Sometimes people have to go to court. Unless you are very unusual, you would find that very stressful. It is possible that you could lose a lot as a result of going to court. You could lose your house, business, kids, money, reputation, or even your freedom. If you are going to give evidence, you can expect to be challenged. You might be called a liar. None of this is pleasant.
Some people say that they are going to represent themselves in court. They can’t afford a barrister or solicitor. They are convinced of the justice of their cause, and cannot see why anyone else wouldn’t see their point. I don’t think this ever turns out well.
But, when it comes to testifying to our Christian faith, all of this is unnecessary. We have provided for us the best advocate or lawyer possible. In fact, we’ve got two advocates. There is no way that God would leave us to represent ourselves. And our passage tells us who these advocates are, and where they do their advocacy.
We are so used to believing that God’s love is ‘unconditional’ that we might be a bit surprised to read verse 15:
14:15“If you love me, you will keep my commands."
God’s love is and can only ever be unearned, unmerited, and undeserved—at least as far as we are concerned. But to say that there are no conditions attached—or better, that there are no inevitable fruits and consequences of that love for Jesus—is simply not true. Obedience to Jesus’ commands inevitably, always, and universally follows from love for Jesus. If you love me, you will obey me.
But we must observe first that this word is again a word in the first instance directed to the disciples as apostles. The word ‘you’, or more literally, ‘youse’, is important to notice.
There is a condition stated—notice the ‘if’. ‘If you love me, you will keep my commands’. The claim to love Jesus will be vindicated by the obedience to the commands that Jesus gives. The claim to love Jesus will and must issue in obedience.
Later, after everything is accomplished, Jesus will ask Peter, ‘Do you love me?’ There, Peter’s love for Jesus is explicitly linked to Peter feeding Jesus’ sheep. Here, love for Jesus is explicitly linked to obeying Jesus’ commands. The two things really aren’t that different. After all, Jesus’ commission to the eleven will eventually involve them being under-shepherds to his flock. For the eleven, obeying Jesus meant shepherding his flock.
Jesus in John’s Gospel frequently reveals that he himself is obeying the commands of his Father. That is how Jesus explains what he is doing. He is obeying the Father’s commands (John 12:49-50, 14:31). Obeying the commands of his Father is how Jesus shows his love for the Father, and even how Jesus remains in his Father’s love (John 14:31, 15:10). And Jesus expects no less from his friends. Just as Jesus obeys his Father, his disciples, whom he has called his friends, must obey him also.
Jesus uses the plural word, ‘commands’. There are not many commands of Jesus to his disciples that are recorded in John’s Gospel. In this, Jesus is very different from Moses, who imposed the burden of the law—a burden that the apostles confess cannot be born by sinful mortal man. However, Jesus does give many commands during his earthly ministry. For example, he commands us to forgive each other from the heart, so that we might be forgiven. He commands us to love our enemies, to love God with our whole heart, to love our neighbor as ourselves. And in the sermon on the mount there are many commands for us to obey. These commands bind our consciences and show us the searching nature of the law of God and Christ (Matthew 5-7).
But remember that John gives us the view of Jesus from the inside. As a generalization, while Matthew, Mark, and Luke give us the public Jesus, John gives us the private Jesus, Jesus alone with the eleven, with the disciple whom Jesus loved lying at his belly and leaning on his breast. And John, the one at the belly of the Lord leaning back in his breast, gives us insight into the command of Jesus to the inner circle. And for John, Jesus, clear as crystal, gives his eleven one main and over-riding command, the single command that explains every other command to govern the relationships within the church. John 13:34-35:
13:34A new command I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, so also you must love one another. 13:35In this way everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (cf. John 15:12-14)
The essential command is to love one another. Indeed, Jesus goes so far as saying, in verse 21 of this passage, “The one who has my commands and keeps them loves me.” (cf. John 15:10-12, 17).
The ‘love’ command in John, while not unique in its general shape, takes a particular form. John almost certainly assumes the teaching of Jesus in the synoptics, that the two greatest commandments are to love God with all one’s heart and love one’s neighbour as oneself. But because John presents to us the ‘inside view’ of the private Jesus, the ‘love’ command takes the particular form of ‘love one another’. For while the ‘love God’ command always is the most important, and the ‘love your neighbour’ command embraces the unbeliever and the enemy, the ‘love one another’ command applies the second greatest command to the situation within the church, to relations within the community of Jesus’ disciples. That is the difference with Jesus’ command to love in John’s Gospel.
