John 14:15-21 (NIV)
“If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever–the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”
Jesus had previously promised the Holy Spirit to those who would believe in Him (for example, in John 7:37-39). But in these last few hours with His followers, He felt the need to be much more specific.
First of all, the Spirit would be sent to those who demonstrated their love for Jesus through obedience to all He commanded (verse 15 and 21, and the background for Matthew 28:20). No one who rejected or rebelled against Jesus’ commands can be considered someone who loves Him, and none of them should expect to receive this “Counselor.”
Second, the Spirit is identified as “another Counselor.” The Greek word indicates one who is called alongside someone. In legal speech, it indicated an attorney who would stand alongside the accused to support them in court. But it could also mean someone called alongside of another to comfort, guide, and direct their path. During His earthly ministry, Jesus had fulfilled that role for His disciples. But now that He had told them that He was going away (John 13:33), He was promising that the Father would send another Counselor who would come alongside them to provide comfort, guidance, and direction, just as Jesus had done during the previous three years.
But there would be a huge difference between Jesus’ presence with the disicples and that of the Spirit of truth that would be sent to them. The Spirit would not only be with them; He would actually be IN them every moment of every day.
And there is one more element of the Spirit’s presence that the disciples needed to know, although they wouldn’t understand it until after Pentecost. When the Spirit took up residence in their hearts, He would mediate to them the very presence of Jesus Himself. This is the basis of Jesus’ startling statements that He Himself would come to them (verse 18), and that he would be “in” them, in the same way that He was in the Father (verse 20).
Father, we can sort of understand how this works through our theology of the Trinity: where one is all three are present and active. But I imagine that to the disicples this was all terribly confusing. But soon they would experience the reality of the Holy Spirit living in their hearts and mediating Your presence to them, even if they didn’t have the vocabulary to completely describe it. Thank You, Lord, that we get to experience the same Counselor, the same Spirit of truth, the same spiritual intimacy with You even today. Amen.
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