Jesus gave us the majority of His teaching about the Holy Spirit in one section of John's Gospel. He taught His disciples the same evening the Romans arrested Him. They had gathered for the evening meal, a meal we have come to know as The Last Supper. Jesus washed the disciples' feet to demonstrate the importance of service in their ministry. After washing their feet, Jesus predicted that one of the disciples would betray Him and that Peter would disown Him three times. This is all in John chapter 13. Jesus then taught the disciples (minus Judas Iscariot who had left the dinner group shortly after Jesus mentioned the betrayal) many things, including important truths about the Holy Spirit. We read about that in John chapters 14, 15 and 16. I'll quote here from all the sections concerning God's Spirit. Make notes on the margins beside the Scriptures below about the important truths you find concerning the Holy Spirit.
"If you love me, you will obey what I commanded. 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. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 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...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. 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. 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. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. You heard me say, 'I am going away and I am coming back to you.' If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me, but the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me...When the Counselor comes, whom I will sent to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning...Now I am going to him who sent me, yet none of you asks me, 'Where are you going?' Because I have said these things, you are filled with grief. But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment; in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. 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. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you."
The word "Counselor" is primary to our understanding of this teaching. It is the Greek parakleton . It means "summoned, called to one's side." It comes from the words para , and kaleo ("to call"). The King James Bible translates the word as "Comforter." That gives a good idea of the meaning of the word. The New International Bible translates the word four times as "counselor" and once as "one who speaks in defense." The four translations of "counselor" are in our current study and used for the Holy Spirit. The other usage is in 1 John 2:1 when the Apostle wrote about Jesus Christ, "one who speaks to the Father in our defense." The literal rendering of the verse is: "Little children of me, these things I write to you in order that you sin not. And if anyone sins, an advocate (parakleton ) we have with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." The Greeks understood the word to mean someone who brought aid, comfort and encouragement to another. It is a verbal adjective referring to an aid of any kind. Greek writers used the word for legal advisors, leaders, and advocates.
In John 14: 16, Jesus told the disciples He would ask the Father to give them "another" counselor. The word is allos . It means "another of equal quality." The Holy Spirit would be equal to Messiah in His ministry of comforting and encouraging the disciples. He would take Messiah's place with the disciples on earth after Jesus ascended into heaven. Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit "into" them before He ascended (John 20:22). The Holy Spirit came upon all the believers on the Day of Pentecost and gave them great power to be witnesses of Messiah's death and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins to all who would believe (Acts 1:8; 2:1-39).
We will see this marvelous work of the Holy Spirit acting as paraklete , to Messiah's disciples and the early Christians in our next studies. However, here are some wonderful thoughts about the Holy Spirit as Comforter and Counselor.
"Christ came in the Name of the Father, as the first Paraclete, as His Representative; the Holy Spirit comes in the Name of Christ, as the second Paraclete, the Representative of Christ, Who is in the Father. As such the second Paraclete is sent by the Father in Name of the first Paraclete, and He would both complete in them, and recall to them, His Cause."(The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Alfred Edersheim, Eerdmans Publishing, 1971)
"Our Lord was about to return to heaven. The disciples were troubled because the One who had been their Guardian, Helper, Adviser, Strength-giver, was now leaving them. They thought that Jesus would leave them alone. But He told them that "another Comforter" would come to their aid, even the Holy Spirit (John 14:16,17)...The word "comforter" is a good translation if rightly understood. It comes from the Latin and means "one who comes with strength." To comfort in the sense of consoling one, is just one of the many ministries of the Holy Spirit to the believer. His many-sided work can be summed up in the phrase "one called in to stand by and give aid." The idea "to stand by" comes from the preposition which is part of this Greek word. The word "another" is significant. There are two words in Greek which mean "another," one referring to another of a different kind, and the other meaning "another of the same kind." Jesus uses the latter word. The Holy Spirit is a Helper of the same kind as Jesus. The Holy Spirit is a divine Person just like our Lord and has the same attributes and qualities."(Golden Nuggets from the Greek New Testament, Dr. Kenneth Wuest, Eerdman's Publishing, 1940)
"The Holy Spirit is, therefore, by the word paraklhtos, of which Paraclete is a transcription, represented as our Advocate or Counsel, 'who suggests true reasonings to our minds, and true courses of action for our lives, who convicts our adversary, the world, of wrong, and pleads our cause before God our Father.' It is to be noted that Jesus as well as the Holy Spirit is represented as Paraclete. The Holy Spirit is to be another Paraclete, and this falls in with the statement in the First Epistle, 'we have an advocate with God, even Jesus Christ .'"(Word Studies in the New Testament, Volume II, Dr. Marvin Vincent, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1887)
"In Jn 14:16 the Paraclete is promised as one who is to take the place of Jesus. It is declared elsewhere by Jesus that it is expedient that He go away, for unless He go away the Paraclete will not come (Jn 16:7). Is the Paraclete, then, the successor or the substitute for Christ as He is sometimes called? The answer is that He is both and neither. He is the successor of Christ historically, but not in the sense that Christ ceases to act in the church. He is the substitute for Christ's physical presence, but only in order that He may make vital and actual Christ's spiritual presence. As we have seen, the Paraclete moves only in the range of truths conveyed in and through Christ as the historical manifestation of God."(The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Dr. James Orr, General Editor, 1915)
"In the third word of consolation, the leading thought is the promise of another Comforter, who should take the place of Him who was going away, and make the bereaved feel as if He were still with them . In the second word of comfort Jesus had said that He was going to provide a home for the little ones, and that then He would return and take them to it. In this third final word He virtually promises to be present with them by substitute, even when He is absent. 'I will pray the Father,' He says, 'and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever' (not for a season, as has been the case with me). Then He tells them who this wonderful Comforter is: His name is 'the Spirit of Truth .' Then, lastly, He gives them to understand that this Spirit of Truth will be a Comforter to them, by restoring, as it were, the consciousness of His own presence, so that the coming of this other Comforter will just be, in a sense, His own spiritual return. 'I will not leave you comfortless,' He assures them: 'I will not leave you orphans , I will come to you;' promising thereby not a different thing, but the same thing which He had promised just before, in different terms. How the other Comforter would make Himself an alter ego of the departed one, He does not here distinctly explain. At a subsequent stage in His discourse He did inform His disciples how the wonder would be achieved. The Spirit would make the absent Jesus present to them again, by bringing to their remembrance all His words, by testifying of Him, and by guiding them into an intelligent apprehension of all Christian truth. All this, though not said here is, sufficiently hinted at by the name given to the new Paraclete. He is called the Spirit of Truth, by enlightening the minds of the disciples in the knowledge of Christ, so that they should see Him clearly by the spiritual eye, when He was no longer visible to the eye of the body."(The Training of the Twelve, Dr. A.B. Bruce, Kregel Publications, 1971)
Please continue this study with The Holy Spirit in the Gospels Part 3
Taking God's Grace to the World!
"Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright ©, 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers."
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