Jesus’ invitation for the eleven to pray in his name (vv. 13-14), and Jesus’ reminder to them that love for Jesus requires obedience (v. 15), also comes with the promise and assurance that Jesus will not leave the disciples to do their appointed task alone. Verses 16 to 17a:
14:16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, so that he might be with you forever, 14:17athe Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see nor know him.
While his disciples are here on earth obeying him, and showing that they love him, Jesus will show his love for the disciples by, firstly, asking the Father (for Jesus only and always honours and obeys the Father), and then, being so certain of the answer, here and now promising that the Father will indeed say ‘yes’ to his request and send the Spirit (v. 16).
This is not merely presumption by Jesus. He so thinks the Father’s thoughts after him, and so knows his Father, that he can say what the Father will say without a shadow of a doubt. They are of one will and purpose.
Notice that the one to be sent is “another advocate” (v. 16). “Another” suggests that there is more than one advocate—and that the disciples well know who that ‘first’ advocate is. What sort of advocate the other advocate he sends is depends on the sort of advocate the first one referred to is.
The word ‘advocate’ is a translation of the Greek word, ‘paracletos’ or ‘paraclete’. The word in its most literal and basic meaning describes one who stands beside and speaks on behalf of those he represents. Other translations render it using the idea of ‘helper’ or ‘counselor’. But what is meant is what we think of as a lawyer, a legal counselor, hence an ‘advocate’. An advocate is a barrister or solicitor who represents someone who has legal testimony to give.
In his first letter, John says that we have a ‘paracletos’ with the Father—Jesus Christ the righteous one (παράκλητον ἔχομεν πρὸς τὸν πατέρα Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν δίκαιον: 1 John 2:1). There’s our first advocate—Jesus. He is a righteous advocate. That means we have an honest lawyer representing us. But he is going to be “with the Father”. Jesus is going up to represent us and do his advocacy work in the highest court. But that’s not all, because Jesus is an advocate who also is our wrath removing sacrifice (1 John 2:2). Jesus takes away our sin (John 1:29, ‘expiation’) and in this way also removes God’s anger from us (‘propitiation’).
This ‘other’ advocate has a name—verse 17, “the Spirit of truth”. Unlike Jesus, the Spirit of truth will stay with the disciples “forever”. Jesus is an advocate who leaves the disciples to represent them in the highest court of all. But the Spirit of truth is an advocate who stays with the disciples forever, to represent them in the lower, earthly courts.
The ‘Spirit of truth’ is a person, because advocates are always and can only be persons. The Spirit’s name, the Spirit of truth, tells us the sort of advocacy that the Spirit will be doing—the Spirit only does truth telling. Yet another honest lawyer to represent us!
In verse 17, the Spirit’s relationship with the world is outlined. He is the one “whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see nor know him.” Jesus’ own people, the Jews, did not receive Jesus himself (John 1:11, 5:43), and nor did they receive his testimony (John 3:32, 12:48). So I guess it’s not surprising that they cannot receive the Spirit of truth he sends, either.
Now, it’s interesting that Jesus says that the world “does not see” the Spirit of truth. No one sees “the Spirit”, in one sense. The church and believers in one sense don’t see the Spirit either. That’s the nature of the Spirit being spirit. He is not to be seen, except in his effects (cf. John 3:8).
But probably Jesus means that the world does not recognize or acknowledge the Spirit of truth’s testimony as the true testimony of God. The world sees the effects of the Spirit, but does not properly perceive what they are seeing.
The disciples, however, will know and recognize the Spirit. Just as they know and recognize the voice of the good shepherd (John 10:14-15, 27, cf. John 6:69, 7:17), so they will know the Spirit of truth. The second part of verse 17:
14:17bYou know him, because he remains with you and will be in you.
Two reasons are given as to why the disciples will know and recognize the Spirit of truth. The first is that “he remains with you”. The second is that “he will be in you”. The first indicates that the Spirit in some sense is currently and presently ‘with’ the disciples. This is certainly the case with Jesus. Jesus is the Spirit filled Messiah (John 1:32-33). So wherever Jesus is, there is his Spirit. And the disciples have been with Jesus. The eleven has been soaked in the teaching of the Spirit-filled Christ. Jesus is saying that even though he himself as the Christ is going to leave them, the Spirit who empowered his ministry with them is staying with them. Jesus at least means this.
