Jesus was vindicated by the Holy Spirit

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The Father revealed the Son by sending him to Bethlehem: “He was manifested in the flesh.” But astute readers will note that only two of the three Triune persons are covered. Not worry, because the second line of the hymn declares that in addition to the Father sending the Son, the Son was also “vindicated by the Spirit” (1 Timothy 3:16).

What does it mean that the eternal Son was “vindicated” by the Spirit?

There are at least three ways the Holy Spirit vindicated Jesus: the Spirit enabled Jesus’ birth, validated Jesus’ deity, and empowered Jesus’ humanity.

The Spirit enabled Jesus’ birth.

The hymn the Ephesian church was singing began with a declaration that Jesus was “manifested” in the flesh. Recall that the hymn is made up of six declarations, all of which are passive. 

In other words, the song celebrates six things that happened to Jesus rather than six things that Jesus did. This is a song about people acting on Jesus. And the first of those was that Jesus was made manifest. This was the Father’s doing.

But how did the Father do it? 

What is how the Father sent the Son to take on human nature? The Father could have simply commanded the incarnation, and it would have happened. After all, if his voice could cause the universe to exist, his voice could create the hypostatic union.

Yet the Triune God did more than will it. God also brought the incarnation to pass by the Holy Spirit forming the human body of Jesus inside Mary. Hebrews 10:5 says that God “prepared” a body for Jesus. Luke 1:35 reveals that it was no general Triune preparation but that the forming of the human body was specifically the work of the Holy Spirit. 

Matthew 1:18 says that the child was “from the Holy Spirit.” Contra Mormonism, the Holy Spirit did not impregnate Mary. Rather the Spirit used Mary’s own body—her own DNA, her own flesh, her own blood—to form the body of Jesus. This was the work of the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit validated Jesus’ deity.

The hypostatic union is the term that indicates that operating within the person of Jesus Christ are two distinct yet united natures. He was truly God and truly man. The Spirit vindicates the manifestation of Jesus’ flesh in at least two other ways, one for each nature.

For the divine nature of Jesus the Holy Spirit validated it. Validation is the concept of authenticating. When you go to a movie, you might get your parking validated. This is a way to show whoever is checking parking stubs that you did go to the theatre. The Holy Spirit had that function in Jesus’ incarnation.

Consider Jesus’ baptism: only two persons could recognize the second person of the Trinity: the Father and the Spirit. At Jesus’ baptism, a voice from heaven (the Father) declared that within Jesus was the eternal Son, the second person of the Trinity. And because every fact is established by two witnesses, the Spirit also bore witness in the most Spirit-like way possible. He settled on Jesus like a dove (Matthew 3:16-17).

When you think about the order of the Trinity, this means of validation makes sense. After all, the Son is begotten from the Father, and Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. 

The Father gives life to the Son, and the Spirit eternally ensues from the Father and Son. The Father is the Speaker, the Son is the Word, and Spirit, in that sense, is the message. All that the Father has he speaks; thus, within the Son, the fullness of God resides. 

All that the Father and Son have is reciprocated, and from both the Father and the Son flows love, joy, and fellowship, and this is the Spirit. And, of course, the Father loves all of who he is. Thus, the Spirit is also all of God. The fullness of God dwells in the Father, Son, and Spirit, but it does so distinctly. It dwells in the Father principally (or firstly), in the Son by generation (or as the image), and in the Spirit by love and affection from both the Father towards the Son and the Son back to the Father. Hence the names Father, Son, and Spirit.


All of this is validated at the baptism. The Father sent the Son (as he always has), and the Father validated the Son by speaking. The Spirit also comes from the Father to bear witness to Son’s identity, and he does so by descending on him. This vindicates Son’s deity.


The Spirit empowered Jesus’ ministry

In addition to validating Jesus’ divine nature, the Holy Spirit empowered his human nature. By this, I don’t mean that Jesus’ human nature was sinful, only that it was human, and humans need help. Perhaps an analogy will help at this point:

To thrive, a succulent plant needs bright light, fast-draining soil, cool nights and warm days. It would thrive if a person were to plant a succulent and give it those conditions. But if a person planted a succulent in clay, overwatered it, and withheld the light, the plant would go dry from the inside out and die. This is not the fault of the succulent! It doesn’t mean the succulent is deficient, only that it is a succulent.

People are like that. In order to thrive, people need a rich relationship with the Lord. They need God’s word, they need to commune with the Lord in prayer, and they need to apply God’s word to their lives. In short, they need to walk with God to thrive.

Now, Jesus was truly human, which means in his life, he too needed to walk with the Lord to thrive as a human. This doesn’t speak to a shortcoming in his human nature, only that he has a human nature.

Here is the catch: Jesus could have fulfilled that nature by virtue of his deity. But this is not how the Gospels portray Jesus. In his humanity, he had a rich relationship with God not because he was God, but because the Holy Spirit was with him. This is the intersection of pneumatology and Christology. As the Son of God, Jesus possessed everything and lacked nothing. 

But by taking on a limited nature, he needed help to walk with God, and that help came by the ministry of the Spirit. Is there another person in the Bible so marked out by the Spirit’s ministry? 

The Spirit was responsible for his birth (Matthew 1:18), the Spirit pointed to him at his baptism (Matthew 3:16), the Spirit led him into the wilderness to be tempted (Matthew 4:1), and then filled him with power for ministry after the temptation (Luke 4:14). 

His preaching was powerful because God “put [the] Spirit upon him” (Matthew 12:18; Luke 4:18). Jesus cast out demons through the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:28). He experiences the joy of ministry because of his communion with Holy Spirit (Luke 10:21).

The Holy Spirit caused Jesus’ humanity to flourish and his ministry to thrive. Or, to say it as Paul sung it, Jesus was vindicated by the Spirit.

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