In John 13-16, Jesus, sharing his final meal with the disciples, says a number of things that puzzle them. But at 16:7 he says something that puzzles me. He tells them that it is to their advantage that he leaves them so that he can send his spirit to be with them.
How can this be? This is akin to when a pastor walks into a hospital room and reminds a person that suffering is God’s tool for drawing them closer to him. This is a daring thing to say to 12 men who, in the next 24 hrs, will witness his grueling death on the cross. But Jesus is not the kind of Rabbi to offer platitudes, so we must probe further. What could he mean when he says it's better for him to go and send his spirit?
Thomas Goodwin, an old Puritan pastor understood this tenstion. He wrote his famous book The Heart of Christ to prove to his congregants that the love Christ displayed on this earth toward his disciples is still the way he loves his people at present. As Goodwin discusses this section of John he says that the purpose of the Spirit is to communicate or mediate the love and work of Christ in the present - not in the past - for the believer.
Like the rays of the sun might break through a cloudy sky, so the Spirit presses the love and action of God to break into the present cloudy reality of our hearts helping us to believe and be comforted.
J.I. Packer wrote a book called Keep In Step With the Spirit and settles on the same central theme of the function of the Holy Spirit. He says that the Spirit mediates Jesus’s presence, word, and actions to believers.
Zeroing in on John 14:16-18 will allow us to draw out the sweetness of the observations made by Packer and Goodwin.
John 14:16–18 (ESV)
16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. 18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
The Holy Spirit Communicates Christ’s Presence To Us
The nature of the presence: Who and How? What kind of presence?
When Jesus says that he will ask the Father to give another helper, he uses the Greek word allos and not heteros. Allos can mean simply another of the same thing whereas heteros typically means something other than, or something else. This matters because Christ is saying that it is his own spirit that is coming to act as helper, comforter and the guide to all truth. We know this is true because we see it in other passages where the Holy Spirit is referred to in correlation with Christ (Acts 16:7, Romans 8:9, Gal 4:6). So we can say that the Holy Spirit communicates Christ’s presence with us.
And that is the other thing, what is the presence of Christ like? How is he with us? When Christ was in the flesh he was present with his disciples, but he was limited by his physical body. The last part of verse 17 tells us that the Spirit will not only be with us, but also in us. Perhaps, one of the reasons Christ says it is better for him to leave and send his Spirit is so that his presence can be dispersed without being depleted. We can be filled with him, not merely next to him.
Samuel Rutherford writes of the mystery of Christ dwelling in the heart of sinners, “‘Lord Jesus, what doest thou here?’ Yet, here he must be…for free mercy and infinite merits took a lodging to Christ and us, beside such a loathsome guest as sin [1].” Christ’s presence by his Spirit, with us and in us is a consistent and constant well from which to draw the sweet and sparkling waters of his love for us as sinners.
The Holy Spirit Communicates Christ’s Words To Us
We see in verse 17 the Helper is also given the title “Spirit of Truth.” In verse 16:26 we read that the role of the Spirit is to teach and remind the disciples of all that Christ taught them. In 15:26-27 the Spirit of truth bears witness about Jesus to us and through us to the world. Then in 16:12-15 we learn that the Spirit speaks what he hears, he declares the Glory of God.
Goodwin calls the Holy Spirit a courier or a letter carrier from Christ to his people. This is in line with the way Paul speaks of him in Ephesians. Twice in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he prays for them that the spirit would enlighten their hearts in 1:17-21 to know what is the hope to which they have been called and to understand the riches of their glorious inheritance. In 3:16-19 Paul famously asks that the Spirit would guide the Ephesians into a deep understanding of the love of Christ: its breadth and length and height and depth, that surpasses all knowledge.
I was at a wedding just a few weeks ago and when the bride walked down the aisle toward the groom, the expression and glistening of the groom’s face caught my eye. Tears streamed down his face as he beheld his bride in all her beauty. The Holy Spirit, through the truth of God’s word, reminded me in that moment that Jesus is the groom and we are his bride.
Goodwin, reflecting on the affection of Christ for his bride, imagines Jesus saying this: “The truth is, I cannot live without you, I shall never be quiet until I have you where I am, that so we may never part again; that is the reason of it. Heaven shall not hold me, nor my Father’s company, if I have not you with me, my heart is so set upon you; and if I have any glory, you shall have part of it [2].”
As I think about how Christ’s love for his bride is like this groom’s, I’m tempted to cry out, “impossible!” But when I consider that his love is even more true than a human groom, far more steady, and trustworthy. That it is even more smiley and teary eyed, gentle and lowly, sacrificial and powerful, I cannot deny that his love is greater than that of this groom on his wedding day. What a wonderful package to receive from the divine courier.
The Holy Spirit Communicates Christ’s Action On Our Behalf
In John 14:18 we see that Christ will come again, he will not leave us as orphans, he goes to prepare a place for us (14:2).
Continuing with the theme of betrothal it is helpful to understand Christ’s promise to return in relation to Jewish traditions regarding engagement. The groom would go and talk with the father of the bride. He would make a covenant with him, he would pour two glasses of wine and the couple would drink them together as a pledge or covenant ceremony. Then the groom would leave, usually for a year or even a little more. All the while that he was away from her he was preparing a wedding chamber, building, decorating, setting things right. And when he had everything just the way he liked it, his father would come and inspect it. It was not until the groom’s father deemed the suite ready to receive his son’s bride that the son would return to get her.
Here is the work of the Trinity in John 14, The groom has gone to prepare a place for us. He is sending his love via his Spirit. And the Father wills for the Son to make ready a place on our behalf. So often we are tempted to believe that Christ is in heaven, sort of twiddling his thumbs waiting for the signal to come again. Nonsense! He will not tarry! He longs to be with us, but he longs to host us, and to host us well. We have a Savior who laid down his life for us, can’t we be sure that he will also do anything to be with us fully and in the perfect timing he will bring us to the place he has prepared for us.
I pray that the Holy Spirit would communicate all this truth to you through his presence, through God’s word, and through Christ’s actions on your behalf.
1.Samuel Rutherford, Letters of Samuel Rutherford, 138.
2. Thomas Goodwin, The Heart of Christ, 16.
