Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

Reverend Eric Alexander: Let's pray for a moment together. Father, we thank you for such words as these. We thank you for the mind from which they came and bless you for the power and grace of Martin Luther's life. We pray that in our generation, you would be pleased to grant us something of the same vision and conviction, that we may know the same grace of God upon us in our days.

We pray that you would come to us this evening and fulfill all the longing expressed in these words that we have sung. May the Holy Spirit, both God and Lord, come and minister amongst us this evening. As we open the pages of the Word of which he is the author, may he also be its interpreter to us, that we may live to glorify and honor you through Christ our Redeemer. Amen.

Now, you will need to have your Bible open this evening at John chapter 14 and the passage that begins at verse 15. If you were with us last Sunday evening, you will recollect that in the first 14 verses of John's gospel, Jesus has been providing for his disciples comfort and strength in view of his impending departure. In other words, he is helping them to face the pain and sorrow of the bereavement that they are going to experience in his leaving them very shortly as he goes to the cross to offer himself there for our sin.

That, of course, is one of the reasons that this passage at the beginning of John 14 is read so frequently at funeral services. It is our Savior's own ministry to those who are facing the pain of bereavement. Basically, he speaks to them about going to his Father's home, which is heaven, and his intention to return and take them to rejoin him there, so that where he is, there they may be also.

Now, that gives rise to several questions. The context of bereavement is one where questions are continually being asked. There are two questions particularly that Jesus takes up: one from Thomas and one from Philip. He answers them in the remaining part of the first half of John 14. But none of this touches the immediate problem which the disciples have of how they are going to cope with life after Jesus has gone.

That, of course, is one of the essential and one of the most harrowing parts of experiencing bereavement. How are we to cope with life when Jesus has gone? The disciples were asking. From verse 15, the passage we read this evening, what Jesus is really saying to them is quite simply, "I have provided and planned for that situation as well." For the sharpness of the experience of my departure and your bereavement, of feeling that you have been left like orphans, I have planned and provided for that.

That provision centers upon the continuing ministry after I have gone to heaven of the Holy Spirit. So, there begins at verse 15 what you find repeated throughout chapters 14, 15, and 16 of John: various passages which are really references to the ministry and work of the Holy Spirit. In this upper room table talk, as someone has called it, in which Jesus engages with his disciples, there is a continuous reference to the ministry of the Holy Spirit because his ministry is to be the key to their gaining victory over the sense of bereftness which they are going to feel when Jesus has gone.

So, our theme this evening, and it will recur as we go through these chapters, is the person and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. When I was a student, it was the common thing at Christian Union meetings when somebody came to speak about the Holy Spirit for the speaker to begin—and we could almost tell that he was going to begin that way; indeed, some of the cynics amongst us used to look over to each other and mouth what he would start to say—and he almost always began by saying, "The subject of the person and ministry of the Holy Spirit is the neglected theme of the Christian church. The Holy Spirit is the neglected person of the Holy Trinity."

Now, I doubt if that could really be said in our generation and in our time. It is scarcely true in days when people think and speak a great deal about the ministry of the Holy Spirit. But there is an area of the Holy Spirit's ministry which I think is greatly neglected amongst us, and that is this area that Jesus is here dealing with: the ministry of the Holy Spirit representing Christ in the heart of the Christian believer and all that that means for the believer in this world.

It is upon that that Jesus is dwelling here principally, and I want us to turn our attention to it by asking three very simple questions of Jesus' teaching. The first is: Who is this Holy Spirit to whom Jesus wants to introduce the disciples so urgently here? The second question would be: What does he do? What is his particular function within this context? And the third question: How do we experience his ministry doing this representing Jesus in the life of the believer for ourselves? How does this become a reality to us, so that we recognize what Jesus is speaking about as something that is true in our own experience?

Who then is the Holy Spirit? Jesus begins to introduce the theme to the disciples in verse 16. You will notice: "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you."

As you read through this passage, one simple and obvious thing becomes clear, and that is that the Holy Spirit, who is the key to the disciples' survival, as it were, in these coming eras after Jesus has gone to heaven, the Holy Spirit is a person, not a force, not a power, not an influence which they are to feel, but a person. Although that is in many senses assumed rather than taught here, it is certainly taught as well.

