“The Other Comforter”
John 14:15-26
Hopefully you will remember from last lesson that as the Disciples gathered in the Upper Room with Jesus on His last evening before His death they were upset and fearful because they were afraid of what the future held. In John chapter fourteen Jesus offers two essential promises to comfort the disciples.
As we have already seen Jesus comforted them with the promise that He has gone to prepare a place for them and He will return to take them with him to be with him forever! His promise of Heaven applied not only to them but to all who will call upon Him to be saved. The promise of Heaven is a powerful source of encouragement to His disciples then and now. As believers Heaven is our home, our eternal destiny, where we will forever be with the Lord.
Now beginning in verse sixteen we come to the second promise, the promise of another comforter. This other comforter of course is none other than the Holy Spirit of God. When you speak of the Holy Spirit in today’s world you may get some strange looks, especially if you use the King James term of “Holy Ghost.” But this is not that unusual in that Jesus tells us in our text that the world “… cannot receive” Him “because it neither sees Him nor knows Him.” (v. 17)
Yet I realize that even to mention the Holy Spirit in a conservative Baptist church makes people uncomfortable, uptight, and even concern-ed! What is it about the Holy Spirit that makes us squirm in our seats? Is it because we believe that Holy Spirit is just for Charismatic churches? Do we really believe that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity? Perhaps the problem is one of control, we really don’t want to relinquish control of our lives, even to the Holy Spirit?
There are five key passages on the Holy Spirit in the Gospel of John (14:15-17, 14:25-26, 15:26-27, 16:4-11, and 16:13-15) and in each of them we grow to know a little clearer understanding of the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Today in our introduction to the Holy Spirit, I want you to see four things about who the Holy Spirit is.
In verse fifteen we read, “If you love Me, keep My commandments. (16) And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— (17) the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. (18) I will not leave you orphans (orphanos - desolate-KJV); I will come to you. (19) “A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also.”
First, The Promise of the Holy Spirit. (14:16a)
“And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever”
Jesus says that He is sending “another Helper” (or comforter in the KJV) to be with the Disciples. In the original Greek there are two different words that can be translated “another” – allos or heteros. Allos, which is used here means another of the same kind, while heteros means another of a different kind. From the later we get our English word Heterosexual referring to a relationship between two people of the opposite sex.
The word that Jesus uses to describe the coming Helper was allos, which means another helper just like Him! Jesus was comforting His Disciples with the assurance that they did not need to be troubled at His leaving because the Helper or Comforter that He was sending was just like Him. Since this means that “another helper of same kind as the first” this implies that Jesus was the first helper. What Jesus is saying is that He is sending someone who will do for you the same things I have been doing for you. All the things spoken of as being done by the Holy Spirit are somewhere or other in the Bible spoken of as being done by Jesus, such as teaching the disciples (v. 26), being with and in them (v. 26; 15:4) and bearing witness (18:4). The point being that when He calls the Holy Spirit “another” – He is another like Jesus Himself. The ongoing work of the Holy Spirit will be a continuation of the present work that Jesus has done during the Disciple’s lifetimes.
• His Function.
Not only is the Holy Spirit just like Jesus but His function is to be our “helper” this word is tran-slated as “comforter”- KJV, “counselor”- NIV, and “advocate” –NLT. It is unfortunate that term “comfort” has become so watered down in our present day.
But if we look the Holy Spirit being our “comforter” then the fact that the word “comfort” in our day means little more than a half-hearted attempt to console someone is not helpful. But that is not what the word means in the Bible. The word “comfort” come into English from Latin and is made up of two words (cum) meaning “with” and (fortis) from which we get the words fortress and fortify, meaning “to strengthen” Put the two words together and you have the true meaning of comfort “with to strengthen.” True comfort strengthens us to face life bravely and keep on going. If we look back at the original Greek word, we find out that the word literally is parakletos. And once again it the combination of two; the word para meaning “beside” and kaleoo meaning “to call;” therefore the meaning is “one called aside to help.”
John uses the same word Paraclete to describe Jesus in his first epistle. “My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. (2) And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.” (1 John 2:1-2) The term paraclete literally means “one called alongside to help.” The word is used in a great variety of ways, “A parakletos might be a person called in to give witness in a law court in someone’s favor, or an advocate called in to plead the cause of someone under charge which would issue in a serious penalty; an expert called in to give advice in some difficult situation, or a person called in when for example, a company of soldiers were depressed and dispirited to put a new cour-age into their minds and hearts. Always a parakletos is someone called in to help in time of trouble or need.” [William Barclay. The Gospel of John. Vol II The New Daily Study Bible. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001, p. 194]
A good example of what this means comes from the world of major league baseball. “Jackie Robinson was the first black to play major league baseball. Breaking baseball’s color barrier, he faced jeering crowds in every stadium. While playing one day in his home stadium in Brooklyn, he committed an error. The fans began to ridicule him. He stood at second base, humiliated, while the fans jeered. Then, shortstop Pee Wee Reese came over and stood next to him. He put his arm around Jackie Robinson and faced the crowd. The fans grew quiet. Robinson later said that arm around his shoulder saved his career.” [Leadership. www.bible.org/illus.]
