It’s not a long drive — just thirty minutes — but it’s an intense one. I’m always a strange mixture of anxious and excited. It’s normally a Monday afternoon, and my destination is a place the three of us call “The Wardrobe.”

The three of us are Ray Ortlund, T. J. Tims, and myself. And “The Wardrobe” is what we call Ray’s new study, not because it’s in any way cramped, but because for the three of us it represents a gateway into a better world. Monday afternoon is when the three of us typically get together to pray and catch up, and specifically to confess our sins.

The New Testament repeatedly shows us the need to be transparent with one another. John urges us to “walk in the light” (1 John 1:7), James to “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another” (James 5:16). The former charge appeals to us: we all like the idea of living in transparency. It’s what excites me as I drive to Ray’s house. But the former comes as a result of the latter — in other words, walking in the light comes as we confess our sins. That’s the part I always feel a little anxious about. Transparency can’t happen without confession. We need to practice James 5:16 in order to enjoy 1 John 1:7.

Doorway to the Light

Being honest about our sins requires being honest not just with God, but with one another. We might think this latter dimension would be the easier of the two: if we’ve already come clean to God, surely it’s no big deal to come clean to each other? But I find the opposite to be the case. God already knows the worst about me. I’m never admitting something he doesn’t already know about — more fully than I do. But with Ray and T. J., that’s not the case. I can really lose face by confessing my sins to them.

There are other reasons we can find confession to another person difficult. Being open makes us vulnerable. At times in the past, I’ve risked some openness with someone and been met with a blank stare, or a really insensitive response. Sometimes it’s hard to know if we want to risk transparency. But we’re actually missing out if we don’t. Both John and James show us the benefits:

If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)

Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. (James 5:16)

Real, deep fellowship is birthed through this kind of honesty. James even says there is healing that takes place. The very act of confessing our sins, and entrusting them to the knowledge of believing friends, is already doing something in us. It pours health and light into the broken and darkened places of our hearts.

How to Hear Another’s Sins

I’ve found this fellowship, healing, and light in my times with Ray and T. J. All three of us are in some form of full-time pastoral ministry, which I know can be isolating for many pastors. But I’ve never felt so deeply known by others before. It’s embarrassing to confess what I must confess, for sure. But it is also liberating. I don’t have to pretend. I’m not sitting on something, wondering if it’s going to be discovered. They truly know the worst about me (and I about them!), and it makes our continued affection for each other all the more precious.

I’ve been trying to think through how we got here — what marks of these two men have helped me be so open with them.

Be Unshockable

Neither Ray nor T. J. has collapsed in shock when I’ve confessed something to them. I think it’s because they know their own hearts well enough. When we know our own depravity, it’s hard to be surprised at someone else’s.

“When we know our own depravity, it’s hard to be surprised at someone else’s.”

I think this is why Paul describes himself as “the foremost” of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). I doubt he’s suggesting that, out of all people, he has the greatest capacity or worst track record when it comes to sin. When someone is aware of just how messed up his own heart is, it can be hard to imagine there’s someone else out there who is more messed up.

If we’re unshockable — because we know how sinful and depraved we are — we make it much easier for others to confess. If I share a particularly distressing sin, and you respond in surprised disgust, I’ll think twice about admitting anything like that to you (or perhaps anyone) ever again. But if you respond with a measure of understanding, knowing your own heart to be prone to sin (even if in different ways), I find it much easier for me to be honest with you next time.

Be Reciprocal

It is hard to be transparent with someone if they’re never really transparent with us. Between Christian friends, building trust requires sufficient mutuality. It’s hard to keep bearing our souls if the other person remains closed. We do have different personalities and experiences, so we won’t all naturally open up with one another to the same extent. But all the same, honesty begets honesty. Someone else’s transparency makes it easier for us to be transparent, and vice versa.

“Honesty begets honesty.”

Ray and T. J. have always been open with me. They’ve never hesitated to entrust me with their struggles. Their example makes it so much easier for me to do the same.

Be a Good Listener

Once, I shared with Ray about a particularly distressing sin of mine. He carefully listened before asking one or two searching questions, making sure he had as full a picture of the situation as he could, and making sure I was giving him the whole story and not holding back important details. And his loving listening made the counsel he gave me all the more deep and insightful.

If you want to invite another’s honesty, learn to listen well. “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame” (Proverbs 18:13). We are to be “quick to hear, slow to speak” (James 1:19).

