At this point I would like to say a further word concerning the Person of the Lord Jesus and His work. The Lord’s Person is His being, His existence, and His work is His ministry or His office. Therefore, with the Lord Jesus there is the matter of His Person and the matter of His ministry. For His Person He had the Holy Spirit as His intrinsic essence from the time of His conception. This is the Spirit for the Lord’s being, for His existence. He was constituted of the Holy Spirit as the intrinsic essence of His being when He was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary. Hence, He was born with the Holy Spirit as His essence. In other words, He was born with the essential Spirit for His Person, being, existence.
For thirty years the Lord Jesus lived on earth by the Holy Spirit as the intrinsic essence of His Person. Then at the age of thirty He came forth to work, to minister, to fulfill His office. For His ministry He needed the Holy Spirit in a further way, not essentially but economically. After He was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form as a dove. This was the Holy Spirit coming upon the Lord economically for the carrying out of God’s economy through the Lord’s ministry.
It is very important that we see these two aspects of the Holy Spirit—the essential aspect and the economical aspect. The essential aspect of the Holy Spirit is for the Person, the being, the existence, of the Lord Jesus. The economical aspect of the Spirit is for the Lord’s work, ministry, and office.
I can testify that for more than fifty years I have been studying the Bible for the purpose of understanding these aspects of the Holy Spirit. In 1934 I was given the responsibility of editing the paper entitled The Christian. For that paper I wrote some articles on the two aspects of the Holy Spirit—the inward aspect for life and the outward aspect for work. However, only in recent years have I seen clearly that the inward aspect of the Holy Spirit, which we may call the indwelling of the Spirit, is a matter of the essential Spirit, the Spirit for essence, being, existence, and that the outward aspect of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit coming upon us, is the economical Spirit for work, for service. The outward aspect is not a matter of essence for existence; it is a matter of economy related to the work and ministry we render to God and the office we fulfill.
In principle, both aspects of the Holy Spirit are the same with us as they were with the Lord Jesus. With Him there was the essential aspect for His Person and the economical aspect for His ministry. With us, there is also the essential aspect of the Spirit for our existence as regenerated believers, and there is the outward aspect of the Spirit for our Christian work.
For many years I was not able to understand or explain adequately why the Lord Jesus, who was conceived of the Holy Spirit and who lived by the Spirit for thirty years, still needed the Spirit to descend upon Him at the time of His baptism. When He was baptized, did He not already have the Spirit within Him? Certainly He already had the Spirit inwardly. Then why did the Spirit descend upon Him? This definitely does not indicate that there are two Spirits, one who indwelt the Lord Jesus and one who descended upon Him. Since there is only one Spirit (Eph. 4:4), how could this one Spirit both indwell the Lord Jesus and descend upon Him? The answer to this question lies with understanding that with the one Spirit there are two aspects, the essential aspect and the economical aspect.
Through years of study not only of the Bible but also of other writings, we have been enlightened to see the essential and economical aspects of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we have the confidence to say that the indwelling Spirit is essential; it is a matter of essence for being, for existence. The outward aspect of the Spirit is economical; it is for the fulfilling of an office and the carrying out of the ministry that accomplishes God’s economy. This economical aspect is not for existence, for being. Rather, this aspect of the Holy Spirit is for work, for ministry. Praise the Lord for these two aspects of the Holy Spirit!
In Luke 3:21 and 22 we see that the Lord Jesus as the Man-Savior was inaugurated into His office and ministry by two steps. These two steps are baptism in water and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. After the Lord Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, God the Father sent the Holy Spirit upon the Lord economically for His ministry. It was in this way that the Man-Savior was inaugurated.