The prime purpose of the incarnation, in the love of God, is to lift us up into a life of communion, of participation in the very triune life of God.

—James B. Torrance

What was the Holy Spirit doing as Jesus was ridiculed, unjustly condemned, beaten and tortured, and then crucified on the cross? Jesus was conceived in the Spirit, baptized in the Spirit, lived his entire life in the Spirit, and offered himself up on the cross in the Spirit. How then do we understand the Holy Spirit in relation to those horrible hours of Good Friday? Captivated, as many of us have been by the penal theory of atonement, this question, as Moltmann notes, rarely surfaces. And there is little wonder. The theory contends that, as the Father placed the sin of the world upon Jesus, he then poured out his wrath upon Jesus instead of upon us who deserved it, hiding his face from Jesus, abandoning his own Son in utter rejection.