Listening well also means remembering well. We don’t serve each other well if, after someone has disclosed something significant, we quickly forget what it was and how it had affected him. Remembering his struggles is part of how we bear his burdens. Only then can we care well for him by following up and doing all we can to encourage him to repent well and keep fighting.

Be a Friend

Lastly, it takes time to cultivate the trusted, confidential, deep fellowship that fosters this kind of mutual transparency — this walking in the light together. Occasionally, we might find ourselves experiencing a moment of glorious, transparent light-walking with a believer we hardly know. But those moments tend to be rare. What we all really need are committed brothers or sisters walking alongside us for the long haul — not just a drive-by confession here and there.

What we’re really talking about here is true friendship. Paul tells us to “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God” (Romans 15:7). Honesty, encouragement, faithfulness, and loving rebuke when necessary — these are traits we find in our friendship with Christ. The greatest way to foster transparency with one another is to cultivate in us Christ’s heart for one another.

This is what I have experienced with my true friends, Ray and T. J. It is what makes our Monday meetings in “The Wardrobe” a gateway into a better world — a world where we walk openly in the light of the Light.

While you may not recognize the name Henry Van Dyke Jr., most spouses are well-acquainted with his work. It comes up in that dreaded moment when you realize an attempt to pursue and bless your spouse didn’t land. And by “didn’t land,” I mean, when it landed, it landed like a bomb, not a blessing. In moments like these, spouses have looked for solace, again and again, in the timeless wisdom of Van Dyke Jr.: “It’s the thought that counts.”

The original quote was this: “It is not the gift, but the thought that counts.” While this maxim may have some value when a genuinely thoughtful gift misses the mark, the sentiment shouldn’t become a target for anyone pursuing a spouse. In fact, it’s quite ironic that a pithy statement centering on the word thought is, in reality, often used to excuse away thoughtlessness.

Thoughts That Really Count

Imagine if my wife, Julia, were to buy me the nicest hairbrush (I’m bald), and then spend hours knitting me the most comfortable Duke Blue Devil blanket (I’m a Tar Heel). After she presents her gifts, I sit in dumbfounded silence until she breaks in: “Well, it’s the thought that counts!” As I’m uploading the pictures of my newly acquired items to eBay, I would say (in the most loving way), “Well, those were some bad thoughts!”

The picture may be silly (unless you live in North Carolina), but the point isn’t. The thoughts that really count in marriage are not random thoughts that misfire, but informed thoughts that land as pleasant to our spouse. The apostle Peter charges husbands, “Live with your wives in an understanding way” (1 Peter 3:7). Good intentions are important, but in marriage in particular, as we model Christ and his church, we should want to aim higher than good intentions.

“Stop trying to love and pursue more. Instead, aim to love and pursue better.”

Most spouses are overwhelmed at any suggestion that they are not doing, loving, or pursuing enough. If that’s you, this is meant to be an encouragement: Stop trying to love and pursue more. Instead, aim to love and pursue better. We’re in need of a love like the one the apostle Paul prays for in Philippians 1:9: a love abounding “with knowledge and all discernment.” The call is not merely to love more, but to love in better, wiser, more discerning ways. If there is any earthly relationship that should model this kind of love to the world, surely it’s the marriage covenant.

With each passing year, we can love our spouses with an ever-increasing knowledge of who they are. This results in spouses who are consistently learning, and then seeking to love each other in light of what they’ve learned. These are thoughts that truly count.

Love in an Understanding Way

Again, this vision to love and pursue in light of what you have learned about your spouse is explicitly given to husbands: “Live with your wives in an understanding way” (1 Peter 3:7). Husbands, live with your wives. This is not a distant or passive word. Peter is calling husbands to be present in the home with their eyes and mind and heart open — like a student sitting in the front row, fully present and eager to learn about this beautiful gift called “wife.”

The word understanding in verse 7 is literally “according to knowledge.” Most husbands actually do love their wives according to knowledge; unfortunately, it’s a knowledge of ourselves and not of them. Julia and I now laugh at the many times I was baffled when a pursuit I thought was amazing landed in the exactly opposite way. Looking back, they were indeed amazing pursuits — that is, if I were pursuing myself. Husbands, the kind of love and pursuit in the home that God calls us to simply cannot be accomplished by going through the motions. He’s calling for a genuinely engaged husband who is regularly learning and then loving his wife in light of what he learns.

