GETTING TO KNOW
THE HOLY SPIRIT
PART ONE: THE
PARACLETE
How well do we know the person and the role of the Holy
Spirit? I admit that of the three persons in the Trinity, Father – Son – Holy
Spirit, I don’t know the Spirit as well as the others. I know that I depend on
Him. I know that He helps me. I know that I would love to be more aware of Him.
I think
that the reason the average Christian struggles to know and understand the Holy
Spirit is His subtlety. The Holy Spirit is involved in the church and in the
life of the individual believer to a great extent. But on any given day, try
and explain “how” to someone.
As a
result, and in an attempt to define His role, people add functions to His role
that are not even biblical. The Holy Spirit becomes a legendary figure in the
church. And the legend does not always match the fact. A favorite movie line of
mine comes from a western where a reporter decides to rip up a story from an
eyewitness account. “You're not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?” the
storyteller asks. “No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes
fact, print the legend,” the reporter replies.[i]
The Holy
Spirit and His work in our lives is larger than legend, not less. I am
convinced that we will not know the full extent of what He has done until the
coming of Christ. Until then, we have the Scriptures, and we have Jesus’ own
words.
We are
scrolling back to John 14 where Jesus announced to His disciples that He would
be leaving them soon. The news casts a gloom over their hearts. The disciples
had followed Jesus for three years having their minds open to God in a way they
never would have dreamed. Now the man who taught them, guided them, and
counseled them, is leaving. Jesus comforts them saying, “If you love me, obey
me.” Then He promises to pray asking God to send another counselor to be with
them. Jesus promises the Holy Spirit to every believer to help them in their
walk of faith.
1. Jesus calls Him “Another Counselor”
Jesus asks the Father to send “another” counselor to be
with the disciples forever. Why does Jesus say “another”?
The NIV
uses the word “counselor” but your Bible may use another word like “advocate,”
“comforter,” or “guide.” All of these terms come from one word which is
difficult to translate. Even in English the word is reserved for the Holy
Spirit. That word is “paraclete.”
A
Paraclete is someone who comes alongside of you to strengthen you, to guide
you, to help you in difficult situations. In Greek literature, a Paraclete was
an advocate who came alongside a person to speak in his or her defense in a
court of law. So the role of the Holy Spirit in this context is to help and to
guide in times of need.
Jesus
says “another counselor” or “advocate” then, because that was what Jesus was to
the disciples during His earthly ministry. He mentored them, showed them, taught
them what it meant to pursue and know God. With Jesus going back to the Father,
He says He will not leave them without this help.
Some
might say that the Holy Spirit is to Jesus what a person’s spirit is to his or
her body. But then the Holy Spirit would be merely the spirit of Jesus’ life
and teaching. Jesus makes it clear that He is sending them “another” person,
not of the flesh but spirit, who will be with them.
The only
other place this word “Paraclete” is used in the NT is 1 John 2:1, and this
will help us to understand part of His role. “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if
anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense – Jesus
Christ, the Righteous One.” Jesus is our Paraclete or advocate before the
Father. As Satan accuses us (ala Job in OT) before God of our unrighteousness
and sin, Jesus defends us with the nail prints in His hands.
When our
hearts accuse us, the Holy Spirit works in us to affirm that we belong to the
Father. As Ephesians 1:14 tells us, the Holy Spirit is a deposit guaranteeing
our inheritance of eternal life. He ministers to our hearts assuring us of our
place in God’s family. “The Spirit
himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children,” (Rom. 8:16).
2. Jesus calls Him “The Spirit of Truth”
In the same breath that Jesus promises the Paraclete, He
calls Him “the Spirit of Truth.” We can’t help but ask with Pilate when Jesus
stood before him, “What is truth?” And the truth stood before Him in the person
of Jesus. Jesus said, “I am the way and the life and the truth.”
Truth is
reality. Truth is what exists, what is really there. The Spirit of God has come
into our lives to explain what is really there. There are many half-truths and
full-on falsehoods in life, many created by our media. But the Spirit of truth
has come to help us to understand life as it really is, to see through the mist
of lies, and grasp the truth.
Jesus
expands this definition of the Spirit’s role in v. 26. “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit…will teach you all things and will
remind you of everything I have said to you.” So when Jesus says that the
Spirit of truth will remind you of the truth, He does not mean that the Holy
Spirit will guide you into natural truth or scientific truth or metaphysical
truth (though He could), but primarily into the truth of Jesus Christ, His
atoning death and resurrection. Through the Holy Spirit we have our eyes opened
to the meaning of Christ’s words and how those words apply to us.
Paul
develops this thought further in his letter to the Corinthians (read 1 Cor.
2:6-16). The deep truths of Christianity are made known to us, believers in
Christ, through the Holy Spirit. Only through the Holy Spirit could we even
come to Christ and receive Him in faith.
Martin
Luther said, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in
Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Ghost has called me by the
Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true
faith, even as He calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies the whole Christian
Church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith….”
3. Jesus says the world cannot accept Him
It is no wonder then, that the world cannot accept the
truths of Christ. Without the Holy Spirit no one can fathom or accept who Jesus
is and what the cross means to the world.
