The Giving of the Comforter

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: whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him; ye know him: for he abideth with you, and shall be in you.—John 14:15-17.

1. There is no such profoundly moving scene in all history as this last evening of our Lord before His death. We need not, and we may not, add one touch to the simple narrative of St. John; in his words the scene stands out in its absolute simplicity. As we read these last chapters of his Gospel we seem to be admitted to the very scene itself; to the sorrow, the bewilderment, the helplessness of the Twelve; to the far-reaching Divine mind and infinite loveliness of the Master.

We stand before some great picture and strive to read the mind of the artist, and one of us will see one subtle meaning and another another; or we contemplate the many-sided aspect of nature, and each of us reads into it some reflex of his own mind; and so it is with a great historic scene like this; according to our spirituality, to our insight, and devotion, and purity, and truth, will be the lessons we shall draw from it. This Scripture is of no private interpretation; it is wider and larger than any of our little formulas in which we may try to bind it. It is the task of a life to interpret all that is involved in this farewell address of Christ.

2. The disciples were in something like a panic over the announcement made to them by Christ that He was going away. At the bare word the world seemed to become a blank for these men. All the sunshine of life seemed to suffer immediate and total eclipse. For Jesus was everything to them. In a sense they had nothing in the world but Jesus. He was more than their best friend. He was their all in all. For Him they had sacrificed fathers and mothers and home and friends and business and every earthly prospect. And now He was going! In response to His call they had embarked upon a new life. They had taken up their cross and followed Him. It was not an easy life; it was a hard life, a toilsome life, a sacrificial life. Already they had been called upon to suffer trial and persecution for His Name’s sake. But with Jesus at their side they had never faltered. With His presence to cheer and strengthen them, they had bravely held on their way. But now He was going. The whole edifice of their life seemed to fall crashing in ruins about their ears. And then to these panic-stricken disciples Jesus explained what His departure meant. He had been as God to them. In Him God had touched the very springs of their life and entered into their souls. His going did not mean that God would forsake them. If He went, they would not be left desolate; God would send them another Advocate, another Helper, who would be to them all that Jesus Himself had been and more; who would bring them just the same sense of God’s nearness and presence; who would inspire and help them just as effectively as Jesus Himself had done.

3. The subject, then, is the giving of the Comforter, and the passage divides itself easily into two parts:—

I.  On what Conditions the Comforter is given.

  II.  For what Purposes the Comforter is given.

I

On what Conditions the Comforter is given

There are two conditions expressly named that have to be fulfilled before the Comforter comes. The first condition is that the disciples must he obedient. “If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments, and …” The other is that Jesus prays the Father to give them the Comforter: “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you.” From these two conditions there flow two results: first, that the Comforter is a gift—“he will give you another Comforter”; and second, that He is given to the disciples who are obedient, and not to the disobedient “world.”

i. Obedience

“If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments.”

1. Before the promises there is a proviso. It is premised that there is a state of heart and a character of life to which they belong. As the works and the gifts of power were made dependent on faith and prayer, so the experiences now foretold presuppose the life of love and duty. This appropriation is laid down to begin with, and is insisted on more largely as the promises unfold.

The preferable reading, “If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments,” gives the future instead of the imperative of the Authorized Version, rather describing a process than imposing a condition; but the meaning is the same—namely, that these are promises which belong only to him who loves and obeys.1 [Note: T. D. Bernard, The Central Teaching of Jesus Christ, 159.]

2. In “If ye love me” we hear a confiding rather than a doubtful tone. The love is supposed, as elsewhere it is expressly recognized. But it proves true love only in one way, “If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments”; and again, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me.” There is a voice of Divine authority in the phrase, “my commandments.” They claim obedience, but the obedience of love; and love will render it. Love is the spring of action, and is in its nature free; but it is not left to its own impulses; it acknowledges authority; it is placed under rule, and includes the element of obligation.

The connexion between love and commandment dwelt on the mind of St. John, and reappears more than once in his Epistle. It is not according to the tendencies of human nature, as we all know, and as St. Paul has set forth in the seventh chapter of his Epistle to the Romans in recording his experience of the law and its effects. It is, in fact, distinctive of Christian duty and of the morality of the Gospel. In Christ the claims of authority and the affections of the heart agree in one. Here, as ever, the teaching of Jesus fixes our minds on the practical side of religion—on doing what we know, on living and walking by His words.2 [Note: Ibid.]

3. Obedience is the one test of sincerity, the one mode of retaining the warmth of love. “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me.” The Bible says very little of what we call religion; but very much of God, and of Christ, and of love. Christ does not say, “If ye love me, then ye will meet often to worship me”; He does say, “ye will keep my commandments”; and the chief and summary of all the commandments are the love of God and the love of our neighbour. The true worship of God is obedience and love. It is an idolatrous notion that God is pleased with mere worship. Just as thousands of burnt-offerings and ten thousands of rivers of oil availed nothing without the love and obedience of the worshipper, so not all our gifts or our services are precious to Him except in so far as they are the offering of our love and obedience, and as they help us in our daily life.

God cannot, will not, does not, bless those who are living in disobedience. But only set out in the path of obedience, and at once, before one stone is laid upon another, God is eager, as it were, to pour out His blessing. “From this day will I bless you.”1 [Note: Hudson Taylor’s Sayings, 43.]

4. But do we not need the Spirit to make us obedient; do we not long for the Spirit’s power, just because we mourn so much the disobedience there still is, and desire to be otherwise? And yet Christ claims obedience as the condition of the Father’s giving and our receiving the Spirit. The answer is that Christ Jesus had come to prepare the way for the Spirit’s coming. Or rather, His outward coming in the flesh was the preparation for His inward coming in the Spirit to fulfil the promise of a Divine indwelling. The outward coming appealed to the soul, with its mind and feeling, and affected these. It was only as Christ in His outward coming was accepted, as He was loved and obeyed, that the inward and more intimate revelation would be given. Personal attachment to Jesus, the personal acceptance of Him as Lord and Master to love and obey, was the disciples’ preparation for the baptism of the Spirit.

