So after nearly a year of avoiding it; it’s time to continue this whole series about Charismatic teachings and experiences and “so what’s really from the Holy Spirit anyway”. So I’ll work at reading through some “Holy Spirit passages” to see what was said about the Holy Spirit and what the Holy Spirit did. We’re going to go straight to the source and start with the upper room discourse in John 14-16. What did Jesus himself say about the Holy Spirit?
So Jesus eating the Passover meal with his disciples and giving them all sorts of last minute teaching. He’s going to be arrested in a matter of hours and within 24 hours he’ll be dead. And he starts telling them that this thing is going to come. He calls it Paracletos or Paraclete (14: 16, 26), a word of Greek origin that means nothing in English. So I had to look it up and discovered that it literally means called to one’s side (or figuratively to one’s aid) and was also a legal term for a defense attorney or more broadly anyone who would plead someone else’s case. Various English translations use the words advocate, comforter, helper, and counselor in place of this word. Kind of leaves me with the impression of the ally or the reinforcements who come in and bolster your courage when you’re facing a hopeless situation and feeling overwhelmed by your enemy.
So what does Jesus say this AdvocateComforterHelperCounselor will do? He will:
Lead / guide into all truth (14:17 and 16:13)
be a representative of Jesus (14:26)
teach the disciples everything and remind them of Jesus’ teaching (14:26)
testify about Jesus (15:26)
convict of sin (unbelief specified later), God’s righteousness, and coming judgment (16:8)
tell about the future (16:13)
glorify Jesus by passing on his words (16:14)
This isn’t an exhaustive list, but so far it seems truth and Jesus are prominent features of the Holy Spirit’s work.
Next time: Holy Spirit according to the book of Acts.