The Second Person of the Trinity had a unique relationship with the world in the Old Testament before the Incarnation. He was the Creator of all things, the transfigured Angel of the LORD, the pillar of fire and cloud that guided Israel in the wilderness, the Shekinah Glory in the Tabernacle and Temple, and the coming Messiah-King. In the fullness of time, God entered this world as the God-Man; He was fully God and fully human. Without sin, He died on the cross as the sin substitute for the world. Our relationship with the Second Person is very different now than was in the Old Testament.
Thus, it should not be surprising that in the Gospels and the early Book of Acts we see mankind’s relationship with the Third Person of the triune God, the Holy Spirit, has become more intimate. The Old Testament saw the Spirit upon or with someone for as long or brief as God’s purpose required. When God’s purpose ended, the Holy Spirit ceased His work or was removed. Today, in the Age of Grace, every believer has a permanent, abiding, indwelling relationship with the Holy Spirit of God
Lewis Sperry Chafer * explains the change of relationship with the Holy Spirit that we read in the Gospels: (More change is evident in the Book of Acts. The epistles explain how the believer is to live in light of this new and permanent relationship with God.)
“The essential character of the Spirit’s relation to men during the period of the Gospels is that of transition, or progression from the age-long relationships of the Old Testament to the final and abiding relationships in this dispensation of grace.
“The early instruction of the disciples had been in the Old Testament, and the statement from Christ that the Spirit might be had by asking (Luke 11:13) was so new to them that, so far as the record goes, they never asked. This new relationship, suggested by the statement, ‘How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him,’ characterized a forwarded step in the progressive relationship of the Spirit with men during the Gospel period.
“Just before His death Jesus said, ‘And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not neither knoweth him: but ye know him for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you’ (John 14:16, 17).
“After His resurrection, and just before His ascension, Jesus breathed on His disciples and said unto them, ‘Receive ye the Holy Spirit’ (John 29:22). They possessed the indwelling Spirit from that moment; but that relationship was evidently incomplete according to the plan and purpose of God, for He soon ‘commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which saith he, ye have heard of me’ (Acts 1:4, cf. Luke 24:29). The ‘promise of the Father’ was of the Spirit, but evidently concerning that yet unexperienced ministry of the Spirit coming ‘upon’ them for power.”
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* He That is Spiritual, by Lewis Sperry Chafer, 1918