For example, do you notice in verse 16, Jesus describes the Holy Spirit to the disciples as another Counselor whom he is going to ask the Father, and the Father will send? In a moment, I want to enlarge upon this a little and explain it to you, but the whole idea of another Counselor, another Comforter, Paraclete—whatever you have in your Bible—is another Counselor, Comforter, Paraclete, the same as Jesus is.

The implication is abundantly clear. The only kind of Holy Spirit who would fulfill this description of another Counselor, another Comforter, the same as Jesus is, is of course someone who was a person. Personal activities in this passage here are ascribed to the Holy Spirit. For example, he is going to teach them. In verse 26, for example: "The Counselor, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things." The very idea of a teacher, instructor, is something that belongs to personhood.

He is going to remind them. He is someone who may be known, do you notice also in verse 17? He says, "He is the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you." The whole language bears the clear evidence that Jesus is speaking in the only natural interpretation about a person.

Elsewhere in the Scripture, we find a further underlining of this idea that the Holy Spirit is a person when we read that he can be grieved. So Paul says, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit." He may be grieved, experience the emotion of grief. Only a person can do that. He may also be sinned against. He may also be lied to. The apostle said to Ananias and Sapphira, "You have not lied against men; you have lied against God." But you lie to and seek to deceive and confuse a person.

So the clear evidence is that the Holy Spirit is a person. Now, the importance of this is not merely for the sake of some kind of doctrinal point that the Holy Spirit is not a thing, but a person—not an it, but a he. The importance is this: that when we speak of the Holy Spirit, frequently our grave danger is that we speak of the Holy Spirit as a power. Very often the two ideas are brought close together in people's thinking. When we speak of the Holy Spirit, we think of power.

People often say, "We need to know the Holy Spirit at work among us so that we might know the power of God in our midst." But it is a very important thing for us to grasp that the Holy Spirit is not a power available for you to use; he is a person who wants you to be available for him to use. These are totally different things. Into that snare of imagining the Holy Spirit as a power that we can use, we frequently fall.

So here is this emphasis which comes first of all: the Holy Spirit is a person. When he comes to dwell within you, he comes as a person with all the attributes of personhood. He comes in order, with all the power of God, to use, direct, instruct, control, and change you.

But the second answer to the question who is he is not only that he is a person, but that he is one of the three persons in the Godhead: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is, the Holy Spirit is a divine person co-equal with God the Father and God the Son.

One of the striking things about this passage we read this evening is how Jesus moves back and forward from the Holy Spirit's dwelling in the believer to his own living in the believer and to the Father's living in the believer. The implication of it is—and we'll look at it in greater detail in a moment—that you can never dissect or separate the members of the Godhead from each other.

They are, of course, distinct persons, in that Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the Father are referred to in different ways. Jesus prays the Father, the Father sends the Spirit, the Spirit instructs the believer about the Lord Jesus. But you cannot separate the one person of the Trinity from the other two. Now, you will notice how Jesus speaks about this and how he bears testimony to the Holy Spirit's divine being.

In verse 17, for example, he is the Spirit of truth. He says, "The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you." Now, if you look on to verse 20, Jesus says, "On that day"—that is the day when the Holy Spirit comes—"you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you." First of all, it is the Spirit is in you, then it is I am in you, and then if you look on to verse 23, notice what Jesus says: "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him."

Now, if you didn't recognize that the Holy Spirit is God and that to speak of the Holy Spirit in you is to speak of God in you, you would become confused about this. What is he speaking about? Is he speaking about the Spirit in me? Is he speaking about Jesus in me? Is he speaking about the Father in me? The answer is he's speaking about all three of them because the Holy Spirit is God living in the believer.

Now, that's an enormously important thing. There is about the Holy Spirit a distinctiveness from the Father and the Son, and yet a oneness with the Father and the Son. That oneness is seen in that the Holy Spirit and the Son and the Father appear at times in Jesus' teaching almost to be interchangeable. So the Holy Spirit is spoken of in precisely the same breath as the Father and the Son. He is not only a person; he is a divine person.

