Having spent time thinking through the darkness of the cross, the question now arises as to where the Holy Spirit was during the darkness of the cross. This question is not easy to answer, because the Gospel accounts of the cross do not mention the work of the Spirit. This does not mean that nothing can be said, but the answer requires some indirect thinking. I realise that what I write here is venturing into the area of speculation, but hopefully that speculation will have a solid theological and biblical basis.
The Oneness of God in three persons
In the darkness of the cross, while Jesus bore the wrath of God and experienced the judgement on human sinfulness which comes upon humanity at the day of the Lord, it seemed in the cry of dereliction that Jesus was separated from the Father. He said, “My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). But what appears and what actually is are not the same thing. When trying to answer the question of where the Holy Spirit was in the darkness, it is important to understand what the Gospel says about the relationships within God, that is, the Trinitarian communion.
Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30). Jesus cannot be separated from the Father because the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son (John 17:21). The Father and the Son are in intimate and exclusive relationship. “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matthew 11:27). Yet Jesus is also in intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the one who has the Holy Spirit remain on him (John 1:32-33), that is, the Holy Spirit is always with Jesus and Jesus has the utter fullness of the Spirit (John 3:34). The Holy Spirit knows what no one else can know, that is the mind of God (John 16:13; 1 Cor 2:10). Therefore, Jesus is in intimate relationship with the Father in the Spirit (Isa 11:2; Luke 10:21).
This intimate Trinitarian communion means that the three person of the Godhead cannot be separated. Therefore, at the cross, although we can no longer see the work of the Spirit, he does not depart from Jesus. The Father and the Son are one. They cannot be separated by the cross. The Father delights in the Son and cannot be disappointed or angry with him, even if Jesus bears the sin of the world and the consequences of sin. The Holy Spirit must be there keeping the Father and Son united as one while the Son and Father experienced separation.
The Holy Spirit incarnates the Son in the likeness of sinful flesh
There are some other theological matters which may shed light on the work of the Spirit at the cross. Paul writes, “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom 8:3 NRSV). The Son of God became a human being in the likeness of sinful flesh.[1] This passage must not be dismissed as if Jesus took on a pre-fall human nature which was without the encumbrance of sinful flesh. For, as Gregory of Nazianzus remarked, “Whatever is not assumed is not healed.” It was the nature of fallen Adam which needed to be redeemed and transformed into the likeness of God. Therefore, the Son of God humbled himself and took on the flesh of humanity in order to redeem the fallen flesh of Adam. If we accept the reality that Jesus took on sinful flesh in becoming a human being, the question must again be asked, “How was the pure and holy Son of God able to become a human being in the likeness of sinful flesh?”
The answer to this question is reasonably straightforward. There is no dispute that the incarnation took place in the power of the Spirit. When the angel told Mary that she would have a child, Mary asked “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel replied: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” (Luke 1:34-35). If the carnation occurred because the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary, forming the infant Jesus in her womb, then we must conclude that the Holy Spirit incarnated Jesus in the likeness of sinful flesh according to the design of the Father for the redemption of humanity.
Jesus is made to be sin by the Holy Spirit
There is another passage about the cross which I think is pertinent in this discussion. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21 NRSV). This is clearly about the events of the cross, when Jesus took on the sin of the world in order to redeem us. “He made him to be sin” should be read as “The Father made the Son to be sin” as the context makes this quite clear. The question is here, “How did God make Jesus to be sin?” In this event of undoing, in which the holy and righteous Son became everything vile and godless, how is this done?
The way in which this is done is not spelled out by Paul. However, there is a connection between God (the Father) making and the Spirit. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 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” (Gen 1:1-2). The Father created (made) the world but the Spirit is the one who shaped and formed the world into the orderly world which we see now. This suggests that the Holy Spirit is the one who brings the Father’s works to concrete reality. This fact, coupled with the clearer statement above that Holy Spirit enabled Jesus to take on the likeness of sinful flesh in his human incarnation, suggests that Holy Spirit is the divine person who brought about the Father’s work in the cross of making Jesus to be sin.
Jesus offers himself to the Father in the power of the Spirit
The clearest biblical indication that the Holy Spirit was present with Jesus at the cross is found in Hebrews 9:14 “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!” This indicates that Jesus enabled to endure the cross – its pain, abandonment, and shame – in the power of the Holy Spirit. This should not come as a huge surprise in that Jesus lived his human life in the power of the Spirit. In order to be faithful to the Father while offering himself on the cross, Jesus continued to live in the power of the Spirit.
