It Is Better That Another Comes

Jesus says, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I'm going to leave you. The reason for that, of course, is that Jesus is going to leave them and then He is going to send the Holy Spirit. But Jesus is faced with a problem as He teaches them. They cannot possibly see the coming of the Holy Spirit as making up for the loss of the presence of the Lord Jesus. Do you believe that? That it's better for Jesus to have left and in His place sent the Holy Spirit?

How could that be possible? That's what Sinclair Ferguson will consider today on this Tuesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. If time travel were possible, wouldn't you be tempted to go back to witness Jesus' earthly miracles, feeding the 5,000, raising Lazarus, or to hear the Sermon on the Mount in person? Despite thinking that it would be better, Jesus tells us that it is to our advantage that He has left us and that the Holy Spirit has come. As Sinclair Ferguson continues his time in Jesus' farewell discourse, he'll explore the three reasons why it is better.

Here's Dr. Ferguson. One of the most famous books that came out of the Reformation was not actually written by one of the Reformers. It was the table talk of Martin Luther. Luther and his wife essentially took in students. They sat around the meal table together and there was wonderful opportunity for the disciples of Luther to ask him questions, to hear the Master's answers, and then they were, as my granddaughter would say, sneaky enough to find ways of writing down what Luther had said on those occasions.

There's something about that kind of atmosphere that we find here in John 13 through 17. Jesus and His disciples, and one of His disciples, the disciple whom Jesus loved, as He describes Himself. Not because Jesus loved Him more than the other disciples, but because He discovered what it means to know that Jesus loved Him. He wrote down Jesus' table talk, and part of that table talk in chapter 14 are these famous words of Jesus, that when we know Him as our Savior and as our resource and as the one who leads us into the presence of the Heavenly Father, there can be a poise and a stability and calm in the life of the Christian that is impossible for those who are not believers, who have no real lasting security ever to know. And Jesus has been responding with His table talk to the questions that two of His disciples have asked Him. But there is something now that Jesus has further to explain to the disciples, and that is that it is actually to their advantage that He is going to leave them.

He says that to them quite plainly later on in chapter 16 and verse 7, He says, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I'm going to leave you. The reason for that, of course, is that Jesus is going to leave them, and then He is going to send the Holy Spirit to them in His place to continue His ministry in their lives. But Jesus is faced with a problem as He teaches them, a very understandable problem. They cannot possibly see the coming of the Holy Spirit as making up for the loss of the presence of the Lord Jesus. In a sense, that's not only a problem for these disciples, in some ways it's been a problem for Christian disciples ever since.

I have sometimes put the problem like this. When we speak on occasions like this as ministers of the gospel, expounding the Scriptures, we believe that we are able to speak in the power of and with the help of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit continues the ministry of Jesus. But my guess is if I were to ask you, would you rather be here studying John's gospel with Sinclair Ferguson, or would you rather just have Jesus in the room talking to you? Does Ferguson plus the Holy Spirit, is there any way that can compensate for having Jesus in the room, for being able to know for the rest of your life what color His eyes actually were, how His hair was cut? Did He have a beard or did He not have a beard? What kind of gesticulations did He use?

What facial mannerisms were expressed in His speaking? And my guess is for most of us that's a no-brainer. We would do anything to have Jesus in the room with us. And so, we can put ourselves in the place these disciples are in, and we can understand and empathize with them that to have Jesus would be far, far, far greater an advantage than to have the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. But what Jesus is now going to do is to help them to understand why it is that it really is to their advantage that He goes from them and that the Spirit comes to them. And He uses an expression here in John chapter 14 that I think is very helpful for us. He says in verse 16, when I go, 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. Now, what is it that Jesus is saying here? The words that John uses to speak about the Spirit here are the words allos parakletos. Parakletos is the word paraklet that some of our hymns use to describe the Holy Spirit based on this text. And when Jesus says He is allos parakletos, He seems to be suggesting that the Holy Spirit is another paraclete of the same kind and quality as the Lord Jesus Himself. You know, in English, as in other languages, there is this paradox about the way we use the word another.

When we say, I want another, does that mean I want a different one, or does that mean I want another one of the same kind? The Greek language has two different terms that by and large, not consistently, but by and large are used to designate another of the same kind and another of a different kind. And it's clear that what Jesus is saying here is, I'm going to send you a Helper of the same kind as myself, and He will dwell in you, and He will be with you forever.

That's why my leaving and His coming is going to be to your enormous advantage. I want us to notice in this study how Jesus works this out in His teaching of His disciples. And He does this in three ways. First of all, Jesus Himself has been their teacher, and He says when the Holy Spirit comes, the Holy Spirit will come as their teacher. Look at what He says, for example, in verses 23 and 24. Jesus is teaching them.

He answers questions. In this instance, the question of Judas Iscariot. In verse 24, He speaks about people keeping His words, and He is clearly their teacher indeed.