It is as we prove our love to Jesus in a tender listening to the voice of conscience, and a faithful effort to keep His commands, that the heart will be prepared for the fulness of the Spirit. Our attainments may fall short of our aims, we may have to mourn that what we would we do not—if the Master sees the whole-hearted surrender to His will, and the faithful obedience to what we already have of the leadings of His Spirit, we may be sure that the full gift will not be withheld.1 [Note: A. Murray, The Spirit of Christ, 72.]

ii. Prayer

“And I will pray the Father.”

1. There are two telephones across the abyss that separates the ascended Christ from us. One of them is contained in His words, “If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it”; the other is contained in these words, “If ye keep my commandments, I will ask.” Love on this side of the great cleft sets love on the other side of it in motion in a twofold fashion. If we ask, He does; if we do, He asks. His action is the answer to our prayers and His prayers are the answer to our obedient action.

2. “I will ask” seems a strange drop from the lofty claims with which we have become familiar in the earlier verses of this chapter. “Believe in God, believe also in me”; “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father”; “If ye shall ask anything in my name I will do it”; “Keep my commandments.” All these distinctly express, or necessarily imply, Divine nature, prerogatives, and authority. But here the voice that spake the perfect revelation of God, and gave utterance authoritatively to the perfect law of life, softens and lowers its tones in petition; and Jesus Christ joins the ranks of the suppliants. Now common sense tells us that apparently diverse views lying so close together in one continuous stream of speech cannot have seemed to the utterer of them to be contradictory; and there is no explanation which does justice to these two sides of Christ’s consciousness—the one all Divine and authoritative and lofty, and the other all lowly and identifying Himself with petitioners and suppliants everywhere—except the belief that He is “God manifest in the flesh.” The bare humanistic view which emphasizes such utterances as these does not know what to do with the other ones, and cannot manage to unite these two images into a stereoscopic solid. That is reserved for the faith which believes in the Manhood and in the Deity of our Lord and Saviour.

In all utterances of Jesus Christ which express the lowest humiliation and completest identification of Himself with humanity, there is ever present some touch of obscured glory, some all but suppressed flash of brightness which will not be wholly concealed. Note two things in this great utterance; one, Christ’s quiet assumption that all through the ages, and to-day, nineteen centuries after He died, He knows, at the moment of their being done, His servants’ deeds. “Keep my commandments, and, knowing that you keep them, I will then and there pray for you.” He claims in the lowly words an altogether supernatural, abnormal, Divine cognizance of all the acts of men down the ages and across the gulf between earth and heaven.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

3. Christ’s prayer is the expression of the eternal Will respecting those for whom He prays. There is no thought of the Son for man that is not the thought of the Father. There is no dissonance of feeling, no discordance of desire, no conflict of will. The promise that Christ will pray is the assurance that the thing He asks for will be given. It is the utterance of that which is in the heart of God.

We are not to think of Christ’s advocacy in heaven as if it were of the nature of supplication on our behalf. It is much more than that, although it is to be feared that the modern ideas which have usurped the ground which the word “intercession” covers have nearly evacuated the word of its fuller and more glorious signification. The word used by Christ in this very verse implies that His Personal mediation is an “appeal” of a higher kind than we understand by prayer. So, again, in John 17:9; John 17:15; John 17:20. And notice that this word is used by Him before His glorification. He never uses of Himself the word “ask” which He so often uses when He bids us pray. We have to ask in His Name, and the ground of our reliance when we so pray is His universal intervention for His Church, the result of His sacrificial “appeal.” He intervenes in heaven (Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25), personally, presenting His merits as our High Priest on behalf of all His members who come unto God through Him. The other Paraclete intervenes on earth (Romans 8:27), not by intermediate advocacy, but by the elevating power of Divine inspiration, lifting us up to speak with God our Father in the fulness of Christ’s merits, by the living fellowship wherein He unites us with Him.2 [Note: R. M. Benson, The Final Passover, ii. (pt. i.) 359.]

4. As our Saviour prayed to the Father for them, so now they would pray for themselves by the grace of the Advocate. Much of our Saviour’s work among men was teaching them to help themselves. He taught them to pray, not simply by putting a form of words into their mouths, but by leading them into the presence of the Father, by instructing and encouraging them to maintain a humble boldness in that presence, and by assuring them that their prayers offered in His name would have as much power as His own prayers offered by Himself.

The disciples seem to have made the mistake of thinking that they must always have His intercession to lean upon. They were thankful for it, but it was becoming a hindrance to their own devotions; as all help becomes a hindrance the moment it discourages personal effort instead of drawing it forth. The mother’s finger is useful to the little child learning to walk, as long as it is needed to impart courage and give steadiness; but as soon as it tempts to idleness and thoughtlessness, it must be withdrawn. And so any religious help is good as long as our ignorance, or coldness, or want of faith requires a kind of external support, but that should only be preparatory to our walking, working, and praying by virtue of an inner impulse. Our Lord was the advocate outside His disciples, praying for them sometimes while they slept, reading their wants and interpreting them to God, doing for them what they must do for themselves if they are to become strong men. And the time for the withdrawal of His aid was at hand; and instead of it was to be substituted the advocacy of the Holy Ghost in their hearts; through His grace they would be enabled to plead for themselves as earnestly and successfully as Christ had done for them; which would be a clear spiritual gain. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.”

iii. The Gift

“He will give.”

1. The Father sent His Son into the world. He does not send His Spirit into the world, but He gives Him to the faithful.

The word “giving” is larger than the word “sending.” Although the latter is also used respecting the Holy Ghost whom the Father gives, yet the more adequate word is that which Jesus uses here. The mission would not imply any covenanted circle of recipients. A mission may be towards enemies. When we were enemies God sent His Son, that we might be reconciled by His death (Romans 5:10). The Son was not given to all mankind. He was “sent” to them. God sent His Son (John 8:16). God “commissioned” Him (1 John 4:10). God sent His Son into the world. He gave Him not to the world, but for the world as a sacrifice (John 3:16). The Spirit is “given” to the faithful, to dwell in them. A gift implies a permanent bestowal. The Presence of the Holy Ghost with the Church is a permanent bestowal. He is not to be withdrawn. This is “the gift of God,” respecting which our Lord spoke to the woman of Samaria. Similarly our Lord says of His flesh, “The bread which I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world” (John 6:51). This promised gift of Christ’s flesh is by the power of His Spirit. So the gift of the Spirit of life is prior and preparatory to the gift of the food of life.

