"I Will Send You Another . . ." Series

We have examples of this. Turn to John 2:22 – when Jesus cleansed the temple and spoke about tearing the temple down and raising it in three days. What does it say there? “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” And in 12:16 when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey it says: “His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.”

These passages are examples of the Holy Spirit reminding the disciples of what Jesus had said and taught. These passages are examples of the Spirit leading the disciples into truth that they could not bear before Jesus left. We see right in the Gospel of John examples of the teaching ministry of the Spirit. They didn’t remember because of their own natural capacity to recall Jesus’ teachings. No, Jesus explicitly told them that the Spirit would remind them of all that he said. He explicitly told them that the Spirit would lead them into all truth – in other words they would actually understand what he meant by what he said. There’s no point in remembering without understanding. It’s like the Spirit would say, “Psst, hey, remember when Jesus said this? Well, this is what he meant by that.”

Preacher Charles Spurgeon once said: “The Holy Ghost does not reveal anything fresh now. He brings old things to our remembrance . . . The canon of revelation is closed, there is no more to be added; God does not give a fresh revelation, but he rivets the old one. When it has been forgotten, and laid in the dusty chamber of our memory, he fetches it out and cleans the picture, but does not paint a new one. There are no new doctrines, but the old ones are often revived.”

And I think that another aspect of the Spirit guiding the disciples into all truth is that we have Scripture. In 2 Timothy 3:16 we have this well-known verse: “All scripture is inspired by God.” Another way of translating “inspired” here is to say that “all scripture is God-breathed.” The Greek word for breath is pneuma which can also be translated Spirit. It was God through the Holy Spirit who gave us our Scriptures. The words of the disciples and apostles and writers of Scripture are not simply human words – but God spoke through these men to give us our inspired – God-breathed – Scriptures.

It’s also true that the Spirit continues to be with us today in this way. The Spirit still leads us into the truth, still enables us to apply the Scriptures to our lives – to find ways of making what was written nearly two-thousand years ago still relevant and vital today. “The Paraclete [the Spirit] thus will proclaim the teachings of Jesus to them [and us] in the new and changing circumstances of their lives.”

3. The witnessing ministry of the Spirit – Jesus also says this of the Spirit: “He will testify on my behalf.” The Spirit testifies to Jesus. Just like John, who pointed away from himself and to Jesus, the Spirit also points away from himself and to Jesus. The work of the Spirit is to witness to Jesus. The Spirit is also called here the Spirit of truth – and we know that in John 14:6 Jesus calls himself “the way, the truth, and the life.” Jesus is the truth. Calling the Spirit the Spirit of truth is virtually synonymous with calling the Spirit the Spirit of Jesus.