These things have I spoken unto you
The mission of the Holy Spirit
I. ITS DISTINCTION FROM THAT OF JESUS CHRIST. Both Christ and the Spirit were sent by the Father, and were sent to teach; but they differed in respect of
1. Character. Christ had been sent in the Father’s name as the Father’s representative; the Spirit was come in Christ’s name as Christ’s representative.
2. Purpose. Christ had been sent to furnish men with an objective image of God; the Spirit to give an inward apprehension of the same.
3. Duration. Christ came for a season; the Spirit forever.
4. Results. Christ’s mission was imperfectly realized so far as it related to the enlightenment of men; that of the Spirit would attain complete success both in instructing and sanctifying.
II. ITS FULFILMENT IS THE CASE OF CHRIST’S APOSTLES.
1. Scripture illumination. A wonderful light began to shine on the Old Testament, which enabled them to see its references to Christ which had previously been hidden (cf. Psalms 16:8-11 with Acts 2:25-28; Psalms 110:1 with Acts 2:34; Psalms 2:1-2 with Ac Psalms 2:7 with Acts 13:33; Amos 9:11 with Ac Zechariah 9:9 with John 12:16).
2. Quickened recollection. A lively recollection of forgotten words of Jesus began to show itself. Examples: John 2:22; Luke 24:8; Acts 11:16, Acts 20:35. In particular, Christ’s utterances concerning His relation with the Father (John 8:28).
3. Further revelation. A gradual disclosure of truths which had been concealed in Christ’s teaching but not developed as, e.g., the doctrines of
(1) His Divinity (Act 1:36).
(2) His atoning death (Acts 3:19).
(3) His exclusive Mediatorship (Acts 4:12).
(4) Justification by faith (Acts 13:39; Romans 1:16-17; Romans 3:21-26; Romans 5:1).
(5) The Catholicity of the New Testament Church (Acts 11:17; Romans 1:6-7, Romans 2:11; Galatians 6:15; Ephesians 2:14-16). In short, out of this flowed the New Testament.
III. ITS RELATION TO THE GENERAL BODY OF BELIEVERS.
1. Negatively. It does not warrant the expectation that new revelations will be imparted to either the Church or individual--a pretension advanced by Rome, which places tradition on a level with the writings of apostles.
2. Positively. Christ’s language implies that the Church and the individual have today, as the apostles had, a Teacher qualified to lead them into all religious truth (1 John 2:20).
Learn:
1. The high esteem in which the Holy Spirit should be held as the Father’s Commissioner, the Saviour’s Expositor, the apostles’ Remembrancer, the Church’s Teacher, the saints’ Comforter.
2. The great confidence which should be placed in the Holy Spirit, possessing as He does the two-fold stamp and seal of the Father and the Son.
3. The sincere gratitude with which the Holy Spirit should be welcomed, since without His assistance the revealed Christ cannot be understood. (T. Whitelaw, D. D.)
The Teacher Spirit
I. THE PROMISED TEACHER.
1. “The Comforter” means literally one who is called to the side of another, primarily for the purpose of being his representative in some legal process; and, more widely, for any purpose of help, encouragement, and strength.
2. This comforting and strengthening office of the Spirit is brought into immediate connection with the conception of Him as a Teacher. That is to say, the best strength that God can give us is by the firm grasp and the growing clearness of understanding of the truths which are wrapped up in Christ.
3. This Divine Teacher is the Holy Ghost. We might have expected, as indeed we find in another context, the “Spirit of Truth” as appropriate in connection with the office of teaching. But there is the profound lesson for us in this, that, side by side with the thought of illumination, there lies the thought of purity built upon consecration.
(1) There is no real knowledge of Christ and His truth without purity of heart. The man who has no ear can never understand music. The man who has no eye for beauty can never be brought to bow his spirit before some gem of art. The scholars in Christ’s school have to come there with clean hands and clean hearts.
(2) On the other hand, the truest motives for purity are found in that great word which is meant much rather to make us good than to make us wise. So, in this designation of the teaching Spirit as holy, there lie lessons for two classes. All fanatical professions of possessing Divine illumination which are not warranted by purity of life are lies or self-delusion. And, on the other hand, cold-blooded intellectualism will never force the locks of the palace of Divine truth, but they that come there must have clean hands and a pure heart.
4. The Holy Ghost is “sent by God” in Christ’s name.
(1) He acts as Christ’s Representative; just as Christ comes in the Father’s name and acts as His Representative.
