The Spirit of Christ

As I was reading through the book of Galatians something in 4:4-7 jumped out at me and got me digging deeper. Jesus came at the appropriate time to redeem those under the law so that we might be adopted as God´s children. Then, because we are children, he sends “the Spirit of his Son” into our hearts so that we can no longer be slaves, but rather heirs.

Only when I read further, to 4:19 did I really notice the implications of verses 4-7. The “Spirit of the Son” forms us into the image of Christ. This takes us all the way back to the pre-fall design for humanity in Genesis 1:26-27. Redemption is to bring us back to His purpose and design for us. His Spirit is the agent for making that happen in our hearts and minds.

This got me thinking about the Holy Spirit’s role in doing so. Why is the Spirit sometimes called the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, etc.? In trying to find out, I stumbled across a reference to the Holy Spirit in 2 Cor. 3:15-18 that made me stop in my tracks and think.

The section is about how looking at Jesus to interpret the Old Testament clears everything up. In vs. 17, “The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” From there it goes to say the the Spirit transforms us to Christ’s image. The same Spirit, now referred to as “the Lord.”

(For those reared in an anti-Trinity mind-set, that’s astonishingly revolutionary. The Holy Spirit cannot be put into a theological box. The docrine of the Trinity is an attempt to counter the limited thinking of those who teach that the Spirit is just God’s power, but without intellect. There is more than one way to try to limit God.)

The point here, however, is that this is Jesus’ own spirit entering our minds to help us become more like Jesus to fulfill our destiny. The Holy Spirit is not a mindless “power” or “energy” but is rather the very mind of God Himself. God Himself directly inside us!

We can take heart that Jesus is very near by His own Spirit in both good times and bad. He can give us everything we need because He is right there, closer than anyone else can ever be.