The Spirit and Believers

By S. Lewis Johnson, Jr. [1]

His Teaching Ministry

An Exposition of John 16:12–15

Introduction

A very common and down-to-earth question among spiritually interested people finds its answer here. It is the question, “How may I understand the Bible?” And the answer that Jesus gives is a simple one, “By my teaching ministry, which I shall provide through the Holy Spirit. He shall take of the things that belong to me, the central figure of the Word of God, and show them to you” (cf. John 16:12–15).

Many years ago in the early days of Dallas Theological Seminary Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer used to take the four chapels of the first week of the opening Fall semester. He spoke to the entire student body each year, and his subject was always the same. Essentially, to speak technically, the subject of the four sessions was biblical epistemology, or how does one understand the Bible. In the early days the faculty sat on a platform behind the pulpit, so that the students were able to see all of the faculty during the chapel sessions. In those days there were about a dozen faculty members. Dr. Chafer, who also led the singing in the opening part of the chapel hours, then would address the student body from the pulpit, in those days simply a small lectern. His opening statement every year was the same. With the faculty of about a dozen men in full view of the students Dr. Chafer would begin by making this startling statement, “At Dallas Theological Seminary we have a faculty of one.” From that abrupt beginning he would unfold for us throughout the week the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit and the necessary conditions for understanding and receiving it. It was always one of the highlights of the year, although many of us heard the messages many, many times. John sixteen always was an important part of the biblical text.

This teaching ministry of our Lord through the Spirit is part of our Lord’s unfinished work. Students of the Scriptures are well acquainted with the fact that our Lord’s work is both finished and unfinished. The basis of our redemption has been laid in the blood that was shed on Calvary’s cross. Once in the end of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself (cf. Heb. 9:26). This once and for all offering and bearing of our sins, however, is followed by His appearance in the presence of God for us (cf. Heb. 9:24). There He continues working as the great High Priest after the order of Melchizedek to secure the full accomplishment of all that He purchased by His sacrifice (cf. Heb. 9:24, 28). This work at the right hand of God is part of His unfinished work, and His ministry of instruction of believers through the Holy Spirit is also an aspect of His unfinished work. Just as God is the Creator and the Sustainer of His creation (cf. Col. 1:16–17), so is God the Son the Creator and Sustainer and Perfecter of the new creation (cf. Col. 1:16–18; Rom. 8:34).

In the context of the Upper Room Discourse our Lord has just warned the Eleven that they may expect the hatred of the world when He has departed for the Father. He has also said, however, that it is expedient for them that He go to the Father, for otherwise the Holy Spirit could not and would not come to indwell them. And this is necessary for them to carry out their ministry of testimony to Him which He has also just said that they will perform (cf. 15:26–27). The coming of the Spirit to them will enable them to testify to the world concerning Christ, and through the Spirit’s testimony by them the world will be convicted of sin, righteousness, and judgment. It is clear, then, that the Spirit must instruct the disciples in the things that concern Christ, in order that they may be useful and fruitful in convincing a hostile world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. Christ must be glorified in them first before He shall be glorified in others in the age to come following Pentecost (cf. Acts 4:13). It is of the nature of the Spirit’s pedagogical work that Jesus now speaks in His continuing discourse with the Eleven.

The Disciples’ Limitation

I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now (16:12).

Jesus continues His discourse by moving now from the Spirit’s work in the world to His work in believers (cf. 15:3).

The Lord Has More to Teach the Disciples

The “many things” to which Jesus refers, the things that He would like to be able to say to the Eleven, are something of a pre-authentication of the remainder of the New Testament. The rest of the New Testament provides what He wished to tell them. The Comforter was to come and remind them of the things that Jesus had said to them in His days in the flesh (cf. 14:26). But the fact that there would be more to come is our Lord’s desire and point. One notices, too, that our Lord wishes to give them propositional revelation, not naked, unexplained events. The truth is what He wishes to tutor them in. The Comforter will “speak” and “tell” them the things that concern Christ. [2]

