The original Nicene Creed of 325 ends with the words, “and in the Holy Spirit.” Period. Full stop (followed by an appended statement condemning Arianism). Strikingly, nothing more is confessed about the Spirit. Subsequently, among the additions and changes made by the First Council of Constantinople in 381, the article on the Spirit was significantly expanded. Along with the important addition made later in the eleventh century by the Western church, its widely received form reads: “And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; who spoke through the prophets.” In view of the continuing prevalence after 325 of Arianism and other errors, no doubt a major reason for the Council’s expansion was the perceived need to affirm, as it does definitely and emphatically, the full and essential deity of the Holy Spirit, coequal with the Father and the Son.
Notable in this expansion is the sole designation of the Spirit, in apposition grammatically, as “the Lord and Giver of life.” Of the vast wealth biblically that could be confessed appropriately about the Spirit, what prompted the Council to identify the Spirit with this particular appellative? Its scope would appear to be comprehensive, having in view the Spirit’s activity beginning at creation (Gen. 1:2; 2:7) and including his continuing presence as Lord in sovereignly controlling all that transpires in history and within the creation. This article will not probe this historical question further. Instead, my focus will be on biblical usage that describes the Spirit as the “Giver of life.” Where this and closely related language occurs in Scripture, this examination shows that the life-giving activity ascribed to the Spirit is (a) eschatological, (b) primarily soteriological, and (c) qualified Christologically. Regarding the final point, the Spirit is the giver of eternal life based on and stemming from the finished work and continuing activity of Christ. The Spirit as life-giving, then, is at the heart of the salvation offered in the gospel; apart from that life-giving activity there is no gospel, no salvation, no eternal life.
The most direct reference to the Spirit as “life-giving” is found in 1 Corinthians 15:45. The significance of this reference will concern us presently. Most closely related linguistically and also substantively is 2 Corinthians 3:6: “… the Spirit gives life.” In Romans 8, as God the Father has raised Jesus from the dead, “he will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you” (v. 11); this is so because “the Spirit is life” (v. 10), because the Spirit is “the Spirit of life” (v. 2). Here, clearly, the eternal life the Spirit gives is not some timeless, ahistorical energy or vitality but is specifically resurrection-life; his life-giving activity is soteriological and eschatological.
These statements of Paul align with that of Jesus: “It is the Spirit who gives life” (John 6:63). The confession of Peter in the near context shows that this life is the eternal life” (6:68) that Jesus gives to whom he wills in raising them up “on the last day” (6:39, 40, 44, 54). Elsewhere, in 1 Peter 3:18, though a reference to the Spirit is disputed (compare different translations), most likely in my view Christ’s resurrection is described as his being “made alive in the Spirit” (NIV).
This brief survey of biblical references associating the Spirit with life and giving life suffices to show the accuracy of the statement made above: The life the Spirit gives is notably eschatological and soteriological, for it is nothing less than resurrection-life, whether Christ’s or believers’.
In 1 Corinthians 15:45, the final clause reads: “the last Adam became the life-giving Spirit” (my translation). As noted earlier, this is the most direct reference in Scripture to the Spirit as life-giving. Though the terms used differ slightly (one is a participle, the other a verbal adjective), the Greek for “life-giving” in this text (ζῳοποιοῦν) and in the Creed (Ζωοποιόν) is the same.
A decision has to be made. Should πνεῦμα (pneuma) be translated “Spirit” (with the “S” capitalized), as I have, and so taken as referring to the Holy Spirit? Or should it be translated “spirit” (lower case) with some other reference than the Spirit in view, as do most English translations (ESV, NKJV/KJV, NIV, NASB, N/RSV)?
One reason presumably for these translations’ resistance to capitalizing is that to do so appears to lend credence to anti-trinitarian views. But that hesitation, however understandable, is unnecessary. Verse 45 is not expressing essential inner-trinitarian relationships; those eternal relationships are outside its purview. Its affirmation is not to be taken in an ontological sense, as if Paul is denying or blurring the personal distinction between the second and third persons of the Trinity. The trinitarian conception of God underlying this passage and essential to his theology as a whole is clear enough elsewhere in his letters, explicit, for instance, in the personal and parallel distinction between God (the Father), Christ as Lord, and the (Holy) Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12:4‒6, 2 Corinthians 13:14, and Ephesians 4:4‒6.