While Peter focuses here on husbands, and while the weight of pursuit rightly and beautifully falls more heavily on husbands, who imitate the Christ who laid down his life for the church, the practical principle is a good one for wives too. It’s hard to overstate the blessing that can result when both husband and wife seek to bless each other in ways that land as pleasant — when we, as spouses, “outdo one another in showing honor” (Romans 12:10).

Loving Different People Differently

As with all aspects of the Christian life, Jesus models loving others according to an accurate knowledge of who they are. Jesus consistently engages needy people in unique and personal ways. Following the death of their brother Lazarus, Mary and Martha both have an encounter with Jesus. It’s interesting to note that while the sisters say the same words to him initially — “If you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21, 32) — Jesus responds to each differently.

He immediately comforts Martha with truth: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25–26). Jesus then asks her, “Do you believe this?” inviting her to lean on this truth. His words gave Martha a place to stand in her heartache, and it seems to have landed as pleasant to her.

Moments later, when Mary speaks the same words, we might expect Jesus to respond the same way he did to Martha. Instead, he allows her space to weep. After they show him Lazarus’s tomb, he weeps as well (John 11:35). Two women in the same devastating circumstances at the same moment, and yet Jesus engages them differently — because they were different.

Now, neither of these is in the context of marriage, but the interactions paint a picture of what it looks like to pursue in an understanding way — in a way that lands. These are thoughts that count: intentional, sacrificial initiative shaped by insights into who this particular person is.

Every Marriage Grows and Changes

What benefits come when we begin loving in an understanding way? For starters, as the marriage gets older, it will never get old. The joy of learning does not end. The future years will bring limitless opportunities to understand our spouse better.

“With each passing year, we can love our spouses with an ever-increasing knowledge of who they are.”

It doesn’t take long in marriage before you begin to discover that with each passing age and life stage, the ways we feel loved will often change. Julia used to love it when I would surprise her with a late-night date to see the newest movie. Now, twenty years and five kids later, taking her to a late movie is essentially an expensive nap in uncomfortable clothes. But you know what? I have learned that she loves when I immediately help clean up after dinner so that we can take a walk in the neighborhood, holding hands and talking about our day. For my wife, that’s a pursuit that lands.

Over the years, we have experienced how toxic it can be when we belittle one another based on our differences in design and desires. It was common for us to make the other person feel like differences were actually deficiencies (sadly, we often thought they were). This all began to change as we committed to learn each other’s unique design and desires, and attempt to love in light of what we learned.

Julia learned that taking the time to write an encouraging note and stick it to the bathroom mirror is a pursuit that lands as pleasant to me. I, on the other hand, learned that taking the time to actually clean the mirror is a pursuit that lands as pleasant to her. We found so much joy and peace when we began to celebrate who each other is, before complaining about who each other is not. Over time, these are the thoughts that count.

Learning Each Other for Life

While spouses often feel an initial wave of excitement as they embrace this kind of informed pursuit, a word of caution is wise. This commitment can be made in an instant, but the real impact will not happen overnight. The process of learning who your spouse is, and loving in light of what you learn, will take time — and a willingness to make (and receive) a lot of mistakes along the way.

Julia and I just entered our third decade of marriage, and, by God’s grace, we both joyfully remain students at heart, eager to learn and then love in light of what we learn. We have gained so many individual and informed thoughts about each other (and our kids!), and trust me when I say, those thoughts have really counted.

How did Jesus walk on water? How did he feed five thousand with five loaves and two fish? How did he raise Lazarus from the dead?

Unless we have been carefully taught, many Christians would be quick to say simply, Because he is God! And he truly is. But is that how the New Testament answers these questions? If we follow the emphasis of the Gospels, we might say that what Jesus’s miracles show is that he is God, but how he, as man, performs these wonders, is not quite as simple as we may assume.

In particular, what are we to say about the many texts that testify to the Holy Spirit’s presence in the human life of Christ? Did Christ, in his humanity, actually need the Holy Spirit if he performed such signs simply by virtue of his divinity?

When we recognize the surprisingly recurrent theme of the divine Spirit’s relationship to the divine Son in his humanity, we might understand Jesus (and the Gospels) better, and freshly marvel at what grace Christ offers us in the gift of his Spirit.

Jesus and the Spirit

First, let’s rehearse the string of biblical texts that lead us to what is often called a “Spirit Christology” — which is simply a term for recognizing the critical part played by the person and work of the Spirit in the person and work of Christ.

