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Scripture Reading: Gen. 1:2; Judg. 3:10; 6:34; Gen. 6:3a; Psa. 51:11; Isa. 63:10-11; Luke 1:13-17, 30-36; Matt. 1:18-20; Mark 1:10, 12; Matt. 4:1; Luke 4:1, 18; John 1:32-33; 7:37-39; 1 Cor. 15:45b; Rev. 21:6; 22:17c
The Bible is a book written not only by the Spirit but also with the Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21; 2 Sam. 23:2). God’s move in man is altogether a story of the Spirit. Without the Spirit there is no history of God, because God is totally a matter of the Spirit. The difference between God’s move, God’s act, God’s work, and religions is that religions do not have the Spirit. They may have some spirits, but those spirits are demonic, devilish, and satanic. There is only one genuine, divine Spirit; that is God Himself. In this chapter we want to begin to study the definition of the Spirit.
In the Old Testament the Spirit is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jehovah, and the Spirit of holiness.
Every story in the Old Testament is related to God. The first story is concerning God’s creation of the heavens and the earth, with millions of items, and His creation of man. In this story the Spirit of God is mentioned. Genesis 1:1 says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Then the following verse says, “The Spirit of God was brooding upon the surface of the waters.” Thus, we see that the Spirit was the Spirit of God in God’s creation of the universe. In creation God’s name according to the Hebrew was Elohim, the mighty One and the faithful One.
After His creation God began to work on man. In God’s work on man His name is Jehovah. The Spirit of Jehovah is in God’s reaching of men and in His care for men (Judg. 3:10; 6:34; Gen. 6:3a). The title Jehovah literally means “He who is who He is”; therefore, “the eternal I Am.” As Jehovah, He is the One who was in the past, who is in the present, and who is to come in the future (Rev. 1:4). Jehovah simply means “to be.” God was, God is, and God will be forever. He is the great I Am.
God told Moses that His name was I AM WHO I AM (Exo. 3:14). This means, “I am always the thing that should be.” If there is a need of light, He is the light. If there is a need of life, He is the life. He is everything. The Lord Jesus Himself said that His name is “I Am” (John 8:58). The name I Am means that the very One who works on man is everything to man. He takes care of man, and He comes upon man. This is Jehovah in His reaching of man and in His care for man.
God is caring for man mainly to make man holy. To be holy means to be separated unto God. Man’s fall caused him to depart from God to become common, worldly, secular, and even dirty. So God needs to take care of man, making man separate from all things other than Himself. This is to make man holy. Thus, the Spirit in the Old Testament is the Spirit of holiness in God’s making His chosen people holy unto Himself (Psa. 51:11; Isa. 63:10-11). This is not the same as the Holy Spirit, which is used in the New Testament. The Holy Spirit is more intensified than the Spirit of holiness.
Now we come to the New Testament. In the New Testament the revelation concerning the Spirit is more complicated.
The first divine title used for the Spirit in the New Testament is the Holy Spirit. According to the Greek text, the title translated as “the Holy Spirit” may be in two forms: the Spirit the Holy or the Holy Spirit. According to my understanding, this means that in the New Testament age the very God who is the Spirit is “the Holy.” God is a Spirit, and this Spirit now is totally “the Holy.” We are now in an age in which God Himself as the Spirit is “the Holy” to make man not only separated unto Him but also one with Him. In the Old Testament the most God could do with man was to make man separated unto Him but not one with Him. But now in the New Testament age the time has come in which God would go further and deeper to make man absolutely one with Him, to make man Him and to make Him man. Athanasius, who was one of the church fathers, said concerning Christ, “He was made man that we might be made God.” This means that we are made God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. This process takes place by “the Spirit the Holy.”
In the New Testament two divine titles of the Spirit are very striking: the first one and the last one. The first one is the Spirit the Holy, and the last one is the seven Spirits (Rev. 1:4; 4:5; 5:6). “The Spirit the Holy” is for making man God, making man one with God and making God one with man. In other words, the New Testament age is for bringing God and man together, to constitute them together so that they coinhere (mutually indwell each other) to be one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). Man and God become one spirit, one entity. Eventually, “the Spirit the Holy” has to be seven times intensified to become the seven eyes of the Lamb. All the living creatures were made by God with two eyes, but eventually the Lamb has seven eyes, and these seven eyes are the seven Spirits of God, the sevenfold intensified Spirit.
In the Old Testament the Spirit of holiness is mentioned but not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is applied first to John the Baptist. This title is used in the conception of John the Baptist to introduce God’s becoming a man in His incarnation (Luke 1:13-17). Luke 1:15 says concerning John the Baptist, “He will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb.” The preparing of the way for the Savior’s coming required that His forerunner, John the Baptist, be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb so that he could separate the people unto God from all things other than God, making them holy unto Him for His purpose.
The beginning of the New Testament gives us a record of two conceptions. One was the conception of John the Baptist, and the other was the conception of the Lord Jesus in God’s incarnation to be a man in the flesh (Luke 1:30-36; Matt. 1:18-20). With these two conceptions the New Testament uses the particular title the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is used in the New Testament due to the change of the age. In order for God to become a man so that man could become God, there was the need of the Holy Spirit. The Old Testament was an age of figures and types, but the New Testament is the time of fulfillment, the age of reality, in which God became a man by being begotten of the Holy Spirit into humanity (Matt. 1:18, 20).
