Eve, the Life-Giver: How an Understanding of the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit Informs Womanhood

I wrote this little reflection more than 5 years ago. I think I've grown and changed in my thinking some since then, but some of these thoughts are still timeless.

Introduction

Attempting a definition of womanhood for the post-modern woman can sometimes be tricky, even offensive. No woman wants the contours of her being to be outlined solely by cultural norms or stereotypes. The Christian woman who desires to apply the gospel to all areas of her life, including and especially her womanhood, must, however, ask herself after whom she is patterning herself. Complementarian thinkers such as Wayne Grudem see analogical parallels between the Trinitarian relationship of Father to Son and of husband to wife. [1] But any such arguments based on the Trinity can be taken too far if seen in isolation or applied one-to-one to our human experience. We are all called to be Christ-like and this, of course, is central to the Christian life of both men and women. Another Trinitarian lens through which to see the relational patterns of man and woman is the Son-Spirit relationship. I firmly believe that there are unexcavated treasures to be found in the person and work of God the Holy Spirit, especially in terms of our self-understanding as women. Because we are made in the image of the triune God, there are necessarily aspects of who we are as women that are in the image of the third person of the Trinity. It is not to say that men bear no resemblance to the Holy Spirit. We are neither more vacuous nor more Spirit-filled than men! There are, however, many inspiring parallels between the role and function of the Holy Spirit within the Godhead as well as in the plan of salvation and our role and function as women in marriage and in God’s redemptive plan.

Primary Analogies

By primary, I mean a comparison between the Holy Spirit’s and the woman’s role that show a clear calling for a woman’s life that is different from that of a man.

The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of Life

The Nicene Creed states, “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” In the beginning, the Spirit hovered over the waters bringing God’s creative power to bear on the natural world and life was brought forth. The Spirit breathed life into Adam. All of life is sustained by his power. He was with God the Father and God the Son in all eternity, proceeding from them and using his power to assist the Father and the Son, the Word, to create all things.

The first woman was made with a similar purpose. She proceeded from Adam’s side, made from the same substance, equal in essence but different in calling. She was to assist Adam in creating life. Her power was to offer herself to help create life. Adam gives her the name Eve, meaning “Life,” or “Life-giver.” She was to become mother to all the living. In this function, she was to bear the image of the Holy Spirit very specifically and uniquely and her function is non-interchangeable with a man’s. Even if we are to put all other differences aside, the one thing that differentiates men and women is woman’s ability to bear children. This function is used by God in singular and prophetic ways to unfold his plan of salvation.[2]

The Holy Spirit is the heavenly Helper[3]

As biblical revelation unfolds, Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as the Paraclete, or helper. Being a helper in no way downgraded the Holy Spirit to a lower form of deity. No, he, being equal to the Father and the Son in substance, power and glory, takes on the task of helping Jesus in his earthly ministry. The Holy Spirit becomes Jesus’ closest companion, comforter, and defense. As he did in the first creation, the Holy Spirit assists Jesus in bringing about the new creation. He is the one through whom men and women are born again. He is the one who gives new life to unbelievers, recreating their hearts and enabling them to love Jesus. He is not only Jesus’ closest companion, but ours now as well as we become united to Christ through faith.

Not surprisingly, Eve is given to Adam to be his helper.[4] She is to assist him in the creation mandate. Her aid is needed above and beyond the job of child-bearing without which Adam could not fulfill his task of filling the earth with image-bearers. She is to be his companion, encourager, comforter and intimate friend. Eve’s giving birth to children is crucial for the survival of humanity and prophetic of the new birth wrought by the Spirit. The Spirit hovered over Mary and created a new life in her, fulfilling God’s redemptive promise announced in Genesis 3:15. It is through a birth that Jesus Christ would enter this world and it is a birth to which Jesus compares conversion, the ultimate work of the Spirit in the new covenant. [5]Only a woman can understand on an existential level the reality of being a vessel, a temple, inhabited by someone else as a foreshadowing of the indwelling of the Spirit. Only a woman can understand, in a small way, through the pains of childbirth, what Jesus went through[6] to procure the delivery/deliverance of his elect children and only a woman can understand the groaning of creation awaiting its final delivery.