(2) He has, for the basis of His mission, and the sphere in which He acts, the recorded facts of Christ’s life and death, these and none other.
5. This Messenger is a Person. “He.” They tell us that the doctrine of the Trinity is not in the New Testament. The word is not, but the thing is. In this verse we have the Father, the Son, and the Spirit brought into such close and indissoluble union as is only vindicated from the charge of blasphemy by the belief in the divinity of each. That Divine Spirit is more than an influence. “He shall teach,” and He can be grieved by evil and sin.
II. THE LESSON.
1. Christ is the lesson book.
2. The significance of this lesson book, the history of our Lord, cannot be unfolded all at once. The world and the Church received Christ, as it were, in the dark; and, like some man that has got a precious gift into his hands as the morning was dawning, each fresh moment that passed revealed as the light grew new beauties and new preciousness in the thing possessed. Christ’s words are inexhaustible, and the Spirit’s teaching is to unveil more and more the infinite significance that lies in the apparently least significant of them.
3. If this be our Lord’s meaning here, He plainly anticipated that after His departure there should be a development of Christian doctrine. The earlier disciples had only a very partial grasp of Christ’s nature. They knew next to nothing of the great doctrine of sacrifice; about His resurrection; that He was going back to heaven; of the spirituality or universality of His kingdom. None of these things were in their mind. They had all been in germ in His words. And after he was gone, there came over them a breath of the teaching Spirit, and the unintelligible flashed up into significance.
4. If Jesus Christ and the deep understanding of Him be the true lesson of the Divine Spirit, then real progress consists, not in getting beyond Christ, but in getting more fully into Him. I hope I believe In the continuous advance of Christian thought as joyfully as any man, but my notion of it--and Christ’s notion of it--is to get more and more into His heart, and to find within Him, and not away from Him, “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” All other teachers’ words become feeble by age, as their persons become wrapped in oblivion; but the progress of the Church consists in absorbing more and more of Christ, in understanding Him better, and becoming more and more moulded by His influence.
III. THE SCHOLARS.
1. The apostles, in all this conversation, stand as the representatives of the Church. For this very Evangelist refers to this promise, when he says, addressing all his Asiatic brethren, “Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and know all things.” And, again, “The unction which ye have of Him abideth with you, and ye need not that any man should teach you.” So, then, every believing soul has this Divine Spirit for His Teacher.
2. But let us not forget that the early teaching is the standard. As to the first disciples the office of the Divine Spirit was to bring before them the deep significancs of their Master’s life and words, so to us the office of the teaching Spirit is to bring to our minds the deep significance of the record of what they learned from Him. “If a man think himself to be spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.” Conclusion:
(1) Let this great promise fill us with shame. What slow scholars we are! How little we have learnt! How we have let passion, prejudice, the babble of men’s tongue’s, anybody and everybody take the office of teaching us God’s truth, instead of waiting before Him and letting His Spirit teach us! “When for the time we ought to be teachers, have need that one teach us which be the first principles of the oracles of Christ.”
(2) Let it fill us with desire, diligence, and calm hope. They tell us that Christianity is effete. Have we got all out of Jesus Christ that is in Him? Is the process that has been going on for all these centuries going to stop now? Ah! depend upon it the new problems of this generation will find their solution where the old problems of past generations have found theirs, and the old commandment of the old Christ will be the new commandment of the new Christ. Foolish men both on the Christian and on the anti-Christian side stand and point to the western sky and say, “The Sun is setting.” But that which sank in the west rises fresh and bright in the east for a new day. Jesus Christ is the Christ for all the ages and for every soul, and the world will only learn more and more of His inexhaustible fulness. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The teaching of the Holy Ghost
I. WHAT THE HOLY SPIRIT TEACHES US. He teaches God’s people
1. All that they do.
(1) There are some things which you and I can do naturally without any teaching. Who ever taught a child to cry? But you and I could not cry of ourselves till we had received “the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.”
(2) Children have to be taught to speak. We, too, are taught to speak. We have none of us learned, as yet, the whole vocabulary of Canaan. “No man can say that Jesus is the Christ but by the Holy Ghost?” Those first words which we ever used as Christians--“God be merciful to me a sinner,” were taught us by the Holy Spirit; and that song which we shall sing before the throne will be His last lesson.
(3) God’s people are taught to walk and act by Him. “It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” To stray is natural; to keep the path of right is spiritual.