2. The Spirit is the gift of the Father, because the Father is the Fountain of all Godhead. The Manhood of Christ is represented by our Lord as setting before the Father the necessities of the case, the human needs of His brethren, those whom the Father has given to Him. The Father, as the Source of all Divine life, gives the Spirit; not a created agency, but an essential communication of the indivisible Godhead which is in the Father. The gift of God must be worthy of God, and therefore cannot be less than God.

3. This gift had never yet been given. The Holy Ghost had indeed been sent from God to the prophets by whom He spoke, but He had not been given to the prophets. He was not given to any one previously; much less could there be any “ministration of the Spirit” by human agency in a covenanted society such as it would be when Christ was glorified as the Head of the Body, the Church. The Father’s gift would be a continuous presence pledged to that society which Christ had called out of the world.

Twice have I erred: a distant God

Was what I could not bear;

Sorrows and cares were at my side;

I longed to have Him there.

But God is never so far off

As even to be near;

He is within: our spirit is

The home He holds most dear.1 [Note: F. W. Faber.]

iv. The World

“Whom the world cannot receive.”

1. The world cannot receive the Spirit of truth, because it lives content with the superficial knowledge of things around. It does not contemplate God so as to gain a loving familiarity with Divine truth. Instead of looking at the phenomenal from the standpoint of Divine faith, so as to see in outward things the operation of Divine relationships, it is content with registering them as they appear to the outward senses. The contemplation of God’s moral government will go a long way towards solving many of the difficulties which we find in creation. If we refuse to accept that amount of Divine truth which has come down to us by the primitive traditions of our race, and has been developed by the teaching of prophets and the contemplations of the faithful in subsequent ages, we are not in a position to receive the Spirit of truth. Nature becomes to us what a geometrical figure would be to those who disregarded the elementary problems of geometry necessary for its elucidation.

If the movements of a planet can prove the existence of another planet by whose proximity it is affected, how much more ought the varied operations of nature to lead a thoughtful mind, which has a love of truth, to recognize the creative mind by which all the functions of the universe are regulated and maintained in unity! If, on the contrary, the interest which superficial occurrences excite becomes so absorbing as to make men give up the deeper devotional acknowledgment of that which is hidden, then they are rejecting the eternal truth, however assiduously they may seek to record and illustrate those data which constitute our science—so shallow after all, although to us so seemingly profound. They unfit themselves for the reception of the Eternal Spirit of truth.1 [Note: R. M. Benson, The Final Passover, ii. (pt. i.) 368.]

2. The Lord does not say that the world cannot receive many good things, for it does receive them; nor does He say that it cannot appreciate them, for it is alive to their excellence. Many of the world’s people see and appreciate the beautiful; and beauty is a good, whether in nature, art, or literature. They see the value of honour and probity in all the affairs of the present life, and they denounce falsehood and overreaching; but they do not know the Holy Spirit. They have no consciousness of His working, for they are unyielding. There may be movements of the Spirit of truth towards something better in not a few of their minds, but they are resisted; the Spirit is not discerned or recognized; and thus neglected and insulted He withdraws.

I once stood far up on the Becca di Nona in Piedmont, the valley in which the old Roman city of Aosta lies being below, and on the other side, not far off, two great peaks of the mountains, part of the Alpine range. There were two clouds, about equal in size, floating and abiding above the two peaks, whose course I watched. The one cloud kept in a compact mass together, seemingly repelled by the hardness and non-receptivity of the granite peak beneath it. The other, after a little while, apparently drawn and attracted by its peak beneath, gradually opened out its fleecy beauties and gracefully descended, bathing the happy mountain peak in its exquisite softness and beauty. So, thought I, is it with the influences of the blessed Spirit. They are near us, ready to descend upon us in their sweetest blessings; but the world is as the granite peak which did not attract the cloud, while the humble, God-fearing soul does not repel, and the Divine Spirit descends and fills it with His grace.2 [Note: H. Wilkes, The Bright and Morning Star, 125.]

3. The two reasons which our Lord gives for the fact that the world does not receive the Spirit are (1) that the world beholds Him not, and (2) that it knows Him not.

(1) “It beholdeth him not.”—This is the real secret of men’s laughter at the idea of the existence of the Holy Ghost—they see Him not. Tell the worldling, “I have the Holy Ghost within me.” He says, “I cannot see it.” He wants it to be something tangible: a thing he can recognize with his senses.

Have you ever heard the argument used by a good old Christian against an infidel doctor? The doctor said there was no soul, and he asked, “Did you ever see a soul?” “No,” said the Christian. “Did you ever hear a soul?” “No.” “Did you ever smell a soul?” “No.” “Did you ever taste a soul?” “No.” “Did you ever feel a soul?” “Yes,” said the man—“I feel I have one within me.” “Well,” said the doctor, “there are four senses against one: you have only one on your side.” “Very well,” said the Christian, “Did you ever see a pain?” “No.” “Did you ever hear a pain?” “No.” “Did you ever smell a pain?” “No.” “Did you ever taste a pain?” “No.” “Did you ever feel a pain?” “Yes.” “And that is quite enough, I suppose, to prove there is a pain?” “Yes.” So the worldling says there is no Holy Ghost because he cannot see Him. Well, but we feel Him. You say that is fanaticism, and that we never felt Him. Suppose you tell me that honey is bitter, I reply, “No, I am sure you cannot have tasted it; taste it, and try.” So with the Holy Ghost; if you did but feel His influence, you would no longer say there is no Holy Spirit, because you cannot see Him. Are there not many things, even in nature, which we cannot see? Did you ever see the wind? No; but you know there is wind, when you behold the hurricane tossing the waves about and rending down the habitations of men; or when in the soft evening zephyr it kisses the flowers, and makes dewdrops hang in pearly coronets around the rose. Did you ever see electricity? No; but you know there is such a thing, for it travels along the wires for thousands of miles, and carries our messages. So you must believe there is a Holy Ghost working in us, both to will and to do, even though He is beyond our senses.1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]

(2) The other reason why worldly men do not receive the Holy Spirit is because they do not know Him. If they knew Him by heart-felt experience, and if they recognized His agency in the soul; if they had ever been touched by Him; if they had been made to tremble under a sense of sin; if they had had their hearts melted; they would never have doubted the existence of the Holy Ghost.

