‘If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth.’
Joh_14:15-17
(R.V.)
It is very important to consider what the Spirit of truth is said to do for us. He does much more than give us fresh knowledge. He gives us knowledge indeed, but it is knowledge which none else can give, knowledge which has a Divine power in it. If we look at the three passages where the name occurs, one in each of these three chapters (Joh_14:17; Joh_15:26; Joh_16:13), and at the words which follow in close connection with them, we shall see that the office of the Paraclete stands out in three distinct and ascending degrees of energy.
I. He looks towards the past.—He reveals the truth by heightening the memory of what our Saviour has told us. He will bring Him back to us. ‘I will not leave you desolate (says our Lord, Joh_14:18): I come unto you’—and not alone. For He says further, ‘If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him’ (Joh_14:23), and then ‘The Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance (
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) all that I said unto you’ (Joh_14:26). The coming, then, of the Father and the Son, through the image of Christ formed in the soul, is thus described as the work of the Holy Spirit. It is not, of course, a mere memory, but it is a work of the Holy Spirit using human memory.
II. The work of the Spirit of truth is to help us to bear witness to Christ before the world in our present struggles. ‘When the Comforter is come, Whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall bear witness of Me; and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with Me from the beginning” (Joh_15:26-27). And this is expressed in more detail, ‘And He, when He is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment’ (Joh_16:8), a hard and sad and yet glorious task.
III. The same Spirit will be the leader and guide of the Church in all future changes (Joh_16:12-13).—Thus the sphere of this Holy Spirit is that of a Divine and eternal being. Past, present, and future are one to Him. The mystical Christ-like life inside the soul, the courage that faces the world with an unwelcome message, the far-seeing wisdom that decides what is right in fresh emergencies—all three are equally His province and His gift. We do well to put all these attributes of the Spirit of truth together into one picture, that we may realise how glorious the vision is, how full the consolation.
Bishop John Wordsworth.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
ANOTHER COMFORTER
Refer to the personal character of the Holy Spirit’s work.
I. It is wrought by a Divine Person entering and dwelling within the human.—The word ‘enthusiasm’ is etymologically a ‘being possessed by God.’ Among the old Greeks it rose, and behind it was the notion that a Divine power may be expected to manifest itself in some strange transport or frenzy, in which the spirit of man becomes intensely self-assertive, and pushes its lordly sway over the lower parts of his being to the bounds of sobriety—a travesty of a true thing. The spirit of man is quickened by the advent of the Spirit of God. Before that advent, man has his blind side, his deaf side, his insentient side, his inarticulate side. The better half of the soul’s avenues are blocked. Its eye hath not seen, nor its ear heard, neither has entered into it to conceive the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them to it by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
II. Personal relation to a personal God.—Responsibilities based upon an intimate relationship, who does not recognise as more sacred, more importunate, than those which render amenable to the will of a stranger? Apart from relationship, all responsibility is, and must be, the ethical offspring of coercion: noble, worthy coercion it may be, involving the highest appeals to the reasoning faculty of the ruled; but still coercion. But what true father, husband, brother, son, thinks of coercion in connection with the recognition of the hallowed responsibilities bound up with these relationships? Love knows no coercion; and God the Holy Ghost is Love.
III. The paramount question of our personal standing with God is only too perilously obscured to-day by the facile patronage accorded by the world to Church life and work. That there is no matter for thankfulness that the religious topic is touched so widely in the press and in society, we are far from asserting. But in a day when religious questions of all sorts are in the air, and to take them up and discuss them involves nothing of the Cross and its stigmata, the overwhelmingly momentous question of one’s own hold upon the deep experimental verities of personal religion is only too apt to be met with the presumption that all is well. Much is heard now of the corporate life of the Church, of her historic continuity. But the body is not the soul; and it is, alas! only too possible to be ecclesiastically alive and spiritually dead.
—
Bishop Alfred Pearson.
