Hearing the Spirit

Knowing the Father through the Son.

Christopher Ash

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781845509910

1

The Spirit, the Word
and His words

How did Jesus of Nazareth make the Father known during His earthly life and ministry? If making the Father known was at the heart of His reason for coming to earth, it is important to know the answer, which may surprise us.

It was not by His physical appearance, for all the evidence suggests that He looked just like lots of other men of His race and culture. His cousin John the Baptist had to point him out (‘Look!’), otherwise no one would have noticed Him when He mingled with the crowds at John’s preaching and baptisms (John 1:29-36). We like to imagine Him with a distinctive beard, different clothing, implausible blue eyes, and the film director’s halo to mark Him out as special. But Isaiah’s prophecy was true, ‘He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire (that is, admire and be attracted to) him’ (Isa. 53:2). He looked quite normal. We would not have been able to pick out Jesus from a still photo of a crowd of which He was part; only a video would have revealed Him, when we saw and heard how He spoke and related with people ¹.

Nor was it His miracles that made the Father known – or at least not the miracles on their own. For a miracle-worker could go around doing all sorts of extraordinary things; but unless those miracles were explained and interpreted, they would mean nothing. He might be nothing more than an extraordinary circus freak of nature, for all that anyone would know better. John characteristically speaks of Jesus’ miracles as ‘signs,’ because they were signposts pointing to His identity and work. And they were only signposts because of the words that accompanied them. The healing of the man by the pool meant nothing without the teaching of the rest of John 5. The feeding of the 5,000 was ambiguous without the discourse of John 6. Sight to a man born blind meant little without the ‘light of the world’ teaching of John 9 and 10. Even the raising of Lazarus had to be interpreted by words in John 11. Even His death on the Cross only revealed the Father because it was interpreted by words. Many men were crucified by the Romans. It is only the words that surround this crucifixion that enable us to understand what it reveals and achieves.

It was neither by His physical appearance nor even by His miracles that Jesus made the Father known. It was by His words. We are going to consider the wonder, the origin, the nature and the enduring significance of Jesus’ words.

THE WONDER OF JESUS’ WORDS

When the temple security forces returned to their seniors empty-handed, having failed to arrest Jesus, they pleaded with amazement that, ‘No-one ever spoke the way this man does’ (John 7:46). Never in the history of the world had a man spoken as Jesus spoke. Luke tells us something very similar. When Jesus taught in his home synagogue in Nazareth, they ‘were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips’ (Luke 4:22).

It must have been an extraordinary experience to hear Jesus of Nazareth teach. We must try to imagine the most beautiful, wise and gracious teaching we have ever heard, and then – in our minds – to purge it of all selfishness, all malice, all foolishness, all poor judgement, all ugliness, all incompleteness, anything inappropriate, all inadequacy, all superficiality, all half-truths and any trace of misleading exaggeration or untruth. We cannot think of such perfect speech, even in our most optimistic imagination. And yet this is what it must have been, to hear Jesus speak, whether it was a public set-piece teaching or a private ‘off-the-cuff’ conversation with an individual. When tired as when fresh, when pressured as when relaxed, when opposed as when applauded, no-one ever spoke as this man.

Jesus’ words were wonderful and beautiful words. And by those words He made the Father known. In the prayer of John 17 (which we quoted in the Introduction), Jesus says to the Father,

‘I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world… For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them.’ (John 17:6, 8).

He gave them words, the words the Father had first given Him, and by those words He revealed the Father.

John especially draws attention to the words that Jesus spoke and His role as a teacher. Words like ‘Rabbi’, ‘Teacher’, ‘word’, ‘words’, ‘teaching’, ‘testimony’ and ‘testify’ abound. The first disciples called Him, ‘“Rabbi” (which means Teacher)’ (John 1:38). When Nicodemus comes to Him by night he too begins, ‘Rabbi, we know you are a teacher come from God…’ (John 3:2). Jesus says that it is those who hear His word and believe the Father who sent Him, who have eternal life (John 5:24). At the end of the long discourse of chapter 6, John says, ‘He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum’ (John 6:59). Teaching is what Jesus characteristically did. He testifies against the world (John 7:7). He says, ‘If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own’ (John 7:17).

In the controversy of John 8, Jesus claims, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples’ (John 8:31). He says to His enemies, ‘you are ready to kill me, because you have no room for my word’ (John 8:37). If anyone keeps Jesus’ ‘word’ he will never see death (John 8:51). At His trial the high priest questions Jesus ‘about his disciples and his teaching’ (John 18:19). He tells Pontius Pilate that, ‘for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth’ (John 18:37).

When John recounts the wonder of the apostolic testimony at the start of his first letter, he begins, ‘That which was from the beginning, which we have heard…’ (1 John 1:1). He goes on to the fact that they saw, looked upon and touched. But he begins with what they heard. So there is this massive emphasis on the wonder of Jesus’ words.