That's the question who is he. The second question is: what does he do? Well, there are two things particularly Jesus points us to in the very names that he gives to the Holy Spirit. In verse 16, first of all, do you notice he will be a Counselor, a Comforter? Some versions of the New Testament translate it simply Paraclete, which is just a transliteration rather than a translation, because the Greek word is really the word transliterated Paraclete.

What it means is someone who is called alongside. It need not be, as the versions which translate it Advocate gives us the idea, it need not be a legal friend called alongside. Although when you are in legal difficulties, you call someone who is an Advocate alongside to speak on your behalf, and so we have the translation often: the Advocate is the one whom the Father will send. Frequently, it has that meaning in the particular era in which John's gospel was written.

But it means, generally speaking, a friend, somebody who is called alongside, who comes and stands alongside you. Now, I wonder if you can see that in the context of this whole idea of their being left as orphans, their being bereft of the Lord Jesus Christ who had been their life. Jesus says, "I will pray the Father. He will send the Holy Spirit, the one called alongside. He is going to be the friend who will draw near, who will stand alongside you and then will be in you."

Now, if you have ever known anything about bereavement, you will know what it is if you have ever had a special friend who has come and has just stood alongside you at a crucially painful hour when the world seems to have collapsed around you and when you can scarcely describe to other people the pain and anguish, the bereft experience that you are going through, the sense of desolation you feel, and there have been occasions in many of our lives when someone has just come and stood alongside us at that time. They have been a Paraclete.

This is one of the great ministries of the Holy Spirit. He comes alongside, not, you will notice in verse 16 at the end, to be there for a little while just to help you through the worst of the days, but he will be with you forever. Now, the really important thing about this phrase is the word "another." He will be another Counselor. You may know that there are two words for the whole idea of another in the Greek of the New Testament.

One of them means another which is different, a distinct, a different kind of thing altogether. The other word means one exactly of the same. John uses the second of these words here. Now, that's very important for this reason. Let me illustrate the difference to you. I bought a book some time ago, and before I'd read it myself, I gave it to somebody else. Not because I thought it wasn't good or important, but because I hoped he would find it helpful and appreciate having it.

So I am about to go back to the bookseller and tell him I want another. Not another book of any kind that he may choose, but another identical volume to the one that I have already given away. I want another of the same. Now, the word that I would choose if I had been trying to express that to him in New Testament Greek would have been this word that John uses here: another of the very same and identical volume.

It's this idea that lies in what Jesus is saying and John is bringing to us in the language in which he writes the gospel about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is another Counselor exactly the same. But already, of course, we recognize that Jesus has been that Paraclete to them. He was the one who has come alongside them to minister to them, and indeed in 1 John chapter 2, Jesus is called the Paraclete. He says, "If any man sin, we have a Paraclete in heaven with God. His name is the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the propitiation for our sins."

So do you see what he is saying? Both Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the Paraclete that disciples in their weakness and need cry out for. Jesus has been that Paraclete to them during the days of his flesh. Everything that they craved for, all that they needed, he provided for them: his wisdom, his love, his tenderness, his grace, his forgiveness, his renewal—everything that they needed was in Jesus. But now Jesus was going away.

He says, "I will pray the Father, and he will send another Paraclete to you." Now, what that means is that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is in one real sense to be Jesus' other self to the believer. Everything that Jesus was, the Holy Spirit will be, though this time not merely with you and alongside you, but in you, do you see? And not only for the temporary period of three years that he was with them, but forever.

Now, that's a glorious thing if you have grasped it, you see. It means that the Holy Spirit is not limited by time. He is not going to be here for a mere period of three years with us; he is going to be with you and in you forever. And the Holy Spirit is not limited by space. You will recognize that if Jesus was in one place, he couldn't be in another. If he was in Cana, he couldn't be in Jericho. If the disciples were in Jerusalem and Jesus was somewhere else, they couldn't see him or know him or experience all that his grace meant to them.

But now, he says, the Holy Spirit will be in you. Now, do you see what that means? That means that every believer may experience the ministry of the Holy Spirit becoming Jesus to them within them on all five continents at once. That's the glorious reality. This is one of the reasons that Jesus says to them, "It is to your advantage that I go away, because if I do not go away, the Holy Spirit will not come to you."