We need not only to understand the promise of the Holy Spirit but …
Secondly, The Person of the Holy Spirit.
Before further examination of the text I believe we need to understand that the Holy Spirit is a Person, not just an influence, not a force nor an impersonal instrument of God. He is a person, a third member of the Trinity, coequal with the Father and Son! The Holy Spirit of God is a person; Jesus referred to the Spirit as “He” (v. 16) not “it.’
In truth a great many Christians have no idea who the Holy Spirit is or what the Holy Spirit does. For all practical purposes they are in the same position as the believers who met Paul at Ephesus and said, “We have not so much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.” (Acts 19:2)
“The importance of the (Holy) Spirit’s (as a person (personhood) cannot be overstated, since the alternative is to think of the Spirit as an impersonal force. Thinking this way, many Christ-ians desire to get more of the Spirit in the same way one gets more power from an electrical outlet. They speak of ‘plugging into’ the Spirit’s power. The Holy Spirit is not a mere power, however, but the third person of the (Trinity) (divine Godhead), coequal with God the Father and God the Son.” [Richard D. Philips. “John” Vol 2: Chap. 11-21. (Philipsburg: NJ: P&R Pub. 2014) pp. 252]
James Montgomery Boice says, “If we think of the Holy Spirit as a mysterious power, our thought will continually be, ‘How can I get more of the Holy Spirit?’ If we think of the Holy Spirit as a person, our thought will be, ‘How can the Holy Spirit have more of me?’ The first thought is entirely pagan the second is New Testament Christianity.” [James Montgomery Boice. The Gospel of John: An Expositional Commentary. 5 vols in one (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1985) p. 975]
We need not only to understand the person of the Holy Spirit but …
Third, The Power of the Holy Spirit. (14:16b-17)
Now returning to the text there are two things I think we should notice concerning the promise of the Power of the Holy Spirit.
• Present with the Believer. – (v. 16b) “… that He may abide with you forever.” He further adds “…He dwells with you…” (v. 17) and “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you” (v. 18). The point that He is endeavoring to drive the Holy Spirit is with the believer forever.
Verse eighteen makes two promises “I will not leave you orphans”- a term which means with-out a father and “I will come to you.”
But He is not only present with the believer He is…
• Resident in the Believer (v. 17) “He dwells with you and will be in you.”
Earlier in the chapter Jesus had promised “Let not you heart be troubled” (v. 1) because “I go to prepare a place for you” (v. 3). Now He is saying, “let not your hearts be troubled because I am making a place within you” One of the most comforting facts of Christianity is that the Holy Spirit not only comes alongside but that He literally resides within us. When a person trusts Christ as their Savior; they are born again and the Holy Spirit enters their heart and bears witness that they are a child of God. The Holy Spirit takes up residence and will not depart.
The Holy Spirit comes to take up permanent residence in a believer’s heart and life. Thus, the body of the believer becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Corinth saying, “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. (19) Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? (20) For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (1 Corinthians 6:18-20)
(14:19-25) There is a seeming digression begin-ning in verse nineteen, a section that one is tempted to skip over in order to maintain the uniformity of a discussion of the Holy Spirit, but in doing one would be missing out on some comforting words about the Lord’s departure and what this depart-ure means to His Disciples.
Jesus draws a contrast between the exper-ience of the world and the experience of His Disciples. In verse nineteen one reads, “A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. (20) “At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”
Jesus says that the world will see Him “no more” but you in contrasting the Disciples with the world - will “see” (v. 19) and “know” me (v. 20). Further He says, “at that day” (v. 20) they will see and know Him in way that they had not previously seen and known. But “at that day” – but what day is He referring too? It could refer to the Holy Spirit’s coming on Pentecost or His future Second coming but perhaps the most natural was to under-stand this is as promise of His appearance to the Disciples after the Resurrection.
In verse twenty-two are the qualifiers, “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him. (22) “Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, how is it that You will manifest Your-self to us, and not to the world?””