There is an interesting point here that should not be overlooked. It was popular some decades ago to cry, “We must go back to Jesus for our theology.” Implicit in this was the view that the later authors of the New Testament, especially the Apostle Paul, were arch-corrupters of the simple ethical instruction of Jesus. What was simple practical ethical moralism was turned by Paul into the mystifications of the professional theologian. The aim of this was to discount and destroy Paul’s emphasis on atonement by the cross alone and justification by faith apart from the works of the Law. It was an old tactic, made common by even such a person as Thomas Jefferson in the opening years of the republic. It was all wrong, of course, for the essence of Paul’s teaching is found in the gospels, although no one would say that all of it is found there. Why should it be? In the New Testament there is progress in the divine revelation just as in the Old Testament.

But, most of all, this claim flies in the face of the teaching of our Lord. If we should say that we shall take only His words as the source of religious doctrine, then we are refusing to follow Him. It is He who said plainly that the doctrine taught to this point in His ministry, the point of His soon death, is incomplete. It is He who urged His disciples to submit to the further instruction that He would give in the days of His resurrection and ascension through the Holy Spirit. The later Teacher will bring Christ’s men fuller knowledge of the truth.

William Temple put it eloquently, “It is no true loyalty to the mind of the Lord which confines attention to what He did and said on earth.” And, “We are most loyal to the mind of Christ when we are most receptive of all that the Apostles, under the guidance of the Spirit, learnt and taught, and of all that the same Spirit would teach us now.” [3]

The Spiritual Incapacity of the Disciples

The claim of our Lord, “but ye cannot bear them now,” refers to the spiritual incapacity of the disciples, not to their mental or moral unfitness. The Spirit is not presently indwelling them to illumine their minds (cf. 7:39; 14:17), and the teaching of the Lord is at this point designedly incomplete. The Greek word used here and rendered “bear” in the Authorized Version (βαστάζειν, bastazein) is one that refers in this context to the absence of power to carry out that which He wanted to teach them. It is this power which He would later give them through the Spirit (cf. Acts 15:10).

The Declaration of Instruction

Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come (16:13).

The Spirit of Truth

The reference, of course, is to the Spirit’s guidance through Christ of the Eleven in the sphere of the truth of the divine revelation.

It is striking that the pronoun “he,” referring to the Holy Spirit, is in the masculine gender (ἐκεῖνος, ekeinos). This is particularly so, since the noun in apposition with the pronoun, “the Spirit,” is in the neuter gender, and one might have expected that the pronoun would also be neuter. That would be the normal usage. The use of the masculine supports the doctrine of the personality of the Holy Spirit, a doctrine established by many types of evidence in the New Testament teaching.

The Spirit is called “the Spirit of truth,” and the genitival phrase, “of truth,” is not unimportant. A number of years ago at a national convention of one of the largest churches in the United States a well-known professed evangelical speaker uttered some astoundingly naive and astonishingly erroneous statements. Among them were these, “I don’t know a preacher that does not believe that every single word of the Bible is the word of God.” [4] He seems totally oblivious to the widely publicized debate over the inerrancy of the Bible among professing scholars and preachers of the Bible. That this minister could be so unaware of the debate is appalling, and yet he was the minister of one of the largest churches of one of our large cities.

Another of his utterances was just as startling. He contended that love for one another must come before orthodoxy of belief. Such a viewpoint is ultimately destructive of Christianity itself and is opposed by the Word of God that he contends he believes. We cannot question the fact that the Bible inculcates biblical love. It is important, and the orthodox must contend for it and practice it. But love without truth is not love in the biblical sense, for it does not have the complete well-being of its object as a first consideration, if it is not love in the truth. In fact, the Bible makes both truth and love primary principles and expressly commands love in the truth (cf. 2 John 1–11; 3 John 1–4). On the other hand, the New Testament also teaches that our love is to abound yet more and more, but it is to abound in “knowledge and in all judgment” (cf. Phil. 1:9). Love, to be genuine biblical love, must always be bounded by the knowledge of the truth that is found in the Bible. Other forms of human “love” usually turn out to be hardly more than maudlin sentimentalism, the “lu-u-uve” sounded by the proclaimers of pop and rock.