The focus of verse 45 is clearly historical, on what has taken place in history. Two considerations within the final clause show that. First, in view is what Christ “became,” not who he is eternally but what has transpired with him in history, what he experienced, as the immediate context shows, in the unfolding of redemptive-history to its resurrection-consummation. Second, what he “became” occurred in his specific identity as “the last Adam,” “the second man,” (v. 47), contrasted with “the first man Adam.” Christ is clearly in view as he has become incarnate in history, in his assumed humanity,
not his immutable deity.
The Spirit as life-giving...is at the heart of the salvation offered in the gospel.
Despite the hesitation of the translations noted above, that the reference in verse 45 is to the Holy Spirit is recognized across a broad front of commentaries and works on Paul’s theology. Among Reformed interpreters, to name several likely known to many readers of this article, this is the view of Herman Bavinck, Geerhardus Vos, John Murray, and Herman Ridderbos.
The following exegetical observations support this view. First, as already noted in the survey above, most closely related linguistically to the phrase in verse 45 is 2 Corinthians 3:6: “the Spirit gives life.” Here there is little doubt that the subject is “the Spirit of the living God” introduced in verse 3 and central to the entire discourse in chapter 3. The references in 1 Corinthians 15:45 and 2 Corinthians 3:6 have in common that, in both, the active subject of the verb (“make alive”) is the same. This leads to the conclusion that, as in the latter verse, the subject is clearly the Holy Spirit, so that is also the case in the former.
Secondly, the identification of Christ as the life-giving Spirit is deeply embedded in its immediate and broader context in 1 Corinthians 15. There, beginning at verse 12 and continuing to the end of the chapter, Paul’s controlling concern is the bodily resurrection of both Christ and Christians. (The resurrection of non-Christians, while affirmed by Paul elsewhere in Acts 24:15, is not within the purview of this passage; throughout the resurrection is a positive, climactically saving event.)
Within the immediate context, verses 42‒49, the uniqueness of Christ as the last Adam become the life-giving Spirit is clearly prominent. At the same time, however, as the life-giving Spirit he is also in view as the first instance of bodily resurrection, of the resurrection body, like his, that believers will receive at this return. Earlier verse 20 expressed what in effect is the thesis that controls much of the argument in this epochal chapter as a whole: Christ in his resurrection is “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” An unbreakable bond in resurrection exists between Christ and Christians.
An unbreakable bond in resurrection exists between Christ and Christians.
To extend the firstfruits metaphor, as Paul surely intends, the age-to-come, eschatological resurrection harvest that at the end of history will include the believers’ bodily resurrection has already begun; it has entered history in Christ’s resurrection. In the flow of the chapter’s argumentation, as Christ is the resurrection-firstfruits, he is the life-giving Spirit; and as the life-giving Spirit, he is the resurrection-firstfruits. His resurrection is the timepoint, not some other, when, as the last Adam, he became the life-giving Spirit.
Christ, as the life-giving Spirit, then, is the initial, firstfruits instance of bodily resurrection, the body marked by imperishability, glory, and power (vv. 42‒44). In a word, all told, this body is “Spiritual” (note the capitalization; vv. 44, 46). This adjective is a single-word summarizing label. It does not mean that the make-up or composition of the resurrection body, its substance, is non-physical or immaterial—a misconception still all too prevalent—but describes bodies as enlivened and radically transformed by the Holy Spirit; note again Romans 8:11 cited in the survey above: as God did for Christ Jesus in raising him from the dead, he “will also give life to your mortal bodies through the Spirit who dwells in you.” Vos is worth quoting at length at this point.
This adjective Pneumatikon [Spiritual] expresses the quality of the body in the eschatological state. Every thought of immaterialness, or etherealness or absence of physical density ought to be kept carefully removed from the term. Whatever in regard to such qualifications may or may not be involved; it is certain that such traits, if existing, are not described here by the adjective in question. In order to keep far such misunderstandings the capitalizing of the word ought to be carefully guarded both in translation and otherwise: πνευματικόν [spiritual] almost certainly leads on the wrong track, whereas Πνευματικόν [Spiritual] not only sounds a note of warning, but in addition points in the right direction positively. Paul means to characterize the resurrection-state as the state in which the Pneuma [Spirit] rules. (The Pauline Eschatology, 166‒167)
Further reinforcing this observation, all of the multiple occurrences of the adjective in Paul with one exception (Eph. 6:12) refer in various ways to the activity of the Holy Spirit.