The Holy Spirit is the divine Homemaker[7]

The Holy Spirit has been at work from the dawn of time, preparing a place for God’s glory to reside. He prepared the world to be a place for God’s glory to be put on display, he prepared people to be image-bearers of that glory. He prepared the tabernacle to be a localized representation of the bigger reality of God’s glory coming to dwell with us in this world. He orchestrated events in Jesus’s earthly life from conception to glorification on the cross and his resurrection. And now he is preparing our hearts to be a dwelling place fit for himself, fit for the glory of God. We are the home of the Holy Spirit when we are Christ’s. He is even preparing the whole world and the whole cosmos to be filled with God’s glory, to be God’s heavenly home in all eternity.

So perhaps it is not just a male-chauvinistic stereotype that wants to keep women connected to their homes.[8] Maybe we are made in the image of the divine homemaker who is recreating us into his glorious image and that reality has implications for how we function best as women. Fruitful home-making it is not so much about home-decorating as it has to do with the Spirit residing inside our hearts and the heart of our homes. How are we creating a space for God’s glory to reside in our families? How are we allowing the Spirit to mold our hearts and preparing our loved ones’ hearts to receive more of Him? How can we create an atmosphere conducive to the Holy Spirit’s work and transforming power in our familial relationships? How can we invite others into our homes so they can taste of the Holy Spirit there? Clearly, husband and wife must work together on the project of creating a home, but the Scripture does place a high value on the role of the woman as central in this task.[1]

Secondary Analogies

By secondary, I mean that the comparison is not one-to-one and many of the truths about the Holy Spirit can find applications for both men and women. Here I wish to show how an understanding of the Holy Spirit can encourage, motivate and challenge women to be more like him in their particular areas of life struggles.

The Holy Spirit is the source of all wisdom

Though wisdom is not ultimately a feminine quality, a glance into the book of Proverbs reveals that wisdom is often taught to sons by women and Lady Wisdom is, well, as her title suggests, a woman! Wisdom is not just an attribute of the Holy Spirit that we desperately need, it is part of his essence. The well-known Proverbs 31 Woman is not meant to be a check-list of all the things a woman needs to do to be godly, rather, it is an acrostic poem teaching us what wisdom can look like when applied perfectly to the life of a woman. Of course, some of her activities are culturally defined and the life of a woman in the 21^st century will look quite different, but certain qualities of wisdom stand out as timeless: trustworthiness, doing good, creativity, diligence, business-savvy, beautification, strength, mercy, faith, dignity, kindness, fruitfulness, and last but not least, the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom. All of these qualities are produced by the Holy Spirit. The more the Holy Spirit takes root in our hearts, the wiser we will be and the more fruit will be evident to others around us. God does not call us to do it all, but to be faithful to the life and calling he has given us. Our daily tasks can become infused with beauty and meaning as we see them not as chores but opportunities for the Holy Spirit’s fruit to grow in us. 

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Adoption

The Holy Spirit reclaims God’s children through adoption as sons and daughters. The fall alienated God’s children from him and the Holy Spirit applies Jesus’ work of redemption to our hearts, cleansing them, transforming them and sealing them, so that we can once again be called his children. Because of this truth, all women can be functional imitators of the Holy Spirit through the process of adoption. The whole point of physical adoption is that a child who was not naturally born to a woman can legally become her child. Applied to spiritual adoption, this means that childless women can have legitimate spiritual children! Infertile or single women do not have to have physical children to fulfill their calling as women to be life-givers nor does having physical children limit us to loving our biological progeny.[9] Whether through the adoption of non-biological children or spiritual adoption, we can bring others into God’s family through our love, acceptance, and discipleship and in so doing, we are being imitators of God the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit desires order and creates holiness