Guidance in the Truth

Our Lord says that the Spirit “will guide you into all truth.” That is a very suggestive description of the work of the Spirit in illumination of the disciples. The verb rendered here by “guide” (ὁδηγήσει, hodēgēsei) is a word that is constructed of two words that mean literally to guide in the way, and it is found in some interesting New Testament places (cf. Matt. 15:14; Luke 6:39; Acts 8:31; Rev. 7:17 [cf. Isa. 49:10]). The Ethiopian Eunuch’s answer to Philip’s question, “Understandest thou what thou readest?,” illustrates its meaning. His answer was, “How can I, except some man should guide me?” (cf. Acts 8:30–31). The aid of the knowledgeable man in understanding the Word is implied. Now Jesus says that it is ultimately the office of the Spirit to illumine our spiritual minds, to guide us, in the truth. And what an encouraging thing it is to know that He, the Spirit of truth, is engaged in bringing His own into the possession of the truth.

The word guide suggests some important truths. In the first place, it suggests that the entrance into the understanding of the truth is not something sudden and final. It is ideally a gradual matter. Peter’s word is in harmony with this, “But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (cf. 2 Pet. 3:18).

In the second place, guide suggests that a response from us is needed. It is not bring, but guide and, while the divine initiative and enablement must always be made primary, human responsibility always exists.

And, finally, guide suggests that the guidance is never ended while the church is still on the earth in its present form. Many manuscripts have the Greek preposition εἰς (eis, AV, “into”) after the word “guide.” If that reading is preferred, then our Lord is saying, I believe, that the Holy Spirit will enable the disciples to penetrate all aspects of the truth. On the other hand, a number of manuscripts have the preposition ἐν (en), which may be rendered by the English word in, and the majority of modern textual critics feel this is what John wrote. If so, our Lord is saying that the Spirit will guide the disciples in the whole sphere of truth. Personally I prefer the latter, but the former makes excellent sense as well. [5] The promise is not that of ultimate omniscience, but it is the promise of a gradual and growing enlargement of spiritual knowledge. The picture is that of a man entering a large and broad land, which he has inherited, and then gradually exploring, possessing, and enjoying the land.

The corporate sense of this is not to be overlooked. Gossip points out:

Old John Duncan, used to resent the habit we have of talking about the earliest Christian writers outside the canon as the fathers, holding that theirs was a very rudimentary knowledge of Christianity — and indeed, as Robert Rainy says, “Elementariness is the signature of all the early literature.… What the apostles and some others of their generation taught is one thing; what the church proved able to receive is quite another” [Ancient Catholic Church, pp. 67, 66]. So that, in reality we are the fathers; we, born into the goodly birthright of the fruit of all the toil and thought and faith of those who went before us.… And that process is not over. [6]

The Unique Place of the Apostles

But one must not pass by these words without reflecting upon the fact that they were originally and pre-eminently addressed to the apostles. In a peculiar and unique sense it applies to them, and in this fact lies involved the authority of these men in the life of the church throughout this age. It is the apostles, with the addition of that last one, Paul, who have been given special authority in the communication of the truth. They were guided in the truth, and we have the task of receiving that into which they have been guided.

MacLaren tellingly notes,

The Acts of the Apostles is the best commentary on these words of my text. There you see how these men rose at once into a new region; how the truths about their Master which had been bewildering puzzles to them flashed into light; how the Cross, which had baffled and dispersed them, became at once the centre of union for themselves and for the world; how the obscure became lucid, and Christ’s death and resurrection stood forth to them as the great central facts of the world’s salvation. [7]

We may, however, still expect to receive further light from the Spirit in the form of illumination of the revelation He gave the authors of the New Testament. Revelation has been completed, but illumination continues throughout the age. As John Robinson, the pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers, said, “I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more truth yet to break forth out of His holy Word.” It is “out of” His Word and, thus, illumination, not further revelation, as charismatics have blunderingly contended.