How could it be an advantage for Jesus to go and the Holy Spirit to come? Because the Holy Spirit is everything to the believer that Jesus was here in the days of his flesh. Now, that is comfort indeed to them, you see. This is what is the real comfort of this ministry of the upper room to the disciples. Jesus is going away, they are going to be left like orphans, but notice what he says: "You know him; he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you."

So rather than being orphaned children, they are to experience the Holy Spirit's presence being everything to them that Jesus was. You can work this out if you want to look at it more carefully in the New Testament, in this Gospel of John. How both Jesus and the Holy Spirit, for example, have a teaching ministry? If you look at chapter 14, verse 23, Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching." He has a teaching in verse 24: "He who does not love me will not obey my teaching."

The Lord Jesus has a teaching ministry. But the Holy Spirit is going to have a teaching ministry, verse 26: "The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you." The Holy Spirit has a ministry of testifying to the Lord Jesus, and Jesus has a ministry of testifying to himself, as you will remember he says in chapter 8, verse 12, for example: "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

The Pharisees challenged him, "Here you are appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid." Jesus says, "Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is true." He testifies to himself. And in chapter 15, verse 26, the Holy Spirit is described as the one who will testify about Jesus. Similarly, both Jesus and the Holy Spirit have a ministry in relation to the world of convicting it of sin: chapter 15, verse 24, and chapter 16, verses 8 to 11.

But perhaps the difficulty is that whereas Jesus was limited by his incarnate state, the Holy Spirit is unlimited. And we are to grasp this, I think: that the Holy Spirit is unlimited either by time or by space, and everything that Jesus was to the believer, the Holy Spirit may be without that kind of limitation. It's important for us to grasp this.

Now, the other answer that Jesus gives to the question what does he do is not only he is like another Jesus, but he is described in verse 17 as the Spirit of truth. That is, he is a teacher or instructor of his disciples. Now, the importance of having all the teaching of Jesus clarified for us is in verses 23 and 24. Do you notice? "If anyone loves me," Jesus says, "he will obey my teaching. And my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him."

So there is a great importance in having Jesus' teaching because it is the key to having the Father and the Son indwelling us in this sense. Obeying his teaching is the key to knowing God with any degree of intimacy and reality. Now, how are we to know what Jesus' teaching is? He says, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching, and my Father will love him because he obeys my teaching, and we will come to him and make our home with him." How then do we come to know what Jesus' teaching is?

Well, Jesus' answer in verses 25 and 26 is through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Notice verse 25: "All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you." Now, it's rather important for us to grasp what Jesus is speaking about there.

There is no doubt that the first reference of that promise—"the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said to you"—the first reference is to the apostles themselves. You notice that from the end of verse 24, there are five occasions when the word "you" is used, and they're all directed to the same people.

"These words"—the end of verse 24—"these words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me. All this I have spoken while still with you"—that is the disciples who were later to be the apostles. "But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you." Now, all these "yous" must refer to the same group of people. Who are they? They are the apostles.

Now, what does that mean? What he is promising is that the Holy Spirit will remind, recall to the minds of the apostles everything that Jesus has taught them. That's the Holy Spirit's first ministry. The Holy Spirit's second ministry is that he will teach them all things. Now, that's amplified, for example, in chapter 16, verse 12. If you just turn over to 16, verse 12, you see Jesus says, "I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth."

Now, do you see how the promise that Jesus makes gives us the authoritative truth from Jesus in two senses? One, he promises to recall to the minds of the apostles everything that he has said. Two, he promises to teach them what they now cannot bear, but which he will reveal to them later. Now, where do we find these two promises fulfilled today? That's the question.

Promise number one is fulfilled in the Gospels. Jesus says, "I will send the Holy Spirit. He will remind you of everything that I have said." Everything Jesus had said, we have written down in the Gospels. Now, he says, "There are other things that I can't tell you just now, but the Holy Spirit will lead you into all the truth. He will not speak of himself; he will speak as he is directed." And that promise is fulfilled in the Epistles.

