginning (Gen. 1:1-2), but the Spirit as the Spirit of Christ (Rom. 8:9) and as the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:19) was not yet at the time that the Lord spoke this word, because He was not yet glorified. Jesus was glorified when He was resurrected (Luke 24:26). After His resurrection the Spirit of God became the Spirit of the incarnated, crucified, and resurrected Jesus Christ, who was breathed into the disciples by Christ in the evening of the day He was resurrected (John 20:22). After His resurrection the Spirit was there because the Spirit then comprised not only the divinity of God but also the humanity of the incarnated God, Jesus Christ. Within the Spirit of Christ are the elements of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and the resurrection of Christ. The Spirit in the New Testament is the compound all-inclusive Spirit.
Since Jesus was not resurrected yet, how could such a compound all-inclusive Spirit be in the Old Testament prophets? In order to answer this question we must see that in Genesis 18 the Lord appeared to Abraham as a man even before He was incarnated (vv. 1-2). Also, Revelation 13:8 tells us that the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. Once the creatures came into existence, there was the need of redemption, so from the foundation of the world Christ was slain in the eyes of God. According to our understanding, Christ was crucified a little over nineteen hundred years ago. This understanding is in the realm of time according to our human, mental apprehension. In God’s apprehension, however, there is no time element. He only recognizes the fact that the Lord’s death is eternal. Constitutionally speaking, the Lord Jesus was crucified nineteen hundred years ago, but functionally speaking, He was slain from the foundation of the world. In the same way, although the constitution of the Spirit of Christ is dispensational, constituted dispensationally through and with Christ’s death and resurrection in the New Testament time, His function is eternal because He is the eternal Spirit (Heb. 9:14).
This New Testament Spirit of Christ was in the Old Testament functioning to help the Old Testament prophets search out what time and in what manner of time Christ had to die and resurrect. The prophets knew that according to the prophecies and types in the Pentateuch, God’s Messiah had to die, so the Old Testament prophets did their best to search out when, where, and how the Messiah would die. When they were researching, the Spirit of Christ within them made the time and the manner of time concerning Christ’s death and resurrection clear. Daniel told us that the Messiah would be cut off at the end of the sixty-ninth week (9:25-26). The Spirit helped the prophets inwardly to realize when the Messiah would be cut off. Isaiah 53 tells us how the Messiah would be cut off. He was “like a lamb that is led to the slaughter” (v. 7). Verses like this in the Old Testament show that the Old Testament prophets found out the way, the time, and even the place (Dan. 9:25-26; cf. Luke 13:33) of Christ’s all-inclusive death. The Spirit of Christ was there even in the Old Testament. Constitutionally speaking, He was not yet, but functionally speaking, He was there.
First Peter 1:11 refers to the Spirit of Christ, and in verse 12 this same Spirit is called the Holy Spirit. This Holy Spirit is the Spirit by whom the New Testament apostles proclaimed the gospel. The Spirit of Christ helped the Old Testament prophets inwardly to search out when, where, and how Christ would die and resurrect. Then after the accomplishment of His death and resurrection, the New Testament apostles came to preach the gospel by the same Spirit, yet it is called the Holy Spirit. With the Old Testament prophets, this Spirit was the Spirit of Christ searching. Christ Himself as the Spirit of Christ was helping the Old Testament prophets to search out the time, the place, and the manner of His death and resurrection. This is why Peter called the Spirit the Spirit of Christ. With the New Testament apostles, the same Spirit became the Holy Spirit preaching.
After the accomplishment of His death to form the gospel, the New Testament apostles, including Peter, proclaimed the gospel to the people by the Holy Spirit. Such a divine title had never before been used in the Old Testament. Peter’s thought was to indicate to the Jewish believers that the very gospel concerning Christ’s death and resurrection proclaimed to them was not something common. It was not something of Judaism, something of the Old Testament, which was common to all the Jews. This gospel is something particularly separated, something holy. The apostles preached this gospel to the Jews by the Holy Spirit. To speak concerning all the items of Judaism, the Holy Spirit is not needed. All that is needed are some rabbis to teach these things. The apostles, however, proclaimed to the Jewish people something particular, holy, and uncommon.
In 1 Peter 4:13-14 we see that the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon the suffering believers in their persecution for the glorification of the resurrected and exalted Christ who is now in glory. When the believers are suffering persecution, the Spirit of God rests upon them as the Spirit of glory. Before Stephen was stoned, his persecutors saw his face as though it were the face of an angel (Acts 6:15). Stephen was neither weeping nor pitying himself, but his face was like an angel’s face because the Spirit of glory was resting upon him. The face of every martyr is like an angel’s face. History tells us that whenever the believers of Christ were persecuted, at the juncture when they were being killed by their persecutors, their faces were like the face of an angel. If someone were to shine a spotlight on my face, my face would glow. This would actually be “the spot of electricity” resting upon me. In the same way the Spirit of glory rests upon the suffering believers. One missionary who belonged to the China Inland Mission and was killed by the Communists in the 1930s wrote a short poem before his death. This poem said that every martyr for Jesus has the face of a lion. This also shows that the Spirit of glory rests upon every martyr.
Approximately fifty years ago, an older Christian traveling preacher came to one of our meetings in my hometown; I was about twenty-nine years old at the time. After the meeting, he told me the story of how he became a Christian. He was a young apprentice in a Chinese business during the years of the Boxer Rebellion in the early 1900s. During those years many Christians were persecuted and killed by the Boxers. One day in Beijing, where the place of his business was, there was a parade of Boxers in the streets with long swords, and they were about to execute a young Christian girl, only in her teens. All the stores on the street closed their doors. This preacher, however, who was a young man at the time, looked through the crack of the door. In the midst of the Boxers, this young girl was riding in an old mule wagon. She was singing, praising, and rejoicing amidst the threatening of the Boxers on her way to her execution. When the young man saw this, he could not comprehend it. This young girl was fearless and full of joy. Because of this, this man said to himself that he must go to find out what it is to be a Christian. He did this, and eventually, as a result of what he had seen, he received the Lord Jesus, gave up his business, and made a decision to serve the Lord full time as a preacher. This story helped me to understand the Spirit of glory resting upon the persecuted one in 1 Peter 4:13-14. It is when you are persecuted for the Lord’s sake, that the Spirit of God, which is also the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Christ, becomes the Spirit of glory. The Spirit of glory means that the Spirit is glory. The Spirit of glory resting upon the persecuted ones means that God’s Spirit as the glory is resting upon them. Every martyr for Christ is not a pitiful one but a glorious one. The martyrs are not full of self-pity but full of glory.
Second Peter 1:20-21 tells us that men spoke from God the prophecy of Scripture while being borne by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is also the speaking Spirit to speak forth God and to speak out Christ. No prophecy was ever borne by the will of man. Man’s will, desire, and wish, with his thought and exposition, are not the source from which any prophecy came; the source is God, by whose Holy Spirit men were borne, as a ship is borne by the wind, to speak out the will, desire, and wish of God.