The Authority of the Holy Spirit

The Lord now offers the reason that the Spirit shall guide in all the truth. The “for” introduces the explanation. He shall not speak on His own authority, but He shall speak of the things that He shall hear from Christ. The point of the phrase “of himself” is that His authority is not self-originated. The Authorized Version renders this preposition by “of,” but it has the force of separation, or in

this case source. [8] He is an infallible guide, since He teaches from Christ (cf. 5:30). This will be emphasized in the verses that follow.

There are two things that bear emphasis here. First of all, it is clear that truth comes not by man’s discovery, but by God’s disclosure, and this is true of believers also. And, second, it is obvious, then, that it is not by brilliant intellects, or degrees, or language skills, or aptitudes for spiritual matters that one advances in the knowledge of God. Increase in the understanding of the truth of God is ultimately dependent on submission to the Holy Spirit. We do not denigrate skills such as those mentioned, but in the final analysis the knowledge of God’s Word comes through submission to the Spirit’s teaching.

When a man follows the normal principles of interpretation under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, then the Bible becomes as different as if you looked at a pile of stones under common light or under ultra-violet light. Take a pile of stones into a dark room and turn a common electric light on them and they reveal nothing unusual. Shine ultra-violet rays on them and they become amazing objects of beauty. A host of new colors and shades replace the old drabness of the rocks, and they live in a new beauty. The light adds no new qualities to the stones but causes certain inner qualities of the stones to fluoresce. The ultra-violet light rays form the unseen part of the violet end of the spectral band of light and is a perfect illustration of both the position and action of the Holy Spirit in illuminating the pages of Scripture. The Bible is fluorescent to the illumination of the Holy Spirit. It contains truth that does not respond to the light of human intelligence, but the instant it is placed under the uncommon and unseen light of the Spirit, it fluoresces with a new and remarkable beauty. [9]

The Things to Come

And, finally, the Lord says that “he will shew you things to come.” It is possible, of course, to take this phrase to refer to that which is future from the standpoint of the time in the upper room, where the Lord is giving that discourse. In that case the words would refer to that which Leon Morris calls, “the whole Christian system, yet future when Jesus spoke.” [10] In other words, the Spirit will unfold the meaning of the cross and the resurrection in the future. This is that which has been done so well in the epistles of the New Testament.

On the other hand, “things to come” may be looked at from the time stand of the author. In that case the words refer to events still future from the end of the first century, or purely eschatological events. The prophetic sections of the epistles of the New Testament, and especially the Apocalypse, would be in view. It seems more natural to me to take the first option. If so, that would not exclude the eschatological events as legitimate concerns of the Spirit’s illuminating work.

The Explanation of the Instruction

Its Content (John 16:14).

He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.

The theme of this brief section might be stated in this way, “The work of Spirit is Christocentric,” and that clause is one that might be usefully branded on the tongues of charismatics. Jesus says that the work of the Spirit is to “glorify me.” Incidentally, think of a mere man saying that! The statement, “He shall glorify me” is one of the many statements that, although not apparently written to prove it, proclaim the deity of Jesus Christ. Could the Spirit really have as the goal of His teaching the glorification of a mere man?

But our Lord’s primary point is that the work of the Spirit is to glorifiy the person and work of the Son. Thus, any man, or movement, that glorifies self, the human organization, or even the Spirit, is false to Christ and to the Spirit. Evangelicalism is full of organizations that come perilously close to attempting to glorify themselves.

The principal glorification of the Son lies in the explication of the work of the cross (cf. 12:23–24; 13:31–32; 17:1, 4). There the Son is pre-eminently glorified.

To illustrate the work of the Spirit one might note the way in which Abraham’s unnamed servant, illustrating the Spirit’s work in the gathering of the church to her Lord, glorifies Isaac to Rebekah, completing the arrangement of her marriage to Isaac, the son of Abraham (cf. Gen. 24: 34–36).

It is also striking that Romans 8:1 begins with the statement, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,” and that Romans 8:38–39, the conclusion of the chapter, reads, “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” In other words, the chapter begins and ends with the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet this chapter is so full of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It is one of the major chapters on His ministry in the New Testament. Commentators often call Romans eight, “the chapter of the Holy Spirit”! He is best seen and known in His ministry of glorifying the Son!

