Reflecting on the Holy Spirit in the life and ministry of Jesus
Reflections on John Owen’s “Works of John Owen by Goold Vol III & IV”
INTRODUCTION
It is worth telling ourselves that no writer has produced a treatise on the Holy Spirit with as much detail and skill as John Owen has. We normally know John Owen for his ‘Death of Death in the Death of Christ’ and on his works on the power and conquest of indwelling sin. We do not hear too much of Owens masterpiece on the Spirit. In volume III and Volume IV of Goold’s edition of his ‘Works’ we find a special contribution to the theology of the Christian church and an area of thought about the Holy Spirit that frequently is overlooked in our thinking and teaching.
(1) Reasons for John Owen’s Focus on the Holy Spirit.
There are three reasons for John Owen to focus on the Holy Spirit.
1. Historical. Born in 1616, Owen died in 1683. He was 58 when his multi-volumed Pneumatologia began to appear. He could look back over the 150 years since the reformation, he could assess the planting, budding, and flowering of reformed theology, and it’s application to the life of society in seventeenth century Puritanism. He realized that central to the reformation’s re-discovery of the gospel had been the place, person, power of the Holy Spirit. Owen could say that reformed theology was different for it took salvation out of the hands of the church and placed it back into the hands of God where it belonged. In recognizing this he also could see that no comprehensive treatment of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit had been attempted.
‘I know not any who ever went before me in this design of representing the whole economy of the holy Spirit, with all his adjuncts, operations, and effects.’ [Works, III, 7]
2. Polemical. In Owen’s day, as in ours there existed a special need to expound accurately and biblically, the ministry of the Holy Spirit. John Owen did just that. Part of the value of his work for us today is in that he had to fight for this accuracy on two fronts. (i) He faced unbiblical rationalism, which gave little or no place for the Spirit. (ii) He also came up against an unbiblical spiritism that stressed the presence of the spirit’s work and of individual divine revelation, and played down the significance of the scriptures. Exalting the so-called ‘Christ within’ above the Christ of the scriptures. Owen recognized that this had the potential to de-value the word of God.
‘He that would utterly separate the Spirit from the word had as good burn his Bible’ [Works III 192]
3. Personal. Owen was born into a Christian home. A home that was of puritan persuasion. In ‘Works’ XIII 224, Owen admits that his father was ‘a Non-conformist all his days, and a painful labourer [one who ‘took pains’ in his work] in the vineyard of the Lord’ The atmosphere in that home was godly and he was immersed in spiritual experience. But Owen could tell you that there is a great difference in knowing the knowledge of the truth, and knowing the power of the knowledge of the truth. Spiritual things can only be known by the power of the Spirit. John Owen like many worthy theologians before him had to receive and experience the power of the Holy Spirit himself. It could be said of him that he was not only a widely read theologian, but also a believer who had experienced and tasted the power of the Spirit for himself.
Owen’s work on the Holy Spirit is spread throughout his many writings, but is concentrated in volumes III &IV of his ‘Works’ Here he draws attention to a masterly theme, one that is so important ‘The ministry of the Spirit in the life and Ministry of Christ.’
The incarnation is a Trinitarian event. The Father the Son and the Spirit are active. The father prepared a body for his son [Heb 10:5]; the son took hold of the seed of Abraham [Heb 2:14] but, Owen adds, none of these actions could take place apart from the ministry of the Spirit. Two questions arise when we take account the ministry of the Spirit in the Incarnation. Firstly, how did Jesus become fully one with us? And, how did Jesus fully become one with us and, yet remain free from sin?
(i) Jesus was conceived by the power of the Spirit. The conception of Jesus in the womb has all the marks of the Spirit’s operations. The Spirit overshadows the waters in Genesis 1. He overshadows the church at Pentecost in Acts 2. So he comes to Mary. Owen says ‘The framing, forming and miraculous conception of the body of Christ in the womb of the blessed virgin was the peculiar and especial work of the Holy Ghost’ (Matthew 1:18, Matthew 1:20, Luke 1:35.) The person working here is the Holy Spirit. In Owen’s words he is the ‘wonderful operator in this glorious work’
(ii) Jesus was sanctified by the Power of the Spirit. When speaking of the conception Owen states that ‘the human nature of Christ being thus formed in the womb by a creating act of the Holy spirit was in the instant of it’s conception sanctified [Heb 7:26] [Luke 1:35] and filled with grace according to the measure of it’s receptivity’. At the point of conception, according to Owen, Christ was sinless, innocent and spotless. ‘Radically filled with a perfection of grace and wisdom’ [‘Works’ III 169] This was the work of the Holy Spirit in the incarnation. At the very moment of conception the Holy spirit sanctified the human nature of Jesus – he was separate from sinners, he was endowed with fullness of grace, he was holy and harmless, he was undefiled.
The significance for Owen is that the outcome of the Spirit’s ministry is that Jesus is truly man and truly holy. In Jesus humanity and holiness are united, they become the same thing. ‘a perfection’ for the only time since Adam.
(3) The Ministry of Christ and the ministry of the Spirit.
Owen gives us two ways of looking at the Holy Spirit in the ministry of Jesus.
