...Second, Christ received gifts and endowments to aid Him in His work, namely, the infusion of habitual graces into His human nature (Isa. 11:2-4). This point was carefully highlighted by several Puritan writers. John Owen makes perhaps the most explicit comment: “The only singular immediate act of the person of the Son on the human nature was the assumption of it into subsistence with himself.”¹ Moreover, Owen insists that the Spirit is the “immediate operator of all divine acts of the Son himself, even on his own human nature. Whatever the Son of God wrought in, by, or upon the human nature, he did it by the Holy Ghost, who is his Spirit.”² The graces wrought upon the human nature were, therefore, a result of the Spirit’s work in Christ. This concept plays an important role in Thomas Goodwin’s Christology. Like Owen, Goodwin maintained that the Spirit sanctified the human nature and constituted the incarnate Son as the Christ. The Spirit anointed Christ with graces (Isa. 11:2).

Thus the graces manifested in Christ’s human nature are to be attributed to the Spirit as the “immediate Author of them.”³ Goodwin adds that “although the Son of God dwelt personally, in the human nature, and so advanced that nature above the ordinary rank of creatures, and raised it up to that dignity and worth; yet all his habitual graces, which even his soul was full of, were from the Holy Ghost … and this inhabitation of the Holy Ghost did in some sense and degree concur to constitute him Christ.”⁴ So, for Goodwin, in the hypostatic union, the divine nature acts not immediately, but mediately through the work of the Spirit. And, in connection with Gillespie’s point above, the Spirit equips Christ for the work of mediation.

Gillespie next shows that not only did Christ receive the Spirit to assist Him, but He also received promises from the Father to encourage Him (Isa. 42:4; 49:1-3).