Illustration
‘What is the life which the Spirit gives, with which He works? I listen, and I hear another voice, which is yet as if also His, and it says, “I am the Life”—“the Life eternal is in the Son”—“He that hath the Son hath the Life.” I read these words, and I see in them a remembrance that what the Spirit does in His free and all-powerful work in the soul, which He quickens into second life, is, above all things, to bring it into contact with the Son. He grafts it, He embodies it into the Son. He deals so with it, that there is a continuity, wholly spiritual indeed, but none the less most real, unfigurative, and efficacious, between the Head and the limb, between the branch and the Root. He effects an influx into the regenerate man of the blessed virtues of the nature of the Second Adam, an infusion of the exalted life of Jesus Christ, through an open duct, living and Divine, into the man who is born again into Him, the incarnate and glorified Son of God.’
(THIRD OUTLINE)
GROUNDS OF COMFORT
‘I will pray the Father.’ Hence it is plain that the gift of the Holy Spirit is the fruit of the prayers of Jesus Christ. But whom does the Holy Ghost comfort? Not the world, but the children of God.
How does the Holy Ghost comfort?
I. By revealing Christ.—‘He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you.’ (Joh_16:14). The Blessed Spirit brings to remembrance the words of Jesus. He unveils the glory of the Redeemer, His atoning blood, His justifying righteousness, His all-sufficient grace, His perpetual intercession, and His glory in store.
II. By shedding the love of God abroad in our hearts (Rom_5:5).—He makes us feel that the Father Himself loves us; and He humbles and melts us with a sense of that ‘love Divine, all love excelling,’ which spared not His own Son.
III. By helping us to pray (Rom_8:26).—When we are cold and dead He leads us to the place where grace abounds, and out of weakness we are made strong.
IV. By witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God (Rom_8:16). He bids us ‘Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God’ (1Jn_3:1). Well, indeed, in the Te Deum, do we sing the praise of ‘the Holy Ghost, the Comforter’!
The great need for the whole Church of Christ is a fresh baptism of the Holy Spirit. If He comes to us with Pentecostal blessing, He will burn up all selfishness and meanness, He will take away all malice and uncharitableness, He will nerve the weak and timid with strength and grace, and He will bless us with the sweetest peace of the risen Saviour.
—
Rev. F. Harper.
Illustration
‘We are accustomed to live by sight and sense so much that we find it hard to bring to us that which we do not see, and that which we cannot comprehend. We are afraid of it, afraid of confounding it with unreality. The Incarnate Son we can in a measure comprehend; He meant us to do so, that we might receive Him with our hearts and affections. But the Blessed Comforter we only know by what our Blessed Master has told us. He opens His hand, and fills all the world with plenty. We are only too apt to forget what He does, because we are unable to comprehend what He is. Think how, from first to last, in all we read of the New Dispensation, the Presence of the Holy Ghost is associated with the Incarnation, Nativity, Death, and Resurrection. He is the subject of the last great closing discourse of our Blessed Lord. Think how St. Paul startles us, in what he takes for granted as an argument, “Know ye not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost?” If we forget Him we do not think as men thought who wrote the New Testament.’
(FOURTH OUTLINE)
COMFORTER, ADVOCATE, GUIDE
The Holy Ghost is a Comforter. As I look round the world I say that if He did not comfort He would have left undone a much-needed work. If there were not a Comforter sent from heaven, where should we be? And it was because our Saviour knew this that before He left He made us this beautiful promise.
I. The Comforter.—I do not believe it is meant by God for a single soul to leave this church uncomforted. It is not a question of merely coming here to hear a sermon. That is not at all the idea. Religion is absolutely hopeless if that is all it is; but I believe that God has brought you here that not a single soul may go away uncomforted. I speak therefore
(a) To those who are bearing some heavy trouble. There is only one Person in the world Who can comfort you, and that is the Comforter. Have you asked the Comforter to comfort you? Perhaps you are trying to kill your grief by distracting yourself with amusement or, as some have tried, to drown it in drink, or as others have tried, to hide it under an unreal merriment. All these are bad ways. There is One sent from heaven Who has never gone back, Who, indeed, as a matter of fact, dwells within you on purpose to comfort you.