No explanation is of any value in matters which do not grow out of experience. Until a deaf man hears music, it is wasted breath to describe it, and there is no proof of colour to the blind. When Jesus spoke to the disciples the words recorded in the fourteenth chapter of John, He offered them truth for experience without explanation. He promised them manifestation of Himself. He knew that the one who should enter into this experience would never be perplexed by Divine reticence in explanation, or by the imperfection of human philosophy.1 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 17.]

II

For what Purposes the Comforter is given

The first purpose is to comfort. But as He is spoken of as the Spirit of truth, a special form of the comfort is the leading of the disciples into the truth. A third purpose is that He may abide for ever.

i. The Comforter

The true Christian has three Comforters, and each of them is Divine. God the Father is styled by St. Paul, in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, “the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation.” God the Son, in the words of the text, speaks of Himself as one Comforter; and St. Paul tells us that “our consolation” or comfort “aboundeth by Christ.” God the Holy Ghost is specifically named by Jesus Christ in several instances as “the Comforter,” and His peculiar office as such is fully unfolded in the last discourse of our Lord to His disciples before His crucifixion. Thus each person of the ever-blessed Trinity is a Comforter, Divine in character, infinite in fulness, eternal in duration. There is, then, no true comfort or consolation that the heart can desire which may not be found in God the Father as the God of all comfort; in God the Son as the Paraclete with the Father; and in God the Holy Ghost as “the Comforter” who proceedeth from the Father and the Son.

1. The word “Comforter.”—The word translated “Comforter” is found only in the writings of St. John. You look in vain for it in all other portions of Scripture. We have it four times in the Gospel according to St. John, as coming from the lips of Jesus. We find it once in the First Epistle of St. John (John 2:1). In the Gospel, where the word is used by Christ and is applied to the third person of the Trinity, it is translated Comforter; in the Epistle, where it is applied to Jesus, it is translated Advocate. In both instances the word is the same; it is the Divine Paraclete.

It was the custom in the ancient tribunals for the parties to appear in court attended by one or more of their most influential friends, who were called in Greek paracletes, in Latin advocatus. These paracletes, or advocates, gave their friends—not from fee or reward, but from love and interest—the advantage of their personal presence and the aid of their judicious counsel. They thus advised them what to do, what to say, spoke for them, acted on their behalf, made the cause of their friends their cause, stood by them and for them in the trials, difficulties, and dangers of their situation. In this sense our Lord is said by St. John to be our Paraclete—where he says, “We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous”—One in heaven before God, who appears there on our behalf, patronizes our cause, urges our plea, ever living to “make intercession for us.”

While on earth, our Lord had counselled, advised, spoken for, and on behalf of, His disciples. They had looked to Him for aid, succour, comfort, truth, grace; and thus, ever at their side, He had been to them a Paraclete, or Advocate. He had most thoroughly identified Himself with them, had taught them to pray, to preach, to live, to work miracles, and the mysteries of the Kingdom. But He was now to leave them. His bodily form was to be removed. Yet, with a sweetness of compassion peculiarly touching, He says, “I will not leave you comfortless,” orphans, undefended, unadvocated, unsustained. “It is expedient for you that I go away: and I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever.”1 [Note: W. B. Stevens.]

Many are the emergencies of human life, and many are the forms of help which they require, and all are included in this great comprehensive name. If we wish to distinguish, we may range them in two divisions, the advocacy of our cause before others, the support of companionship to ourselves. When we think of the one office, we speak of an advocate; when of the other, of a comforter. But the same person will fulfil either office as need requires; and both are included in the word “Paraclete.” Therefore the choice of the English equivalent in any particular case may be dictated by the nature of the occasion and the general feeling of the situation. If so, the Revisers have done well in retaining the old rendering “the Comforter” in the four passages in which “Paraclete” here occurs, as they were plainly right in retaining that of “Advocate” in the only other passage where it is found (1 John 2:1). The situation presented in the Gospel more naturally suggests the first rendering, while that contemplated in the Epistle certainly prescribes the second.1 [Note: T. D. Bernard.]

2. “Another Comforter.”—The word “another” signifies that Jesus Himself was an advocate, helper, paraclete, comforter. But it does not mean that He was now to be superseded, or that, going out of sight, He was also to be out of mind. Scarred with wounds and enthroned as the Head of the Church, He was to be more in His people’s minds and hearts, better represented in their lives, than hitherto. For—let us be clear about this—Jesus, and He alone, is our life; it was He and He alone who bore our stripes and carried our death down into His grave, transfiguring our departure, with whatever distress and humiliation may attend it, into a promotion and home-going. “He that hath the Son hath life.” If we can say with a true and thankful heart, “I am Thine own, O Christ”; “My beloved is mine, and I am his”; “To me to live is Christ,”—then we possess the everlasting Life, and will never see Death.

Although Jesus spoke of another Comforter, two facts are clear—the one, that He would continue, and more fully than ever, to be the life of the believing soul and the believing Church; and the other, that the Holy Spirit would be the vehicle of that life, uniting Christ and the soul, and so bringing it to pass that the Church should not so much mourn an absent Lord as rejoice in a present Spirit.