Because Jesus has said in verse nineteen that “the world will see Me no more” and then said in verse twenty-four that He will “manifest himself” to the Disciples and Judas asked, “how will you mani-fest yourself to us and not to the world?” It was hard for him to understand what Jesus meant when He now spoke of a revealing of Himself and yet that the world would not see. Judas did not understand what Jesus meant and so he asked for further clarification. First, we need to clarify who this Judas is. John just tells us that it was not Judas Iscariot, but other sources tells that he is the Disciple known as Jude or Thaddeus.
The world has had its opportunity, but that time has passed. Then the little empathic word “But” you - speaking of the Disciples will “see me”
The idea of “manifest” (v. 21) is to reveal, to make plain. It wasn’t immediately apparent how in His departure Jesus could reveal Himself to His disciples and not to the world at large. In verse nineteen Jesus had said that the Disciples “would see” him. The word translated “see” is (theoreo) that we talked about in the last lesson it means to see “with perception.” What a difference Christ’s post-resurrection appearances made in the lives of the Disciples
In verse twenty-three Jesus answers Judas’ question, “Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. (24) He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me. (25) “These things I have spoken to you while being present with you.”
Jesus promises that He responds to genuine love of His disciples by making Himself real to them. Obedience produces an increasing aware-ness of the LORD – He becomes increasingly more real to us!
Now we are returning to revelations about the Holy Spirit. We need not only to under-stand the power of the Holy Spirit but …
Fourth, The Purpose of the Holy Spirit. (14:26)
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”
The role of the Holy Spirit as a divine Comforter has already been emphasized and now the emphasis is on the Holy Spirit as the divine Teacher. Verse twenty-six outlines a two-fold purpose of the ministry of the Holy Spirit;
1. To Teach you all things
When the Lord says, the Holy Spirit is to “teach you all things” the reference is primarily to the Apostles. This conveys the thought that what-ever the disciples need to know as they go about the task of living of serving the Lord, the Holy Spirit will teach them!
Much of what the Lord had spoken to the Apostles had not been understood by them at the time. It would be up to the Holy Spirit to apply the truths that they had already heard, and after the resurrection help the Disciples to understand what the Lord had meant.
And in a secondary way this truth also applies to believers today. The Apostle explained it to the believers at Corinth this way, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” (10) But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. (11) For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.” (1 Cor. 2:9-11)
2. To Bring to your remembrance all things that Jesus has taught them.
First, the Apostles are given the Holy Spirit to aid in the remembrance of those things that Jesus had taught. Did you ever wonder how the Apostles were able to remember with such exactness the things that Jesus had said years earlier? The recording of what came to be the New Testament is a direct result of the aid of the Holy Spirit.
The secondary application is to us today. I believe that this truth flies in the face of those who believe “continuing revelation.” This refers to those who believe that God is continuing to reveal “new” truth to believers today. This passage tells us that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit does not bring forward new revelations about Jesus, or from Jesus, but rather gives correct applications and meaning for what He has already taught.
But why if they were taught all things does anything need to be brought to their remembrance. The simple truth is that our minds are not able to retain all the important things we have heard taught. It is possible to be well taught, even brilliantly taught and still forget.
Have you ever been in a conversation with another person, perhaps trying to offer a word of counsel, when suddenly, some truth of God's Word floods into your mind and heart? It may be something which you've not read in years or thought of in years. Suddenly, at just the right time of need, that truth wings its way to the forefront of your thoughts or to the tip of your tongue just in time to be used. That is the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing truth to remembrance.
Conclusion
Is it difficult to live the Christian life? Certainly it is, in fact it is impossible to live without help. The demands that the believer is asked to face are greater than our capabilities. And if we face life simply in our own strength we are bound to fail. But we are not asked to face life in our own strength. God, the Holy Spirit, has been sent from the Father and the Son to abide with us and dwell in us. He has come as our advocate. We can live victoriously, IF we live in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The secret of a successful Christian life is being controlled by the Holy Spirit. Sumner Wemp says, “It is about as hard to get Christians to allow the Holy Spirit to control them as it is to get non-Christians to let the Savior convert them.” [S. Summer Wemp. “How on Earth Can I Be Spiritual.” (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1978) p. 58]
Ephesians 5:19 says “be ye filled with the Holy Spirit.” What does it mean to be “filled with the Holy Spirit? Does it mean to get more of the Holy Spirit, like filling a glass until it overflows? No! The Holy Spirit is a person and you have all of Him the moment you get saved. To “be filled with the Holy Spirit” means to be controlled by the Holy Spirit. So, it becomes a question of how much of you does the Holy Spirit have? It is a question of yielding yourself to His control. So, my question for you today is, “How much control of your life does the Holy Spirit have?”
