And Simon Peter answered and said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said to him,…. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. – Matt. 16:16-18
But these have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. – John 20:31
But this He said concerning the Spirit, whom those who believed were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified. – John 7:39
But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from among the dead dwells in you, He who raised Jesus from among the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. – Rom. 8:11
When Christ our life is manifested, then you also shall be manifested with Him in glory. – Col. 3:4
And He subjected all things under His feet, and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church, Which is His Body, the fullness of the One who fills all in all. – Eph. 1:22f
[Emphasis added]
Any message from the Bible or interpretation of the scriptures that ignores the crucial elements of Christ, the Spirit, life and the church will surely miss the mark. But, in these scriptures we see a sketch of something wonderful in God’s working.
Continuing from Part 2, we will pick up with John 7:39.
The Spirit to be given
In John chapter 6 (vv. 51-55), Jesus reveals Himself as “the bread” by which the world may obtain life. This, of course, is precisely parallel to God’s original offering in the Garden of Eden where God offered Himself to man as food (the Tree of Life).
Now, in chapter 7, Jesus offers Himself to man as drink. In verse 37, He clearly says, “come to Me and drink.” Then, verse 39 clarifies this further saying, “But this He said concerning the Spirit.”
The rest of verse 39 has been troubling to many in classical Christianity over the years precisely because most of Christianity has an extremely limited understanding of the economy of God.
Allow me to take a brief aside here to talk about what is meant by the “economy” of God. The Greek word oikonomia, from which we get our English word “economy,” comes from two roots: oikos, meaning a house, dwelling; and nomos, which means law. So, strictly speaking oikonomos means the household law or rules, and is variously rendered in the scriptures to be “stewardship,” “dispensing” or similarly.
The very term “economy” implies time: If there is not the passage time, there is no need for a dispensing or a stewardship. Of course, we time-dwellers do not have same viewpoint as the Eternal God. We, in fact, find it quite difficult to imagine an “eternity” (past or future) in which time is not a factor. Nevertheless, that is where God dwells.
Therefore, there are two ways to look at God. In His eternal essential being He is timeless, unchanging, omniscient, omnipresent, and much, much more. However, when He involved Himself with man in “time”—between eternity past and eternity future—He also become “economical,” because in time there is change and the need for an ongoing management and dispensing—hence, the economy of God.
With this in view, let us consider what is being said in John 7:39. The troubling part to classical Christian theologians has been the whole matter of the scriptures declaring “the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
Now, the King James translators, wishing to avoid any theological questions that might arise from this conclude to supply “given,” so that the verse would read: “for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
Well, this is arguably correct, for the preceding portion clearly says “the Spirit, whom those who believed into Him were about to receive….” Nevertheless, scriptures—without the theological augmentation—say, [literally] “Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
Now, we know and may be absolutely assure that the Spirit of God existed before this time. For Genesis 1:2 makes reference to the Spirit of God. We may also state with certainty that the Spirit being referenced here as being the source of “rivers of living water” within our “innermost being” is, in fact, the Holy Spirit of God.
So, in what sense was the Spirit “not yet”?
[To be continued]
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