Published out of order, Mark Baddeley marks the penultimate post in our series on The Apostles’ Creed with an examination of the spiritual implications of the incarnation.
We have before us one of the lines of the creed that has received one of the more paradoxical receptions in recent centuries. It has been at ground zero for struggles to uphold classical Biblical teaching on the supernatural dimension of the Christian faith, and so has witnessed a multitude of attempts to defend it against secular scepticism. At the same time, however, that defensiveness has inhibited deep reflection about its implications for life and doctrine: it has tended to sit as an isolated ‘dot point’ in lists of essential doctrinal convictions.
A Virgin Conception
While the Lord Jesus was fully human in the same way that we are, his birth and his existence were also unique—on a par with the formation of Adam
The first thing to note is the fact that this line immediately precedes the statement about Jesus being born of the virgin Mary. That article underlines the genuine humanity of the Lord Jesus: he wasn’t just human, but human in the way that all humans are—conceived and born by means of a human woman. His is not a new, pristine pre-fall humanity, but a being born into our situation and lot, outside the Garden in a world of futility, suffering and death. His identification with us is complete because he takes on, not just an abstract humanity, but our humanity: he bears the image of Adam. It is because of this that he is able to act on our behalf and to die in our place—both representing us and substituting for us. God brings Jesus into existence as a man by working with the grain of our humanity, not by setting it aside and doing something discontinuous.
Yet, while the Lord Jesus was fully human in the same way that we are, his birth and his existence were also unique—on a par with the formation of Adam from dust, or of Eve from Adam’s rib. It was a supernatural disruption of the normal and natural order of human existence. In Jesus’ conception, God did something discontinuous, not being bound to the limits of our humanity.
Why the Spirit Particularly?
If this supernatural character to Jesus’ conception is so obviously the point that the creed is making, why the particular attention on the Holy Spirit? Why does the creed not simply note that this occurred by the power of God more generally, rather than focus on the agency of the Spirit in this divine act? Why highlight the Spirit’s involvement here?
At one level the answer is fairly straightforward. The creed does this because the Scriptures do it. In Luke 1:35 the angel Gabriel states that this would occur quite clearly to Mary as the reason why a virgin would conceive:
The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
Matthew states it more bluntly in Mat 1:18 and 20:
This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. …
Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
What the Holy Spirit does in the incarnation fits well with his work throughout the OT
So, at its most basic, the creed focuses on the Spirit here because the Scriptures do; and the Scriptures—if we want to curtail discussion—focus on the Spirit here simply because that is what happened historically. This can suggest to some of us that there’s no bigger ‘there’ there, there’s just historical facts.
But a better answer that reflects the inner logic of Scripture is to look for underlying patterns and coherences in Scripture. What the Holy Spirit does in the incarnation fits well with different aspects of his work throughout the OT leading up to the incarnation. We’ll highlight just three examples.
1. The Spirit is the Giver of Life (and Creation)
The Spirit is consistently associated with the gift of life in the OT, and of creation more generally. This pattern begins in some of the earliest words in Scripture, in Gen 1:2:
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Here, before any word is spoken to begin the week of creation, the Spirit is already present and active in the emptiness and chaos of the cosmos before there was a cosmos (the paradoxical way in which Genesis speaks of what was before there was anything—that the earth was formless and void). The rest of Genesis 1 goes on to highlight the role of the Word of God in bringing creation into existence, but while secondary, it is nonetheless significant that the Spirit of God is also highlighted in the context of creation. Creation was by the Spirit even as it was in and through the Word.
More particularly, the Spirit is especially associated with the gift of life. In John’s Gospel (Jn 6:63), Jesus declares: ‘The Spirit gives life.’ And in stating this, crystalises a conviction ubiquitous throughout the OT. It begins in the very first detailed account of the beginning of human life in Gen 2:7:
Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
The word for ‘breath’ here is the same as that for ‘Spirit’, because—as the Son is portrayed in Scripture as the speech of God—the Spirit is portrayed as the breath of God. One reason why wind is often divinely significant in Scripture is because of this connection: when God breathes out the effect is more hurricane than quiet exhalation. The breath of life that is breathed into the man’s nostrils is nothing less than God’s own breath of life, the Holy Spirit. And with this exhalation, life is given to humanity.