THE ORIGIN OF JESUS’ WORDS

But how did it come to be that His words were so perfect, so wise and so gracious? John points us to the origin of Jesus’ words for an answer. He does it in two complementary ways.

1 …in the eternal life of the Father

First, he directs us to their origin with the Father Himself. At the very start of his Gospel, he bookends his great Prologue in this way,

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning…’ (John 1:1, 2)

‘…No-one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side’ (literally, ‘in the Father’s bosom’, in the closest possible intimacy with the Father), ‘has made him known.’ (John 1:18).

The Word is personal (‘he’), He has an identity distinct from God the Father (He is ‘with God,’ ‘at the Father’s side’), and yet He is Himself ‘God’. He is the Word who makes the Father known.

The root idea of a word is self-expression. Our words are both part of us (for they originate in our hearts) and yet distinct from us (for they go out from our mouths). The question arises in human affairs whether or not we will be true to the word we have spoken. For God, there is no such question: the Father was, is, and will always be, true to the eternal Word He spoke in Jesus. And Jesus perfectly expresses the heart and name of the Father who spoke Him. He is the perfect eternal self-expression of the Father.

2 …given by the anointing of the Spirit

The other way in which John teaches us to understand the origin of Jesus’ words is by pointing to His anointing with the Spirit after His baptism by John the Baptist. Jesus is both the eternal pre-existent divine Word and – at the same time – the fully human man upon whom the Spirit of God descends and remains. John the Baptist gives this testimony about Jesus’ baptism,

‘I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptise with water told me, “The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptise with the Holy Spirit.” I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.’ (John 1:32-34).

Twice John includes the words, ‘and remain’, emphasising that the anointing of Jesus with the Spirit was permanent. Although John the Baptist was Jesus’ relative (Luke 1:36), and no doubt knew who Jesus was (in a superficial sense), he testifies that it was only when he paradoxically ‘saw’ the invisible Spirit of God come down and remain on Jesus that he ‘knew’ in a deep sense who Jesus was and Jesus could be ‘revealed to Israel’ (John 1:31).

Jesus Christ – Son of the Father and man anointed by the Spirit

John sets side by side two ways of thinking about Jesus Christ ². First, he gives us what is sometimes called a Word-Christology. Christology means learning to think and talk about Christ. A Word-Christology means thinking of Him as the ‘Word’ of John 1:1, 2, pre-existent, the one who had been God the Son in intimate proximity with the Father from all eternity.

Alongside this he gives us what is sometimes called a Spirit-Christology. This means thinking of Jesus Christ as the fully human man anointed with the Spirit of God. The word translated ‘anointed’ is the same word from which we get ‘Christ’. A Christ (the Greek word) or Messiah (the Hebrew word) means an anointed one. In his Nazareth synagogue sermon Jesus spoke of Isaiah’s prophetic anointing being fulfilled in His messianic anointing: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed’ – we might say ‘Christed’ – ‘me…’ (Luke 4:18 quoting from Isa. 61:1). And in Acts 10 Peter describes ‘how God anointed’ – again, we might say, ‘Christed’ – ‘Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and (therefore) with power’ (Acts 10:38).

Both ways of thinking are true and we need them both. Remembering that Jesus is the Eternal Word safeguards us from the mistake of thinking that Jesus only became the Son of God, at His baptism, when the Spirit came upon Him. This error is called ‘adoptionism’ as if God looked around for a man to adopt as His Son, and happened to fix upon Jesus of Nazareth.

Considering that Jesus is the man of the Spirit reminds us that He was (and is) fully human. Indeed, it does seem that there was a change in Jesus’ experience at the time of His baptism. From the time of His conception, Jesus was ‘God with us’ (Immanuel, Matt.1:23). But from the time of His baptism, the Spirit was – if we may say this reverently – ‘God with Jesus’ to equip Him with power for ministry. This is why there were no miracles before Jesus was anointed with the Spirit. He who had always been the Son of God in His nature entered only then on His public ministry of revealing the Father.

From His conception to His baptism, Jesus’ life was surrounded, as it were, by the special ministry of the Spirit ³. Even in Jesus’ childhood, when Mary and Joseph found him in the temple, ‘Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers’ (Luke 2:47). But John ascribes the revelatory power of Jesus’ words especially to the abiding presence with Him of the Spirit after His baptism. At the end of John 3 there is a little explanatory comment about Jesus (John 3:31-36) ⁴. In it we read that,

‘the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit.’ (John 3:34)

John says that, ‘the one whom God has sent’ (that is, Jesus) ‘speaks the words of God’; and the reason He does so is because ‘God’ (that is, God the Father) ‘gives the Spirit’ (that is, to God the Son) ‘without limit’. The reason Jesus Christ speaks the exact words of God the Father is that God the Father has given to Him the Spirit of God without any limit. This is unique. When the New Testament later speaks of the Spirit being given to Christian believers, it never speaks of Him being given to an individual believer in an unlimited way. Rather, His gifts and working are apportioned out to us in partial ways (e.g. 1 Cor. 12:7-11). But to Jesus, He was given without limit. And therefore His words perfectly revealed the Father.

