“The promise of promises” by Thomas Goodwin
“The coming of the Spirit I may farther call the great promise of the New Testament. For as Christ’s coming was the great promise of the Old Testament, so the sending of the Spirit is entitled the ‘promise of the Father’ in the New: ‘And behold I send the promise of my Father upon you.’ (Luke 24:49)
And he is so styled, not only in that he had been promised in the Old Testament by the prophets (as in that of Joel 2:28-29), and in multitude of other prophecies of old; but because that Christ himself did now de novo (as it were) promulge it as His promise, and the Father’s; and that upon this authority, that this Spirit proceeded from Him, as well as from the Father, and that He was first to receive Him for us, and then shed Him forth on us, (Acts 2:33), that so it might be made good, that ‘all the promises are yea and amen in Him;’ seeing this promise of the Spirit is given upon Christ’s account, as He is the Son (according to that, ‘God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts,’ (Gal. 3:13-14), and also because now under the New Testament this promise was to be fulfilled in such a manner and measure as was never under the Old; and so it becomes a promise proper to the New, that next great promise, which was to succeed that of Christ Himself, the promise of promises; the sole great promise now left to be given.
God the Father had but two grand gifts to bestow; and when once they should be given out of Him, He had left them nothing that was great (comparatively) to give, for they contained all good in them; and these two gifts were His Son, who was His promise in the Old Testament, and His Spirit, the promise of the New.
And the Father doth honour Himself to us by this title, that He is the promiser and giver of the Spirit; and Christ himself, now when He is come, takes the honour too of that, to make the sending of the Spirit His promise also, in saying, ‘Behold I send Him:’ (Luke 24:49), and in John 14:26, ‘Whom my Father will send in my name.’
And it is evident that our Saviour, in calling Him ‘the promise of the Father,’ which was spoken by Him after His resurrection, Luke 24:49, doth refer to His own words and sermons uttered afore His resurrection, in 14th, 15th, and 16th chapters of John, rather than to the prophets primarily in his intention.
Acts 1:4 says: ‘Wait for the promise of the Father, which ye have heard of me.’
Again, Christ had John the Baptist, who ‘began the gospel,’ to foretell His manifestation in the flesh, and to prepare the way for this Lord. And besides him, His angels did it.
But the Holy Ghost hath Christ Himself to foretell His coming upon flesh: and that to prepare the hearts of men for Him whenever He should come.
And, lastly, on purpose to honour His visible coming, He had answerably an extraordinary work left to Him, upon that His visible coming: the conversion of the whole Gentile world; and the raising and building of the churches of the New Testament was reserved of His glory.
To believe in the Holy Ghost, and the holy catholic church, you know how near they stand together in the Creed.
His visible coming at Pentecost was the visible consecration and dedication of that great temple, the mystical body of Christ, to be reared under the gospel (the several members of which body are called ‘temples of the Holy Ghost,’ 1 Cor. 3:16), as that appearance at Christ’s baptism was the consecration of the head.
Of this work of the Spirit, that of the psalmist, though spoken literally of the first creation, may yet be used in allusion, and is mystically applied by some of the fathers thereunto: ‘Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; thou renewest the face of the earth.’ (Ps. 104:30)
The whole earth was decked and adorned with a new array, when the Spirit of God moved upon that chaos; and the whole face of the world was in that age of the gospel’s promulgation no other than a chaos, void, and without all form; ‘all nations had walked in their own ways.’
But the Spirit was sent forth, and lo this barren wilderness became a fruitful field all the world over.”
–Thomas Goodwin, The Work of the Holy Ghost in Our Salvation, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, Volume 6 (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 1861/2006), 6: 8-9.
