[ Post a Response | Community Chapel Gathering ]
Posted by Helen on 5/1/2006, 4:33 pm, in reply to "A Question for Helen" Matt your question implies that the Holy Spirit could not have been given to Jesus himself because Jesus was not yet glorified. Jesus said that in John 14:17-18 where he reveals that he himself is the Holy Spirit, he says that the disciples know him because he was dwelling with them at that time, but that he would be [future tense] in them, with the promise that he would not leave them comfortless by coming to them himself. We know that in Christ all the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily, so Jesus was not of those who had to wait for the promise of the Father. Joel is correct that there is different dispensations of the Spirit between the Old and New covenants, and the Spirit being given as a gift for every believer was a New covenant promise. I suspect he remembers this very well because of the prophecy that’s found in his namesake. Many times we will run into Christians today that seem to be Spirit filled because they are manifesting “he who is forgiven much loves much”, and as Matt.10:1-8 indicates one can have power to perform miracles without being Spirit filled, but I am convinced that being continually filled (not just initially in-filled) with his Spirit is the will of God for our use of that promise. Finding the anointing to witness in season and out of season; yielding to the anointing of his Spirit in the gift ministries and loving our lives not to the death. ***Helen
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Hi Matt and Traci, 
John the Baptist truly was a transitional person, he was the last of the Old covenant prophets and the first Christian martyr, however; his dying was still in the Old dispensation because Jesus had not yet died, resurrected and ascended. John was also called a prophet (Luke 7:28) and there are several scriptures that indicate that the Spirit came upon the prophets in the Old Testament. Obviously among those in John 7 some recognized the Spirit in Jesus, because in the next verse (John 7:40) some automatically thought Jesus was a prophet because that was an office in the Old covenant that manifested God’s Spirit.
