The Christ-Centered Spirit

Many Christians have quite clear ideas about God the Father and God the Son, but only rather vague, indistinct ideas about God the Holy Spirit. This stems, in part, from the fact that as human beings Christians have knowledge of fathers and sons in everyday experience, but not of personal bodiless spirits.

Though reluctant to admit it (it’s so unspiritual!), even ministers often share this indefiniteness about the Holy Spirit and almost dread occasions that call for special sermons on this subject. It is much easier to preach about Christ and to take silent refuge in the fact that even theologians have found it far easier to formulate a doctrine of Christ than of the Holy Spirit. Yet this uneasiness is not so much a matter of deficient spirituality as it is a misunderstanding about the possibilities of knowing the Holy Spirit.

Two other Christian truths are still without clear and adequate formulation. Both, interestingly enough, are intimately related to considerations of the Spirit. They are: eschatology (the doctrine of the last things) and ecclesiology (the doctrine of the Church). The dependence of both upon the Spirit is clear from the biblical teaching that the Church was constituted, and the last things were introduced, by the outpouring of the Spirit upon the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1–17).

With the rise of the ecumenical movement and with the impact of Albert Schweitzer’s insistence in The Quest of the Historical Jesus that Jesus was an eschatological figure, a vast amount of research has been turned on the New Testament teaching about eschatology and the Church. And as a by-product came a deeper understanding and richer appreciation of the Spirit.

Our Knowledge Of The Spirit

This concomitant emergence of greater knowledge of the Spirit illustrates a cardinal truth which must be recognized if we are to gain greater clarity concerning the Spirit and lose the uneasy sense of guilt concerning our deficient knowledge. By the term “by-product,” I mean to suggest that we know the Spirit of God only indirectly; he himself ever eludes us—for we hear the sound, but know not whither he comes or whither he goes. It is not given us to know the Spirit in isolation, to know the Spirit simply as the Spirit. We can know him only indirectly, in and from our knowledge of Christ. To know Christ is to know his Spirit; to know the Spirit is to know Christ. The one does not occur without the other. Our quest to know the Spirit cannot circumvent the fact that God has given his Spirit to Christ, nor the fact that the Spirit so accepts this being-given-to-Christ that he makes Christ known but not himself.

Before pursuing this matter further, we must linger for a moment with another factor that explains the peculiar status of our knowledge of the Spirit. It is commonly recognized that the illuminating and directing action of the Spirit upon our hearts and minds is that which makes any and all Christian knowledge possible. It is not so commonly recognized, however, that this creates a special obstacle for every attempt to obtain direct knowledge of the Spirit. Since the action of the Spirit upon our spirits is the precondition of all Christian knowledge, it is also the precondition of our knowledge of the Spirit. Every attempt therefore to gain direct knowledge of the Spirit objectifies him who is the indispensable element in our subjective processes of coming to know him. The effort presupposes itself; it involves a detachment from the very condition within which all Christian knowledge, including that of the Spirit, is alone possible. Direct knowledge of the Spirit is an attempt to know the means of Christian knowledge without using the means, that is, to know the Spirit without the help of the Spirit.

Such an attempt to gain direct knowledge of the Holy Spirit is quite similar, both in intent and final result, to the epistemological experiment conducted by modern philosophy since the days of Descartes. From that time on a “critical philosophy,” by separating the object from the knower, sought to know the conditions of knowledge without using them; it ended finally in skepticism concerning the possibility of any valid knowledge at all. Once the Christian separates himself from the true object of his knowledge—namely, from Christ—by isolating the Spirit and by attempting to know that Spirit which is the very condition of all Christian knowledge, directly and apart from Christ, he too will in a Christian skepticism, or at best in an irrational form of Christian mysticism. Whether in philosophy or theology, every attempt to know directly the conditions of knowledge by abandoning those conditions is doomed to failure.

We return now to our theme that all knowledge of the Spirit is first of all a knowledge of Christ. It must be urged that this “first” is not something that can be left behind, as though once having gained a knowledge of the Spirit through Christ, we can then enjoy and retain this knowledge apart from Christ. The Spirit is eternally Christ’s and is never ours except as his Spirit and as his gift (Acts 2:33).