However, it also may be that Jesus is alluding to something more—that the disciples know the Spirit personally and experientially. That is suggested by the next part of the verse.
Now, some of our best manuscripts read Jesus’ words as we have them in our version, that the Spirit “will be in you”. Notice the future tense, and this would clearly be a reference to the future coming of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. However, some of our earliest and best manuscripts (i.e., P66*, B, D*) say that the Spirit “is in you”. This would be a reference to the present indwelling of the Spirit in Jesus’ disciples.
This is strange, because elsewhere in John, the coming of the Spirit is clearly and unambiguously said to be future (John 7:39, 14:16, 16:7). But if the present tense is correct, it shows that Jesus did acknowledge a present ministry of the Holy Spirit who subsisted and lived within the disciples even while he was with them. The future coming of the Spirit, then, on the day of Pentecost, is not a first coming, but a new and different sort of coming in power. That is, the coming of the Spirit to the disciples on the day of Pentecost is a bit like the coming of Jesus on a donkey to Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday—neither could be said to be a first coming by any stretch of the imagination, but the nature of each coming is so new, so significant in salvation history, and for such an important purpose for the salvation of humanity, that it is this particular coming that puts in the shade all Jesus’ previous visits to Jerusalem—or the Spirit’s work on earth—and so is rightly termed ‘the coming’ par excellence.
This is undeniable to some extent, because the Holy Spirit has been active in various ways on earth in Old Testament times since the first verses of Genesis. So the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, while a new and unprecedented salvation historical moment, was not the first time the Holy Spirit has worked with and in humans. But what is new, is that the Holy Spirit will be testifying that Jesus is the incarnate Christ through the eleven.
We should not be surprised that the Spirit would already be ‘in’ the disciples, even though he hasn’t been ‘given’ yet. For Jesus has already said that no one can enter the kingdom of heaven unless they are born from above, born of the Spirit (John 3:3-8). And also Jesus will breathe on the disciples and says “receive” the Holy Spirit on the first resurrection Sunday (John 20:23). Moreover, the disciples are described as doing so many things in the Synoptics that we know can only occur by the Spirit—driving out unclean spirits by the Holy Spirit, healing the sick, having the Father reveal Jesus’ identity to them—that it makes eminent sense that all this has been enabled by the Spirit’s ministry in them.
The disciples’ job is to obey Jesus. They do this by loving one another. This is in fact how they express love for Jesus. Jesus’ job will be to send the Spirit of truth to them. He is another advocate. He is another advocate because Jesus is the first advocate. An advocate is one who speaks on behalf of another to represent them. Jesus has done this for the disciples, but is about to leave them. By going to the Father, he will continue his advocacy, but in a higher court. But the Spirit of truth whom he will send as the other advocate will remain with them forever. The Spirit is a person like Jesus is a person. Only persons can be advocates. But the Spirit is different in that he will remain with the disciples forever. Jesus will be returning bodily to the Father, and so is in a real sense, leaving them.
My Translation
14:15“If you love me, you will keep my commands. 14:16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, so that he might be with you forever, 14:17the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see nor know him. You know him, because he remains with you and will be in you.
Regarding verse 15, Jesus in John’s Gospel frequently reveals that he is obeying the commands of his Father by saying what the Father does and doing what the Father does (John 12:49-50, 14:31). Obeying the commands of his Father is how Jesus shows his love for the Father and even remains in his love (John 14:31, 15:10). It is part and parcel of the filial relationship, Jesus’ relationship as Son. The Son is ontologically ‘Son’, and not merely Son by virtue of the incarnation, so we can indeed infer from the acts of the Son in the economy of salvation to the ontology of the Trinitarian relations. The Father’s commands will issue and result in eternal life for the world (John 12:50), and the Son stepped into time and history to obey that will of the Father.
