John 15:26-27 (NIV)
“When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.”
Jesus knew going into the events of the next few days, His arrest, suffering, crucifixion, death, resurrection, and ascension, where this was all headed. He knew that the ultimate goal of all this was not just salvation for His followers after they died or at some point in the distant future.
Instead, He had come to not only live out the kingdom of God in His own life, but to make it a living reality in the lives of His followers, present and future. To do that, after He ascended to heaven He would be sending the Counselor, the Holy Spirit who lived in Him, to live in each and every one of His followers.
The Holy Spirit, when He came on the day of Pentecost, still a little more than six weeks in the future, was going to testify about Jesus, settling the disciples’ hearts and minds about who and what He truly was. He would remind them of everything Jesus had taught them during their three years together (John 14:26) and help them to understand those things. And He was going to equip and empower the disciples to be witnesses themselves, so that they could testify about Jesus and the kingdom that He had brought into being.
The words witness and testify are important in this concept. A witness is one who has experienced something, and their testimony is their relating what they have experienced. Someone who tries to testify about something that he or she has not experienced personally, or about something that someone else has experienced, is not a witness. Instead, they are guilty of presenting hearsay evidence, which is not admissible in court, and which is rightly classified as mere gossip outside of strictly legal circles.
These eleven remaining disicples had lived life with Jesus for more than three years, and so could authoritatively testify about all that Jesus had said and done during that time. And with the power of the Holy Spirit boosting their memory and putting superhuman power behind their every word, their testimony was going to be a powerful force in expanding the kingdom of God.
Father, thank You for Your Holy Spirit, present and active in our lives even today. Lord, sometimes we are tempted to share our theology rather than our testimony, to share a “canned” presentation of Scriptures instead of our own experience with You. And we wonder why we are so much less effective than we want to be, why there seems to be no power in our “testimonies.” Help us to instead share our own story of transformation, a story that You can empower to penetrate even the hardest of hearts, so that we can have an abundant harvest every day. Amen.
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