In this final discourse in the upper room, Jesus shared with His disciples much of the work of the Holy Spirit. Our deep appreciation and understanding of this would help us in our outworking as individual believers as well as the Church of God.
Jesus in the previous chapter has explained how He is the true fruit-bearing vine and how His disciples will face the world’s hatred and hostility as they persevere in Him. The disciples would be understandably disturbed, knowing that Jesus is about to leave. Jesus now returns to the issue of His departure.
Jesus expressed concerns that the disciples were more self-absorbed in their own loss that they have not asked more thoughtful questions about His going and what it will mean to them. Jesus went on to reiterate that His departure is for their own good and this led on to disclosure of the coming of the Holy Spirit and His work and ministry.
Jesus then revealed the work of the Holy Spirit in the world and His ministry to His disciples. When the Spirit comes, He will convict the world about sin, righteousness and judgement. With regard to sin, it is the sin of unbelief; a refusal to accept the merits of a divine Redeemer (Jesus) and a rejection of the proposals of reconciliation with God and the remedy offered by Him. He shall convince the world of righteousness, for by His departure, that is, by His death and sufferings, a valid righteousness has been procured for all true believers, an imputed righteousness. The third object of which the world is convinced by the Spirit is judgement. The work of the Son, satisfying every claim of law and justice, terminated Satan’s right and reversed his authority acquired by conquest. The prince of the world has been judged and has no more right to retain the world. Believers are thus convinced that they are no more subjects of the tempter and no more bound to obey him. Men in this world can be convinced by the Spirit of this reality if they believe in the Lord Jesus.
The Spirit will lead the disciples into “all truth” and so bring glory to Jesus. In essence, the Holy Spirit will make Jesus known through convincing the world and non-believers of sin, righteousness and judgement and in leading the apostles into all truth; we the believers are to persevere in that truth in a hostile world and thereby bear fruits in the vine. The ministry of the Spirit will ensure true lasting joy and peace for the genuine believers in the face of deep hostility and opposition from the world and the evil one. This experience is always rooted in what the cross has achieved through the departure and sufferings of Jesus and grounded in a new relationship with the Father. With the advent of the Holy Spirit, there will be direct access to the Father in prayer, and direct access to the truth about the Father. The Spirit will show us Christ and glorify Him; Christ reveals the Father to us, for those who have seen Him have seen the Father, and glorifies the Father. We the believers have Christ living in us through the Spirit and also have access to the Father through Christ.
When Jesus shared that the disciples’ grief will soon turn to joy; there are those who point to the resurrection of Jesus which will turn their sadness to joy when they see Him. Others indicate that this may refer to the second coming of Christ; there are convincing suggestions to conclude that it might refer to the coming of the comforter, the Holy Spirit when the disciples will have the joy of ‘seeing’ Jesus and having Him always in the Spirit even though He may be absent as the man Jesus.
It may be helpful to ponder the implications of the Holy Spirit’s ministry in the life of the believer and the Church at this juncture. The Spirit’s work was specially intended to form a MYSTIC UNION with Christ for the application of redemption, and for the INHABITATION of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:2). The inmost soul of the redeemed is reserved for Christ’s inhabitation by the Spirit, who thus becomes the life of their life, the soul of their soul, in a sense to which any other known union makes no comparison. ‘He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit’ (1 Cor. 6:17) and the result is so powerful that Christ’s Spirit becomes theirs, His holiness their holiness, His joy their joy. By His Spirit our whole person is united to is whole Person. Realise the wonderful implications: when we are united to the Lord Jesus by one Spirit, we obtain a true and actual participation in all that He achieved by His obedience unto death. If Christ satisfied divine justice, we who are united with Him by faith have also satisfied it. When Christ overcame, we overcame; when Christ received perfect acceptance as the Surety, we received the same acceptance in and with Him. Also, as Christ obtained a resurrection life, a life of holiness and joy at God’s right hand for ever, we too, who are found in Him have an incipient life of the same nature, a life hid with Christ in God (Col. 3:3).
What about being led by the Spirit? When God promises (Ezek. 36:27): ‘I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you shall keep my judgements, and do them’, we are taught that the Spirit so far anticipates the first tendency or inclination of man as to make him act according to the divine precepts. Take note: God’s free grace, and not man’s free will, originates the actions and makes all effectual. In like manner, the apostle Paul describes the occurrence of man’s activity and God’s effectual operation, when He gives absolute priority to the divine power (Phil. 2:13). ‘It is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure’. The language proves beyond all doubt that before man either wills or acts in the ways of God, there is in the recesses of the heart a divine operation anticipating our will, and giving effect to our action. The Holy Spirit does not move the hearts of regenerate men by mere power; He moves them by those spiritual powers or graces with which they are now provided. The Spirit who is in Christ without measure is in believers by measure as a Spirit of life; not moving the mind as a stone, or as a wheel, by mere power, but according to the new nature which has been created and formed in it . To lose sight of this is to ignore the fact that Christ is the source of the Spirit of life , and the Christian has to add to his faith virtue, and in virtue knowledge, and all the various excellences which are perfect in Christ Jesus (2 Peter 1;5). Hence, they who are renewed after the Lord’s image have, according to their measure, a certain spiritual power, a certain law of their mind, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, which enables them to overcome and triumph in their Lord (Rom. 8:2).