That's the term that was so often used for Him, teacher. But He's saying when the Holy Spirit comes, He is going to teach them. Look at verse 25. These things I've spoken to you while I'm still with you, but 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. Now, how does the Holy Spirit become our teacher?

Well, Jesus says He becomes our teacher because He reveals to us the deep things of God. He says when the day comes when the Holy Spirit is sent to you, on that day, He says, you will know that I am in My Father and you are in Me and I am in you. Chapter 14 and verse 20, on that day, He's speaking about the day when the Holy Spirit comes, on that day, you will know I am in My Father, you are in Me, and I am in you.

Now, what's He saying here? He's saying when the Holy Spirit comes, you will have a better understanding of My relationship to My Father. You will have insight into that relationship that you have never had during the course of My ministry.

You will see something of the intimacy of My fellowship with the Father. You'll understand, as John understood, what he says in the very first verse of the Gospel, how the Word was with God and how He was God and how the Father loved His Son and how the Son loves His Father and all the different things that John remembers Jesus had taught them, but they didn't understand that they now understand because the Holy Spirit comes and illumines their understanding of who God is. It's almost as though Jesus is saying, remember how Paul puts it this way. He says, the Spirit searches the deep things of God and He makes those deep things known to God's people. So, this is to their advantage that Jesus goes and the Spirit comes as their teacher.

And then there's also another aspect to this. Jesus says, in that day, you will know that I dwell in you and you dwell in Me. And you see what He's saying.

He is saying throughout My ministry, I stand outside of you. You have seen Me. You can touch Me. You hear Me.

You watch Me. But you and I are at a distance from one another. But when the Holy Spirit comes, the Holy Spirit will actually come to indwell you. He will live in your heart and in your life and empower you and change you from within. And in a sense, Jesus is saying, so long as I am with you, I can't dwell in you.

But when I go and send the other counselor, He will dwell in you and He will be with you forever. It's an amazing thing, isn't it, that Jesus is teaching them that they fear that when Jesus goes, they won't know Him so well. But actually He is saying, it's only when I go that you will begin to know Me really well because through My Spirit, I'll not only be with you, I will actually come to live and dwell within you. Now, that's one of the great mysteries of the gospel, isn't it? But it lies at the very heart of being a Christian.

Remember how Paul puts it in Romans 8 and 9. If anyone doesn't have the Spirit of Christ, he doesn't belong to Christ. But if you do have the Spirit of Christ, it is like Christ Himself dwelling in you. Remember how Paul puts it to the Colossians, Christ dwells in you as the hope of glory. And so Jesus says, you know this Spirit because He's been with you.

Where has He been with them? Well, He's been with them in Jesus. But now He is going to be in you and you will discover when I go and send the Spirit to you that this is wonderfully to your advantage. So Jesus has been their teacher and the Spirit will come to dwell within them, to teach them more about the Lord. Second, Jesus has been their counselor. And when the Spirit comes, He will also be their counselor. Now, again, you see Jesus counsel, especially in the way He responds to the various questions He's asked. In chapter 14, verse 5, Thomas' question.

In chapter 14, verse 8, Philip's question. And then, of course, later on when he responds to the question of Judas, not Judas Iscariot, in chapter 14 and verse 22, Jesus has patiently counseled them from misunderstanding to understanding. And He has been their counselor. But He says when the Spirit comes, He is going to be your counselor as well. But He's going to be your counselor in a very special sense. The word that's used here for counselor, the paraclete, the counselor, is a word that comes from the legal world.

Counsel in the sense of counsel at law, somebody who comes alongside you to speak on your behalf. And Jesus is saying when the Spirit comes, that's what He's going to do. He's going to come to be your counselor. Now, how does that work out in Jesus' teaching? One of the ways He works out in Jesus' teaching is that when the Spirit comes, He comes as the prosecuting counsel. He comes, as Jesus will later say, to convict us of sin and righteousness and judgment, to point the finger at us, to make us aware of why we need a Savior, because we are sinners. And we have experienced this, haven't we? We were living our lives. We were doing the decent thing. Some of us were trying to earn our way to heaven. And then the Spirit came upon our lives, and we realized our spiritual bankruptcy and our spiritual inability. And we were, as we sometimes say, deeply convicted of our sinfulness and our need of a Savior. And this was the work of the Spirit prosecuting us in order to bring us to make a confession of guilty before the judgment seat of God, and to bring us to see Jesus as the one who had died for our sin. And then when He has done that, the Spirit comes into our lives, and He keeps pleading the cause of Jesus in our lives.

It's a wonderful ministry, isn't it? We want to honor Jesus. We want to love Jesus. We never want to let Jesus down.

Why that change of disposition? Because the Spirit has come, and He has exalted Jesus before us. He has said, look at how wonderful Jesus is. Trust Him. Live for Him. Don't let Him down. Follow Him. Serve Him all your life. And we've said, yes, I want to do that.

