Let us now add many more things to our illustration in this way:
We have seen what Christ is; now we must see what the Spirit is. Again, when we say “what,” we are speaking of the substance, the essence. What is the substance or essence of the Spirit?
In John 7:39, we find a clause that is quite strange: “for the Holy Spirit was not yet given....” The word “given” is in italics, meaning that this word is not in the Greek text. At that time the Spirit of God was already present, but here it says that the Holy Spirit was not yet! Why? The verse continues: “because that Jesus was not yet glorified.” Do we realize the meaning of this verse? First of all, we must see what the glorification of the Lord Jesus is, and when He was glorified.
Many of us think the Lord was glorified when He was taken up into the heavens, but this is not accurate. If we read Luke 24:26, we will see that by the resurrection the Lord was glorified. “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?” After His resurrection, He met two disciples on the way to Emmaus and told them He had already entered into His glory. This word was spoken before His ascension, but after His resurrection.
What does glorification mean? We know that the Lord, the God of glory, became incarnated one day as a man. The very God of glory came into man and clothed Himself with man. All of His divine glory was concealed within this man. He was an ordinary man, but within Him was the God of glory. However, through His death and resurrection, the glory within Him was released. He was like a grain of wheat, or the seed of a beautiful flower. Within the seed is the glory of the flower, concealed and veiled. But once the seed falls into the earth, dies, and then grows up, the glory of the flower is released. Thus, through the Lord’s death and resurrection, His very glory as God was manifested.
Why was the Holy Spirit “not yet” when the Lord was on this earth? Because Jesus was not yet glorified. It was after His resurrection and glorification that the Holy Spirit came. In the morning He was resurrected, and in the evening He came to His disciples and breathed on them, saying, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). The Holy Spirit, therefore, is the Spirit of the glorified Jesus.
In the entire Old Testament, the title “Holy Spirit” cannot be found. (“Thy holy spirit” in Psalm 51:11 should be “the Spirit of Thy holiness” according to the Hebrew, and “his holy Spirit” in Isaiah 63:10-11 should also be “the Spirit of His holiness.” See Darby’s New Translation.) This title, “Holy Spirit,” began to be used in the New Testament when the Lord Jesus was about to be brought in and incarnated in the womb of Mary (Luke 1:15, 35; Matt. 1:18). The title, Holy Spirit, therefore, has something to do with God mingling Himself with man. In the Old Testament, there was not such a mingling, although many times the Spirit of God came upon the prophets and certain other persons. At that time God was only God, and from God, the Spirit of God came down. He was God only, nothing more. But in the New Testament, the Triune God-the Son, with the Father, in the Spirit-became incarnated in man. He lived upon this earth for thirty-three and a half years, experiencing all of human living. He passed through death, conquering and subduing it, and entered into resurrection, with which, as we have seen, is glorification. Through all these experiences the Spirit of God came to us as the Holy Spirit, including all the elements of divinity, humanity, human living, the effectiveness of death and the power of resurrection.
We must realize that the Holy Spirit in the New Testament is different from the Spirit of God in the Old Testament. The Spirit of God in the Old Testament was only of one element, divinity, because He was solely the Spirit of God. But the Holy Spirit today in the New Testament is of many elements, including the divine nature, the human nature, the effectiveness of Christ’s death, and the power of His resurrection. Andrew Murray in his book The Spirit of Christ says:
The Spirit of God as poured out on Pentecost was indeed something new. Through the Old Testament He was always called the Spirit of God or the Spirit of the Lord; the name of Holy Spirit He did not yet bear as His own proper name. It is only in connection with the work He has to do in preparing the way for Christ, and a body for Him, that the proper name comes into use (Luke 1:15, 35). When poured out at Pentecost, He came as the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, the Spirit of the Incarnate, crucified, and exalted Christ, the bearer and communicator to us, not of the life of God as such, but of that life as it had been interwoven into human nature in the person of Christ Jesus. It is in this capacity specially that He bears the name of Holy Spirit...
In the following paragraphs of his book, Brother Murray continues:
From His [Christ’s] nature, as it was glorified in the resurrection and ascension, His Spirit came forth as the Spirit of His human life, glorified into the union with the Divine, to make us partakers of all that He had personally wrought out and acquired, of Himself and His glorified life.... In virtue of His having perfected in Himself a new holy human nature on our behalf, He could now communicate what previously had no existence-a life at once human and Divine....In our place, and on our behalf, as man and the Head of man, He was admitted into the full glory of the Divine, and His human nature constituted the receptacle and the dispenser of the Divine Spirit. And the Holy Spirit could come down as the Spirit of the God-man- most really the Spirit of God, and yet as truly the Spirit of man.
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