Now, this is one of the basic reasons that we believe in the inspiration of the New Testament. Jesus has told us that the Holy Spirit will direct the apostles, reminding them of what Jesus has spoken—that's what we read in the Gospels. He says, "There are some things that you cannot bear to hear now, but I will get the Holy Spirit to teach you later, and he will speak from God." And that's fulfilled in the Epistles.

Now, this teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit, therefore, is a ministry that primarily refers to Holy Scripture. And we have the teaching of the Holy Spirit in Holy Scripture. There is, of course, a secondary reference of these words in that the Holy Spirit directs us and leads us into the truth, prompts us when we are straying from it, confirms it in our lives, thrusts it into our hearts, and leads us to discern between truth and error. But the primary reference is that the Holy Spirit is going to bring the teaching of Jesus into Holy Scripture.

Now, do you see how important this is for disciples who are going to be bereft of Jesus' immediate presence? He is going to go away. How are they going to have the truth? How are they going to have Jesus' teaching? What are they going to do when the Savior is in heaven and they no longer can sit at his feet and listen to his sermons and his teaching? Jesus says, "I've thought about that, and I've planned for it. And the Holy Spirit is going to come to you apostles and remind you of everything that I've said, and then give to you what I now cannot say to you because you cannot bear it, and that we have in the rest of the New Testament." That's a very important principle, and we greatly need to grasp it.

So we've looked at two questions: Who is the Holy Spirit? He is a person; he is a divine person. What does he do? He is another Counselor; he is the Spirit of truth. There are many other things that we would need to say about the Holy Spirit's ministry if we were going right through the Bible, but we are not, you may be relieved to know. What we need to go on to ask now, however, finally, is: how do we experience the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in our own lives?

Well, the answer to that is brief, and it's this: there is a thread which runs through this chapter which you cannot escape if you look carefully at the chapter and read it carefully. It has five different appearances through this passage that we read this evening. And if we grasp it, this thread, it will cure us of all ideas that the power and presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit are available to us through some sort of formula or some sort of specialized experience that we may have.

Let me just take you through these five occasions when this thread appears in this passage. Number one is in verse 15: "If you love me, you will obey what I command." Number two is in verse 21: "Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him." The third is in verse 23: "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching." That's number four. Number five in verse 31: "The world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me."

Now, what's the common thread? The common thread is that loving Jesus is tested by only one thing, and that is obeying him, doing what he says. That's the common thread. What's the significance in relation to this whole matter of experiencing the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and Christ in all his glory in your heart?

Look at verse 23: "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home, our dwelling with him." That word "home" is the same word that's used by Jesus at the beginning of chapter 14 when he speaks of my Father's house, my Father's home. What's he saying? He is saying, my dear friends, that it's possible to have heaven in your heart. Why? Because heaven is only heaven because God is there. That's all that heaven is, did you know? Heaven is just God in all his glory.

Well, now, says Jesus, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments, and my Father will love you, and I and my Father will come and make our dwelling with you." So how do we experience the glory of the Godhead dwelling by the Holy Spirit in our lives? Oh, I tell you, there is no neat formula. It is by obeying everything that he says. And Jesus says this is what the world needs to know: that I do everything my Father has said. And somehow, in a way that I don't pretend to understand, God the Father responds to that, and he comes down and he makes his home in that heart by the Holy Spirit. That's why obedience in the Christian life is so important. Let's pray together.

Father, we marvel at the wondrous provision that you've made for your children in their pathway from grace to glory. We thank you for the Holy Spirit, the Counselor and Paraclete, the Spirit of truth. And we pray this evening that you will so come to us and work in our lives that we may get to know something of heaven in our hearts for Jesus' sake. Amen.

Mark Daniels: You're listening to Hear the Word of God with the Reverend Eric Alexander, a minister in the Church of Scotland for over 50 years. To access more Bible teaching from Reverend Alexander, visit hearthewordofgod.org, where your generous contribution will help us sustain and grow this ministry. That's hearthewordofgod.org. You could choose instead to mail a check to this address: 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17601. Or call 1-800-488-1888. This program is a presentation of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. I'm Mark Daniels. Thank you for listening. Please join us again next time for Eric Alexander and Hear the Word of God.