Verse 45 functions as Scriptural support (“Thus it is written …”) for the contrast in verses 42‒44 between the pre-resurrection (“sown”) and resurrection bodies of Christians. Consequently, on the positive resurrection side of that contrast, the Last Adam become the life-giving Spirit in his resurrection serves to establish and anchor the preceding description of the resurrection body as Spiritual; as correlate noun and adjective, “Spirit” (v. 45) and “Spiritual” (v. 44) are mutually clarifying. This points to the conclusion that as the adjective describes the resurrection body transformed by the Spirit, so the linked noun refers to the person of the Spirit.
These two lines of exegetical reflections—(1) the noun subject and its active verb in 1 Corinthians 15:45 and 2 Corinthians 3:6 are the same, and (2) the semantic tie between the noun and its corresponding adjective on the positive side of the contrast in 1 Corinthians 15:44‒46— show that the life-giving Spirit in 1 Corinthians 15:45 is the Holy Spirit.
The point of verse 45 in its immediate context, then, is that the resurrection-change in view brought about a conjunction or oneness between the incarnate Christ and the Holy Spirit of a magnitude that did not exist previously. Two related aspects are involved. For Christ, the resurrection resulted in (1) an unprecedented transformation by the Spirit and, with that, (2) an unparalleled possession of the Spirit. This transformation and possession were so climactic, so complete and permanent, that Christ and the Spirit are now in some sense one. Paul deems that oneness is expressed adequately and appropriately by saying that Christ, as the last Adam, became the life-giving Spirit.
This oneness, it should be immediately noted, exists and is qualified in a specific respect. Paul does not say simply that the last Adam is or became the Spirit; the qualification “life giving” is all-important. The oneness or unity in view consists in their unified activity of giving life. In terms of the distinction between the ontological and economic Trinity, this equation reflects the latter (economic), always keeping in mind that it involves the transformation in history experienced by the person of the Son as the last Adam, in his human nature. Other suitable designations are functional, understood in terms of the consequent life-giving activity involved, or, given the resurrection-quality of that life, eschatological. In view is their conjoint, unified saving activity, an activity that does not obliterate or compromise the personal trinitarian distinction between Christ and the Spirit. Beginning with his resurrection and continuing in his state of exaltation, it is now the case not simply that the Spirit makes alive but that Christ as functionally one with the Spirit makes alive.
The preceding sentence prompts observing that “heaven” and “heavenly” applied to Christ in verses 47‒49 are exaltation predicates, describing him in terms of the place of his bodily presence not only as resurrected but also as subsequently ascended and now at the right hand of God. As exalted, he is now active as the life-giving Spirit.
This discussion of 1 Corinthians 15:45 may be rounded off with a couple of further observations. The absence of a definite article before “life-giving Spirit” in the Greek text does not show that the Holy Spirit is not in view. Paul regularly refers to the (Holy) Spirit without the article, for instance, the references to the Spirit without the definite article in the Greek of Romans 8:9. Also, given the outlook of Scripture in general and of Paul in particular, it is appropriate to ask: what meaning could “a life-giving spirit” possibly have as a description of what Christ has become by virtue of his resurrection? The response of Christ to the fearful apostles after his resurrection would appear to settle that question: “For a spirit (pneuma) does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39; cf. 37). My hope is that in the future when readers of this article see “a life-giving spirit” in one or other translation of 1 Corinthians 15:45, they will think “the life-giving Spirit.”
The final clause in 1 Corinthians 15:45 connects closely, and its meaning is further substantiated by what Paul writes later in 2 Corinthians 3:17‒18: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, … For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
Quoting Bavinck,
This taking possession of the Holy Spirit by Christ is so absolute an appropriation that the apostle Paul can say of it in 2 Corinthians 3:17 that the Lord (that is, Christ as the exalted Lord) is the Spirit. Naturally Paul does not by that statement mean to obliterate the distinction between the two, for in the following verse he immediately speaks again of the Spirit of the Lord (or, as another translation has it, of the Lord of the Spirit). But the Holy Spirit has become entirely the property of Christ, and was, so to speak, absorbed into Christ or assimilated by Him. By His resurrection and ascension Christ has become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). (The Wonderful Works of God, 368)
Here, as in 1 Corinthians 15:45, Paul’s focus is on what has transpired in the history of redemption with the incarnate Christ, with who he is in terms of his humanity. “The Lord” is specifically Christ as exalted, and the equation affirmed between Christ and the Spirit is based on Christ’s unprecedented, indeed consummate transformation by and possession of the Spirit experienced in his resurrection. The identity affirmed in saying “the Lord is the Spirit” is a oneness or unity in their activity, an identity that does not deny but keeps intact the personal distinction between them and the unchanged
deity of each.