God forbid that our thoughts should for one moment be turned away from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself as the Incarnate Head of His ransomed Church. It is as His executive that the Holy Spirit acts, and in Him there is nothing approaching to either abdication or desertion. There is no such thing as abdication; for we are told that God “hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church.” Nor is there desertion, for in the self-same chapter in which He gives the promise of another Paraclete He gives also the promise of His own presence in the words, “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you” (John 14:18); and in the assurance given to those that love Him, He says (John 14:23), “My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” It may be asked, How is such language consistent with those other words of His, in which He said, “It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you”? But the answer is simple. As the localized incarnate Son of man, He is gone away, and is now where Stephen saw Him, at the right hand of God; but as the eternal Person of the undivided Trinity, He is omnipresent and ever acting; nor is it within the capacity of finite beings like ourselves to put any limit on His Divine action.1 [Note: E. Hoare, Great Principles of Divine Truth, 234.]

3. How does the Comforter comfort?—We know by the fruits of His comfort. To the disciples everything about the working of that Divine Comforter was wrapt in mystery except the fruits. How He made His temple in man, how He imparted His light and His truth to His creatures, how He strengthened the vacillating, and spoke without words to the inward ear, and raised the fallen, and won back the wanderer, none could trace, none could know. The wind bloweth where it listeth: the ways of the Spirit are unsearchable. It is vain to imagine how that Heavenly Person associates Himself with our spirit, becomes to us the source of light and strength, and of the desire of good, making His work our work too, overshadowing, protecting, guarding our souls, giving us thoughts above our own thoughts, surprising us into an earnestness so unlike our common selves. Why should we expect to be conscious of His Presence? Why should we expect, such as we are, to recognize and discern clearly what is of God? But the effects of His Presence were soon recognized in the world, and have never ceased to be recognized since. They were seen in those two contrasted lists in the Epistle to the Galatians, of the works of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit—of what the moral world had been and was, without Him, and of that new phenomenon and substantial fact of character which had shown itself beyond denial since He had come.

(1) Let us take the word “comfort” first in its modern sense, a sense covered by the Greek word, though not its chief meaning. Then we may say that He comforts us in our sorrow, providing consolation and affording relief.

When I think over the troubles of which I have heard even this week, I know that this is a world that needs comfort. One boy of brilliant promise lies struck down by sudden illness in a nursing-home; another man in the prime of life, doing a brilliant work, has a sickness on him to-day which I fear will never leave him, or, if it leaves him, will take away all power of work. There are two young women lately married; one is a widow after eight months, and the other after three. Another woman has her child born dead. And as these sorrows roll on me, at the centre of this great diocese—and I rejoice that people should pour their troubles on to me, inadequate as I feel myself to help them—I look up to heaven and I say, “If there were not a Comforter sent from heaven, where should we be?” And it was because our Saviour knew this that during that sad Holy Week, before He left, He made us this beautiful promise: “It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you. I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter besides Me, another Comforter who shall abide with you for ever; there shall be with you the Holy Ghost, the Comforter.”1 [Note: Bishop A. F. W. Ingram, A Mission of the Spirit, 192.]

(2) But the Spirit’s function is not merely, or chiefly, to soothe sorrow and wipe away the tear. The word really does not suggest so much the quiet room as the battle-field. It is an energetic, forceful, militant word. It implies conflict and struggle, and for the conflict and the struggle the Spirit is a fortifier—He lifts men above fear; He reinforces them; He gives them triumph in battle—and that is exactly what the Spirit proved to be to these first disciples.

We borrowed the term from a language, the makers of which set great store by these things. “Only be thou strong and very courageous,” was the Lord’s message to Joshua, the leader of the host of Israel. “As I was with Moses, so will I be with thee.” Confortare is the rendering of the first phrase in the Vulgate Version of the Old Testament, and in the Septuagint it reads literally, “Be strong and play the man.” In Isaiah 41:10 our noble Authorized Version gives us, “Fear thou not, for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee.” Confortare is once again the equivalent for this promise of strength. We observe, therefore, that the word which our fathers considered the best English equivalent of the Greek, “Paraclete,” is one with a history, in which sweetness and strength are united. There is a sympathy which enervates and a sympathy which braces, a love which weakens and a love which inspires. In our Lord’s promise of the Comforter it is Divine sympathy and love of the latter kind that are suggested.

Did not the Apostle pray on behalf of his Ephesian friends that they might be strengthened with might by God’s Spirit in the inner man? Did not our Lord give His disciples to expect that they should “be endued with power from on high”? Did He not associate this expectation with the promise of the Spirit? I think we may feel the idea of this strengthening to be an ingredient in the meaning of the word comfort as employed in the New Testament; as, for instance, when we are told that the Church in Judæa, Galilee, Samaria, had rest, and, “walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, was multiplied.” And I should say this element of strengthening entered more or less into the meaning intended to be conveyed by the word comfort or Comforter in various places in our Prayer-Book: in the prayer at Confirmation, “Strengthen them … with the Holy Ghost the Comforter,” and in the invitation, “Draw near with faith, and take this holy Sacrament to your comfort.” In truest comfort, in God-given comfort—and of this the New Testament speaks—there is power; it may prove to be an essential element or condition of real power.1 [Note: J. W. Bishop, The Christian Year and the Christian Life, 247.]

Just over a century ago Robert Morrison set sail for China; it seemed a quixotic business. “Do you think,” said the captain of the ship in which he sailed, “that you are going to convert China?” “No,” replied Morrison, “but I believe that God will.”2 [Note: J. D. Jones, Things Most Surely Believed, 141.]

ii. The Spirit of Truth

1. Three times in these verses is the Spirit called the Spirit of truth. And, in the original, each time the title occurs, it is the Spirit of the truth. This must be taken to mean the truth which is in Jesus, the truth which is Christ Himself, which was incarnate in Him. For shortly before giving forth this promise of the Spirit He had proclaimed Himself to be “the way, and the truth, and the life.” “I am … the truth:” “the Spirit is the truth.” “He shall [both] teach you all things, and [more especially] bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you.” “He shall bear witness of me.” “He shall guide you into all the truth.” “He shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you.” The Spirit for whose coming, for whose replenishing or baptism, foretold by the Baptist, the disciples would have still a little while to wait, would make clear to them something of the meaning of Jesus’ earthly life, and of His teaching concerning God and man and duty, so that they might make it clear to others.