(4) So with the higher efforts. The preaching of the gospel, when it be done aright, is only accomplished through the power of the Holy Spirit. So is it with sacred song. The wings with which I mount towards the skies in sacred harmony and joy are Thy wings, O Holy Dove! The fire with which my spirit flames at times of hallowed consecration is the flame of the Spirit!
2. All they know. We may learn very much from the Word of God morally and mentally, but spiritual things are only to be spiritually discerned.
(1) He reproves us of sin. No man knows the exceeding sinfulness of sin, but by the Holy Ghost.
(2) Next the Spirit teaches us the total ruin, depravity, and helplessness of self.
(3) The character of God. God’s goodness and omnipotence are clearly manifested in the works of creation; but where do I read of His grace, mercy, or justice? These are only revealed to us in this precious Book, and so that we cannot know them until the Spirit opens our eyes to perceive them.
(4) Jesus Christ. It is the Holy Ghost who manifests the Saviour to us in the glory of His person; the love of His heart, the power of His arm, the preciousness of His blood, and the prevalence of His plea.
(5) Our adoption. Indeed, all the privileges of the new covenant, beginning from regeneration, unto the abundant entrance into the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is the teaching of the Holy Spirit, and especially that last point, for “eye hath not seen,” etc.
II. THE METHODS BY WHICH THE HOLY SPIRIT TEACHES.
1. He excites interest in the mind. He shows them that these things have a personal bearing upon their soul’s present and eternal welfare.
2. He gives to the man a teachable spirit. There be men who will not learn. Teach them by little and little, and they say--“Do you think I am a child?” Tell them a great deal at once, and they say--“You have not, the power to make me comprehend!” The Holy Spirit makes a man willing to learn in any shape.
3. He sets truth in a clear light. How hard it is sometimes to state a fact which you perfectly understand yourself, in such a way that another man may see it. It is like the telescope; there are many persons who, when they walk into an observatory and put their eye to the glass, expecting to see the rings of Saturn, have said, “I can see nothing at all; a piece of glass, and a grain or two of dust is all I can see!” “But,” says the astronomer, “I can see Saturn in all his glory.” Why cannot you? Because the focus does not suit the stranger’s eye. By a little skill the focus can be altered so that the observer may be able to see what he could not see before. Now the Holy Spirit always gives the right focus to every truth. He sheds a light so strong and forcible upon the Word, that the spirit says, “Now I see it and understand it.”
4. He enlightens the understanding. ‘Tie marvellous, too, how the Holy Ghost does teach men who seem as if they never could learn. I know some brethren whose opinion I would not take in anything worldly on any account. But those men have a deeper, truer, and more experimental knowledge of the Word of God than many who preach it, because the Holy Spirit never tried to teach them grammar, and never meant to teach them business, but He has taught them the Word of God, and they understand it. But I have perceived, also, that when the Spirit has enlarged the understanding to receive Bible truth, that understanding becomes more capable of receiving other truth.
5. He refreshes the memory. “He shall bring all things to your remembrance.”
6. He makes us feel its effect. You may try to teach a child the meaning of the term “sweetness;” but words will not avail, give him some honey and he will never forget it. So the Holy Spirit does not only tell us of Christ’s love; He sheds it abroad in the heart.
III. THE CHARACTERISTICS AND NATURE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT’S TEACHING. The Holy Ghost teaches
1. Sovereignly. He teaches whom He wills, when He wills, as He wills.
2. Effectually. He never failed to make us learn yet.
3. Infallibly. We teach you errors through want of caution, over zeal, and the weakness of our own mind.
4. Continually. Whom once He teaches, He never leaves till He has completed their education. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The Teacher of the Church
I. OUR NEED OF SUCH A TEACHER. It is not enough to assume the necessity of the teaching of the Holy Ghost. All experience shows that an outward revelation of truth is inadequate. Our knowledge is always in advance of our inward conformity to it or our practical compliance with it. But even when men seem to receive and believe the truth, we must not always assume that they really understand it, or that they need no more light than it brings along with it in order to discern the fulness of its meaning. By nature man does not so easily apprehend spiritual truth.