This conjoint activity, 2 Corinthians 3:17–18 also shows, is present as well as future. Believers are already in the process of being conformed to the glory-image of the exalted “Lord who is the Spirit” (v. 18). While the life-giving activity in 1 Corinthians 15:45 is realized in the future in the bodily resurrection of believers, in 2 Corinthians 3:17, in view is the “freedom” inherent in that eschatological life presently enjoyed by believers in their union with Christ. The regimen or order (“law”) put into effect by the death and resurrection of Christ is such that already “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free …” (Rom. 8:2 NASB; “the life-giving Spirit in Christ Jesus has set you free” NET).
All told, we may say the apostle would expect his original readers in Corinth, and all subsequent readers, to understand that the “is” in 2 Corinthians 3:17 and 18 is based on the “became” in 1 Corinthians 15:45. Christ, the last Adam, resurrected and ascended, is and remains the life-giving Spirit, the exalted Lord who is the Spirit.
Looking now beyond this teaching of Paul elsewhere in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 15:45 may be aptly seen, in effect, as a one-sentence commentary on the significance of Pentecost. In Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost, the primary point is not the presence of the Holy Spirit with the associated remarkable sight and sound phenomena, as significant as all that was, but Christ; the Spirit came down, and Peter preaches Christ (Acts 2:14–40). As the sermon unfolds, verses 32–33 express this culminating conclusion following his crucifixion: “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.”
The multiple events that Peter delineates here—resurrection, ascension, reception of the Spirit in the ascension, and outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost—though temporally distinct, constitute a single and unified composite of inseparable events. This event complex of redemptive-historical fulfillment Paul telescopes and encapsulates by saying that the resurrected last Adam has become the life-giving Spirit.
Further, the overall narrative in Luke-Acts shows that 1 Corinthians 15:45 hardly means that the relationship of the incarnate Christ with the Holy Spirit only begins with his resurrection. This relationship is one that progresses as it unfolds in stages. It originates already with his birth—in fact, at his conception by the Spirit (Luke 1:35)—heightens at the onset of his public ministry at his baptism (Luke 3:22), and reaches its climactic and consummate realization in his resurrection and ascension.
The most decisive progression is from Christ’s state of humiliation to his state of exaltation: At the Jordan, Christ received the Spirit as endowment necessary for the task facing him as the Messiah, a task “to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt. 3:15) that culminated in his atoning death. In his ascension he received the Spirit promised by the Father as the reward for that task now behind him and successfully completed. This reward he does not keep for himself (“not for [his] own private use” is Calvin’s arresting phrase). But instead, as the culminating fruit of his redemptive work, at Pentecost the Spirit becomes his consummate gift to the church.
The full trinitarian involvement of all three Persons, both at the Jordan and on Pentecost, should not be missed.
“After the creation and the incarnation, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the third great work of God” (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:500). This striking statement highlights that Pentecost is far from being a paradigm for the individual experience of the Spirit had by some Christians in distinction from others in appropriating the benefits of salvation (ordo salutis). Rather, Pentecost, so inseparably connected with Christ’s resurrection and ascension, is the culminating event in the once-for-all accomplishment of salvation (historia salutis).
Turning to John’s Gospel, we see that the single event-complex inseparability in view in Acts 2:32‒33—Christ’s resurrection, his ascension-reception, and his Pentecost-donation of the Spirit—is reinforced in John 7:37‒39. In 7:38, Jesus declares that the hearts of those who believe in him will become sources of “living water.” This prompts John’s parenthetical insertion in 7:39, writing from his post-Pentecost perspective, that Jesus was speaking about the Spirit whom believers were to receive in the future, with the further explanation that “as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
According to John 7:39, (1) there is a certain “not yet” of the Spirit, a future coming of the Spirit, and (2) this coming of the Spirit is linked to the glorification of Jesus; the Spirit is in view as a benefit secured by Christ’s death and resulting from his exaltation. What is articulated more fully in Acts 2:32‒33 is stated here in a telescoped, briefer way, akin to 1 Corinthians 15:45.
The latter part of John 7:39 should be taken at face value; its epochal absoluteness should not be missed or toned down. Getting its sense may be helped by the terseness of a more literal translation: “For the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” These two “not yet” occurrences are categorical: no glorification of Jesus, no Spirit.