The Holy Spirit is the power of God to create order out of chaos. This process happened at the first creation, when the word of God, through the power of the Spirit, brought order and fullness to a formless and empty world. Eve was made to help Adam bring order to the created world God entrusted to them. But the Spirit also brings moral order, or holiness, into people’s lives. Humans are given life through the breath of the Holy Spirit. God’s Spirit is a spirit of holiness. This implies that being made in God’s image means being holy as he is holy. And it was so in the beginning. Adam and Eve were morally perfect at creation. But Adam failed to exercise his priestly role and guard the garden from the presence of evil.  Eve, in turn, failed to stand firm on the Word of God and was deceived by the Serpent when he questioned it. Since then, sin mars the image of God in us. However, the Holy Spirit has been at work restoring holiness to our broken image. Through Jesus’s substitutionary death and his imputation of righteousness to us, the Holy Spirit gives us a new holiness, not just restoring the pre-fall lost moral image in us, but also being an indwelling down-payment of the glory to come.

I often wonder about the meaning of my life when what seems to best describe it is cleaning up other people’s messes. Whether dishes, laundry or dirt, trails of toys, shoes or papers, it always seems that for the number of messes that get cleaned up, the same number of messes gets created. The daily fight against mess and chaos can be disheartening, but even more depressing can be the amount of mess in relationships and in the church. Ministry is messy! Though this may sound trite, I am greatly encouraged by the fact that the Holy Spirit’s task in this fallen world is to clean up messes too! This helps me deal with the physical messes, since I know God is about restoring all things and it helps me deal with the moral messes, knowing that He is in control of my and other people’s sanctification. Women often want to “be the Holy Spirit” and clean up the sin in other people’s lives but we need to remind ourselves that that is the Holy Spirit’s prerogative, not ours. We need to be faithful, speak the truth in love, but we cannot change anyone and we certainly cannot manipulate anyone into holiness!

The Holy Spirit models worship, witness and intercession

a.     Worship

This may sound strange but the Holy Spirit is the perfect worshipper. He is ultimately and eternally engaged in glorifying the Father and the Son. All that the Spirit does aims at bringing them glory. This is why, when we are converted and filled with the Holy Spirit, we desire to bring God glory and worship him with all of our being. Jesus called out women to become his followers and worshippers. One of the most important conversations about worship that we have recorded in the gospels takes place with the Samaritan woman at the well. She wants to know where the best place is to worship God and Jesus tells her that a time is coming when we will not need a place because through the Spirit, we will be able to worship God in spirit and truth. Jesus, the promised Bridegroom, has a tender heart toward women and they sometimes understand his identity and worship him as Messiah more intuitively.[10] Women need to see all of life as worship, including the menial, hidden, never-recognized work we do. The Holy Spirit who is also unseen and whose work is often only seen much later by its fruit enables us to do it unto Jesus.

b.     Witness

Worship leads to witness. The Holy Spirit’s role has always been one of divine witness. Whether as active witness of the creation of the world or an intimate witness in Jesus’ life, he vouchsafes the truth of God and his message. The Samaritan woman’s reaction to the Messiah is worship but also witness. She runs back to the town, urging others to come see the man who changed her life.  Women were the first to witness the resurrection of Jesus, contradicting the cultural assumption that the witness of women could not be trusted in a court of law. The Spirit entrusts women with truth and this enables us to be bold and speak the message of the Gospel to others. [11]

c.     Intercession

The Spirit is the intercessor par excellence. He intercedes on behalf of God’s children [12] and we become like him when we too bring others before God’s throne. Of course, we can do this in private but the apostle Paul assumes that women will be praying in public as well. [13] There seems to be one type of public prayer that Paul mentions, however, that ought to be done by men. [14] Women can be Spirit-like if they use the gift of prayer to intercede for others.