We need to see that the conception of John the Baptist was strikingly different in essence from that of Jesus the Savior. With John’s conception the essence of the Holy Spirit was not involved but the power. The conception of John was by the power of the Holy Spirit through man’s instrument. But with the conception of Jesus, the very essence of the Holy Spirit Himself was involved. Thus, Matthew 1:20 says concerning the begetting of Jesus in Mary, “That which has been begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit.” The conception of John the Baptist was God’s miracle, accomplished with the human essence, merely by the divine power without the involvement of the divine essence. This resulted in the bringing forth of a mere man who was filled with the Spirit of God but who lacked the nature of God. The conception of the Savior was God’s incarnation (John 1:14), constituted not only by the divine power but also of the divine essence added to the human essence, thus producing the God-man of two natures—divinity and humanity. These two conceptions are related to the beginning of God making Himself man and of God making man Him that He might become man and man might become Him, that the two could be one entity.
The Spirit anointed Jesus and was in the move of the man Jesus in His ministry to God on the earth (Mark 1:10,12; Matt. 4:1; Luke 4:1, 18; John 1:32-33). After Jesus was baptized, the Spirit as a dove descended upon Him. In symbolic form Jesus is the Lamb, and the Spirit is the dove. The Spirit as the dove came upon Jesus as the Lamb to carry out God’s redemption and salvation for the accomplishing of God’s economy.
Luke 4 says that the coming down of the dove upon the man Jesus was the anointing (vv. 1, 18). Jesus was anointed with the Spirit as a dove. This anointing made Jesus a particular man. In the Old Testament a number of people were anointed with oil, and then the Spirit came down to reach the anointed one (Exo. 29:7; 1 Sam. 9:16; 16:12; 1 Kings 1:34; 19:15-16). But the anointed one was not anointed with the Spirit directly. In the New Testament, however, Jesus was anointed directly with the Spirit as a dove.
This anointing Spirit is not referred to as the Spirit of Jehovah or as the Spirit of God but simply as the Spirit. The reality and the essence of God’s statuses in the Old Testament are implied in the Spirit. This means that this anointing Spirit was in God’s status as the Creator and in His status as the One who was, who is, and who is to be. In the Old Testament the Spirit is God, the Spirit is Jehovah, and the Spirit is holiness. Jesus was anointed with such a Spirit, who is God, who is Jehovah, and who is holiness.
After the baptism of Jesus we see Him standing in the water, the Spirit coming down upon Him, and the Father speaking from the heavens. This is a picture of the Divine Trinity. The Father is in the heavens, the Son is on the earth in the water, and the Spirit is in the air. They are in three locations. This is mentioned in the first three, synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Matt. 3:16-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22). These Gospels deal mainly with the Lord’s humanity.
But the fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, deals mainly with the divinity of the Son of God. John shows that the three of the Divine Trinity are one. John 14:26 says that the Father sends the Spirit in the Son’s name. But John 15:26 says that the Son sends the Spirit from the Father. The sense in the Greek for the word from here is actually from with. These verses indicate that the Father and the Son are one. They both sent the Spirit. Then when the Spirit came from the Father, He came with the Father. The Son also said that He was never alone, because the Father was always with Him (8:29; 16:32). This is mainly concerning His divinity.
The synoptic Gospels are mainly concerned with Christ’s humanity. In these Gospels we see that God, Jehovah, who is the very holiness, came down upon the man Jesus as the Spirit to be one with this man. The anointing God is one with the anointed man. The dove was in the air. The Lamb was on the earth. But now here is one entity—the dove on the Lamb. The One in the air is now one with the One on the earth. God and man have become one, indicating a kind of organic union. The anointing Spirit and the man Jesus became one in His ministry. The Spirit was not only for the anointing of the man Jesus but also for the move of the man Jesus in His ministry to God for three and a half years on this earth.
The Spirit was there to anoint Christ and to move with Christ, but at that time the Spirit had not yet entered into the believers to flow out as rivers of living water (7:37-39). In this sense “the Spirit was not yet.” John 7 tells us that the Spirit was not yet, because by that time Jesus was not glorified in His resurrection. Resurrection was for the man Jesus to get out of His human shell and to release the divine life, and this resurrection is called glorification. Before Christ was thus glorified, the Spirit was not yet. When John said “the Spirit was not yet,” he meant that the Spirit was not yet to flow out of the believers as rivers of living water. But the Spirit was there for the anointing of Christ and the moving of Christ in His ministry.
The anointing of Jesus the man and the moving with Jesus the man was God making Himself one with man on a small scale in an individual way, with one person. But when the Spirit flows into the believers and flows out of them as many rivers of living water, God being one with man and man being one with God becomes a corporate matter. It is not just with one man, Jesus, but with millions of His believers. This is the enlargement of God being one with man. God’s being one with man altogether depends upon the Spirit. The Spirit is a big key to the organic union of God with man.
Through and in His resurrection Christ as the last Adam became the life-giving Spirit to enter into His believers to flow out as rivers of living water (1 Cor. 15:45b; Rev. 21:6; 22:17c). God is a Spirit, and the second of the Triune God in the flesh became a life-giving Spirit. Prior to Christ’s resurrection God was a Spirit but not a life-giving Spirit. Before Christ’s death and resurrection God had no way to enter into man to be man’s life. Between man and God there were a number of negative things as obstacles. According to the typology seen in Genesis, the way to God as the tree of life was closed by the requirements of God’s glory, God’s holiness, and God’s righteousness (Gen. 3:24 see Life-study of Genesis, msg. 21). A fallen, sinful, unclean man was altogether unable to take the tree of life, to take God in as life, until Christ’s death fulfilled these requirements.
Hebrews 10 reveals that the death of Christ opened the way, a new and living way, so that we can go into the Holy of Holies to partake of God as the tree of life (vv. 19-20). In His death He fulfilled all the requirements of God’s glory, holiness, and righteousness; then in resurrection He changed in form to be the life-giving Spirit. This was absolutely for the organic union between God and man—to bring God into man and to bring man into God in His resurrection. Today we can take the tree of life and drink the water of life so that the Triune God can flow out from our innermost being as rivers of living water.
