Seth Lewis shows a good instinct both in his commitment to engage seriously with what the Gospels tell us about Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and in his desire to encourage Christians in their own dependence upon the Holy Spirit.[1] However, I wonder whether he might have got himself in a bit of an tangle over his descriptions of who Christ is in his article, perhaps reflecting the constraints of attempting to compress everything into a word count. Perhaps we can try and untangle some of those knots through a bit of decompression if that’s not mizing my metaphors. I believe that we will not only find that we can still meet Lewis’ aim but gain a richer view of what dependence on God looks like.
What does the Bible tell us about who Jesus is and what he does?
Let’s start at the very beginning. John 1 takes us there and tells us that the Word was with God and was God (1:1). In other words, “The Word” was fully God but not all that there is to God. This is the starting point for our understand that there is one God in three persons. In verse 14, John tells us that “The Word became flesh” and dwelt among us. Church Fathers such as Athanasius would describe the incarnation in terms of The Son taking to himself a body. [2] John 3:!6 makes it clear that The Word is the eternally begotten Son of the Father, this means that he is without beginning and that he has the full nature of God.
In John 5, Jesus comes into dispute with the Jewish leaders. He has just healed a man on the sabbath and is being pursued for breaking the Law of God. His response is not to argue that he did this under the Spirit’s prompting or in the Spirit’s power. Instead he tells his accusers:
“‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.’ “
In other words, he goes to his identity as The Son and links this to his oneness with this Father. This causes the Jewish leaders to accuse him of blasphemy. So Jesus explains:
“‘Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”
Notice a couple of things here. First that the Son argues specifically that it is the Father who shows him what to do and that the Son does the same things as the Father. This is sometimes referred to as “Inseparable Operation” How is the Son able to do this? Well Jesus explains:
“6 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.
In other words, The Son’s very existence is described in terms of him having “life in himself”, he is self-existent in nature, not dependent on anyone outside of himself. The important thing to observe is that constantly Jesus describes his authority and ability to work miracles in terms og his relationship to the Father and in terms of his own divine identity.
Jesus will talk about his relationship to the Father in these terms:
“10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?
In other words, there is a mutual indwelling. This is sometimes referred to as “perichoresis”. Whilst here Jesus specifically talks about the Father and Son, we can extend the terminology to speak of the Spirit as well as we look at the rest of Scripture. This enables us to say that wherever the Son is present, so too the Father and the Spirit.
With those verses in mind, we can come to the description of Jesus’ anointing with the Holy Spirit at his baptism. This is Luke’s description:
“21 When all the people were being baptised, Jesus was baptised too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’[3]
What you may notice here is that this is not described purely in terms of the man, Jesus receiving, being anointed with or filled with the Spirit. Rather, this is beautifully Trinitarian, we get a glimpse of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One of Jesus’ names was “Emmanuel” and in his earthly ministry we see the Godhead in his fullness, present with us.
The early church’s understanding of Jesus’ identity
There was much controversy about who Jesus is throughout the first few centuries and this led to various councils to try and knock heads together and reach clarity. For example at the Council of Nicaea, the idea that Jesus was some mere created spiritual being was dealt with. Jesus was begotten, not created, he was fully and eternally begotten. However, this was not the only error that had to be confronted. Others would teach that Jesus was not fully human but only gave the appearance of being so.[4] Some wanted to emphasise the two natures, human and divine but over separated them leaving Jesus sounding like two different entities with a kind of common physical user interface. Others reacted to this but by insisting that Jesus was one nature they made it sound as though the natures had merged together creating a hybrid creature, neither human nor divine. The Council of Chalcedon responded, picking up on what we have seen in John’s Gospel by insisting the following:
““Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us.”[5]
Notice the wording insists that we must speak of the natures as “without confusion” this avoids the error of treating the two natures as mixed up together into something new. I believe that one of Lewis’ aims is to avoid this error when he states:
“Our Saviour did not live a different kind of humanity. He did not supercharge the inherent weakness and dependence of His human nature with His own divine power.
However, Lewis’ also seems to go further than, or potentially misapply Scripture when he uses Philippians 2:6 to argue:
“But a close reading of the New Testament shows us that Jesus did not leverage the power of His divine nature to assist His human nature (Philippians 2v6-7).
That verse is pointing towards Jesus’ willingness to take the position of a servant and contrasts that attitude with one that grasps after status. It’s aim is to encourage our humility. And Lewis’ language at times risks giving the impression of an over separation of the natures.
A better way forward
Lewis is right in his insistence that Jesus did not cheat the system. He didn’t use his divinity to avoid pain and suffering, tiredness, grief, hunger and thirst, then eventually death. However, this does not answer the question about how he worked wonders.
And this is important because Lewis’ argument may risk proving more than he intends. Similar language has been used particularly by people such as Bill Johnson to insist that we should desire to operate at the same level of spiritual power as Jesus, not just to use spiritual gifts such as prophecy or to see people healed but to consistently be expecting supernatural experiences such as raising the dead and walking on water. I’m sure that Lewis’ doesn’t intend to take us down that rabbit hole.
Nor, does he need to because as we’ve seen, Scripture points us to Jesus, The Son, fully God and fully man exercising his ministry. This means that there are things that Jesus could do that we should not expect to.
The concepts of mutual indwelling and inseparable operation helps us to see more of what ws going on with the works of Jesus. It wasn’t just that God the Son did miracles, nor was it that a human part of Jesus did them, closed off from his divine nature and dependent on the Spirit. Rather, we see God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit at work.
Finally, this helps us to think about what it means for us to seek to follow and serve Christ. Yes we receive the Holy Spirit and are dependent upon him but we are also blessed by the Father with all Spiritual blessings (Ephesians 1:3) and we are to “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly”. In other words, when you invited Christ into your life, the Father and Spirit were present too. So, in our Christian walk and service we are granted intimacy with and dependence on the Triune God.
[1] Jesus depended on the Holy Spirit, too | Evangelicals Now
[2] Athanasius, On The Incarnation, 2 (8).
[3] Luke 3:21-22.
[4] Docetism
[5] The Chalcedonian Creed is also known as the Chalcedonian Definition. The Chalcedonian Creed – The Westminster Standard Cited 19/09/2026.
