The Spirit of God, as the Third of the Divine Trinity, was the Spirit of God in God’s creation (Gen. 1:2), the Spirit of Jehovah in God’s contact with man (Judg. 3:10; 6:34; 11:29), and the Holy Spirit in the preparation for the incarnation of Christ as the embodiment of God (Luke 1:15, 35; Matt. 1:18). In the New Testament the Holy Spirit is the first divine title ascribed to the Spirit of God. Such a title is not used in the Old Testament. In Psalm 51:11 and Isaiah 63:10-11, Holy Spirit should be translated “Spirit of holiness.”
Before Christ’s resurrection, the Spirit of God possessed only divinity, not humanity.
John 7:39 says, “The Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.”
The word in John 7:39 unveils to us a very strange aspect concerning the Spirit of God; that is, before His glorification, before His resurrection (Luke 24:26), “the Spirit” was not yet, even though the Third of the Divine Trinity as the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jehovah, and the Holy Spirit was there already. This indicates that, after the Lord’s resurrection, the Holy Spirit has become “the Spirit,” who is different from what He was before the Lord’s resurrection. In this point our understanding of the Holy Spirit according to the divine revelation differs from the understanding of Christianity according to their traditional fundamental teaching.
Through and in the resurrection of Christ, the Holy Spirit has become “the Spirit of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:19b). Jesus Christ is the God-man; He is both divine and human; hence, the Spirit of Jesus Christ must possess both the element of divinity and the element of humanity. Andrew Murray saw this divine revelation. We would like to quote from chapter five, concerning the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, of his masterpiece entitled The Spirit of Christ. Please note that our own commentary on what Andrew Murray has said is enclosed in brackets.
...The Son, who had from eternity been with the Father, entered upon a new stage of existence when He became flesh. When He returned to Heaven, He was still the same only-begotten Son of God, and yet not altogether the same. For He was now also, as Son of Man, the first-begotten from the dead, clothed with that glorified humanity which He had perfected and sanctified for Himself. [This is what I call the uplifted humanity. His humanity was not only glorified, perfected, and sanctified, but also uplifted from the human level to the divine level.] And just so the Spirit of God as poured out at Pentecost was indeed something new....[After Christ’s resurrection, on the day of Pentecost the Spirit became something new.] 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....
[Andrew Murray used the word interwoven. I use the word mingled (Lev. 2:4-5). The truth concerning mingling was taught by the church fathers in the second century. But later theologians condemned this term because of some who heretically said that Christ’s humanity and divinity were mingled together to produce a third nature. But the proper definition of mingling according to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary is, “To bring or combine together or with something else so that the components remain distinguishable in the combination.” In other words, two things are mingled together as one entity, but their separate natures remain the same, without the producing of a third nature. Andrew Murray saw the same thing, but he used the word interwoven, as in a textile, instead of the word mingled as used in the type of the meal offering in Leviticus 2:4-5.]
This thought opens up to us further the reason why it is not the Spirit of God as such, but the Spirit of Jesus, that could be sent to dwell in us....Christ came...to bring human nature itself again into the fellowship of the Divine life, to make us partakers of the Divine nature....[This is spoken of in 2 Peter 1:4, which says that we are partakers of the divine nature.] In His own person, having become flesh, He had to sanctify the flesh, and make it a meet and willing receptacle for the indwelling of the Spirit of God....From His 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....And in virtue of His having perfected in Himself a new holy human nature [the uplifted humanity] on our behalf, He could now communicate what previously had no existence—a life at once human and Divine....
[Thus, we see that Jesus is God mingled with man, the God-man, and His Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, who possesses both the human nature and the divine nature.]
...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....He can now come down to witness of the perfect union of the Divine and the human, and in becoming our life, to make us partakers of it....
...The Holy Spirit descends as a Person to dwell in believers, and to make the glorified Jesus a Present Reality within them.