(1) Personal Progress:
In Isaiah 11:1-3 we have a prophecy about the work of the Spirit in the Messiah. John Owen attached great significance to this prophecy. It was by the Spirit that the Messiah would be abundant with wisdom, we can also see this quality in Luke 2:52. We can say that Jesus as the Messiah was sustained and enabled by the Holy Spirit by his continuous presence. The Spirit enabled Jesus to do human things perfectly. The Spirit of God taught Jesus the wisdom of God from the word of God. Jesus grew in the knowledge and wisdom of God through the word of the father constantly revealed and illuminated by the Spirit. Owen declares this in [Works III pp. 170-171] ‘In the representation then, of things anew to the human nature of Christ, the wisdom and knowledge of [his human nature] was objectively increased and in new trials and temptations he experimentally learned the new exercise of grace. And this was the constant work of the Holy Spirit on the human nature of Christ. He dwelt in him in fullness, for he received not him by measure. And continually, upon all occasions he gave out of his unsearchable treasures of grace for exercise in all duties and instances of it. From hence was he habitually holy and from hence did he exercise holiness entirely and universally in all things.’
(2) Public ministry.
Owen gives us a window to what, for him, is distinctive about Jesus’ baptism – it is that in Jesus’ later years he received a fullness of the Spirit’s anointing for public ministry. This does not make him immune from trouble or danger. In fact temptation is seen as a Spirit led occurrence and the function of this is to advance the kingdom of God and pull down the strongholds of the enemy. In Luke we see Jesus powerfully using the sword of the Spirit with confidence and total assurance.
Just as in the incarnation we see the ministry of Jesus as being a Trinitarian ministry The Son of God being led and enabled by the Spirit of God in order to do the work of God.
(4) The Atonement of Christ and the ministry of the Spirit.
In Hebrews 9:13-14 we find a key text to consider the Spirit’s work in the atonement. Old Testament sacrifice is contrasted with the atonement. Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice to cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death. This he did ‘through the eternal Spirit’.
There are two ways of grasping this key text for Owen. One, the text might mean the personal spirit of Jesus, or two the text might mean the Holy Spirit. For Owen if the text ’Eternal Spirit’ means Holy Spirit there are two important facts to consider that the text expresses.
The Sacrifice:
The contrast between the Old Testament sacrifices and the Sacrifice of Jesus was that his sacrifice was an eternal sacrifice, the Old Testament sacrifices could never be said to be eternal for they were continued one after the other. In contrast Jesus’ sacrifice was eternal because it was offered through the Eternal Spirit.
For Owen the text implies the nature of the Spirit’s ministry in the sacrifice of Christ. Supporting and sustaining ministry. The Spirit supported Jesus generally in the decision to conform to the fathers will throughout his life and more particularly in the garden of Gethsamane. Jesus was enabled to give himself to the will of Father by constant dependence of the Spirit. The Spirit supported Jesus, he became for him the comforter (Paraclete), the Spirit that Jesus spoke of in John 14, and the ministry of that Spirit was qualified with authority because the knowledge of this was born out of his own experience. The Spirit sustained him in the breaking of his heart in his contemplation of the coming Calvary and the spirit sustained him in his dying and death. The companion of Jesus throughout his life is the Spirit By his ministry he is encouraged to grow in wisdom and in stature, by his ministry Jesus is upheld, in temptation, in confrontation, in condemnation, in crucifixion, and by the ministry of the Spirit was preserved in the darkness of the tomb.
Owen bears testimony to this in his masterly teaching on the Holy Spirit.
We find in the teaching of Owen a truthfulness to the mercy and ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus – a holy devotion from Spirit to Son.
(5) The Exaltation of Christ and the Ministry of the Spirit.
Owen attributes the resurrection and glorification of Jesus Christ to the ministry of the Spirit. In Gal 1:1 we find reference to the Father who is responsible for raising the son. In John 2:19; 10:38 we find references that suggest the responsibility lay with the Son laying down his life and taking it up again. But rightly Owen notes that in the New Testament there are strands of text that suggest and attribute the responsibility with the Holy Spirit. [Rom 1:4, 1 Tim 3:16, 1 Cor 15:43a & 45-49]
Christ was proclaimed the Son of God in power through the resurrection, the Spirit in the resurrection raised him, and Christ’s resurrection was a transformation. It was resurrection to glorification. From the tomb to the throne Jesus is dependent on the ministry of the Spirit. When we find the texts as above that attribute the role of resurrection to either Father or Son, this is true and right but happens through ministry of the Spirit. The father raises the son through the ministry of the Spirit, the son lays down his life and takes it again through the ministry of the Spirit. Owen states ‘he who first made his nature holy, now made it glorious’.[‘Works’ III p183]
When we contemplate glorification and exaltation, the words of John 16:13-14 are plain. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is in lifegiving, and exaltation to Jesus both in raising from the dead and in constantly giving glory and honour to him.
Conclusion:
John Owens masterly work in volume III of his ‘Works’ on the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus Christ encourages two things when you read it.
(1) It encourages a new joy in the Spirit of God. You can see him working in, through, and upon the conception, birth, life, death, resurrection and glorification of Christ. It reveals that the Spirit is truly the ‘giver of life’, as it says in the creed. It reveals that the Holy Spirit’s activity and ministry is promised to believers in the same manner of lifegiving and sustaining as we find in his ministry with Jesus.
(2) It encourages a new admiration and worship for Jesus. All that Jesus was, did and accomplished in his life were given to him by the Spirit of God. The strength to preach, teach, heal, touch and have compassion was invested in him by the Spirit. The strength to carry on when in difficulties, the words to say when in confrontation were all ministered to him by the Spirit of God.
This declares hope and release to the followers of Jesus today. The ones he promised ‘another comforter’ to. The ones who will guide his church until he returns through the leadership of the Spirit.
Owen’s ‘Works’ Volume III inspires excitement and renewed faith that the Spirit is involved in every aspect of God’s creation and redemption. Jesus declares that all that the Spirit was to him, the Spirit will be to his disciples. For this there is only one response. ‘Thanks be to God’.