The darkness of the cross involves the undoing of the Son by the Spirit
For these reasons, I believe that when Jesus experienced the tohu and bohu (emptiness) on the cross[2], the Holy Spirit brought about his undoing. The emptiness, vanity, meaninglessness of the cross was an experience of the sheer dysteleology (lack of a goal) of humanity without God. Human beings have only one telos (goal) and that is life with God. When humanity entered into sin, they lost this goal of their existence and substituted idols as a goal (Rom 1:18-23). But idols are nothing (Isa 44:12-20) and cannot provide humanity with a goal. In order to deal with this emptiness and dysteleology, Jesus had to experience sin’s vanity, to bring about its defeat. He therefore experienced the total purposelessness and absolute loss of identity which comes in the tohu and the bohu.
Yet an undirected emptiness, even the undirected emptiness and purposelessness of the Son of God, could not accomplish the redemptive purposes of the Father. The experience of the darkness must therefore have a direction and that direction was provided by the Holy Spirit. When the Spirit made Jesus to be sin, according to the Father’s plan, he took Jesus into the darkness and held him there. This work of the Spirit in undoing the Son of God was part of the goal of the Father to deal with sin in the flesh by making Jesus to be sin. The state of sin in which humanity exists leads to nothing good. Sin produces in us this meaninglessness, emptiness, vanity and loss of identity. Therefore, becoming sin must also involve these things for Jesus as he suffered and died. In this way the Father’s plan to undo what sin had done would be accomplished. But the reality of the Father’s plan could only be accomplished in the carefully directed moving of the Spirit in the person of Jesus.
Just as Jesus knows the Father in the Spirit as a human being, he was directed by the Spirit in his seeming separation from the Father while he died as the vilest of sinners. The constant in the whole process of the life of Jesus was the presence of the Holy Spirit actively working. We should not suppose, just because the Spirit’s work at the cross is not visible, that the Holy Spirit was not active there. The Father could not accomplish his purpose by allowing Jesus to be swallowed up into the abyss of sin’s dysteleology alone. If this had happened, how would Jesus have come out of the abyss again? Yet we know that Jesus came out of the darkness of death and abandonment to sin through the power of the Spirit. This is made clear in the resurrection, which was accomplished by the Spirit’s power (Rom 1:4).
If the Spirit directed Jesus to the cross, enabled him to sacrifice himself to the Father, and raised Jesus again from the dead, then the Spirit must have been with Jesus in his descent into the darkness. To assume otherwise would be tantamount to assuming that the Trinitarian persons could do their work in separation from one another. The oneness of God could not be compromised in this way without compromising the very being of God. There must have been a continuous work of the Spirit in taking Jesus through the events of the cross: his surrender to the will of the Father to go to the cross; the leading of the Spirit in his trial; the yielding to the evil which was inflicted upon his; his descent into the darkness of the cross; his giving over his of his last breath to the Father before he died; his descent to the dead; and his resurrection from the dead; and finally the ascent of Jesus into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father. All things were accomplished through the power of the Spirit.
Christians in the darkness
This undoing of Jesus by the Spirit impacts the Christian life. Although the children of God are children of light, they still must experience the darkness while they continue to live in a fallen world (2 Pet 1:19). There is a darkness which comes as a result of sin, but there is also a walk in darkness for the righteous. Psalm 44 as a whole discusses an experience like this. I quote here only a few verses. “All this happened to us, though we had not forgotten you or been false to your covenant. Our hearts had not turned back; our feet had not strayed from your path. But you crushed us and made us a haunt for jackals and covered us over with deep darkness” (Psalm 44:17-19).
There are times in the Christian life when Christians experience the darkness, not because of sin but because it is the will of the Father to take us through an experience of undoing. In the times like these the word of God exhorts us to trust in our God. “Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the word of his servant? Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God” (Isa 50:10). It is in this time of darkness that we must be reminded of what took place on the cross, where Jesus walked in darkness and was undone.
As it was the work of the Holy Spirit to undo Jesus on the cross, to take him through the darkness and emptiness, the vanity and meaningless of his seeming abandonment by the Father, it is also the work of the Spirit to direct Christians in the darkness. The experience of undoing which takes place when Christians are placed in a time of darkness by the Father is an experience which is directed by the Holy Spirit. We are not left alone to wander without purpose and without meaning. Even though such an experience can seem like abandonment and seem to be a descent into vain emptiness, it is an experience in which the Holy Spirit sanctifies his people for the purposes of the Father. We can, therefore, entrust ourselves to our heavenly Father in the times of darkness, knowing that he is working by his Spirit, even when that work is not visible.