Of course, the will of the Father is identical with the will of the Son, because of the unity of purpose of the divine persons, which flows from their unity of essence. Pre-eminently, the command of the Father to the Son is for him to lay down his life for his sheep and for the world, and to take it up again (John 10:17-18). Yet, this command of the Father is so in conformity with the will of the incarnate logos, that Jesus can say that no one, not even the Father, takes his life from him, but that he lays it down and takes it up again of his own accord (John 10:18). This is supreme obedience and submission—not merely a submission by the Son to the will of the Father, but a perfect concord of the wills of both Father and Son, such that the Son’s submission to the Father’s will is no less the uncompelled and spontaneous free willing of the Son.
Not only is the commanded act performed by the Son the Son’s will because the Father has commanded it, but also the ‘independent’ (if this is the correct word and be allowed) agreement of the divine persons of the Father and Son that the performance of the Father’s command be the best and most appropriate act possible, not only because of deontology (the fact that the Father has commanded it), but also because of the nature and purpose of the command itself.
In verses 17 (cf. v. 25), the relative or other pronouns referring to the Holy Spirit are neuter, agreeing with the grammatical gender of the τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον, which likewise is neuter. However, the translation adopted here still translates them as masculine, because grammatical gender is always subservient to actual gender. An example of this subservience are the neuter Greek forms rendered in English ‘child’ or ‘children’. An example of this in John’s Gospel is τὸ παιδίον, the referent of which is also described as ὁ υἱός and ὁ παῖς (John 4:49-51), and thus the child’s real gender is masculine. Other examples are the neuter plural noun, τέκνα, which is rendered ‘children’ (John 1:12, 8:39, 11:52) and cognate diminutive, τεκνία, rendered ‘little children’ (John 13:33).
Another example is the Greek rendered ἡ οἰκία αὐτοῦ ὅλη ‘his whole household’, which is grammatically feminine, even though it is constituted by males and females.
A further example is in John 17:24, where Jesus describes his disciples as ‘that which’ God gave him, using a neuter relative pronoun: 24Πάτερ, ὃ δέδωκάς μοι, θέλω ἵνα ὅπου εἰμὶ ἐγὼ κἀκεῖνοι ὦσιν μετ’ ἐμοῦ || ‘Father, I want that which you gave me, so that these also may be with me where I am.’ The disciples are clearly humans, and even male humans, ‘men’, not things, yet the neuter relative pronoun is still applied to them. It is quite acceptable in such a case to translate the neuter pronoun using the personal, ‘those whom’, although it is also acceptable to allow the image of the disciples as a ‘gift’ of the Father to the Son, which is connoted by the neuter pronoun, also to stand.
While it is quite appropriate to translate the neuter forms according to the real gender of the referent, which in the case of the Holy Spirit is masculine and personal, what this does mean is that the argument from the grammatical gender of ὁ παράκλητος and the masculine demonstrative which refers to it, ἐκεῖνος (e.g. John 14:25) is of only limited use to demonstrate the personality of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s personality, like that of anyone described as παιδίον or τέκνον, is shown by his acts and attributes as demonstrated in Scripture. It is this aspect of the Spirit being ὁ παράκλητος, and not some claim that John is ‘bending the rules of Greek grammar’ by using the masculine demonstrative ἐκεῖνος rather than the neuter, that builds the Biblical case for the full personhood of the Spirit.
In verse 17, there is a textual issue in the sentence, “You know him, because he remains with you and will be in you” (ὅτι παρ’ ὑμῖν μένει καὶ ἐν ὑμῖν ἔσται), which raises an important and theologically significant issue. Good witnesses, including the original hands of P66* B D*, read the present tense form of the verb ‘to be’, ἐστιν, rather than the future tense form, ἔσται, as provided by NA28, which is read as the original hand by the weighty manuscripts, א A P75vid and the correctors P66c and D1. It is clear from John 7:39, 14:16 and 16:7 that the coming of the Spirit is future from the perspective of those passages, and so this renders the present tense form in John 14:17 more difficult, suggesting the possibility that scribes have assimilated this passage to the more prominent teaching elsewhere of the future coming of the Spirit. However, the tension between the Spirit’s future coming and his present ministry prior to Christ’s glorification (as testified to by important witnesses by reading the present ἐστιν in John 14:17), can be maintained on good evidence and is theologically fruitful. That is, if the present tense form reading is correct, it shows that Jesus did acknowledge a present ministry of the Holy Spirit subsisting within the disciples even while he was with them, and can be read quite consistently with a future coming of the Spirit that is appropriately modified to an acknowledgement of his ongoing presence with all believers.