This absoluteness, to head off a misunderstanding, does not mean that John is overlooking or denying the obvious, that prior to Christ’s glorification the Spirit was clearly present and active in the creation in general and particularly at work among God’s old covenant people as well as in Jesus’s earthly ministry. Rather, in view is a new state of affairs in the future, one that did not exist previously: the Spirit will be present, not as he was previously, based in anticipation of the future glorification of Christ, but now on the basis of and as the consequence of his glorification having actually occurred.
In John 7:39, the ”not yet” of the Spirit—the future coming of the Spirit contingent on the glorification of Jesus—has in view a once-for-all historia salutis event, a climactic event in the history of redemption; it is not an ordo salutis component, an aspect in the ongoing application of redemption and appropriation of the benefits secured by the accomplished redemption, as essential as that application is. The primary significance of the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost is not found in Christian experience, whether of those present on that occasion or subsequently. That significance is Christological, as Pentecost is inseparably correlated with Christ’s glorification—his death, resurrection, and ascension—in their epochal, once-for-all significance.
Subsequently in John’s Gospel, chapters 14‒16, Jesus expands on this glorification-effected bond between himself and the Spirit. Everything said in this regard stems from and pivots on his ascension, his “going to the Father” (14:12). A central thread runs throughout the entire discourse: for the Spirit to come and be present, Jesus must depart bodily. However, this ascension-departure does not mean that the disciples will be abandoned. To the contrary, his departure will be to their decided advantage (16:7–15), for in ascending he will send the Spirit; he will ask the Father in his (Jesus’s) name to send “the Spirit of truth” as the disciples’ “Helper,” their “Advocate” (14:16–17, 26; 15:26; 16:7).
But not only that, for in his bodily departure Jesus himself will not abandon the disciples: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (14:18). Clearly, in context (vv. 19–20), this coming will not be the return of Jesus at the end of history, nor his temporary post-resurrection appearances prior to his ascension. Rather, as the Spirit in his coming is the disciples’ “other” Helper (14:16), Jesus in his ascension will remain their Helper-Advocate (1 John 2:1).
In John 14:18, then, Jesus affirms that the Spirit’s coming following his ascension will be his own coming. Here again, with the personal distinction between them kept clear and uncompromised, in their presence and activity in the church and within believers Jesus and the Spirit are unified, one. Here again, in John 14–16, in view is the truth of the climactic Pentecost event-complex delineated in Acts 2:32–33 and encapsulated in 1 Corinthians 15:45: Christ is now, as he has become in his exaltation, the life-giving Spirit.
The elements of bread and cup...signify and seal his presence, his real communing with the congregation and within those who partake by faith.
As noted above in Luke-Acts, in John 14–16 the full trinitarian involvement of all three Persons is apparent.
Briefly, as it must necessarily be here, I will note the following about the Western church’s eleventh-century addition of filioque (“and the Son”) to the Latin version of the Creed. The biblical warrant for that addition is in the background and reflected in the relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit in John 14–16, but that warrant is not directly in view there. The procession or spiration of the Spirit from the Father and the Son affirmed in the Creed is eternal; the sending of the Spirit by the Father and the Son in John is redemptive-historical. The former is the action of the Son in his deity, the latter is unintelligible apart from his incarnation, dependent on the salvation he has accomplished in his assumed humanity.
To confess with the Nicene Creed, “the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life,” is to confess what is true, in large part, because of the truth already confessed that “the only-begotten Son of God … for us and our salvation came down from heaven,” with all that is then further confessed about the incarnate Son. To the extent that the life the Spirit gives is eternal, the eschatological life of the age to come—and this is surely where Scripture, especially the New Testament, by far places the emphasis—that Spirit-given life is specifically Christ’s resurrection-life shared with those in union with him by faith. This is because, in being resurrected, Christ has become the life-giving Spirit and is the now glorified Lord who is the Spirit. By virtue of his incarnation leading through his state of humiliation to his present state of exaltation, the Son and the Spirit, without any compromise of their essential deity and the personal distinction between them, are now inseparably united, one in their presence and activity in the life of the church and within believers.
This functional oneness opens up the widest of perspectives. Here, only able to do so briefly, I note several aspects, chosen somewhat randomly but each important.
1. In giving the Great Commission, Jesus, now resurrected and soon to ascend, brackets it—its bookends, so to speak—with empowering sanctions. Expressed on either side is an indicative that grounds the world-wide discipling imperative of verse 19: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (v. 18) and “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (v. 20).