He is the “Spirit of truth,” not as if He brought new truth. To suppose that He does so, opens the door to all manner of fanaticism; but the truth, the revelation of which is all summed and finished in the Person and work of Jesus Christ, is the weapon by which the Divine Spirit works all His conquests, the staff on which He makes us lean and be strong. He is the Spirit by whom the truth passes into our personal possession, by no mere imperfect form of outward teaching, which is always confused and insufficient, but by the inward teaching that deals with our hearts and our spirits.

The method used by the Spirit of truth is not driving or forcing, but “leading,” “guiding,” by winning ways and by persistently pointing to the truth and commendingly interpreting it. When we gaze upon a picture we may for ourselves see much that is beautiful and attractive in its mode of exhibiting colour, form, and expression. But to understand the inner meaning of the picture and appreciate its main purpose and idea, we may need some skilled interpreter to open our eyes to its most vital and inherent excellencies. The Holy Spirit is such a guide to the Saviour and such an interpreter and revealer of the true grace and glory of Jesus Christ in His purpose and mission into this world.1 [Note: A. H. Drysdale, Christ Invisible our Gain, 186.]

2. Christ is the Truth. The Comforter, the Holy Ghost, is the Spirit of truth. He is the Spirit of truth in two ways. He is communicated from Jesus, who is the Truth, and He is the living power of the Triune Energy, by which Jesus Himself is the Truth. In Him the Son of God is begotten eternally as the Image of the Father. By Him the Son of God was conceived in the womb according to the fulness of the Divine purpose. The truth of Christ’s Godhead in the unity of the Holy Ghost necessitated the truth of His Manhood assumed by the power of the Holy Ghost.

3. The Spirit of truth, communicated to the Church, is the living Presence, in wisdom, power, and love, of that Divine energy which formed the worlds. They were formed for the habitation of God purposing to become incarnate. The Spirit of the Incarnate God fits the Church as the Body of Christ, to exercise dominion over all the creation which He has framed with a fitness for this final occupation. There is nothing superfluous, so as to be beyond the eventual purposes of God for His Church. There is nothing wanting, so that the Church of God, the Body of Christ, may feel within herself a Divine capacity for which the created universe gave no practical scope.

The truth of the creature is not separable from the truth of the Creator. Creation is true to itself, while it is true to the mind of the Creator. The first laws of creation are the impress of the Eternal Mind. If they were not so, they would be purely accidental and mutable. Doubtless there are harmonies in creation far deeper and grander than we can trace out. Harmonies of sight and sound, of number and weight, of mechanical power and chemical combination, of microscopic delicacy and astronomical magnificence, of universal distribution and temporal sequence, may be the objects of our guess-work at present, but at the best we can know them now only as one standing on the shore can know the waves whose ripple washes over the sand, all ignorant of the vast ocean far away. But all the universe is true, because the worlds of matter and spirit are the projection of the infinite intelligence of Him who is in His own true essence the law of beauty and truth to which all His creatures must be conformed.1 [Note: R. M. Benson, The Final Passover, ii. (pt. i.) 364.]

4. How does the Spirit of truth operate?

(1) He enlightens our mind that we may know Christ Jesus.—He opens the eyes to the true meaning and aims of Christ’s words and work by furnishing insight into them, and enabling us to realize not only their true inwardness, but their vital importance—giving an attractiveness to them and a fascinating interest in them to our yearning and wondering heart and mind.

We can see the process of enlightenment going on in the New Testament. Take the one matter of the universality of the Kingdom. When Christ left the disciples, they were as narrow in their notions as any Jews in the land; they saw no place for Gentiles in the Kingdom: but see how gradually the Spirit led them to an understanding of Christ’s purpose. First of all, the Samaritans receive the word. Then, at the impulse of the Spirit, Philip preaches to the Ethiopian eunuch and baptizes him. Then, at the direct and imperious bidding of the Spirit, Peter goes to Cornelius, the Roman centurion, and baptizes him. And then, finally, the Spirit thrusts forth Barnabas and Saul into the work of evangelizing the world, and so the truth is gradually brought home to the disciples and Apostles that they shall come from the North and the South and the East and the West, and sit down in the Kingdom of God.

When Jesus says of this Spirit that “he shall guide you into all truth,” He does not mean that the Holy Ghost will guide us into natural truth, or scientific truth, or metaphysical truth; but into those great central truths—the atoning death, the justifying righteousness of Jesus Christ; those poles on which turn as on an axle the whole round scheme of redemption and grace. As it was by this Spirit of truth that the prophecies concerning Christ were uttered which fill the Old Testament; as it was by the Spirit of truth that Jesus was conceived by the Virgin Mary; as it was by this Spirit of truth that He was anointed for His ministry after His baptism: so is it declared that His office is to take of the things of Christ and show them unto men.

Nor is it a new revelation which the Spirit gives, but rather a more perfect understanding of that which has already been given in Christ. Here, then, is the test by which to try all that claims the authority of spiritual truth. Does it “glorify” Christ? Does it lead us into a fuller knowledge of Him “in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden”? “Whosoever goeth onward,” says St. John, in a remarkable passage, for which English readers are indebted to the Revised Version, “and abideth not in the teaching of Christ, hath not God.” In other words, no true progress is possible except as we abide in Christ.