Sinclair Ferguson observes three distinct “stages” in the life of Christ, through which we might acknowledge the Spirit’s relationship to the Son (The Holy Spirit, 38–56). Those stages are as follows, with key texts.

1. Conception, Birth, and Growth

As we know from some of our favorite Advent readings, the Holy Spirit is present and pronounced in the angelic announcements to both Mary and Joseph. How will it be, asks Mary, that I, a virgin, will conceive and bear a son? “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35). So too in Matthew’s account about Joseph, the Spirit both frames the report and is explicit in the angelic announcement (Matthew 1:18, 20).

Yet the Spirit is not only present, and explicit, at the conception and birth of Christ, but also specifically prophesied by Isaiah, seven centuries prior, as “resting upon” the coming Anointed One: “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord” (Isaiah 11:2).

“God’s word notes again and again the power of the Spirit as Christ’s inseparable companion.”

Now in Jesus of Nazareth, the long-promised shoot from the stump of Jesse has come (Isaiah 11:1), and “the Spirit of wisdom and understanding” upon him is seen even as early as age 12 as Jesus listens in the temple to the teachers and asks them questions. “All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. And when his parents saw him, they were astonished” (Luke 2:47–48).

Even in childhood, as Jesus “increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52), he was not on his own but had the Spirit as his “inseparable companion,” as the great Cappadocian theologian Basil of Caesarea (c. 330–379) captured it so memorably.

2. Baptism, Temptations, and Ministry

Isaiah’s prophesied anointing with the Spirit comes to the fore again at the outset of Jesus’s public ministry, beginning with his baptism. The forerunner, John the Baptist, tells of a coming Spirit-baptism that John’s water-baptism anticipated (Luke 3:16). But first, before baptizing others in the Spirit, Jesus himself will be the preeminent Man of the Spirit. When Jesus “had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased’” (Luke 3:21–22; also Matthew 3:16).

Here at the outset of his public ministry, the Spirit descends on him with new fullness for his unique calling, and the voice from heaven first connects the Anointed of Psalm 2 with the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 42. The Servant — and Son — not only enjoys God’s full favor, but he is also the one of whom it is said, “I have put my Spirit upon him” (Isaiah 42:1).

Freshly endowed with (“full of”) the Spirit, Jesus then goes to the wilderness. Not only is he “led by the Spirit” (Luke 4:1; Matthew 4:1) into the wilderness, but as Mark reports, “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness” (Mark 1:12), not as a retreat but as an advance in war, to encounter the enemy and beginning taking back territory.

Once Christ has returned, victorious in his wilderness test — in the power of the Spirit (Luke 4:14) — he comes to Galilee and to his hometown of Nazareth. In the synagogue, they hand him in the scroll of Isaiah, and what does he read, as the first public act after his baptism? He begins with Isaiah 61:1: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me . . .” (Luke 4:18).

Jesus’s ministry then unfolds in the subsequent pages as by the Spirit he proclaims good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:18–19; Isaiah 61:1–2). Jesus will testify that it is “by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons” (Matthew 12:28). By the Spirit, he teaches with unusual authority. Fully man, he is fully dependent on his Father — having come not to do his own will but the will of him who sent him (John 6:38). And as Peter one day will summarize his life, in telling his story to Gentiles, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38).

In the words of John 3:34, and Isaac Ambrose (1604–1664), Jesus “received the Spirit out of measure; there was in him as much as possibly could be in a creature, and more than in all other creatures whatsoever” (Looking unto Jesus, 280).

3. Death, Resurrection, and Ascension

Significant as the testimony is about the Spirit’s work in Jesus’s childhood and ministry, we might expect that when he comes to die, and rise, and ascend, we would hear about the Spirit here too. Indeed we do. According to Hebrews 9:14, Jesus offered himself for sins at the cross “through the eternal Spirit.” As he set his face like flint toward Jerusalem, mounted the donkey on Palm Sunday, confronted scribes and Pharisees, and prayed with “loud cries and tears” in Gethsemane (Hebrews 5:7), Jesus was anointed, sustained, and strengthened by the Spirit to the end. And beyond.