On the one side, verse 18 is not a declaration of the immutable omnipotence Jesus possesses as God’s Son, for he speaks of authority he has been “given,” that is, authority and dominion, universal in its scope, that he previously did not have but now does, specifically that he did not have before his resurrection and now does as resurrected.
Similarly, while verse 20 surely entails the divine omnipresence of Jesus, as authorizing and grounding the Great Commission, it is also fairly seen as including a promise that anticipates Pentecost. While Matthew’s Gospel ends on this note, in Acts 2 Luke documents how on the Day of Pentecost Christ begins to make good on that promise by sending the Spirit. Christ, become the life-giving Spirit, will be with his church in the power of the Spirit “to the end of the age.” Until his return he will always be active in and with the Spirit, faithfully supplying the church, “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic,” corporately and each member individually, with everything needed for its life and worldwide mission. That empowering presence makes the Great Commission surpassingly grand in its realization and its ultimate success certain.
2. A much mooted question, especially since the time of the Reformation, concerns the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. Keeping in mind his identity as the life-giving Spirit helps to clarify and focus, with all of the sublime mystery involved, sound and proper understanding of and participation in the Supper. The elements of bread and cup, far from being merely bare representations, signify and seal his presence, his real communing with the congregation and within those who partake by faith. Because in his glorified humanity he is the Lord who is the Spirit, he is both bodily absent there in heaven at God’s right hand and yet truly present here on earth wherever the congregation observes and celebrates the Supper.
This sacramental presence, Reformed theology rightly holds, is “Spiritual” (note the capitalization) in maintaining the requisite balance between bodily absence and real presence. However, that designation should not in any way be taken to mean or suggest that in the Supper the Spirit replaces Christ who is remote from the congregation or is the substitute for Christ who remains only at a distance. Recall what he said, “I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you” (John 14:18), promising what would be true after his bodily departure in his ascension and the consequent sending of the Spirit by the Father in his name. As he, the life-giving Spirit, is pervasively present in all the concerns of the church and in every aspect of the lives of believers (Matt. 28:20), his sacramental presence in the Supper is his genuinely real presence.
3. Nowhere is the unified conjoint activity of Christ and the Spirit in the lives of Christians more succinctly evident than in Romans 8:9–10: “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.”
Here the four parallel phrases occurring for the believer’s relationship to Christ and the Spirit— “you in the Spirit,” “the Spirit … in you,” you in Christ (the implied positive antithesis to the negative “does not belong to him”), and “Christ … in you”—do not refer, in pie chart-like fashion, to four different sectors of separate relationships in the experience of believers but to a single relationship with Christ and the Spirit in its fullness, a fullness in their experience (ordo salutis) because of what is true in back of their experience in the experience of Christ (historia salutis), because he has become the life-giving Spirit and because the Spirit is now “the Spirit
of Christ.” Elsewhere, in Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3, the “Spirit in your inner being” and “Christ … in your hearts” (vv. 16–17) are interchangeable, and in Galatians 2:20, often quoted and memorized, “Christ who lives in me” does so as he has become the life-giving Spirit.
As the discourse unfolds in Romans 8 and further light is shed on this conjoint, indwelling presence and activity, revealed is a most important—perhaps the most
important—truth we need to know about prayer. In verses 26–27, we learn of the intercession of the Spirit indwelling believers and then in verse 34 of the “more than
that” intercession of Christ “at the right hand of God.”
The fundamental “weakness” of our existence in “this present time” (v. 18), that is, until Christ returns, affects our prayers (v. 26). In all of our praying there is a deeply rooted and pervasive ignorance; “we do not know what we ought to pray for” (v. 26 NIV). Left to ourselves in prayer, too often we are more or less, in one way or another, perplexed, uncertain, ambivalent, lacking in concentration, plagued with doubts.
But the good news is that in prayer we are not left to ourselves. In what we might call our prayer poverty, the Spirit “helps” us, and that prayer help is specifically his richly efficacious intercession for us. Unlike our prayers, lacking, flawed, and weak, his intercession is completely, perfectly, and powerfully “according to the will of God.” And mirroring this intercession for us is the self-same sublimely efficacious intercession, in tandem so to speak, of Christ in heaven.
In our all-too-weak praying we can nonetheless be confident: our prayer lives are in good hands, doubly good hands, all because Christ ascended is now, as he has become, the life-giving Spirit.