[As stated in part I, this series of posts was inspired as the result of a dialogue with my friend, Mike V. The substance of the posts is taken from several lectures given by Dr. Gaffin at WTS in a New Testament course focusing on Acts and selected epistles of St. Paul. Thus, the tenor of the posts is more conversational and less polished given that they are for the most part the notes that I took from Gaffin’s lectures].
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In post II, we discussed Gaffin’s take on John 14:18-19, “I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you,” and his rejection of the interpretations that this refers to Christ’s second coming or to His post resurrection appearances. Instead, Gaffin argues that the situation in view pivots around Jesus going to the Father and correlatively the coming of the Holy Spirit. In other words, it is a situation determined by the resurrection/ascension at Pentecost. This is the setting in which we encounter the “I will not leave you orphans but come to you.” Hence, there is a dynamic between ascension and Pentecost, and the point of John 14:18 is that in the course of redemptive history, Christ must leave bodily in order that the Spirit may come. He must ascend to the Father and this is a personal/bodily ascension so that the Spirit may come. This bodily departure also indicates that He will return and share His life with believers. “Because I live you also will live” (John 14:19). Likewise, in John 14:28, we read, “You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I (ESV).” Also in 14:18 where the return of the Spirit is truly a return and presence of Christ as well. Likewise, in John 16:10 and 16:16, Jesus says, “Because I go to the Father you will see me no longer,” and “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.” As was pointed out previously, these verses employ the present tense with a future meaning. The disciples were of course asking, “what is the ‘little while?’” Then in chapter 16 Jesus addresses this uncertainty and brings clarity to the situation. However, the point here is that for the Spirit to come is for Christ to come. The balance that we find coming to expression here is the balance between the bodily absence and the spiritual presence of Christ. That balance between bodily absence and Spiritual presence is what Reformed theology has tried to maintain in its view of the real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper—it is not just a memorial.
The Father’s Involvement
Here we focus on the Father’s involvement in that Pentecost is the fulfillment of the Father’s promise. It is not simply a matter of promise but of the promise that is specifically connected to the Father. It comes from the Father (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4; Acts 2:33); God as heavenly Father gives the Spirit. Identifying the Spirit as the promised one of the Father opens the widest possible perspectives on Pentecost. That is, this identification marks out Pentecost as the fulfillment of that promise which is at the core of the Old Covenant expectation—it is basic to the architecture of the Old Covenant promise that is at the foundation of covenantal history and that has shaped the course of this history from the beginning. In Gen 12:3, God tells Abraham that in him all nations of the earth will be blessed. Thus, to identify the promise of Pentecost as the promise of the Father is to bring into view the ultimate perspective on that promise. St. Paul expresses this in Gal 3:13-14, when he wrote, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith (ESV, emphasis added).
The hina clauses (“so that”) are correlative; they link the blessing of Abraham to the Gentiles, and what correlates that is that the New Covenant people of God, the Gentile as well as the Jew now receives the promise of the Spirit. This opens up the widest possible perspectives that Pentecost brings to God’s people in that the nexus of what we are seeing now is not only linked to Luke 3 or Joel 2 but is even more comprehensive as brings Genesis 12 and Acts 2 into conversation. Interestingly, Gen 12 follows the account of Babel in Gen 11 where we read of the confusion of language imposed as judgment. What happens at Pentecost with the universalizing of the Spirit is a reversal of Babel and a counter to the effects of that curse.
In John 14:26, we are told that the Father will send the Spirit in Jesus’ name. Jesus had earlier stated in 14:23 that He and the Father will come and make their home with the believer. Thus, what is effected at Pentecost is not only the presence of Christ in the Spirit but the Father’s presence as well. We ought not to see these two aspects (the Christological and the Pater-logical) in a simply parallel fashion. Rather, the Christological has a certain priority or mediatorial distinctiveness. That is, there is an instrumental indispensability of the Christological for the Pater-logical. Think of John 14:9 where Jesus says, “whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” The point being that this statement is not reversible. Thus, there is a mediatorial necessity or instrumental indispensability in John 14:9. Also, in John 14:20, “in that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” It is only as Jesus is indwelt by the Father that He indwells believers and the Father indwells believers.
In sum, Pentecost involves the (initial) fulfillment of the ultimate design and expectation of the covenant. And what is that ultimate expectation? That God Himself will dwell in the midst of his people in Triune fullness. Or put another way, Pentecost is the (initial) realization of the Emanuel principle on an eschatological scale—the Triune God is with us and has not left us as orphans.
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