The Comforter, And Persecution.

THE COMFORTER, AND PERSECUTION.

John 15:26-27, John 16:1-4.

1. The Coming of the Comforter.

John 15:26-27.

As we enter this part of our text, it is well to note, first, the certainty of the event: “When the Comforter IS COME” (John 15:26a).

But when did the disciples receive the Holy Spirit? It may appear at first glance in John’s Gospel that He came upon them when Jesus ‘breathed on them’ during one of His post-resurrection appearances (cf. John 20:22). However, Luke’s Gospel records the same conversation in a slightly different way: ‘And you are witnesses of these things. Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high’ (cf. Luke 24:48-49).

In other words, the “coming” of the Holy Spirit corresponds with the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2:1-4.

Second, Jesus names the Comforter, “the Spirit of Truth” (John 15:26b).

Jesus says, ‘When He, the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into all the truth’ (cf. John 16:13). Now this is tantamount to saying that He will point the disciples to Jesus, for Jesus has already said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except by Me’ (cf. John 14:6).

Third - as well as being “sent” by the Father, and by Jesus, the Holy Spirit “proceeds (goes forth) from the Father” (John 15:26c) under the power of His own volition, His own sovereign free-will.

Fourth, the Holy Spirit comes to testify of Jesus (John 15:26d). The Holy Spirit does not point to Himself, but away from Himself to Jesus. As should we.

Fifth, it is at this point that we see the disciples’ responsibility to bear witness (John 15:27a).

Primarily, this no doubt applies specifically to those who were still present with Jesus at this stage of the Upper Room discourse. This would be the apostolic party, which Judas had already left. They are the ones who had been “with Me from the beginning” (John 15:27b).

Secondarily, this applies to successive generations of the church, each with a duty to tell forth to their own generation ‘the wonderful works of God’ (cf. Acts 2:11). A mission which began in Jerusalem and is continuing even now ‘to the ends of the earth’ (cf. Acts 1:8).

2. The Inevitability Of Persecution.

John 16:1-4.

In the previous chapter, Jesus did not hold back from His eleven remaining disciples the reality that they must face. They would face persecutions. Jesus has forewarned them, and us, so that we might be forearmed against such things, and need not be “offended” (literally, “scandalised”) by them (John 16:1).

It is a fact of our faith, that, ‘All that will live godly in Christ Jesus, shall suffer persecution’ (cf. 2 Timothy 3:12).

For the eleven this involved, literally, “Out of the synagogues will they put you” (John 16:2). Excommunication. Worse than this, the time would come when the person who killed them would think that he was doing a service to God.

This was the testimony of St. Paul, when he reflected upon his pre-conversion state as Saul of Tarsus. ‘I persecuted this Way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women.’ Bearing letters from ‘the high priest’ and ‘all the estate of the elders,’ he ‘went to Damascus, to bring them which were there bound unto Jerusalem, for to be punished’ (cf. Acts 22:4-5).

It is often ‘religious’ people who persecute those who find peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus tells us why. “And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor Me” (John 16:3; cf. John 15:21).

The Greek rendering of the first sentence in John 16:4 is: “But these things have I said to you that when the hour may have come you (all) may remember that (it was) I that said them to you.” The emphasis falls upon the “I” who spoke these words, even our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

In the second sentence of John 16:4, Jesus explains why He had not put so much stress upon persecution at the beginning of His ministry. It was because He was with them, teaching them the fundamentals of the faith. It would have been too early for them to stomach the full extent of the hard realities of which He was now forewarning them.