Its Character (John 16:14-15).

He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.

The character of the Spirit’s ministry is best highlighted by the threefold occurrence of the word, “shew” (ἀναγγελεῖ, anangelei, cf. vv. 13, 14, 15). It is a word that means essentially to report back. The paraclete is one who listens to the voice of the Lord in His teaching ministry and then reports to the believers that which the teaching Lord desires to inculcate in them. He acts as a pedagogical mediator between the Lord and His saints. The repetition of the word “shew” may be designed to stress the divine initiative, or the Son’s initiative, in the teaching process.

MacLaren comments at this point:

We are like the first settlers upon some great island-continent. There is a little fringe of population round the coast, but away in the interior are leagues of virgin forests and fertile plains stretching to the horizon, and snow-capped summits piercing the clouds, on which no foot has ever trod. “He shall guide you into all truth;” through the length and breadth of the boundless land, the person and work of Jesus Christ our Lord. [11]

Many of us, however, know little of His teaching ministry, although we may have been gloriously saved. We are like travelers who have landed in the airports of beautiful countries on through flights and have never done anything more than see the airport. This year I landed in Honolulu, Hawaii twice, but never saw anything more of the beautiful islands than a Holiday Inn! I returned home with a view of Pearl Harbor from the window of an airplane, and that is all. So there are many who have believed in Christ, and yet they have never toured the countryside of the divine revelation to see the beauties of the land of salvation. May the Lord make us students of His Word.

Conclusion

Let me summarize: We have a divine teacher, whose ministry is to glorify Christ by guiding us into an increasingly richer knowledge of Him. That is the answer to the question with which this exposition began, “How may I understand the Bible?”

Why, then, do so many of us not have that knowledge? The great apostle, whose great goal was “that I might know him” (cf. Phil. 3:10), has enlightened seeking souls in an early section of his first letter to the Corinthian church (cf. 1 Cor. 2:6--3:4). Simply put, he has said that natural men, unsaved men, need a spiritual birth in order to receive spiritual eyes to see truth. He has said that carnal-weak men need growth, while carnal-willful men need confession of sin and restoration to communion (cf. 1 Cor. 3:1–4). Spiritual men, or mature men, have the capacity to know all the truth, subject, of course, to the divine will’s determinations. It is these who come to know the secrets of God. It is to them pre-eminently that the spirit of Jeremiah’s words applies, “I will give them an heart to know me” (cf. 24:7).

Notes

1. Lewis Johnson is a Bible teacher at Believer’s Chapel in Dallas, Texas. He is Professor Emeritus of New Testament Exegesis at Dallas Theological Seminary and also served as Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. This is the eleventh in a series of expositions on The Upper Room Discourse.
2. D. A. Carson, The Farewell Discourse and Final Prayer of Jesus: An Exposition of John 14–17 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), 149.
3. William Temple, Readings in St. John’s Gospel, First and Second Series (London: Macmillan, 1940), 290
4. The Dallas Morning News (June 25, 1983): 46A.
5. Perhaps copyists introduced “into” (Gr. εἰς, eis) into the tradition because they thought it more idiomatic after the verb lead (ὁδηγήσει) used here. Cf. Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (New York: United Bible Societies, 1971), 247.
6. Arthur John Gossip, “Exposition: The Gospel according to St. John,” The Interpreter’s Bible, ed. George Arthur Buttrick, 12 vols., (Nashville: Abingdon, 1952), 8: 731–732.
7. Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John, Chapters XV-XXI, 2 vols. (New York: George H. Doran Co., n. d.), 1:116.
8. B. F. Westcott, The Gospel according to St. John, reprint ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964 [1881]), 217.
9. The source of this illustration, which I read many years ago, is unavailable to me now.
10. Leon Morris, The Gospel according to John, NICNT (rev. ed., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 622.
11. Alexander MacLaren, The Holy of Holies: Sermons on Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of the Gospel of John (London: Alexander & Shepheard, 1890), 300.