The Holy Spirit associates himself with the Bride

Paul describes Jesus’ love for the church as a marriage. Jesus is the husband, the church is the bride. The husband is to love his wife, as Christ loves the church and the wife is to submit to her husband as the church submits to Christ. When Adam took Eve as his wife, he left his parents (figuratively speaking!) and became one with Eve. The second Adam, Jesus Christ, left his heavenly Father to pursue his bride, the Church, with the goal of becoming one with her. The amazing thing about Jesus’ work on earth, is that his relationship with the Holy Spirit appears to be intensified to the point of complete oneness because of the common redemptive purpose of the Son and the Spirit. [15] And this oneness between Christ and the Spirit is given to us by the indwelling of the Spirit and gives us union with Christ! All that is his is ours! And all believers in the body, the Church, the bride of Christ share this same intimate experience. The Church is the place where the glory of God resides because that is where the Glory-Spirit dwells. The age of the Church, the second Eve, is the age of the Spirit and he is the down-payment of better things to come, the promise of the glory of the Lord filling the earth as the waters fill the sea. Each Spirit-filled woman is a microcosmic picture of what will happen to the Church, the bride of Christ and the entire cosmos one day. Eagerly awaiting the day of the Lord, the Spirit stands with the bride and cries, “Come!’[16]

Conclusion

Instead of defining biblical womanhood merely as a set of dos and don’t' s, a bigger picture of the story of redemption helps elevate the role of women to a beautiful task paralleled to the Spirit’s life-giving role seen in creation, recreation and the glorification of God’s elect people and of his world. These findings undeniably undergird the idea of complementarity and interdependence of the sexes, though coming from a different trinitarian perspectival approach. Much more work needs to be done in this area, but the small amount of scratching I have done on the surface of this topic has left me in awe of the part all Spirit-filled women get to play in this story. It has also motivated me to become more reliant on the Lord and Giver of life in all areas of my life and ministry. Let us embrace being woman, co-heirs and partakers of the divine nature through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, [17] enjoying it, sacrificing for it, and helping others see the beauty in it.

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[1] “Just as God the Father has authority over the Son, though the two are equal in deity, so in a marriage, the husband has authority over the wife, though they are equal in personhood.” Grudem, Wayne.  Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 459.

[2] The apostle Paul picks up on this in 1 Timothy 2 when he discusses women being saved through childbirth. Ultimately, childbirth is the main difference between men and women and the latter are to embrace the beauty of this calling, realizing its prophetic and redemptive purpose. It was Eve’s desire to step into the representative priestly role, instead of accepting her role that led to her being deceived. Instead of being a life-giver, she became a death-bringer.

[3] Ferguson, Sinclair.  Who is the Holy Spirit? (Sanford, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 2012), 34.

[4] The Hebrew word ezer is translated boethos in the LXX, which overlaps in semantic range with the word parakletos but excludes the legal representative meaning. But there is no denying that the meanings overlap.

[5] “Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' The wind 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’" (Joh 3:4--8 ESV).

[6] Jesus’ death on the cross is viewed by John as his glorification and it is the Spirit’s role to glorify Jesus.

[7] Ferguson.  The Holy Spirit. (Downers Gove, IL: Intervarsity, 1996) 187.

[8]  “Train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled“(Titus 2:4--5).

[9] This is an expansion of the Old Covenant notion of fruitfulness. It was considered a curse to be barren in the Old Testament. Now, in the new and better covenant, even barren woman can be fruitful.

[10] “Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair” (John 12:3). Mary worshipped Jesus as the Lord who was going to die.

[11]“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom 1:16). Witness is different from teaching, however, which Paul forbids women to do in a public worship setting (cf. 1 Tim 2:12). Women are encouraged to pray and prophecy in church.

[12] “Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Rom 8:26).

[13] “Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head” (1 Co 11:4--5).

[14] “I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling” (1 Tim 2:8). It would seem that the lifting of holy hands is symbolic of man’s priestly role in representing his family and blessing it and that the women in the church are to be receptors of this blessing and submissive to the men in authority, not usurping their new privileges to clamor for the representative role of man.

[15] “’The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor 15:45). And also: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:17).

[16] Rev 22:17

[17] “May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.  His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:2-4).