II. THE NATURE OF HIS TEACHING.
1. As a Teacher, His work is in reality a continuation of the prophetical office of Christ. Jesus is the great Teacher; but the Holy Ghost is His representative on earth during His personal absence from His Church on earth. Thus we are reminded that the substance of His teaching was not a new revelation, distinct from that which had been already afforded, but an extension, completion, and application of that which had been given by Jesus Christ as His own words clearly show. He was not to speak of Himself, because He was not the Saviour in the exact sense of that word. The Holy Ghost was further to bring all things to the remembrance of the disciples of Christ which He had spoken to them. The words of the Son of God contained the germ of all Christian truth. But His work was not to be a mere helping of the memory.
2. And this work of teaching is carried on now in the Church of Christ by the Holy Ghost as truly as it was in the days of the apostles. The Holy Ghost no longer teaches us in the same manner in which He taught those who waited for His advent. No “cloven tongues as of fire” rest upon us who preach, or upon you who hear.
(1) He teaches us now by the Word which He inspired the apostles to write.
(2) So also, He teaches by the instrumentality of the Christian ministry Ephesians 4:8; Ephesians 4:11-12).
(3) But the Holy Ghost also teaches us by inward illumination. He speaks to our hearts by His own personal influence, and casts the rays of His enlightening grace into the darkest recesses of our spirits.
(4) And, ought we not to add, He gives us this teaching, whether with reference to things human or to things Divine, whether for our natural or our spiritual life, in answer to prayer. He is an infallible Teacher; and there is no other but He. He is an ever-present Teacher.
III. Finally, let me notice TWO ERRORS LYING IN QUITE OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS, WHICH ARE COMMITTED WITH REFERENCE TO THE TEACHING OF THE HOLY GHOST.
1. The first is the error of those who profess to seek and receive the teaching of the Holy Ghost while they reject the means.
2. An error no less common, among you to whom I speak perhaps even more common, is the fault of those who forget the agency of the Holy Ghost in the use of the means of grace. (W. R. Clark, M. A.)
And bring all things to your remembrance
The Holy Ghost a Remembrancer
I. THE HOLY GHOST TEACHES US, IN A GREAT MEASURE, NOT AT THE MOMENT, BUT IN AND BY THE MEMORY. None of the faculties of the human soul have been given it in vain. Every endowment has its office; and in working out salvation, man may find his whole intellectual and moral nature brought into play. It is so with fear, with hope, with love; so also with memory.
1. There is a very remarkable instance of this in the case of the apostles. Nothing is clearer than that the twelve disciples, at the time, did not and could not comprehend the nature or the teaching of their Lord. When the Holy Ghost came down, then, as He revived in their minds the memory of all that Christ had done and said, they began to see, more and more, who He was.
2. And thus also is it with ourselves. We interpret God’s dealings with us, not at the moment, but as we go over them again in memory. Is it not the case that in every man’s life occur critical periods, upon which the whole after existence turns, and which yet at the time he understands not? The becoming acquainted with a certain individual, the going for a few weeks to a certain place, have often fixed a man’s whole after destiny. You knew not at the time how important the step was; but when you look back, you are able to discern in it the hand of God. It is in memory, that is, that you can trace God’s dealings with your soul.
3. In the history of Churches and nations, the same rule will be noticed. How frequently in the progress of a kingdom has the history of centuries turned upon an infant’s death, upon a bow drawn at a venture. “If the king had acted otherwise,” says the annalist, “the history of the country from that hour would have had to be written differently.” Yet to contemporaries it seemed of no consequence which course was taken. What a difference again does the moment of acting make. The same political conduct at one period stops, at another hurries on a revolution; yet the acutest human intellect at the instant discerns not the crisis. By and by a child can often appreciate the error, and trace its results. Nor is it hard to assign a reason why God should thus leave us blind at the moment, and allow us to be enlightened afterwards. It is evident that if, whilst an event was happening, we could see palpably God’s hand in it, our freedom of will would be interfered with.
II. LET US PASS ON TO OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS.
1. It is a common observation, that argument does no good. All a man’s good opinion of himself is armed against you when you try to convince him that he is wrong. And perhaps if the truth is really on your side, there is yet another profounder cause why you are not heard. But you may also have noticed how in after years the same reasoning has made itself felt. When the excitement of the moment is over, the words of wisdom which we put from us will often return to the mind, and force conviction of themselves.
2. Take the case of a young man who laughs to scorn the remonstrances of a father, and pursues headlong his career of sin and self-pleasing. He has always an answer satisfactory to himself, if not to others. Life ebbs away, and those remonstrances seem to be wasted breath; yet not so. Again and again has it happened, that in distant lands and remote years, the reproof of a father and the sighs of a mother have echoed in the silent soul, and, like one risen from the dead, spoken with power. And what is this but the Holy Ghost acting upon the memory, to teach and convert the sinner.