In his resurrection, Jesus was “vindicated by the Spirit” (1 Timothy 3:16). As Paul writes in Romans 1:4, Jesus “was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.” And promising a coming of, and baptizing with, the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5, 8), Jesus ascended to heaven (Acts 1:9), to be glorified at God’s right hand, where he then would pour out the Spirit on those who believe (John 7:37–39; Acts 2:2–4, 17, 33). Amazingly, then, Peter would preach, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). Now, to receive Christ is to receive the Spirit, and vice versa.

In fact, the Holy Spirit has become such an “inseparable companion” for Christ that we find a striking identification of Jesus and the Spirit in the letters of Paul (1 Corinthians 15:45; 2 Corinthians 3:17–18). Not only is the Holy Spirit now “the Spirit of Jesus” (Philippians 1:19; also Acts 16:7), but the glorified Christ and the poured-out Spirit can be spoken of interchangeably, as in Romans 8:9–11: Christians “have the Spirit of Christ,” and in the Spirit, “Christ is in you.”

Jesus Did Not Cheat

Now back to our original question: How did Jesus walk on water, multiply loaves, and raise the dead? The New Testament witness to the Spirit as Christ’s “inseparable companion” and source of divine power is too pronounced to ignore. Jesus, the God-man, apparently needed the Spirit. The terms of the incarnation, in honoring the fullness of humanity, were that the second person of the Trinity did not immediately provide divine power and help to the human Christ. Rather, he did so mediately through the Spirit. It was the great Puritan theologian John Owen (1616–1683) who perhaps first ventured the formulation that now has stood for almost four centuries: “The only singular immediate act of the person of the Son on the human nature was the assumption of it into subsistence with himself” (The Works of John Owen, 3:160).

“Jesus, the God-man, apparently needed the Spirit.”

In other words, the eternal Son’s only direct act on his human nature was uniting that humanity to himself in the incarnation. “Every other act upon Christ’s human nature,” writes Mark Jones, “was from the Holy Spirit. Christ performed miracles through the power of the Holy Spirit, not immediately by his own divine power” (The Prayers of Jesus, 23). As Jones comments elsewhere, “Christ’s obedience in our place had to be real obedience. He did not cheat by relying on his own divine nature while he acted as the second Adam” (Puritan Theology, 343). The Holy Spirit has accompanied, supplied, and carried the Son in his human nature from conception to childhood to ministry, to the cross and resurrection, and now in his glory, fully endowed as the Man of the Spirit at God’s right hand.

Spirit of Christ in Us

Why make a point of what some might perceive as a technicality? Why note, as Kyle Claunch does, this “marked contrast” between the New Testament emphasis and “the tendency of post-biblical authors, who appeal to the deity of Jesus as the explanation for the extraordinary features of his life and ministry”?

For one, a Spirit Christology demonstrates the genuine humanness of Christ, which is vital not only for our imitation of his life, but even more for his perfect human life to count savingly and uniquely in the place of us sinners. Also, observing the critical place of the Holy Spirit with respect to the humanity of Christ helps us understand the Bible. From Isaiah, to the Gospels and Acts, and the Epistles, God’s word notes again and again, as we’ve seen, the power of the Spirit as Christ’s inseparable companion. If we want to know and understand God’s word, we will not want to read a phrase like “by the Spirit” as white noise but with meaning.

Finally, a Spirit Christology shows us, in a secondary sense, what is possible in us by the same Spirit who dwells in us — not mainly in terms of being the Spirit’s channel for displays of extraordinary power (though we might grow to be expectant of more than we have), but most significantly in terms of holiness and spiritual joy. Jesus was and is unique. The power of the Spirit in his human life pointed to his uniqueness as God. Still, the same Spirit who empowered Jesus’s earthly life, and sacrificial death, and triumphant resurrection, has been given to us today as “the Spirit of Jesus” (Acts 16:7). He not only works on us, and through us, but dwells in us (Romans 8:9, 11; 2 Timothy 1:14). He has been given to us (Luke 11:13; John 7:38–39; Acts 5:32; 15:8; 1 Thessalonians 4:8). We have received him (John 20:22; Acts 2:38; 8:15, 17, 19; 10:47; 19:2; Romans 5:5; 8:15; 1 Corinthians 2:12; 2 Corinthians 5:5; 1 John 3:24), to glorify the Son (John 16:14).

The very power of God himself, in his Spirit, has come to make himself at home in some real degree, and to increasing effect, in us. We are his temple, both individually and collectively (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19), and a day is coming when we, like Christ, will reign in glory, fully endowed with the Spirit, to enjoy life, and God in Christ, beyond what we’ve even imagined so far.