Another Helper
Psalm 66, Deuteronomy 4:32-40, 1 John 3:14-24, John 14:15-21
Barbara and I are reading a series of murder mysteries. In the series we’re reading right now, the main character is named Hieronymous Bosch, a name his mother gave him because she thought that medieval painter’s depictions of hell resembled Los Angeles. In one scene, he is driving home through portions of LA that have been devastated by an earthquake, and he passes by a new apartment complex, which is now marked with fractures from one end to the other. Harry Bosch then notes that someone has come along with a can of spray paint and has written along the entire length of the building these words: The Fat Lady Has Sung.
Well, except for the anachronism involved, something like that would be a good to spray on the wall as Jesus is talking to his disciples in the section John reports in the gospel lesson appointed for today. It might say, the Fat Lady is about to begin singing. Jesus has told them in the previous chapter of John 13 that he is going away and they cannot come with him. They knew he was talking about his death. Judas is betraying Jesus. Peter will soon deny the Lord. At the time of Jesus’ greatest testing and trial, they will all run away. Their world is about to be turned upside down.
In John 14 Jesus offers his disciples the comfort of two promises. The first promise is the one you hear at just about every Christian funeral you have ever attended — the promise that Jesus is going away to prepare a place for the disciples – and by extension, for us – and that he will return and take us to be with him in that place forever.
The second promise Jesus offers his disciples has a more immediate application. Something this side of death. And, that promise is found in verse 16: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper to be with you forever...”
Many of you know that the word in John’s text is translated in various ways into English. Some versions read Counselor; others Comforter; or, as in the translation we heard read a moment ago, “Helper.” The Greek word is “parakleetos” which is difficult to translate into English, and so we find different renderings of this word in different English versions. It is a combination of “para” meaning “beside” or “alongside” and “kaleo” meaning “to call” or “to summon.” It refers to someone who is called along side to help. In some Greek texts it is a legal term for a defense attorney. And, so, some English versions translate the term here “Advocate.” We should also note what my Greek professors would often point out when discussing this passage, namely that the word “another” is important here, since there are a couple of different terms for this in Greek. Here we have “allos” which means another of the same kind (Someone just like Jesus). “I will ask the Father and He will give you another Helper...”
Why is this important to you and me? It is important because what was true of the disciples is also true of you and me. No one here today can live a godly life without the abiding help of the Holy Spirit. But this promise to the disciples is also a promise to you and me. We know this from statements such as Peter made in his sermon in Acts 2, when speaking of the gift of the Holy Spirit, he said this: “For the promise [of the Holy Spirit] is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call." The Holy Spirit is exactly what we need to handle life successfully and to live in a godly way.
We should take careful note of the things Jesus tells us here about the Holy Spirit.
For example, in verse 16, we learn that He comes to be with us forever. The Holy Spirit is not fickle in His commitment to us, or in his ministry us. He is not “there” when we feel spiritual. He is not with us only when we’re doing our best or when we’re on your knees. Indeed, it is when we are feeling pretty lousy and when we’re flat on our faces before temptation or terrible trial – these are the places and times when the ministry of the Paraclete is most important, for it is in the face of the bad news about what’s about to happen that Jesus offers his disciples this promise.
Jesus knows what awaits them on the other side of his own trials, on the other side of his own ascension into heaven. He knows they cannot fulfill their destiny as redeemed sinners without divine assistance, divine encouragement, divine enablement. That is why he promises them the Holy Spirit – for those kinds of times.
There is a silly and ultimately dangerous idea about the Holy Spirit that is popular today. It is the notion that the Holy Spirit is given to make us feel good, to enjoy a “spirit-filled life” which is understood in psychologically therapeutic terms – Holy Ghost the Happy Pill for our spirits, Holy Ghost vitamins for the soul. If you insist on thinking of the Holy Ghost in medicinal or nutritional terms, it might be better to think of him as Holy Geritol, divine vita-meata-vegemin for the spiritually weak and depleted.
But even this is a deceptive idea. For sure, the Holy Spirit is given to believers to enable them to do the hard things, to face the temptations and trials and tests which are the common lot of the followers of Jesus. But, we must never think of the Holy Ghost as medicine or a source of spiritual snake oil for the hard time. We don’t “dose ourselves” with the Holy Spirit as needed, as if he were a bottle of aspirin. Jesus tells us that he abides in us, that when he comes, he is with us forever.
