Introduction

It is clear from a number of places in the Scriptures that the ascension of the Lord Jesus is closely linked to the gift of the Holy Spirit poured out on the day of Pentecost. For example, in Acts 2:33 Peter says of Jesus “Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.” Jesus himself had said that he would send the Spirit when he had returned to the Father, and that the Spirit would testify about him. “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me” (John 15:26), and that this gift would enable the disciples to testify. Jesus says in John 15:27, “And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning”, a fact that the Lord emphasizes again in his post-resurrection teaching to the disciples, as seen for example in Luke 24:46-49 and Acts 1:8.

That the Spirit would be poured out from the Father through the Ascended Lord thus seems clear, but what is the reason for this sequence of events? Could not the Spirit have been poured out before hand? If not, why not? And why is the outpouring of the Spirit to give power for testimony something that only occurred in this way after the ascension? Had not others received the Spirit in Old Testament times, who bore prophetic testimony to Christ?

In our first essay on this theme, we commented on the journey in which Jesus was engaged. Not only was he going to Jerusalem from Galilee (as in Luke 9:51), but he knew that he had come from the Father and was returning to the Father through Jerusalem and the events that would take place there. He would go back to the Father’s heavenly presence via the betrayal, cross, tomb, resurrection and ultimate ascension that would all occur in or near the city. Jerusalem was the centre of Jewish life because it was the centre of its worship. The Temple stood there, which was the Father’s house. However, though in one sense God’s name was present there, and though it was his holy place because of its dedicated function, in another sense it was never ultimately God’s dwelling. Solomon knew this clearly when he was given utterance by the Spirit at the time of the original Temple’s dedication (1 Kings 8:27-29).

Jesus’ journey through Jerusalem would be back to heaven from which he had come (see John 3:13; 17:5, 25 compared with John 13:3; 16:28). The glorious truth of the incarnation is that the eternal Son came from heaven taking human nature to himself in the womb of Mary, and he has never put this human nature aside. When he returned to heaven he returned as the incarnate man. Jesus never ‘shed’ human nature at any point, and abides forever as a man at the right hand of God the Father. But he does not return to heaven as a sole man. By virtue of the gracious union into which we are brought with him, by grace through faith, he takes many sons to glory with him. He represents them as their great High Priest (the subject of another essay to come) and he leads them in the worship of the Father. By virtue of believers’ union with Christ, we are ‘seated with him in heavenly places’, and our life is already ‘hid with Christ in God’.

This means that the purpose of Jesus’ journey was to provide a homecoming, not just for himself, but for his brothers and sisters. He has prepared a place for the inconceivable multitude of God’s children to be at home, in himself. Through him, all the kings of redeemed humanity bring their glory into the presence of the living God. Through him, every knee bows and every tongue confesses that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Jesus’ journey is for the fulfillment of the purposes of God, that there would be a complete family of the Father’s children who would exist for the praise of his glory, and reflect his glory to the whole cosmos. This, by its very nature, would also be the highest good and deepest delight of the humanity thus redeemed.

So how does this help us understand the event of the giving of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and what does it mean that the Spirit was given though Jesus? The means by which the blessing of God is brought to the nations is entirely bound up with the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is through the proclamation of the peace established by God in the Cross, and the declaration of justification and reconciliation on the basis of that Cross, that the nations are brought to share in the blessing promised to Abraham. It is notable that in Galatians 3:14 the blessing of Abraham is virtually identified with the Spirit, but that this gift of the Spirit is inseparable from the proclamation of justification by faith rather than by works of the Law.

We can come at this from another angle. It is very clear that the Old Testament prophets spoke and wrote as men moved by God. They received the Spirit to bring revelations of God (for example by dream and vision), and they spoke as they were empowered by the spirit to bear testimony to all that they saw. However, this testimony was still with a view to the fullness. Peter says that ‘the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired, carefully inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look’ (1 Peter 1:10-12). We note a couple of things from this passage: firstly the prophets saw in part the nature of the salvation that would come under the new covenant, and secondly that the gospel preached to the new covenant believers was preached by the Holy Spirit.

If we draw our thoughts together, it leads us to the conclusion that the Spirit could only be poured out in the way he was on the day of Pentecost, because it is only after the events in Jerusalem that the gospel could be proclaimed. The essence of God’s good news is Christ, and him crucified. The proclamation of the salvation of God now opened to the nations of the earth could only be made after the work of God had been accomplished in the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is this gospel which is the power of God for salvation to all who believe, but this gospel could only be proclaimed after Jesus had created it by accomplishing the Father’s work of redemption.

Jesus had said that when he would return to the Father he would send the Spirit from the Father. He said that the Spirit would come as the disciples’ Helper, the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive (John 14:15f.) and that he would teach the disciples and bring to mind all that Jesus had said (John 14:26). The Spirit whom Jesus would send from the Father would testify about him (e.g. John 15:26f.); the Spirit would also convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgment (John 16:8ff); and that he would guide the disciples into the truth (John 16:13f.). We could perhaps say that this is summarized in Jesus’ great statement that ‘He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you’ (John 16:14-15). While space precludes elaboration, we can say simply that it is in the great event of the Cross and its vindicating Resurrection that the glory of God is seen most clearly. It is here, where we see the Lamb slain, that we find the fullest revelation of the nature of God and the beating of his heart (to allow mere human speech!). By the very nature of the case, then, the Spirit could not declare all that the Father and Son have and are, unless he declared the work of the Father and Son in the gospel of the Cross. This is why we find such an emphasis on the fact that the crucified and risen Jesus (“this Jesus, whom you crucified”) is the one though whom God the Father has poured out the promised Holy Spirit.

We could come to the same matter from anther angle, which preserves for us a glorious truth. Jesus was always the man of the Spirit. All aspects of his life, from his conception to his death and resurrection, were accomplished by the agency of the Spirit of God, through whom he performed all his mighty works and in whom he found the power for every aspect of his life and ministry. In this way Jesus is the archetypal man, since we were originally created to live in the Spirit and to walk by the Spirit. In our fallen state we live in the Flesh, and walk according to the Flesh, but this changes nothing of what really belongs to true human nature. It is true that fallen humanity does not live or walk by the Spirit, but this does not mark its humanity, so much as its fallenness. When Jesus lives and moves by the Spirit at every point of his life, he is living as a true man should.