We must notice the Trinitarian nature of all this. The eternal Son speaks the words of the eternal Father by the ministry of the eternal Spirit. He has heard and known those words from all eternity, dwelling in the bosom of the Father in unbroken and unimaginable intimacy. And now in His human incarnation He knows those words again, perfectly and completely, by the ministry of God the Holy Spirit coming upon Him and abiding with him without any boundary to limit the completeness of His filling and intimacy.

This is why no-one ever spoke as Jesus spoke. This is why He tells Nicodemus that He speaks about what He knows and gives testimony to what He has seen (John 3:11). This is why He can say of His teaching that it ‘is not my own. It comes from him who sent me’ (John 7:16). This is why he could say, ‘I…speak just what the Father has taught me… I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence’ (John 8:28, 38). This union with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit is the source and origin of Jesus’ wonderful words.

Spirit and breath

This is a good point to pause and make the important observation that both the Hebrew and the Greek words for ‘spirit’ (ruach and pneuma) also mean ‘breath’ or ‘wind’. So when a Hebrew or Greek speaker hears the word for ‘spirit’ they naturally think also of ‘breath’. And it is a short journey from a person’s ‘breath’ to the person’s words, for words are carried on breath. A person breathes out words. So it should be no surprise to us that the man of the Spirit of God is the man of the words of God. Indeed, it would be strange if he were not. We shall note this connection again. ⁵

THE NATURE OF JESUS’ WORDS

We now shift our focus from the divine origin of Jesus’ words (the words of God the Father spoken by God the Son through the ministry of God the Holy Spirit) to the spiritual and life-giving nature of Jesus’ words. The one follows from the other.

We find the most striking testimony to the nature of Jesus’ words in two sayings near the end of John chapter 6,

‘The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life’ (Jesus in John 6:63)

‘You have the words of eternal life’ (Peter in John 6:68)

John 6 begins (vv. 1-13) with the feeding of the 5,000. That wonderful feeding is the springboard for the teaching that follows, which is all about food. After the feeding, the people try to make Jesus king by force (v. 15). But He withdraws. That evening He walks on the water to join His disciples in the boat crossing to the other side of the Sea of Galilee (vv. 16-23). The crowds that had been at the feeding cross over in other boats and find Him in Capernaum, on the west side of the lake (vv. 24, 25). Jesus’ extended teaching about food runs, with brief interruptions, from verse 26 through to verse 59. He contrasts physical food (the bread of the miraculous feeding) with ‘food that endures to eternal life’ (v. 27), that is, food that will feed you spiritually and keep you alive for the age to come. When they ask what they must ‘do’ Jesus says they must ‘believe’ in Him (vv. 28, 29). Using the image of the manna-bread given by God to the Israelites in the wilderness after the Exodus (Exod. 16), Jesus describes Himself as the reality to which this foreshadowing pointed (‘I am the Bread of life’ v. 35). He tells them that to get the life of the age to come they need to eat Him, and go on eating Him. Indeed, the ‘bread’ they must eat is His ‘flesh’ which He will give for the life of the world (v. 51). It sounds horrifying. So, again, the question comes, how can it be possible to do that (v. 52)? Jesus replies they must eat His ‘flesh’ and drink His ‘blood’, where flesh and blood in separation speak of a life given up in death. So in some spiritual way they must feed on the death of Jesus.

Clearly He is speaking of a spiritual feeding. But what does it mean? There are several reasons for concluding that Jesus is not telling people to eat and drink the bread and wine of Holy Communion or the Lord’s Supper. That would have made no sense to His original hearers, since the Last Supper hadn’t happened and the Lord’s Supper hadn’t been instituted. None of the very earliest commentators thought He meant that. Again and again He tells us that it’s about believing in Him (vv. 35, 40, 47), which is an inward and spiritual thing. It is true that the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion is the outward and physical sign that points to this inward reality. But we do not feed on Jesus by the mere outward action of taking communion. We feed on Him in our hearts by faith (as Cranmer put it in the Book of Common Prayer). ‘John 6 is not about the Lord’s Supper; rather, the Lord’s Supper is about what is described in John 6.’ ⁶

The section that immediately follows (vv. 60-9) gives us the clue as to what Jesus means. In verses 60 and 66 many of Jesus’ followers are so horrified by this strange teaching that they turn back. Jesus expands on His teaching in verse 63: ‘The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing.’ That is to say, only the Spirit of God can give the life of God. We shall think more about this in chapter 2. He went on to say, ‘The...