What Is Jesus Doing Now?

I received the following question:

The Bible is very clear about Jesus' role in NT times: He came to earth to sacrifice Himself to pay the penalty for sin that we all owed. It is also clear about his role in the end times: He will come again and gather all the faithful to heaven.

I have a hard time relating to Jesus' role today. When he went to heaven He sent the Holy Spirit to live in us and guide us. So, what is Jesus doing before the end times?

What a wonderful question! I have never been asked it before. It has caused me to think very hard about how the Bible describes the functioning of the various Persons of the Trinity.

One simple answer is to say that Jesus (now, in the present tense) intercedes for us. At least three texts indicate this:

Romans 8:34:
Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

Hebrews 7:24-25:
Because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.

1 John 2:1:
My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.

A second simple answer is to say that he is with us:

Matthew 18:20:
"For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them."

Matthew 28:20b:
"And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

There is a wrinkle, however, that opens up a whole Pandora's box of issues. The Holy Spirit is also said to intercede for us, and he is also said to be present with us:

Intercession of the Spirit: Romans 8:26-27:
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.

Presence of the Spirit: John 14:16-17,26:
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever — the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you...But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

It seems that the work of the risen Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit dovetail and overlap. They are both with us and they both intercede for us. Consider the following sequence of verses, and see if by them you can answer the question, "Who lives in the Christian, the Holy Spirit or Jesus?"

Romans 8:9-11:
9 You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. 10 But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.

Verses 9 and 11 say that the Spirit lives in you, but sandwiched between those statements verse 10 says "Christ is in you"! It makes one wonder, is "Christ" just another word for "Spirit"? Is everything we say about Christ equally true of the Holy Spirit?

Sabellius thought so. He was a third century priest who simply denied that God was triune. Jesus is God who is the Holy Spirit, and the only distinction between "them" is modal: God reveals himself in various modes of fatherhood, sonship and spirit nature depending on time, circumstances, and the purpose at hand.

But Sabellianism doesn't work. Among its many weird entailments is the conclusion that when Jesus prayed he was really carrying on a soliloquy; that the Father died on the cross ("Patripassionism"); that, when God died briefly at the crucifixion, somehow the universe kept going on its own. Also, Sabellianism cannot make convincing sense of texts that speak, for example, of God raising Jesus from the dead (Acts 2:24) or sending the Holy Spirit (John 14:16). The Church fathers condemned Sabellianism as heresy, and it is rarely seen today except in Oneness (or "Jesus Only") Pentecostalism.(Well-known preacher T.D. Jakes, who came from the Oneness tradition, has had his orthodoxy called into question and in response has publicly affirmed his belief in the Trinity.)

A different way of handling Trinitarian complexity is to deny that the Holy Spirit exists at all. That is, whenever Scripture speaks of the "Holy Spirit," (or "the Spirit of God" or "the Spirit of Christ," or whatever) we should understand that in exactly the same way as when we speak of our own spirits. For example, when the Virgin Mary says in Luke 1:47, "My spirit rejoices in God my Savior," or when St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 16:18, "For they refreshed my spirit and yours also," they were certainly not thinking that their spirits were distinct from themselves. A text that might lend support to this view is 1 Corinthians 2:11: "For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God." A parallel is drawn in this verse between God's Spirit knowing God and our own spirits knowing us.

Jehovah's Witnesses believe in the exactness of this parallel, and so their New World Translation of the Bible never capitalizes the word "spirit." God's spirit, in this view, is like God's breath or power or force or will or thought or mindset. Trinitarians err, they teach, in personifying this power and treating it like something separate from God the Father, calling it "He" and regarding it as a Person. (Orthodox Christians raise a similar objection to the gnostic personification of Sophia, "Wisdom," wherein the wisdom of God is spelled with a capital W and regarded as a goddess of some sort. We think that that "Wisdom" should have a small "w.")

If the Jehovah's Witnesses are right, then the question posed at the top of this essay dissolves completely. Whatever the Bible says the spirit is doing now is what Jesus is doing now, and our confusion about their contrasting or overlapping roles is due to a total misunderstanding of Jesus' Personhood.

But I'm afraid Jehovah's Witness Arianism doesn't work any better than Sabellianism. The biblical case for the Holy Spirit's personhood is simply too strong. In Acts 5:3 St. Peter condemns Ananias for lying to the Holy Spirit. How can you lie to a personified abstraction? In Ephesians 4:30 St. Paul commands us not to grieve the Holy Spirit, and I would argue that only a person can be grieved. In John 16:7 Jesus insists on such an exclusivity between himself and the Spirit that the Spirit cannot come to the disciples unless he (Jesus) goes away first!

So that leaves us with the difficulty suggested in my friend's question: What is Jesus, as distinct from the Holy Spirit, doing in the present age?

I would suggest two things.

First, we simply have to grant some overlap (duplication? redundancy?) in the roles of the three Persons of the Trinity. This is biblical. Texts cited above demonstrate that both Jesus and the Holy Spirit intercede for us and are present with us. In addition, Jesus says in John 5:19, "Whatever the Father does the Son also does." The picture Jesus develops in John 5:17-20 is that of a son in his father's workshop imitating and duplicating his father's craft. So at least part of the answer to the question "What is Jesus doing now?" is "whatever God the Father is doing." If this was true in his earthly incarnation, how much more true is it in his glorified state!

Second, if I had to describe the current role of Jesus as distinct from that of the Father and the Spirit, I think it would have much to do with his position, more a matter of where he is rather than what acts he is performing.

The Bible says repeatedly that Jesus is "at the right hand" of God the Father. Jesus himself, and Peter, and Paul, and the writer of Hebrews all mention this. Some examples:

Luke 22:69:
"But from now on, the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the mighty God."

Colossians 3:1:
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

1 Peter 3:22:
[Jesus] has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand — with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.

Hebrews 12:2:
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

The Holy Spirit is never said to be at the Father's right hand, and it goes without saying that the Father cannot be at his own right hand. The position appears unique to Jesus. Does it have anything to say about his role?

I believe it does. In some mystical, metaphorical fashion, we can "see" Jesus in a way that we cannot see God the Father or the Holy Spirit. Of course you can't see the Spirit - he's a spirit! And the Bible affirms that no one has ever seen God the Father. John 1:18 says, "No one has ever seen God." But then the same verse continues, "but God the One and Only [Jesus], who is at the Father’s side, [the right side!] has made him known."

I think we can say, reverently, that Jesus gives us someone to focus on. That is (part of) his role now. We have a hard time fixing our eyes on God the Father or God the Holy Spirit, but we are commanded to "fix our eyes on Jesus" in Hebrews 12:2. Of all the members of the Trinity, only Jesus became (and remains) a man, and for that reason our minds can get a better grasp on "seeing him" up above and ahead of us. I look forward to seeing Jesus face to face, and bowing before him, but I don't know if I'll ever see the Holy Spirit. It has long intrigued me that the Objects of worship in the book of Revelation are always the first and second Persons of the Trinity, never the third. (See for example Revelation 5:13: Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!"). Where is the Holy Spirit in this verse? Don't we worship a Triune God? Why is the Holy Spirit not receiving song and praise in these verses along with the Father and the Son? I think the best answer is that He is the one inspiring it. He is behind us, beside us and inside us, urging us to glorify Christ. I think it is the Spirit's role, now and forever, to move us to worship Jesus, and it is Jesus' role, now and forever, to receive that worship.

I must stress though that these are at best some preliminary thoughts on a difficult question, and I would gladly submit to instruction from minds that are theologically more astute and biblically better informed than mine.