Birth of the Church - Part 1
A Scriptural Defense to
John MacArthur’s John 20:22 Exegesis
And Jesus breathed into them, and says to them, [you] take spirit holy. (John 20.22, Literal)
In his provocative book, Charismatic Chaos, John MacArthur, Jr., claims that Jesus’s command of “Receive ye the Holy Ghost” and blowing into his disciples in John 20:22 did not birth the Church, but rather constituted a predictive act foreshadowing the Church’s birth at Pentecost. He states that the synthesis of John 7:39 and John 16:7 shows that the disciples could not receive the Holy Ghost until the day of Pentecost.
(37) Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. (38) He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (39) But this spake he of the spirit, which they that believed on him were to receive: for the spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified. (John 7:37-39)
Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto you. (John 16:7)
Based upon John 7:39, MacArthur holds “the Spirit would not come until Jesus had been glorified, and He could not be glorified until He had ascended.” He then uses John 16:7 to state that Jesus did not “go away” until he ascended as recorded in Acts 1:9. Upon these premises, he declares that pouring out of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, not John 20:22, was, in fact, the Church’s birth, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost, or the gift of tongues, was a special manifestation specific to that time period as a sign to Israel and confirmation of the apostles’ spiritual authority. This article will demonstrate by exegesis of the Greek New Testament that the Scriptures irrefutably show that Jesus birthed the Church in John 20:22, which then set the stage for the baptism of the Holy Ghost with the evidence of tongues at Pentecost as a second definite experience for all Christians.
Jesus could not be glorified until he completed his mission. In Luke 13, Jesus, himself, declared when his mission would be completed. In that chapter, certain Pharisees came to Jesus and told him to leave the region because Herod sought to kill him. In response, Jesus made this provocative statement,
Go and say to that fox, Behold, I cast out devils and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I am perfected.
The word “perfected” means the total fulfillment or completion of a mission. From John 10:10, we understand that Jesus’s mission or reason to come was to give mankind zoe-life, the God-kind of life. Therefore, by Jesus’s own statement in Luke, his mission to provide the means for mankind to have or possess the zoe-life of God would be completed in its entirety on the “third day,” which was the day of his resurrection.
Jesus actually spoke of his own glorification in John 13. While Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, he announced that one of them would betray him. After his disciples asked him who it was, he told them the betrayer was Judas. At that very instant Satan entered Judas and Jesus said to him,
That thou doest, do quickly.
Thereafter Judas immediately left the house. Jesus then turned to his disciples and said,
Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him.
By MacArthur’s logic and exegesis of John 7:39, the Holy Spirit should have been poured out at that moment since Jesus said He was glorified, but we know that it was not.
At first blush, it appears that Jesus misspoke because he used the word “now” which means now - “at that moment” in the Greek - and “glorified” is past tense. The key to understanding this is found in the word “straightway” in the next verse. In that verse Jesus says,
and God shall glorify him in himself, and straightway shall he glorify him.
The Greek word for “straightway” is euthus. Euthus is usually translated “immediately” or “at once” in modern English translations. The New Testament, however, shows more a specific use of the word than what is derived in the English. In Matthew 3:16, Jesus went up immediately (euthus) out of the water after he was immersed by John the Baptist. In Mark 1:12, the spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness immediately (euthus) after his baptism. In John 19:34, blood and water poured out immediately (euthus) after a soldier pierced Jesus’s side. In all of these passages and others, euthus is an adverb used to express the immediate, but conditional cause and effect. In other words, it expresses the idea that one event occurs immediately after the execution or completion of a prior event.
This same usage is seen in John 13. Once Jesus identified Judas as his betrayer - the completed prior event - all conditions needful for his glorification had been placed in motion, so it was considered done at that moment. In effect, God deemed Jesus’s death, burial, resurrection, and ascension into heaven one complete act that was fully accomplished when Judas walked out the door. Consequently, Jesus could and did say that he was glorified right then and there.