Tuesday, Oct. 25

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Tuesday

There are several places in the Gospels where Jesus talks about the coming of the Holy Spirit after He (Jesus) returns to His Father in heaven.   Listen to the words of Jesus in John 14 where He promises the Holy Spirit to His disciples.

“If you love me, you will obey what I command. And 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.”  Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?” Jesus replied, “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.  – John 14:15-26

Right here in this text we have a picture of the Trinity in action; Jesus (God the Son) says that He is going to ask God the Father to send the God the Holy Spirit to be with His followers forever!  Jesus calls the Holy Spirit, “another Counselor”.  The Greek word for “another” means one that is just like the first.  In other words, Jesus is saying that the Holy Spirit will come to us and be just like Him (Jesus).

One of the distinctive marks of the Holy Spirit is that He never draws attention to Himself, but He always points to Jesus!  This is one of the reasons that I am always a little bit nervous about Christians who seem to over emphasize certain manifestations or expressions of the Holy Spirit.  I can’t help but wonder if the Holy Spirit Himself isn’t saying, “Don’t focus on me, focus on Jesus!  He’s the one that I want you to know and follow.” 

When you get right down to it, the primary purpose of the Holy Spirit in our lives is to make Jesus real to us. At the very end of this passage Jesus tells us that the role of the H.S. is to teach us and remind about Him.

This is why Jesus says that the world cannot accept Him because it does not know Him.  When Jesus uses the term “the world” He is not speaking about the planet, or every living being on earth, He is referring to those who do not believe in Him, in Jesus.  So if the primary purpose of the Holy Spirit is to make Jesus real to us, then it is no wonder that Jesus says the world cannot understand Him – because they cannot understand Jesus.

This is what the Apostle is talking about when he wrote the following words to the Corinthian church…

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.  – 1 Corinthians 2:14

It seems to me that our culture is increasingly antagonistic to the truth claims of the Gospel.  The name of Jesus is less and less welcome in our schools, our courts, even our homes.  We are bombarded daily on every side with messages of secularism, pluralism and materialism.  It is not easy to cling to the belief that Jesus Christ is God and that He alone is the way to eternal life.  This is why He is called the “Counselor”, because He contradicts all of the false counselors we see and hear in the world everyday, and He counsels us in the way of the One who is the Truth.

Jesus promises us that if we belong to Him, then we have the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth residing in our hearts, and that He will teach us and remind us of Him – Jesus Christ, the one who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

Jeff Frazier