This time of
year we naturally focus on the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, and rightly
so. As we contemplate such a
brutal, horrifying moment questions confront us. Why did Jesus die?
Why such a horrible death? Why
the cross? How do we interpret the
meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion?
These are critical questions, yet rarely, as Jurgen Moltmann notes, does
anyone focus upon the Holy Spirit in this context. What was the Holy Spirit
doing when Jesus was ridiculed, unjustly condemned, beaten and tortured, and
then crucified on the cross? Jesus
was conceived in the Spirit, lived his entire life in the Spirit, and offered
himself up on the cross in the Spirit.
So how do we understand the Holy Spirit in relation to those horrible
hours of Good Friday?
In our Western, legalistic framework we are led to think of the Father as rejecting his own Son
as the sin of the world was placed upon Jesus. Some, in this framework, go further and argue that on the
cross the Father actually poured out his wrath—due to fall upon us—upon Jesus,
and then abandoned him in utter rejection. In the context of such disastrous notions it is striking to
ask about the Holy Spirit. What did the Holy Spirit do when the Father rejected
his Son? What happened in the Holy
Spirit’s heart, if we may so speak, when the Father forsook his Son and poured
out his wrath upon Jesus? If we
accept this model of the Father rejecting and damning his Son on the cross then
we are left with the Holy Spirit simply and profoundly torn between the two! Did the Holy Spirit have to choose a
side? Which one? Or perhaps the Holy Spirit is like a
mother caught between an angry husband and her only son. Perhaps here we see the reason there is
so little discussion of the Holy Spirit in the context of Jesus’ death. But if
we sit at the feet of Athanasius and his insistence on the equality and utter oneness
of the Father, Son and Spirit we find ourselves in a different world. Here a different answer to the question
of the Holy Spirit’s relationship with Jesus in his death emerges—and a
different answer as to what the Father was doing when his Son was being
murdered by the human race.
Let me back up
for a moment. First, I believe
that Athanasius and the early Church were right in their development of their
vision of the Trinity. The
relationship of the Father, Son, and Spirit that we see lived out on the pages
of the New Testament is not something that came into being 2000 years ago. This is an eternal relationship. There was never a time, as Athanasius
argued, when the Father was alone and simply God, without his Son and
Spirit.
Second, according
to John 1:1-4; Colossians 1:16-17; and Hebrews 1:1-3, Jesus Christ is directly
involved in the creation and sustaining of all things. Among other things this means that the
Father’s eternal Son had a relationship with the human race and all creation
prior to Christmas. Before he
became a human being the Father’s eternal Son, who is face to face with the
Father in the Holy Spirit, not only created all things, but also constantly
upholds and sustains them.
Third, when this
Son became a human being he was not creating
a relationship with the human race and all creation; he was establishing his
existing relationship inside our humanity.
Fourth, when the
eternal Son became human he did not leave the Holy Spirit or his Father behind
in heaven. At Christmas it was the
Son who became flesh, but precisely as the
Son and as the one anointed in
the Holy Spirit. The incarnation
does not mean that Jesus abandoned his Father and the Holy Spirit, but that the
Son in his relationship with his
Father, and in his anointing in the
Holy Spirit became human. This
means that in Jesus Christ—the incarnate Son—the Father, the Holy Spirit, the
human race, and all creation are together in relationship. Jesus is the relationship, the place of
meeting. In fact, the relationship
that the Father, Son and Spirit had with humanity and creation prior to
Christmas is here in the incarnate Son being established inside his humanity.
Fifth, now we
are ready to see something even more astonishing that our legalism prevents us
from ever seeing. The death of
Jesus on the cross was not about a rejection of the Son by his Father, and the
Holy Spirit trying to hold things together. The death of Jesus on the cross is about the Triune God
entering into the deepest, darkest pit of our broken, sinful humanity. What happens on the cross is that the
relationship that the Father, Son and Spirit had with creation prior to
Christmas, which is then established inside Jesus’ humanity in his
incarnation—this relationship —is now being established inside our sin and
iniquity, bondage to evil and death.
The cross is not
about the Father’s rejection of Jesus, but ours. The wrath poured out on Calvary’s hill did not originate in
the Father’s heart, but in ours (see Matt. 20:18-19; 16:21; Mark 10:33-34; Luke
24:7; and Heb. 12:3). It was not
the Father or the Holy Spirit who beat Jesus, detested him, cursed him, and
abandoned him; it was the human race.
We mocked him. We cursed him. We crucified him. As Jesus himself suffered our rejection,
as he endured our betrayal, and submitted himself to bear our scorn and
hostility, he was personally entering into our iniquity—and he was not alone.
The Father and the Holy Spirit were with him. “God was in Christ” as Paul teaches (2Cor. 5:19). Neither the Holy Spirit nor the Father
were spectators to Jesus’ suffering.
What does this
mean? It means that in Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit, and the Father have
descended into our hell, and used our betrayal of Jesus as the way to get there.
It means that the Father, Son and Spirit have taken our rejection of Jesus and
turned it into our adoption, and new birth, and the recreation of all things in
Jesus. For as Jesus accepted our
rejection, as he experienced personally our bizarre, blind disdain, he was
establishing his relationship with us not simply in our humanity, but inside
our broken humanity at our very worst—and he brought his Father and the Holy
Spirit with him. Thus the death of
Jesus is the entering of the trinitarian life of God into the blackest darkness
of our hell.
As we focus on
the Father’s inclusion in Jesus’ suffering, or on the fact that far from
rejecting Jesus and abandoning him at the crucial hour, the Father was in Jesus all the while, we are given
eyes to see the deep inner meaning of our adoption in Christ. Adoption is not a doctrine; it is
reality. In Jesus, as he accepts our
beatings, the Father is finding us, the broken, rebellious, betraying, sinful
us, and embracing us, and including us in his own life. Jesus is himself the way or place, as
always, where the Father meets us, and now as the result of our crucifying
Jesus the Father has met us in chaos of the great darkness. What redemptive genius is at work
here! Our contribution to our
inclusion in the life of the Trinity was to reject and murder the Father’s
eternal son.
As we focus on
the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s inclusion in Jesus’ suffering, or on the fact
that as Jesus was rejected, betrayed and murdered by the human race, the Holy
Spirit was not merely holding a carton of tissues and watching from a distance,
but in Jesus, we are given eyes to
see the deep, inner meaning of new birth.
As the Creed says, the Holy Spirit is “the Lord and giver of life.” The way the Holy Spirit gives life, or
rebirths, or recreates all things is not by external command, but by descending—in
Jesus—into the dark world of sin and evil. Resurrection is not something that the Father externally confers
upon Jesus as a sign of his acceptance of Jesus’ sacrifice, or upon us as a
sign of his acceptance of us in Jesus. Resurrection is the direct, personal,
and inevitable fruit of the Holy Spirit’s entrance—in Jesus—into the hell of
human sin and darkness and death. In Jesus, as the result of his shocking
submission to our bitter contempt, the Holy Spirit has made his or her way
inside our death, and done so not as a watered down spirit, but as the Holy
Spirit, the Lord and giver of life.
What can death do to the Holy Spirit?
In Jesus Christ,
by virtue of his relationship with us, and by virtue of his anointing with the
Holy Spirit, and through his submission to our treachery to the point of death,
we and our dying and death have been ushered into the world of the Holy Spirit
and anointed with the life of the blessed
Trinity.
The Holy
Spirit’s descent—in Jesus—into our hell means that death has been transformed
into the way of recreation and resurrection life.
Thank you Holy
Spirit. We will have more please.