In
John’s Gospel, the “world” refers to the human system that is in rebellion
against God and is in need of salvation. People who are in the world cannot
understand the deeper things of God, things of the spirit. As Paul said, “The man without the Spirit does not accept
the things that come from the Spirit of God…” (1 Cor. 2:14a).
Jesus
said that the world cannot accept the Holy Spirit because a) They don’t see
Him, and b) they don’t know Him.
a) The World
doesn’t see Him – The world cannot receive the Spirit because
secularist-humanist thinking is based on observable data. In plain language
“seeing is believing.” If it cannot be measured, studied, or compared, it
cannot be real. That is why for some, science has become a god.
God,
whose personal majesty is invisible to the human eye, is not a rational
proposition. From a worldly perspective, that which we call a miracle or divine
intervention is inconceivable. Instead of praising God for the phenomenal work
of His hand, the world rationalizes through observation that these things would
have happened without God. If we refuse to see God in our daily experiences, we
are not in a position to receive the Holy Spirit.
b) The World
doesn’t know Him – If the world doesn’t see Him, how can it know Him? Your
unbelieving friend says there is no Holy Spirit because he/she cannot see Him.
You reply that, sometimes you can feel Him, or you have sensed His presence, or
He has given you a word. Your friend says that is just your imagination and
that he/she has never felt Him. But what if I said that Kleefeld honey was
bitter? You would say that I cannot have tasted it and you would buy me a
container of it. With the Holy Spirit, if you felt His influence and knew His
presence, you would no longer say you cannot see Him or feel Him.
Jesus
said to Nicodemus, you cannot see the wind but you feel its influence – so it
is with the Holy Spirit. You see the crashing waves and the waving trees, so
you know there is a thing called wind. Can you see electricity? No, but you can
hear me clearer when that power is coursing through the wire.
The
world doesn’t know the Holy Spirit because it doesn’t know what to look for.
But for you, follower of Christ, train your eyes to see what the Holy Spirit is
doing and use the Scriptures as your lenses.
4. Jesus promises He will be in you
Like the disciples in that moment in the upper room, we
would like to have and keep the physical Jesus with us. We would like to see
Him, talk to Him, and know Him as we would know our best friends. But at that
critical moment, Jesus had to finish the work of the cross and then return to
the Father.
In His
place, Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would come and be with the
disciples. Jesus indicates that the disciples already know Him “for he lives with you and will be in you”
(17b). There are two parts to this statement.
a) He lives with
you – At that point in time, and wherever you read in the OT about the Holy
Spirit, the Bible speaks of the Spirit being “with you” but not in you. From
when Moses found the burning bush and God said “I will be with you” (Ex. 3:12)
to Isaiah’s prophecy “When you pass
through the waters, I will be with you” (Is. 43:2), God had always promised
to be with His people. The Spirit
partnered with God’s people to help them achieve God’s purposes.
b) He will be in
you – But remember that the Holy Spirit had not yet come as a permanent
resident in the hearts of believers at this point. So Jesus promises this
presence as a future event, one that we now live in. previously, the Spirit was
like a guest living with the people of God; with Pentecost, the Holy Spirit
became a permanent resident dwelling in the life of the believers. The language
has changed: The Apostles now speak of the Spirit “filling” you. At Pentecost,
the disciples were “filled” with the Spirit; in Ephesians, Paul exhorts his
readers to “Be filled with the Spirit…”
The
startling reality for you and me is that the living God, the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, the God who became flesh and dwelt among us in Jesus Christ,
now dwells in us through the Holy Spirit. The power of God is in you.
Unfortunately,
we might have images of Marvel Comics going through our minds when we think of
power. We will not turn green and thrash our enemies; we will not be able to
fly or climb walls like a spider. We have a greater power in us through the
indwelling Holy Spirit to overcome the real crises of life. And He reminds us
of Jesus who showed us that real power is in submitting to God’s will and even
dying for it. We do this with courage because Jesus showed us that there is
strength in weakness and blessing in obedience. Everything we face has the
sting taken out of it because after death is the resurrection. Always!
Greater
is He who is in me than he who is in the world!
I want to get to know the Holy Spirit better. The primary
way to do that is to begin with Scripture. What does the Bible say about the
Holy Spirit and His work in our lives? The secondary way to know the Holy
Spirit is to see with the lens of Scripture the ways in which the Holy Spirit
is working in your daily experience. What others see as coincidence or logical
outcomes, evaluate through the Bible and prayer. Write it down, think about it,
share it with others. Is this the Holy Spirit?
Above
all, begin with this comforting thought: You have the Paraclete in you, one who
comes alongside of you to guide you and to help you to follow Jesus.
AMEN
Father God, sometimes we pretend to know but we don’t
really know anything. We are sadly unaware of the presence of your Holy Spirit
on a daily basis. We have this precious gift of the indwelling God in our lives
– teach us to know Him better, to experience Him, and to celebrate Him. You
have given us power through the Holy Spirit to act with courage and conviction
on our faith. May we do so more boldly knowing that you have come alongside of
us.
AMEN
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