(b) To those who are feeling the far more bitter sorrow of sin. There is a sting about sorrow for sin which there is not about sorrow for loss. The sting of death is sin. How does the Holy Ghost comfort the sinner? There is only one Atonement ever made which avails for the sin of the world, and that is the Atonement made by Jesus Christ Himself.
(c) To those who are possessed by an awful sense of loneliness. What they want is a Comforter; they want Someone Who will cry ‘Abba, Father’ in their hearts; Someone Who will give them a perpetual sense of the protecting care of God, and surround them with an atmosphere of God’s Presence. The Holy Ghost cries ‘Abba, Father,’ in thine ears. He gives them a glorious sense of being protected in the everlasting arms, and in that sense He comforts them, and nerves them, and embraces them to stand firm and hold out.
II. The Paraclete.—With a world that wanted comfort it was an inspiration that the word should be translated ‘Comforter’ first. But yet when we look into it and compare the passages togther, there is another translation which is more correct even than Comforter, and that is Paraclete or Advocate: ‘called to our side to help’; that is what the word means.
(a) Difficulties. I may be speaking to some who are very much troubled how to get across that difficulty which faces them—who cannot see their way through difficulties at the office, or who have home cares or difficulties in making both ends meet, or how to bring up their children. Now what I want you to do—because this is a different kind of trouble—is, I want you to call the Comforter, the Paraclete, to your side to help you. He loves to do it. He loves to come, and see you through—not only to-day, but every day.
(b) Tangles. What tangles there are in people’s lives! The life, as it were, is tied up into knots; and no one can see where the mistakes are. That poor girl or boy cannot see where it is wrong. It is what the Paraclete, what the Comforter loves to do. And He sometimes uses men and women to do it. When St. Paul was in a tangle the Holy Spirit sent Ananias to help him, and he was to receive what he was to do through Ananias. And so it may be through some man, some woman, or some friend you trust; it is wonderful how He uses people.
III. The Guide.—The Comforter, the Paraclete, undertakes for us the whole journey of life. Those who need comfort in the journey of life need not have the slightest worry or trouble if they really leave it to Him. He guides them through this change, through that difficulty; and when it comes to death, He sees us through that too. There are some who are worrying about the journey of life and are anxious about it, but I do believe it is because you have not put your lives entirely into the keeping of the Comforter. Call Him to your side to help. Do not worry whether you are to be poor or rich, to live a long or a short time on earth; but leave it to the Comforter, and you will have peace for the first time in your life, an absolute freedom from anxiety and worry, because you are in the shelter of a greater power than your own.
Bishop A. F. Winnington-Ingram.
Illustrations
‘In Gordon’s Quiet Talks on Power there are two illustrations which illustrate well these points. They are illustrations of what it means by a Paraclete or Advocate. He first pictures a very familiar scene. A little child is trying to cross one of our crowded London crossings, and there, as the poor little thing tries to get across, the great omnibuses, cabs, and motor-cars pass; the poor little child begins to think she will never get across. The tears begin to come in her eyes, when the great—or what seems to her great—policeman in charge of the crossing calls to her, “Do you want to go across, dear?” “Yes,” she says; and when she looks up to the great strong man who puts his hand up to stop the traffic and draws her safely across in his protecting care, he is her Paraclete; he is her Advocate. She called him to her side to help because he was strong enough and had authority enough to help her through the trouble that was too great for her. Then he takes the illustration of a boy at school worried over his sum, who cannot make it come right. He wrinkles his brow, and the poor little brain gets hot. But the kind schoolmistress sees his difficulty; she sits down by his side and looks through his sum, and kindly tells him “This is where you went wrong.” The little brow becomes smooth, and then he goes on and gets the answer right. She does not do the sum for him; she shows him where he has gone wrong. She is his Paraclete.’
