The other side of the Son’s work in embodying the new covenant is how God the Holy Spirit joins us to Jesus. Last week (Day 20), we considered Irenaeus’ idea that the Father stretches forth two hands to save us. He sends the Son to take up our humanity and create reconciliation through his faithful sacrifice. Then he sends the Spirit to unite us to the Son. Through his Spirit, the Father relocates us out of the domain of darkness and into the kingdom of the beloved Son (Colossians 1:13). 

 

Astoundingly, God foretold this through Ezekiel. The prophet builds on Jeremiah’s recording of a new covenant to be written in the heart. Now we hear specifically that God’s own Spirit will come to dwell in us. This will transform our inner being. The image is of a heart of stone being turned back to a heart of flesh. From frozen to warm. From stubbornly unresponsive to awake and willing. From the heart’s exile to home again in God. In such restored humanity, we come to the realization that the God we once feared has given himself fully for us. We who belonged miserably only to ourselves now belong to the God who made us and redeemed us.

 

This Ezekiel passage tells us that it is the Spirit whom God sends us who makes us able to walk in the life-giving ways of God. By deigning to dwell within us, the Spirit makes our spirit, the core of us, new and alive. 

 

Putting together Jeremiah and Ezekiel, yesterday’s readings and today’s, we see that the transforming new covenant occurs through action by all three persons of the one God. The Father sends the Son who enacts the new covenant through his faithful obedience unto an atoning death. The Father sends the Spirit who joins us to Jesus. He unites us to Christ, so that all that Jesus has and is becomes ours. Then the Holy Spirit directs us upward to the Father with whom we have been reconciled by Christ. He cries out within our hearts, “Abba, Father.” 

 

There is a wonderful loop occurring. The Father sends the Son who enacts our redemption and then returns to the Father bringing our new humanity into the triune life. The Father sends the Spirit who joins us to the ascended Jesus and impels our worship upwards to join the Son’s praise of his Father. We become included in the love being passed between Father, Son and 

Holy Spirit! 

 

Now the Spirit works in us steadily to make us more and more like Jesus our brother and redeemer. Paul describes this in terms of the fruit of the Spirit growing through us. Of course, the Spirit’s fruit in our lives is exactly like the essential qualities of Jesus: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22). 

 

And the same Spirit who empowered Jesus in his ministry now empowers us for our participation in both building up the church, Christ’s body, and then following Christ’s command to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19). He gifts us for particular works of service, some very unobtrusive and some very noticeable. Each one works together in the sending of the church to the world.