πνεῦμα

There is a verse in John’s Gospel that gives the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit its specific shape. It comes at the end of the Feast of Booths, after Jesus has invited the thirsty to come to Him and drink. John adds a parenthetical comment that has done more pneumatology than perhaps any other sentence in the New Testament:

“Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” (John 7:39, ESV)

The Spirit had not yet been given. Why? Because Jesus had not yet been glorified. And what was the glorification, as we argued in Chapter 8 on doxa? It was the cross.

The implication is striking, and it is worth letting it land before moving on. The Spirit is given on the basis of the cross. Pentecost is downstream from Calvary. The whole life of the church in the Spirit — the Word preached, the sacraments administered, faith created, the Christian sanctified, the fruit borne — is the gift of the Spirit who could not be given until Jesus had been glorified, and who was given because Jesus had been glorified.

This is the chapter where we work out what that means.

The Word

πνεῦμα (pneuma), pronounced NYOO-ma (the initial p is silent in modern English pronunciation; in Greek it is breathed). A neuter noun, third declension. The family includes the verb pneō (πνέω, “to breathe, to blow”), the adjective pneumatikos (πνευματικός, “spiritual”), and various compounds. Our English pneumatic, pneumonia, and pneumology descend from it.

The basic meaning is unhelpfully wide. Pneuma in ordinary Greek meant any of the following: wind, breath, air in motion, the breath of life, the inner life of a person, a spirit (good or evil), an angel, the divine Spirit. Greek philosophy used the word for the active principle that animates living things — the breath that distinguishes a body from a corpse.

The Septuagint translators chose pneuma to render the Hebrew ruach (רוּחַ), which has a similarly broad range — wind, breath, spirit, the breath of God, the Spirit of the Lord. When the New Testament uses pneuma in a theological sense, it is reaching for a word already saturated with the Old Testament’s usage. The wind blowing over the waters in Genesis 1:2. The breath of God breathed into Adam in Genesis 2:7. The Spirit who came upon the judges and the prophets. The Spirit who would be poured out in the last days, according to Joel 2.

By the time John writes that the pneuma was not yet given, all of that backdrop is in play. The Spirit John is talking about is the Spirit who hovered over the waters, breathed life into the first man, and was promised through the prophets. And John is saying that this Spirit waited for the cross before being given to the church.

Range of Meaning

In its New Testament usage, pneuma covers:

• Wind, the moving of air. Jesus uses this sense in His conversation with Nicodemus: “The wind (pneuma) blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit (pneuma)” (John 3:8). The pun is in the Greek; English has to choose one word or the other.
• Breath. The breath that distinguishes a living body from a dead one. Used of Christ’s last breath at the cross (Mark 15:37, Luke 23:46), and of the breath He breathed on the disciples after the resurrection (John 20:22).
• The human spirit. The inner life of a person, the seat of feeling and willing — sometimes used in distinction from the body (sōma), sometimes used more or less interchangeably with the soul (psychē).
• An evil spirit. The Gospels speak of “unclean spirits” (pneumata akatharta) that possess and torment people, and that Jesus casts out.
• An angel or other spiritual being. Hebrews 1:14 calls angels “ministering spirits (pneumata).”
• The Holy Spirit. The dominant theological use in the New Testament — the third person of the Trinity, sent by the Father in the name of the Son, given to the church on the basis of the Son’s glorification.

Context governs which sense is in play, and in John 7:37–39 the context could not be clearer. Verse 39 specifies the sense: “this he said about the Spirit (pneuma)” — meaning specifically the Holy Spirit, the one who had not yet been given.

Where You’ll Meet It

“On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”’ Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” (John 7:37–39, ESV)

The text we have been holding throughout this chapter. Worth noting: the “rivers of living water” image draws on the Old Testament expectation of eschatological waters flowing from Jerusalem (Zech 14:8, Ezek 47:1–12), which the prophets attached to the day of the Lord’s coming reign. John tells the reader that the pneuma is what those rivers were always pointing to — and that the Spirit’s giving had to wait for the cross.

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.” (John 14:16–17, ESV)

The first of the Paraclete passages, which we will treat in detail in Chapter 37 on paraklētos. For now: Jesus calls the Spirit another Helper — another meaning one of the same kind as Himself. The Spirit will do the work Jesus has been doing, in the disciples’ midst, after Jesus has gone.

“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” (John 16:7, ESV)

The same connection John 7:39 made, said from the other direction. Jesus must depart — to the cross, through the cross, beyond the cross — before the Helper can come. The going-away is the precondition of the coming. The cross is in between.

“And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (John 20:22, ESV)

The post-resurrection breathing. The risen Christ breathes on the disciples — the verb is emphysaō, the same verb the Septuagint uses for God breathing into Adam in Genesis 2:7 — and gives them the pneuma. The Spirit John 7:39 had said could not be given until Jesus was glorified is now being given, because Jesus has been glorified.

“You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” (Romans 8:9, ESV)

Paul’s formulation, which makes explicit what John’s narrative implies. The Spirit who dwells in believers is “the Spirit of Christ.” Not the Spirit in some generic divine sense, but the Spirit specifically of the crucified-and-risen Son. Pneumatology is Christological. Where you have the Spirit, you have the Son — because the Spirit is the Son’s Spirit, given by the Son, after the Son’s glorification.

“He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.” (Titus 3:5–6, ESV)

The Spirit poured out on us “through Jesus Christ our Savior.” Again — the Spirit comes through the Son. And the means by which the Spirit is poured out, in Paul’s formulation here, is “the washing of regeneration” — that is, baptism. Pneumatology lands in the sacrament.