Empower me to do it. And the Holy Spirit has come, and He has been Jesus' counselor in our lives. Actually, there's one difference between this legal background to what Jesus is saying and the way in which we think about the law today. If you want legal counsel today, you go downtown to somebody who has a brass plaque and usually two or three names, and you may need to take out a modest or even large loan in order to provide for the services that you anticipate.

It's all very professional, and the standards are carefully set out, and the fees are usually carefully set out as well, and you'll be billed for them. That wasn't the world of the law in Jesus' time. The world of the law in Jesus' time was much more communal activity, and if you needed a paraclete, a counselor, you didn't go down to the local law office. You went to your best friend, the person who knew you most intimately, the person you trusted most, the person you'd shared most of your life with, and you said to him, will you come and be my counselor? I am in trouble, and I need somebody who will stand for me and speak for me.

And you invited the person who knew you best to stand up in court and say, it is impossible that he or she should have been guilty of this. I know them through and through. Nobody knows them as well as I know them. I've known them since they were tiny.

He never did this, and he never would do this. And they are your counselor because they are your closest friend. They are the person who has most intimate knowledge of you. Isn't that true of the Holy Spirit in relationship both to Jesus and to ourselves? He, after all, is the one who was there in the womb of the Virgin Mary. He is the one who was there at the baptism and temptation of Jesus. He was the one through whose power Jesus did his miracles. He was the one through whom Jesus offered himself up to the Father.

He was the one in whose power the Lord Jesus was raised from the dead, from the womb to the tomb, not to mention from all eternity and at every point between. We could say the Holy Spirit is Jesus' counselor because He has known Him best, and He has been with Him in all the most intimate moments of our lives. And that's why the Holy Spirit's ministry is so precious to us, because He is the one who knows Jesus best, and He is the one who knows us best. And He knows what it is about Jesus that we each most of all need. And like a bright light, He shines on this aspect of the Lord Jesus' character and ministry and person, or that aspect of Jesus' character and ministry and person, to show us that Jesus is exactly what we need every moment of our lives.

And that's a huge advantage. I'm going from you, says Jesus, but I'm going to send the Paraclete to you. But there's a third aspect of this that I personally love to think about a great deal. The Spirit will come as their teacher. The Spirit will come as their counselor. But also, says Jesus, the Spirit will come to be a homemaker in their lives. Jesus is going to heaven to make a home for us. He's going to come for us and take us to that home. And the Spirit is also going to be a homemaker, but He's going to work in the opposite direction. Says Jesus, when the Spirit comes, verse 18, I'll not leave you as orphans. You'll not be homeless.

And the reason you'll not be homeless, He describes in these overwhelming terms. He says in verse 23, for example, my Father will love you and we, and He's speaking about what will happen when the Spirit comes, we will come to you and we will make our home with you. To me, this is one of the most wonderful ways to think about the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the one the Lord Jesus sends into my life to make my life the kind of place that the Father and the Son will feel at home in. Now, it's a very human picture, isn't it? We are invited to some homes and we feel we're strangers. We feel an awkwardness. We feel we're not really welcome or we feel this is a pretty cold place to be in. I wish we could just get back to our own home. And then there are other homes that we go into and we feel welcome.

We can settle down. Since we love these people, we could hang around these people forever. They just make us feel part of the family. And Jesus is saying this is the Holy Spirit's ministry in the life of the believer to make your life the kind of place where the Father might say to the Son, I feel at home here, don't you? And the Son would say to the Father, Father, don't you feel at home here in this person's life?

And of course, it raises this very simple but really penetrating question for us. By the Holy Spirit, has my life become the kind of place where the Holy Spirit has made me a comfortable home for the Father and the Son? And it explains so much about the Christian life because there's so much needs to change in my life before the Father and the Son can be comfortable dwelling in me. And the Holy Spirit's ministry is to make those changes in our lives. And that's surely one of the wonders of His ministry.

I love how Dr. Ferguson just expressed this. The Holy Spirit is the one the Lord Jesus sends into my life to make my life the kind of place that the Father and the Son will feel at home in. Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and this is Renewing Your Mind, a listener-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Sinclair Ferguson is doing a deep dive on Jesus' farewell discourse in John's Gospel. The series is actually 12 messages and will unlock all 12 plus the study guide in the free Ligonier app when you make a year-end donation at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343. Receive words of encouragement as you study this portion of Scripture and prepare for the new year that is just around the corner. To thank you for your generosity, in addition to the series, we'll send you Dr. Ferguson's Advent devotional, Love Came Down at Christmas. My family has greatly benefited from these reflections on 1 Corinthians 13 from Dr. Ferguson, so if you've not read it, be sure to request it today at renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast show notes. And if you have read it, consider getting another copy to share with a friend or family member. Jesus said that He is the vine and we are the branches. That will be Sinclair Ferguson's topic tomorrow, here on Renewing Your Mind.