I sometimes sit at my study window on a bright morning, and combine with my work the pleasure of looking at my share of God’s beautiful world. It is a wonderful blend of landscape and marine, colour and form: trees and flowers in the foreground, dark roofs and tiled chimneys beyond, and behind all the grey and azure of the mighty sea. Not simply once, but many times, do I lift my eyes to it, yet the picture is always the same. Floating clouds overhead may modify the light and shadow, but they do not change the permanent features in the least. And yet I know the picture is not out there: it is within me; it is not the eye but the mind that sees. The effect of the landscape is being impressed upon my consciousness, by the light of day—itself invisible. And every ray of light contains the perfect picture. I may look up a thousand times—it will always be there, while the light can fall upon the eye. And you may come with me and view the same picture. If you have eyes to see you shall have the perfect picture too. And a million persons may, if they choose, stand and gaze. The whole scene is theirs, as much as yours or mine. There is but one scene and one sun, but every ray of the energies of the latter reveals the whole of the former to every eye that is turned upon it. So it is with the work of the Divine Spirit, the other Paraclete. He reveals the Christ to those who seek Him, writes His name, and forms His likeness within the human soul. The living Christ, the indwelling Christ, becomes a rich personal spiritual experience in the power of the Holy Ghost.1 [Note: R. J. Campbell.]

(2) He encourages us to appropriate Christ.—We feel entitled, without being chargeable with any vain confidence, to appropriate and apply to ourselves such words of personal conviction as, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” “Thou knowest that I love thee,” or, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him.” The very sting of death is extracted, and its terrors no longer keep the soul in thrall. So the dying saint, falling back at last as at first into the arms of a glorified Redeemer, breathes out his soul in fidelity, meekness, and hope, saying in fearless triumph, “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

The immortal Bengel died in 1752. One of his friends was travelling, and spent all night at Bengel’s house. The great commentator was very busy with his Bible, and worked till nearly midnight. But the friend still waited. He knew the rich Christian character of the scholar, and wished to hear his evening prayer. At length the books were put on one side; Bengel arose, and knelt down beside his chair. He had been studying the words of Christ, and he knew that the blessed Master was near him all the time. So now there was no lengthened agony of supplication. Sweetly and simply the words of the scholar rose to heaven, “Lord Jesus, things are just the same between us,” and then he laid himself down to rest. Perfect peace! perfect confidence! For he had appropriated Christ as his personal Saviour, and he knew Christ was his.1 [Note: J. A. Clapperton, Culture of the Christian Heart, 36.]

(3) He enables us to overcome sin and grow in true holiness.—Our Lord prays, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” Men of science have at length discovered what is the character of the world so far as it consists of animated things. “It is a struggle for existence;” it is “the survival of the fittest.” So it is with the Christian life. The old man conquered, but not thoroughly subdued, contends with the new life which has been superinduced. It is a contest between the lower principles of man’s nature and the higher, quickened and sanctified by the Spirit of God. It is a struggle between the animal man and the spiritual man; between pleasure and duty; between selfishness and benevolence; between appetite and conscience; between lust and reason; between love of ease and zeal for good; between cowardice and courage; between deceit and candour; between selfishness and love; between the fear of man and the fear of God; between earth and heaven. But they that be with us are far stronger than they that can be against us. The believer is not perfect in this world, but he is going on towards perfection in obedience to the command, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” “He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.”

The connexion between justification and sanctification is not merely human gratitude for Divine grace as the motive of a new life; it is not only a conscious personal communion with a Divine Saviour and Lord, a communion that must be potent in conforming man to His moral perfection; but it is a habitation and operation in man of God by His Spirit, the very life of God become the life of Man 1:2 [Note: A. E. Garvie, Studies of Paul and his Gospel, 190.]

(4) He gives strength for witness and for service.—The Holy Spirit who comes to give fulness to the work of Jesus must communicate new power proportionate to the new revelation. The new kingdom is to be marked by profounder spiritual life, by a clearer vision of eternal things, by a more vivid consciousness of sin, by mightier energies of holiness, by a diviner dynamic of spiritual love. In the might of inward spiritual force men and women are to occupy the heavenly places with Christ. To this end they must be endued with new power, with a vaster momentum of spiritual energy.

There need be no hesitation in affirming that the communication of inward spiritual power is the fundamental office of the Holy Spirit of the New Covenant. It is through this new influx of spiritual power that the new illumination is given. “The spiritual man judgeth all things, but he himself is judged of no man.” At Pentecost and throughout the records of the Apostolic Church, the ministry of the Holy Spirit is fundamentally the giving of holy power. The keynote of the Spirit’s presence is given by our Saviour in such words as these: “Tarry ye in the city, until ye be clothed with power from on high.” “But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” This is the new spiritual power demanded by the new revelation. For, in view of the reception of this power, the Lord continued: “And ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”

“Ye shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming on you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me.” The copula links together the power and the witness-bearing. Few facts of history are more convincing, as to the need of the Holy Ghost’s power for Christian service, than that these first disciples, who had lived in our Lord’s immediate society for three years and more, were yet not equipped by that long intimacy of fellowship and observation for the great task which He intended them to carry out. No. They had to tarry in the city of Jerusalem till they had been “endued with power from on high”; until they had received Him who was designated by the great title: “the promise of the Father.” From this we may learn that a distinct gift, other than personal knowledge of Christ, and experience of His wonderful ways, confidence in His grace and power, remembrance of His words and works, and much besides, which these men possessed, is needed if we are to bear an effective witness for our loved and trusted Master.1 [Note: R. C. Joynt, Liturgy and Life, 208.]

iii. The Abiding

1. The Comforter is to abide with us for ever. He is the instrument whereby the glory of Christ is communicated to His members, and so His Presence with the Church is coextensive in duration with the glory of Christ the Head. The ministry of humiliation was to cease. The ministry of righteousness was to be an eternal glory.

2. The Presence, the ever-continued assistance of the Holy Ghost, unearthly as it is, is yet a thing of the immediate present—of the present shaping and improvement of life, of present growth in depth and reality, and elevation of character. If ever we rise above what is of the earth, earthy; above what is of time, transitory; above what is of this world, fugitive, unsatisfying, corruptible—it is to Him that we shall owe it.

3. Two phrases, significant in variety, are used to describe the relation of the Spirit of truth to believers. First, that relation is spoken of as a Fellowship—“He abideth with you”; and next, it is represented as an Indwelling—“and shall be in you.”

