The Spirit in the Gospels, Part 1

We’re in the midst of a series exploring the development of beliefs about the Holy Spirit. So far we’ve looked at how the concept was used in the Law and Deuteronomistic History (or ‘Former Prophets’), the Prophetic tradition, and the Hebrew Bible’s creation theology, as well as how these ideas developed during the Second Temple period. Throughout, we’ve seen a surprisingly consisting understanding of the Spirit and its roles: There is a generalized understanding of the Spirit as the breath of life permeating all creation and therefore as a source of wisdom and truth; and, parallel to this, there is a particular understanding of the Spirit, involving gifts of wisdom, knowledge, communication, and power given to individuals so they can lead the People of God. These two strands seem to merge in messianic and apocalyptic traditions, which looked forward to a day when the Spirit would come upon the whole world in a new way, ushering in a new age of justice and truth, often through the leadership of one particular figure, ‘the Messiah’. With all this biblical and historical context, we’re now finally ready to dive into the New Testament, and today, specifically the Gospels.

In terms of the internal timeline of the Gospels, the the first references to the Holy Spirit come from Luke. Luke goes out of his way at the start of his Gospel to show that the Spirit is at work. He does this by having multiple characters prophesy before and just after Jesus’ birth. The first comes in the story of the conception of John the Baptist, who is Jesus’ relative and, according to Christian tradition, the last of the prophets of the so-called ’Old Covenant’. An angelic visitor appears to Zechariah, an elderly man, to announce that his with Elizabeth will bear him a son. Two things are important here at the outset: First, barrenness was culturally understood to be a curse (and always the ‘fault’ of the wife). So, a lot is riding on a story like this: It isn’t just a long-awaited blessing and promise of the continuity of family lines and someone to be a caregiver in old age, but also a personal vindication before the community. And second, the Bible uses this trope a lot: Sarah and Hannah both give birth late in their lives, and Rebekah, Rachel, the ‘Shunammite woman’, and the unnamed mother of Samson all have their children after extended struggles to conceive. Second-century Christian tradition also provides the Virgin Mary with a similar backstory, having been conceived when her mother Anna was past child-bearing age. All this lies in the background of the words the angel says to Zechariah:

Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. (Luke 1.13-17)

If we combine subtext and text here, it’s clear that God is up to something big: Zechariah and Elizabeth will be vindicated by having a child, who will grow up to be “great in the sight of the Lord,” and “be filled with the Holy Spirit,” following in the prophetic footsteps of Elijah to “make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” This is nothing short of the return of a long-dormant prophetic ministry! So good is the news that Zechariah struggles to believe it. He is struck dumb until after the child is born, when he too is “filled with the Holy Spirit” and prophesies in his own right, with the stirring words we call the Benedictus: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them” (Luke 1.68).

But we’re already getting ahead of ourselves. For something even bigger is happening during Elizabeth’s pregnancy: namely the conception of Jesus, through the Holy Spirit. As Luke tells the story, the angel Gabriel appears to the young woman Mary, engaged but not yet married, and tells her: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God” (Luke 1.35). Matthew’s version of the story is also clear to attribute Jesus’ conception to the miraculous work of the Spirit, explicitly laying it out in the narrative (1.18) and in a dream sequence in which an angel reassures Mary’s fiancé Joseph of the child’s divine origin: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (1.20-21). There’s also an apocalyptic undertone to this message, as the name Jesus, which is just a version of the name Joshua, means ‘the LORD saves’. Again, God is up to something big here, and it has to do with the salvation of God’s people.

When Mary visits Elizabeth during their pregnancies, Elizabeth too is “filled with the Holy Spirit” and prophesies, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb” (Luke 1.41-42). This prompts Mary to prophesy in turn, the wonderful words known as the Magnificat. While Mary’s prophecy does not specifically mention the Holy Spirit, it definitely picks up on the same “God is doing a big thing to save God’s people!” messaging of the others; in the oft-neglected second half of the oracle she proclaims, in words that could easily come from Isaiah:

He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.
He has come to the aid of his child Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever (Luke 1.51-55)

With all this introduction, it’s a bit surprising that the Holy Spirit is not mentioned in the birth narrative directly. However, Jesus’ birth is accompanied by large scale angelic manoeuvres (something that’s often lost in tradition is that a more honest translation of what we call the ‘heavenly host’ is ‘the armies of heaven’!) and astrological portents.

But the Spirit returns to the narrative in a big way when the infant Jesus is presented to the Temple. There we meet Simeon and Anna, two elderly individuals who have been faithfully devoted to serving God:

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:

“Lord, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word,
for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” (Luke 2.25-32)

Note how often the Spirit is mentioned in this short story! The Spirit “rests” upon Simeon and “reveals” to him the promise that he would see the the fulfillment of his hopes and dreams for his people before he died. He sees in this baby just that, and praises God that he can now die in peace for he has seen the salvation, not only of his own people, but of the whole world.

Then the text introduces Anna, whom Luke calls “a prophet,” who in her widowhood “never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day.” When she sees the infant Christ in the temple, “she came and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2.36.38).

Notice that I’ve now written over 1500 words about the Holy Spirit in the Gospels and have not even gotten past Jesus’ birth narrative! But I think all of this is important, and very intentionally put here by the evangelists (primarily Luke). So in the interest of time and attention, I’ll leave the rest of the Gospels for the next post and end here by reflecting on what all this means.

It is clear from these stories that Luke understood the Holy Spirit to be at work in a powerful way in the births of both John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth. These events involve nothing less than the return of prophecy, not only in the ecstatic oracles of all of the individuals we’ve looked at today, but also in the coming ministry of John. These oracles exuberantly proclaim that God is at work saving God’s people and the whole world through these births. We might call them apocalyptic, but more in the ‘proto-apocalyptic’ sense of Isaiah, with his promises of a day when God would send a new king to bring peace and justice to the world, than later apocalyptic with its strange symbolism and violence. It must also be noted that half of the oracles come from the lips of women, something generally unprecedented in in the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit is doing something big here — and it’s not just for the same old kinds of people.

We’ll have to wait until the next posts to see where Luke takes this, both later in his Gospel, and especially in Acts, which is ‘part 2’ of Luke’s Gospel. But this is as good of a place as any to leave off for today.