Read Isaiah 61:1-11
Even before the fall, God made the human being to be dependent upon the Holy Spirit for the empowerment of his spiritual life. Without the Holy Spirit, even unfallen man would have been incapable of communing with and living for his God. He would be like a motorized toy without the batteries. When he fell, he became even more desperate for the Holy Spirit. We now need the Holy Spirit to give us new birth as children of God and repentance of sin, to give us victory over temptation, to enable us in the Christian life, and to make us messengers of the Gospel. Part of Christ’s becoming like us in our human nature was to take on this dependence on the Holy Spirit so that he might become the perfect substitute for us. He was born of the Spirit (Lk. 1:35). He was baptized with a baptism of repentance and anointed for his calling by the Spirit (Lk. 3:21-22). He was lead through the wilderness of temptation (Lk. 4). He fulfilled all of his tasks by the Spirit (Mt. 12:28; Mk. 6:14). And he became the dispenser of the Spirit who would empower the Church for missions (Lk. 24:49). [1]
Therefore, at Christmas we celebrate one who came to fulfill our need for and dependence upon the Holy Spirit.
While there are many places we could look in the Old Testament for the promise of benefits that would come to us by means of the gift of the Spirit through the Messiah, few are more powerful than Isaiah 61, the passage Jesus read in the synagogue in Luke 4 announcing that the Messiah had arrived.
What distinguished Jesus' message on earth was that he not only preached good news – he was the good news!
We know these first few verses so well because the Lord read them in the synagogue announcing that he himself was the long-awaited Messiah. The proof of whether or not he really was the Messiah would be the demonstration of the enablement of the Spirit. In other words, the mark of the Messiah would be not only one who experienced the infilling of the Spirit providing a favored and full relationship with God, but one who was also “anointed” (commissioned) by him to lead others to the same. That combination of Spirit-filling and anointing was prophesied by David (2 Sa. 23:1-7) and realized in Jesus Christ.
Notice his task as the Servant of the Lord is to preach “good news” (40:9; 41:27; 52:7; 60:6). That was his primary ministry on earth. And it remains his primary means of redemption through those who preach his good news. They stand in his place and deliver by his grace. However, what distinguished his message on earth was that he not only preached good news—he was the good news! That remains the distinguishing characteristic of Christian preaching. It is not the clever articulation of psychological principles nor the brow-beating delivery of do’s and don’t’s but rather the preaching of Christ, the good news.
Who are the recipients of that good news? The “poor.” These are not just the materially poor, though they are certainly included as a special concern of God. These “poor” are primarily they who recognize (Lk. 5:31-32) they are in extreme trouble and in desperate need of deliverance from any number of true crises (Ps. 25:16-21). These poor are further identified as those who are brokenhearted, those who have been so disappointed in the core of their being by life, by relationships, or by self that they feel they will implode because of the vacuum in their hearts. These poor are captives to addictions, to the thrills of life, or the satisfaction of fleshly desires. These poor are those who feel they are imprisoned to their own selfishness or depression or practices that cause them to lose hope of living past today. To each of these, Christ declares in a clarion voice, “Good News!”[2]
But notice Christ does not simply preach at these poor ones; he actively heals them. He “binds up” (habas) their wounds. This is the same word used in the negative in 1:6 to describe “unbandaged” wounds, oozing with the pain of sin. Christ not only declares a message that comforts the mind, he begins to put people back together. He mends broken hearts by filling up the vacuum left by disappointment, by releasing prisoners from the captivity of addiction, and by liberating captives from imprisonment to self. He is the king who is sovereign over every dominion and therefore able to “announce” release to captives. He begins the experience of healing in this life, but perfect healing will come in that life to come.
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[1] Abraham Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 1995), 105-09.
[2] See Oswalt, 565.