3. And we may not pass over here the strange power which the dead possess in memory. Why should a person exercise an influence when departed out of this world which he did not exercise whilst alive? How many a wayward boy weeps bitter tears, as he recollects by a mother’s grave, her earnest longings for his well-doing, her prayers and warnings against sin, and vows amendment which is often the beginning of a saintly life. The meaning of this is the Holy Ghost using the power of memory to check man’s sin, and stir him to repentance.
4. And there is a darker hour yet, when the Holy Ghost turns the faculty of memory to a terrible yet blessed account, when He causes the dying man to see with a fearful distinctness all the lapses of his life past.
Conclusion:
1. Memory has no power to convert. It only preserves or recalls the past. But God the Holy Ghost lays hold of man’s memory and turns souls unto righteousness.
2. It is on this peculiar working of God the Holy Ghost as a Remembrancer, that may be founded one main argument for early Christian education. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
3. There remaineth yet a nobler accomplishment of the promise than any yet seen below. The work of the Holy Ghost as a regenerating sanctifying Spirit, will be past and over; but tits work as a Remembrancer shall never cease. For in the courts of the heavenly city there shall be a perpetual recurrence of the souls of the redeemed to all that Christ said unto them and did for them on earth. If the thunder of their song shall ever roll with a mightier volume at one time than another, it will be, methinks, as the Eternal Spirit brings to the remembrance of each saved soul, the wonders of the way in which the Lord God led it. (Bishop Woodford.)
The Divine Remembrancer
I. There is A GIFT OF FORGETFULNESS. What would this world be if it were not given us to forget--if the finger of time had no subduing, and mellowing, and obliterating touches. What a mercy is oblivion! There is not a more gracious revelation of Deity than this--“I will not remember thy sins.” It is among the best offices of the Holy Ghost that He can teach us to forget. There are many to whom the greatest lesson which they have to learn in the school of grace is to forget. You should not remember what God has forgotten. But here is our comfort--that if we will let the Spirit work in our hearts, He will secure at once the right memory and the right forgetfulness.
II. A GIFT OF MEMORY.
1. Who has not to lament over his religious forgetfulness? Sermons, conversations, which were so interesting and so useful; hymns once learnt; passages of Scriptures, impressions, thoughts and feelings, which seemed engraven upon the mind as with a pen of iron--how have they effaced themselves? What would it be if everything which once lived in our souls were living there now? And if it be really an attribute of the Holy Ghost to bring all these things back again, and not to allow anything to die which was indeed the voice of Christ, what a possession that Spirit must be! And yet, what else can these words mean?
2. There is no doubt that a strong memory is a natural endowment. And he that has it has a wonderful power. But it is a gift--he could not help it. But that with which we have now to deal is something different. It is the prerogative of the Spirit to help the memory on all sacred subjects. And if upon sacred subjects then on all. For if that faculty of the mind be strengthened and increased in one department, surely it cannot fail to be improved in every other, for all memory is one.
(1) Did you never know a verse of the Bible, which had been lying dormant in your mind for a long time, awake and come to you with a power and a vividness which quite surprised you? And it, strangely appropriate, just fits the circumstances in which you find yourself, and the state of your own mind. If it had been made for you it could not have suited you better. What is this but the Holy Ghost fulfilling His own mission.
(2) Or there is a passage in the Bible with which you are very familiar--but today it stands out in such a new light, and carries such a power, never felt before, that it strikes upon you like a new creation. And yet you have read it hundreds of times--no verse more common. Then why is it so salient now? It is memory illuminated by the Holy Ghost.
(3) Or, it may be no written word at all. Years and years back, Christ spoke to you by an impression. The rough contact of ten thousand things in this rude world has long since trodden it out. You are now as if that good impression had never been. Why is it there again today so distinct and loud? Did you call it up? What has raised it from those sleeping places? I know but one answer--He who quickens all buried things, He who raises dead Christs out of the graves of our dull hearts is bringing back the things of Christ to you.
(4) Or, it may not be even as much as this. Who has not felt the mysterious power of association? It may be the smallest possible thing that evokes it--a breath of wind, a colour, the scent of a flower, the accent of a note.But it will make you go through Chapter s of existence. And what if all these recovered links of being are the waftings of the Spirit’s wing, verifying the promise of Jesus. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)