This is the second thing we must keep in mind about the Holy Spirit. His presence in each and every believer is one of those things which constitutes them as members of Christ’s body, as members of the Church, as heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven, of which the Holy Spirit is the down payment. Said another way, the Pentecostals are flatly wrong when they suppose there are believers out there with the Holy Ghost and some sort of second class believers who haven’t yet gotten the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Again, Peter is quite clear in his sermon in Acts 2: ““Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.” Paul is just as clear when he writes to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 12: “13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.” Again, in the Epistle appointed for today, John writes (1 John 3:24): “And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.
You cannot come into the Kingdom of Heaven apart from the calling of God’s Spirit. You cannot be joined to Christ’s body the Church without the baptism, that thing which the Holy Spirit does to make you a member of Christ’s body, to engraft you into the true vine, to make you a branch of the true olive tree, to constitute you as a living stone, set into the temple of the living God. You cannot live as a member of Christ without the quickening, empowering ministry of the Holy Spirit.
How, then, are the results of this ministry of the Spirit in our lives. Again, Jesus’ words tell us.
Look again at John 14:15-16. “If you love me, you will obey what I command. 16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper to be with you forever.” “...You will obey what I command And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor...” Peter later acknowledged this link between the Holy Spirit and obedience in Acts 5:32 when he says, “We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him."
There is nothing, absolutely nothing that will keep me obedient to God except the love of God. And nothing can more surely awaken that love, cause it to grow, and make it to issue forth in obedience than the ministry of God’s Spirit.
The Old Testament lesson from Deuteronomy today provides an interesting contrast between the Old Testament saints and New Testament saints as far as their differing capacities to please the Lord. In Deuteronomy 4, Moses extolled the great and mighty acts which God had done for Israel in delivering them from the Egyptians. And then he said this:
“39 Therefore know this day, and consider it in your heart, that the LORD Himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. 40 You shall therefore keep His statutes and His commandments which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which the LORD your God is giving you for all time.”
Moses, therefore, sets before the Jews two reasons for their obedience to the LORD. First of all, they should obey him because of who he is and what he has done for them in the past. Second, they should obey him because this is how it may go well with them and for their children after them. These are perfectly reasonable, even compelling reasons to obey the LORD. But the sad, sad lesson of centuries of the Old Covenant show that these reasons were NOT sufficient to produce obedience.
But, what about those in Christ? It is a wholly different matter now. As Jesus told his disciples in John 14: “21 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.” And whence comes this love that is shown by obedience to God’s commands? It comes from God’s Spirit.
Paul tells us in Galatians 4 that “God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” To the Corinthians Paul wrote, “21 Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, 22 who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” To the Romans, (Rom. 5) Paul wrote, “ … we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; 4 and perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Again, in Romans 8, Paul tells us that “ … you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ 16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.”
In John 14:24 Jesus deals with the other side of his statement about obedience. “He who does not love me will not obey my teaching.” A lot of people are confused in their understanding of what love is. Love is not a sentimental feeling. Some people think they love God because they have sentimental feelings about God or about what Jesus suffered. But the biblical test is not what I think I feel. Jesus gives a very simple way I can know whether I really love God. Am I obeying his commandments? If I’m not obeying Him then that is clear evidence that I don’t love Him. If I am obeying, then even if I don’t feel a lot of emotion I am demonstrating clear evidence that I love Him.
Biblical love is something far meatier greater than simple sentiment and emotion. Biblical love motivates me to do those things that God has commanded because I want to please Him. I don’t do it grudgingly. I may struggle some in my efforts to do it. But I want to do it.
In the hymn “Amazing Grace” John Newton wrote, “‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear.” Thank God for that grace. But the rest of the verse says, “And grace my fears relieved.” Fear can get our attention. But, for sustained obedience something more than fear is needed.
It begins with a revelation of God’s love toward us. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life.” In his first epistle (4:19) John wrote, “We love him because he first loved us.”
That is the New Testament motive for obedience. It begins when you begin to realize how much God loves you—not because you deserve it, but because He just loves us. Jeremiah wrote, “The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness’.” (Jerm. 31:3) And, so Paul writes concerning believers in Ephesians 1: “ … He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself…”
God grant that by the Spirit of Christ, given to us in the marvelous grace by which we are saved, we work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that it is God who works in us for His good pleasure. May the Holy Spirit accomplish all his good will for us, to the end that we all may arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
