When someone mentions the Holy Spirit, what comes to mind?
For some of us, the Holy Spirit feels mysterious, almost abstract. We believe in him, and yet we don’t always know how to think about him. Others grew up where the Spirit was talked about constantly, usually tied to an emotional experience. And others rarely heard about him at all. It was the Father, the Son, and then… that’s it.
And yet in John 14, on the night before the cross, Jesus spends a lot of his last words with his disciples talking about the Spirit. He wanted them to know who was coming. He wants you and I to know too.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:15-18, ESV)
Here are three things the Spirit does, right there in the text.
1. The Spirit empowers our love and obedience
There in verse 15, Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” This isn’t Jesus doubting their love. It’s a statement of result. Love comes first, and obedience flows out of it.
Hear me on this: obedience is not what causes God’s love for us. Our obedience is because God loves us and we love him. We don’t earn God’s love by obeying. And the Spirit enables what Jesus commands.
That word Helper can also be translated Advocate. Think of an attorney who speaks on your behalf, someone who comes alongside you in your trouble. That’s what the Spirit does for followers of Jesus. He comes alongside us, guides us, and gives us the wisdom and encouragement we need.
And it’s quite frankly a miracle that God would live in sinners like you and me. Paul says it this way: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” (1 Cor 6:19, ESV). We can worship God anywhere. At work, at school, at home, anywhere, right?
2. You are not orphans
“I will not leave you as orphans.” When I read that word, I thought about my own story. My mom and dad got divorced, and I didn’t meet my dad until I was 21. And yet I had my mom. I had my grandparents. I had people around me, so I never felt like an orphan.
An orphan has no one to lean on, no one to help, no one to be there when you need something. In Jewish culture, when a rabbi died, his disciples were said to be orphans. They lost everything they knew. And Jesus is saying, I’m not going to leave you in that state.
Then verse 20: “In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” Follow that little word in. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit, all active in the life of the believer.
This changes how I see myself. I’m a husband, and that can be taken away from me. I’m a father, and that can be taken away from me. I’m a pastor, and that can be taken away from me. I love every one of those things, and I hope none of them are ever taken. And yet none of them are my primary identity. I am a son of God, adopted into the household of faith, and that can never be taken from me. Out of that flows everything I am.
If you’re in Christ, the same is true of you. You are a son or a daughter of God. Out of that should flow everything you do, everything you are, and everything you say.
One more thing here. Notice it’s not believing something about Jesus. The demons probably have better theology than any of us, and yet they don’t believe in Jesus. We believe into Jesus, and so we are in Jesus. And if the Spirit is in me and in you, we are connected more deeply than any other way you and I could be connected. That means we can’t hate other followers of Jesus. We’ll disagree. We may not get along perfectly. But hatred for a brother or sister in Christ can’t exist where God dwells.
3. The Spirit teaches and reminds us of Christ’s truth
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” (John 14:26, ESV)
It’s probably not news to anyone, but our memories are not great. You learn someone’s name, and a minute later you’re thinking, oh no, what was it again? The disciples didn’t have perfect memories either, and yet the Spirit would bring back to them everything Jesus had said.
So here’s my confession. Often I read something in the Bible, I don’t understand it, and my first instinct is to go to a Google search, to my Bible software, or to someone I know and ask, “What does this mean?” Rarely is it prayer. Rarely do I say, “God, I don’t understand this verse. You wrote it. You’re the author. Like, can we get some insight here?”
The answer may still come through a person, a book, or a search. Those are good tools. And yet if I’m not praying, I’m going in my own power to find the answer. Let’s be people who read the book, pray over the book, and go to God first.
Because we need this book. You can’t remember most of the meals you’ve eaten, maybe except that medium rare ribeye or the night you ate 12 breadsticks and thought, what did I just do? And yet if you hadn’t eaten those meals, you’d be malnourished. Sermons are like that. You won’t remember most of them. They still fed your soul for that week.
Peace that the world can’t give
Jesus didn’t have much to leave his disciples. And yet he left them something no one else could:
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27, ESV)
We can have all the money in the world, and that doesn’t give us peace. We can get the next thing on our wish list, and that doesn’t give us peace. This is a peace that lasts from the mountains to the valleys.
And here is why it can last. Jesus is not just our example of obedience. He is our answer. He obeyed the Father all the way to death, absorbing the wrath that destroys our peace, and he rose again so that we could live. “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19, ESV).
The Father sent him. The Son secured him. And now the Spirit lives in us.
So in your routines, at work, at home, at school, in your neighborhood, you are not left alone. You have a Helper, an Advocate, a Comforter.
Here’s one next step for this week: the next time you open your Bible and hit a verse you don’t understand, pray before you search. Ask the Author. What might change if you and I went to him first?
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Practical Theology for every day life
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