Webster once said: “The greatest thought that ever entered my mind was that of my personal responsibility to a personal God.” A great thought truly, and yet a greater is beneath it: my personal relation to a personal God.1 [Note: Bishop A. Pearson, The Claims of the Faith, 24.]

(1) Fellowship.—“He abideth with you.” While Jesus was with His disciples below, the Holy Ghost dwelt with them in His person. They saw in Him the presence of the Divine Spirit. His mighty works, His wonderful words, His perfect holiness and charity and self-denial and truth, all these things, daily witnessed by them and profoundly reverenced, were results of the Spirit given to Him not by measure. Though He was very God, yet He acted below within the limits (as it were) of a perfectly inspired humanity. It was of the essence of His humiliation, that He lived and acted, spoke and wrought, during His earthly sojourn, as though He were only a Man full of the Holy Ghost. Thus, when He dwelt with them, the Holy Spirit dwelt with them; dwelt with them in a sense and with a fulness never realized in the case of any others. And the Spirit who was in Jesus kept them also in the truth by virtue of a controlling influence put forth upon them from Him. “While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name.”

This fellowship of the Spirit is ours also. The Comforter dwells with us in Church ordinances. Every time that we meet for worship there is a coexistence with us of the Holy Ghost. And He dwells with us in the haunts of common life. He dwells with us in Christian lives; in the daily sight and hearing of the conduct and language, of the acts and the words, of true Christian people

(2) Indwelling.—“And shall be in you.” It would be esteemed a rare privilege to have a great and truly noble person dwell with us, a Paul, a Chrysostom, an Augustine; to have such an one as our perpetual monitor, and adviser, and exemplar; to have him show us how to act, how to speak, how to live; to have the benefit of his oversight, his wisdom, his favour. But then the person thus favoured might never fully copy the devotion of an Augustine, the eloquence of a Chrysostom, or the holiness of a Paul. How different, however, would the case be if there were a process by which the spirit of those great men, in its wholeness could be infused into the minds and hearts of others, so that instead of dwelling with an Augustine, Augustine should by his spirit dwell in them; instead of living with a Chrysostom, Chrysostom should live his life in them; instead of copying a Paul beside us, Paul should dwell in us as the abiding spirit. What a difference there would be! The indwelling spirit of an Augustine would make a second Augustine; the infused spirit of a Chrysostom would make another golden-mouthed preacher; and a Paul living in us would reproduce the spirit and the deeds of the great Apostle in our own life and work. The Comforter, as the Spirit of truth, not only dwells with us as a guest, but dwells in us as the inner controlling, shaping, enlightening, sanctifying Spirit, evolving out of Himself through the functions and faculties of our being, the fruits and graces of a holy life, and the beautiful character of a true Christian.

The artist who paints a picture, or chisels a statue, impresses a certain amount of his own genius on flat canvas or cold marble. It is not a beauty developed from within, working outward; but something put upon the passive canvas or marble, by an outside process that never goes beneath the surface, never imparts life within. But the artist power of the Holy Ghost is seen in that, taking up His abode in the heart, He renews and sanctifies that heart, and the outward life is but the development of the inward grace.1 [Note: W. B. Stevens.]

To all the world mine eyes are blind;

Their drop serene is—night,

With stores of snow piled up the wind

An awful airy height.

And yet ’tis but a mote in the eye:

The simple faithful stars

Beyond are shining, careless high,

Nor heed our storms and jars.

And when o’er storm and jar I climb—

Beyond life’s atmosphere,

I shall behold the lord of time

And space—of world and year.

Oh vain, far quest!—not thus my heart

Shall ever find its goal!

I turn me home—and there thou art,

My Father, in my soul!2 [Note: George MacDonald.]

The Old Testament is full of the thought of the presence of God with His people. With very few exceptions—which are found chiefly in the Psalms—it is always “with.” “My presence shall go with thee.” “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee.” This thought—and it is a very grand and comforting one—characterizes the whole of the ancient dispensation. Neither is it forgotten in the New. “Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” But the new and determining feature of the Second Testament is the “in,” the “in you.” “I am in you.” “Christ in you.” “The Holy Ghost which is in you.” “God is in you of a truth.” “I will dwell in them, and walk in them.”3 [Note: James Vaughan.]

The Giving of the Comforter

Literature

Aitken (J.), The Abiding Law, 11.

Benson (R. M.), The Final Passover, ii. (pt. i.) 353.

Bernard (T. D.), The Central Teaching of Jesus Christ, 157.

Bishop (J.), The Christian Year in Relation to the Christian Life, 243.

Bourdillon (F.), Short Sermons, 189.

Brown (J. B.), The Divine Mystery of Peace, 65.

Butler (W. J.), Sermons for Working Men, 289.

Church (R. W.), Cathedral and University Sermons, 182.

Dick (G. H.), The Yoke and the Anointing, 160.

Drysdale (A. H.), Christ Invisible our Gain, 175.

Hoare (E.), Great Principles of Divine Truth, 218.

Ingram (A. F. W.), A Mission of the Spirit, 190.

Jackson (G.), The Teaching of Jesus, 65.

Jerdan (C.), For the Lambs of the Flock, 346.

Jones (J. D.), Things most surely believed, 126.

Joynt (R. C.), Liturgy and Life, 204.

McCosh (J.), Gospel Sermons, 150.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: John ix.–xiv., 320.

Murray (A.), The Spirit of Christ, 60.

Pearson (A.), The Claims of the Faith, 14.

Russell (A.), The Light that lighteth Every Man, 138.

Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 339.

Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, i. 4.

Stevens (W. B.), Sermons, 28.

Thomas (J.), The Mysteries of Grace, 192.

Vaughan (C. J.), Doncaster Sermons, 463.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser. xiii. No. 1005.

Wilson (J. M.), Sermons preached at Clifton College Chapel, i. 165.

Christian World Pulpit, ix. 332 (W. Roberts); lxi. 294 (R. J. Campbell).