AMY: Hi, Dr. MacArthur, my name is Amy.
JOHN: Hi, Amy.
AMY: I want to thank you so much for your ministry.
You've impacted so many people, including myself and my family.
My question is, what is the relationship...how does the Bible define the relationship between
Christ and the Holy Spirit, especially during His ministry on earth?
JOHN: Good question.
The best way to understand that is this, that when Christ emptied Himself as it says in
Philippians 2, and took upon Him the form of a servant, He yielded up His own personal
will.
He said over and over, as we have noted many times, "I only do what the Father shows
me to do.
I only do what the Father tells me to do.
I only do what the Father does.
I only do it when He says to do it."
And it comes to the crux in the garden when He says, "Not My will, but Yours be done,"
which means He is completely submitted to the Father's will.
So He goes through life, not that His will is in disagreement with it, but He yields
up His own prerogatives to do the will of the Father.
The self-emptying, however, is more than that.
It is more than just a willingness to do the Father's will in the Father's time.
It is a yielding up of prerogatives within His own power.
For example, He said if I wanted to I could call a legion of angels.
Right?
But I won't.
He yielded to the Father's will and He yielded to the Spirit's power so that if you, and
this comes out in Matthew chapter 12, if you said of Jesus He does what He does by the
power of Satan, that's what the leaders said, He says you have blasphemed the Holy
Spirit.
Which is to say what He does He does by the Spirit.
You see an illustration of that, several illustrations of that, early on in the gospel of Luke.
You can remember the Holy Spirit leads Jesus into temptation.
The Holy Spirit empowers Him as He goes into Galilee, empowers Him to preach, empowers
to do miracles so that He in His self-emptying does the will of the Father in the power of
the Spirit.
So to assign what He does to the devil is to blaspheme the Spirit who is really the
one doing it.
This comes into clear focus, if you understand from the very beginning, that He was conceived
in the womb of Mary by the Holy Spirit.
He was at His baptism being baptized by John the recipient of the Holy Spirit in a symbolic
way when the Spirit came like a dove and settled upon Him.
This was a demonstration of now that He's going to launch into His ministry, it's
going to be empowered by the Holy Spirit.
So that's the way to understand that.
Now Jesus said in that last night in that Upper Room with the disciples, He said, "When
the Holy Spirit comes, He will speak of Me."
So the ministry of the Holy Spirit now is to point us to Christ.
In His humiliation, Christ pointed to the Holy Spirit as the source of His power.
In His exaltation, in His saving work, the Holy Spirit comes to point us to Christ.
Okay?
Good question, Amy.
AMY: Thank you.
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