We read that God made Jesus to be the Christ (Acts 2:36), and did so by the gift of the Spirit. As the one who has received from God the gift of the Spirit, Jesus is the Christ (Hebrew, Messiah), i.e., the “anointed one.” It is the possession of the Spirit which constitutes Jesus as the Christ. Without the Spirit, Jesus would not be the Christ; Jesus Christ is who he is because of this peculiar possession of the Spirit. If others also shared in this unique anointing and peculiar possession of the Spirit, Jesus would not be the only Christ. It is his peculiar anointing and possession of the Spirit that makes him the only Christ, and makes all other Christs and Messiahs false.

Just as unique anointing constitutes him the only Christ, so it constitutes him also the only Elect of God. He is the Elect of God beside whom there is none else. On this fact rests the divine summons to the elect nation of Israel: “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth” (Isa. 42:1a). This unique anointing accounts also for the special designation of Psalm 2, “Thou art my Son”—a distinction applicable to none other; accordingly he alone is designated as the one who shall receive the nations for his inheritance, the one whom we must kiss lest we perish in the way. This unique anointing also is the basis for that public and dramatic announcement at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me …” (Luke 4:18). If the significance of this escapes us, it did not escape Jesus’ enemies, for they thereupon sought to kill him. The peculiar reception and possession of the Spirit constitutes Jesus the one and only Christ, the one and only Elect of God, beside whom all others are pretenders.

The Reticence Of The Spirit

That this Spirit, so uniquely given to Christ, does not make himself the object of our knowledge is clearly asserted by Jesus: “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak.…” Further, “He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it into you” (John 16:13, 14). Here our Lord plainly says that the Spirit will talk not about himself, but about Christ; that he will not glorify himself; that he will “seek not his own” but the things of Christ; that he will be an echo of Christ and by so doing will guide us “into all truth.” This silence about himself has been called “the reticence of the Spirit.” We know the Spirit not as one who makes himself known to us, but as one whose function is to give the knowledge of Christ. Only as one who makes Christ known, do we know him.

The Leading Of The Spirit

Of what “spirit” God is or what the Spirit of God is like, we discover not by looking directly to him, but by looking to Jesus of Nazareth whom God by the bestowal of his Spirit hath made to be both Lord and Christ. It was this bestowed Spirit that drove Christ into the wilderness to triumph over Satan and all the demonic powers that haunt our spirits and lure us to destruction. Prompted by the Spirit, Jesus gave sight to the blind, healing to the sick and brokenhearted, food to the hungry, liberty to the captives; by the Spirit he had compassion for the mutitudes, good news for the poor. Induced by the Spirit, Jesus took our iniquities and diseases upon himself and made them his own. When in Gethsemane the flesh was so weak that “mere” contemplation of the Cross brought it nigh unto death and prompted the cry “Now is my soul troubled, even unto death,” it was the Spirit that was strong. The Spirit led him to the Cross, and there through this eternal Spirit, he offered himself unto God (Hebrews 9:14). It is the Spirit, too, that creates for him his Body, the Church, that community of God in which men, prompted by the same Spirit, accept Christ as Lord and each other in love and forgiveness. By the Spirit the Church becomes that authentic Body of Christ which does not talk about itself, but echoes Christ, bearing witness to him and to his glory. It is by the Spirit that Paul is prompted to assert, “We preach not ourselves but Jesus Christ.” In Christ is revealed the nature of God’s Spirit, the Spirit of the Almighty, whose tender and thoughtful solicitude commanded that a young girl be given something to eat (Mark 5:43).

The biblical imperative is not that we know the Spirit, but that we know Christ and be filled and led by his Spirit. By New Testament definition the spiritual man is he who knows the “reticent” Spirit indirectly as the unique possession of Jesus. The spiritual man therefore acknowledges that Jesus is the Christ, and is humbly and happily willing to share in Christ’s calling and election, in his name and Gospel, in his death and resurrection, and in his final glory. Until that glorious day he seeks not his own but the things of Jesus Christ. In a word: The spiritual man knows Jesus as the Christ, who led by the Spirit died for him.

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