Deep Things of God by Sanders Fred;

Author:Sanders, Fred; [Paulette Boudet ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781433524141
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2010-07-03T16:00:00+00:00

The Holy Spirit is also involved in the carrying out of Christ’s work after his death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven. It is through the Holy Spirit that the work of Christ is applied to believers so that they are born again, become temples of God, and are empowered for discipleship. When Christ ascended into heaven, he sent the Holy Spirit to minister God’s presence among his people. Indeed, when the Holy Spirit is poured out on Pentecost, his personal presence in salvation history after the finished work of Christ inaugurates a new era in God’s ways with the world. Thus the work of the Holy Spirit surrounds the work of Jesus Christ, as he goes before and after the incarnate Son like a set of holy parentheses embracing the story of salvation in Christ.

The encouragement to watch Jesus and think Trinity can change the way we read Scripture and enable us to see things there that we may have overlooked before. When we turn our eyes upon Jesus and learn the habit of asking how the Father and the Holy Spirit are co-present with him, we can see that many of the most beloved biblical stories from the life of Jesus Christ have a Trinitarian background we had never noticed. Perhaps their presence is impossible to ignore at Christ’s baptism in the Jordan, when the Spirit descends in the form of a dove and the Father speaks from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” But the baptism story should give us the interpretive key to the rest of the New Testament as well, because the Holy Spirit’s anointing power is always on the incarnate Son, and the Father’s good pleasure in his beloved is the secret of everything Christ does. We should always inquire after the hidden presence of the Spirit and the Father in the unhidden work of Jesus.

Attending to the Father’s presence in the life of Christ makes us look up higher than we are used to. Attending to the Spirit’s presence in the life of Christ makes us look back and forth further than we are used to. Taken together, the presence of the Father and the Spirit makes it clear how the life of Jesus is the focal point of the economy of salvation.

Diagram 4.1: The Work of the Trinity Centered on Jesus

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