Bringing both these ideas of creation and life together, the Psalmist therefore declares in 104:29-30;
When you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground.
If there is to be a new beginning for human life, the Spirit must be the agent of that life
The Spirit is the one whose going-out renews the ground, and gives life to the humans who were made from the dust of that ground. He does not just give life, his coming results in the creation of the creature.
And so, if there is to be a new beginning for human life, especially human life outside the capacities of its mother, then the Spirit must be the agent of that life. Thus, Paul’s observation in Galatians chapter four (4:21-31) that Isaac is not only the child of the promise, but also—as one born to a barren couple—the child of the Spirit. Where the flesh was not able, the word of promise and the Spirit were.
This work of the Spirit is even more necessary in the conception of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is not just a child of promise, but the child of promise; not just the fulfilment of a promise but the one in whom all God’s promises find their amen (2 Cor 1:20). His existence rests even more clearly upon the Spirit’s power to give. The virgin birth is the reality to which the shadows of barren births pointed: it is pre-eminently the work of the Spirit, the giver of life and of creation.
2. The Spirit Empowers God’s Agents of Salvation
The second reason is the way in which the Spirit is connected to the agents of salvation. Judges, kings, prophets, priests, even craftsmen fashioning the Tabernacle—all were anointed by the Spirit for their work. Whereas fallen flesh—human nature under the rule of sin and death—is unable to do anything to participate in God’s saving work, the Spirit comes bring saviours into history.
Yet these saviours are mere shadows compared to the True Saviour, Jesus Christ. All that the prophets, priests and kings were, Christ is and even more. More than simply God’s agent, he forges salvation in his own body through his life, death, resurrection and ascension, and then shares that with us through uniting us to himself by the Spirit.
What Jesus receives of the Spirit, he then shares with his people.
Christ’s baptism in the Spirit is the basis and ground for our being baptised in the Spirit when we come to faith: what he in his humanity receives of the Spirit, he then shares with his people so that they too partake of the Spirit. The Spirit’s dwelling within Christ’s humanity forms a matrix for the Spirit to permanently indwell believers and seal them for the day of salvation.
All of the agents of salvation in Scripture acted in the power of the Spirit. The Spirit coming to them was the beginning of their ministry of salvation. But Christ’s whole life—beginning with his conception—was a work of salvation through the Holy Spirit. Everything he did was for us and for our salvation as the creeds acknowledge. Salvation is the one and only reason he was born as man, Saviour is his very nature in our confession of him. And so it is right that he would enter the sphere of sin and death to end it by means of a special work of the Spirit.
3. The Spirit is the Agent of Recreation and Eternal Life
The final reason we’ll briefly discuss builds on the previous two. Sin and death have now taken up dominion over human existence—so deeply woven into us that delivering us from these powers involves a salvation that is on a par with the original act of creation. Salvation requires, not just life, but re-creation of the sinful creature.
The salvation that the Lord Jesus Christ came to achieve in himself and give to us was of this order—a thoroughgoing transformation of flesh and blood is transformed to inherit the kingdom of God, where the perishable puts on imperishability, and the mortal puts on immortality. We are delivered from the domain of darkness and made children of God.
This must come by means of the Spirit. It wasn’t something we could do for ourselves; it needed God’s own breath of life.
We see this expressed in Ezekiel 37 where Ezekiel prophesies to bones so dead they have dried out. As the word of promise is preached the bones reknit and flesh forms, but it is only as wind comes and gives breath to the fully formed corpses that they live. This is then used as a basis to promise life from the dead when God puts his Spirit in his people in Ez 37:14. Life that overcomes death is possible only by the Spirit of God.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the Saviour whose salvation involves the recreation of his people to live in the eternal kingdom of God as children of God. This salvation is accomplished in Christ himself and he began to achieve it from the moment he took on human nature, and it is the whole focus of his existence as the Christ. Accordingly, it is highly fitting that a Saviour of this order, bringing a salvation of this nature, would enter into the realm of human existence by the Spirit. As the creed declares, the Lord Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit.
