Advent’s Spirit of Sonship

Last updated on: November 25, 2015 at 12:00 am by Peter Leithart

Advent’s Spirit of Sonship 2015-11-25T00:00:00+06:00 Peter Leithart

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Luke 1 is Trinitarianly odd. Our creeds, growing out of Matthew 28:18-20 and other biblical texts, speak of the order of the Trinity as “Father, Son, Spirit.” That reflects the order of the economy: The Father does send the Son; and then the Son ascends to heaven, and sends the Spirit. The order in history is Father, Son, Spirit.

Luke 1 suggests that it is equally correct to say “Father, Spirit, Son,” and this is a more dominant Trinitarian pattern in the gospels. Especially as Luke describes it, the whole of Jesus’ incarnation, life, ministry, death, and resurrection, can be seen under this heading: Jesus is the Son of the Father through the Spirit.

This is evident in Jesus’ baptism (Luke 3:21-22), when the Father anoints the Son with the Spirit and speaks words that allude to Psalm 2 (“Today I have begotten You”). Jesus was God the Son prior to His baptism, but the declaration of His Sonship occurs at His baptism, when He receives the Spirit. As in the incarnation, so in Jesus’ baptism, the Father commissions the Son as Son through the Spirit.

The same Spirit drives Jesus out into the wilderness and empowers Him to withstand the temptations of Satan. It is through the “finger” or “Spirit” of God that Jesus performs His miracles. The Spirit not only is the agent of the Son’s incarnation, but is the agent of His ministry: Jesus is the obedient Son by the power of the Spirit. In John’s gospel, Jesus is the one “born of the Spirit,” whose voice is heard but whose origins and destiny are unknown (John 3:5-8).

-as Jesus comes to the cross, He speaks to His disciples concerning the Father, and tells them that the Father is His “Abba”; and Paul tells us that it is through the Spirit that we can cry out “Abba, Father”; Jesus goes to the cross as His supreme act of obedience: He goes to the cross to obey His Father, His “Abba,” and He calls His “Abba” through the Spirit

According to Paul, the Father raises the Son from the dead through the Spirit (Romans 1:4; 8:11): Jesus is “declared Son of God according to the Spirit of holiness by His resurrection from the dead.” The Father raises the Son by the Spirit just as the Father sent the Son through the Spirit, and just as the Son lived faithfully before the Father by the Spirit, and just as the Son obeyed until death through the Spirit. The Spirit is the agent of the new creation, of resurrection life, of life after life after death.

And this pattern is evident also in the Old Testament, as the Word of Yahweh is made presence and effective by the Spirit. The Word that speaks the world into existence is the Word breathed by the hovering Spirit. Adam is formed from the dust of the ground, and God breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, and so becomes the human son of God, God’s image and likeness. When Israel, God’s son, is a field of dry bones, the prophet prophesies to the bones, and the wind of God brings them to life.

Gregory of Nyssa wrote, “it would not be right that God’s Word should be more defective than our own, which would be the case if, since our word is associated with bread (spirit), we were to believe he lacked a Spirit. . . . In the same way, when we learn that God has a Spirit, which accompanies His word and manifests His activity, we do not thing of it as an emission of breath. . . . On the contrary, we think of it as a power really existing by itself and in its own special subsistence.” John of Damascus put it more succinctly: “When we speak a word, this movement of the air produces the voice, which alone makes the meaning of the word accessible to others.” So also in God the Spirit “accompanies the word and reveals its efficacy.”

The Father, according to Scripture and the creeds, eternally begets the Son; the Son is the “only-begotten of the Father” (John 1:14). But if the incarnation reveals the relation of the Father and Son, we can say that the Father eternally begets the Son through the Spirit. The Spirit is the Love by which the Father begets the Son, and the Love through which the Son loves the Father. Since the Father is the Father only because He has a Son, the Spirit through whom the Father begets the Son makes the Father the Father, even as, being the agent of begetting, He makes the Son the Son.

Our redemption follows the contours of this Trinitarian movement. Paul teaches that we have received the Spirit so that we can be conformed to Christ the Son. Through Jesus, God has delivered us from the flesh and from death, to live in the Spirit (Romans 8:9). The Father raised us through the Spirit to a new life (Romans 7:6; 1 Thessalonians 4:7-8). The Spirit is the “spirit of Sonship” that enables us to join in Jesus’ address to His “Abba” and conforms us to the life of the Son (Galatians 4:4-8). Through the Spirit, we are made sons, and if sons, then heirs. Through the Spirit, we are brought into the Triune community as sons, or, to change the image, as the bride of the Son.

We are the new Adams created by the Spirit. We are new creations, over which the Spirit has hovered. We are the dry bones who are revived and made alive by the voiced word of the Father, by the Spirit-empowered Word of the Father.

The Father who eternally begot the Son through the Spirit now begets sons from sinners through the same Spirit. The advent of the Son comes by the Spirit by whom also is the advent of sons.

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