The Holy Spirit as Teacher
John 14:15–27
The Holy Spirit . . . will teach . . . and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. John 14:26
The Lord’s emphasis on remembering teaches us two separate truths. First, it teaches us that the wisdom of God is not a new thing. It is that which God has revealed in the past and that is the same because he is the same. Second, it teaches that we tend to forget these doctrines and need to be continually reminded of them.
This verse also tells us that the object of the teaching is Christ. We have a danger of making the Scriptures an end in themselves, forgetting that the purpose of the Scriptures is to reveal Christ to the seeking heart and mind. The verse also makes the point that the Holy Spirit is the One who enables us to teach these truths to others. Teaching spiritual truths cannot be done in the power of the flesh.
Thus three things are necessary if God’s truth is to be properly communicated. There must be the revelation of the truth to the apostles by the Holy Spirit. This has been done. There must be the teaching of the Holy Spirit to our hearts, so that, as we read their words, we come face-to-face with the Lord Jesus Christ about whom they wrote. And there must be the continuing work of the Holy Spirit to take our testimony concerning this Word and carry it home to the hearts of those who have not yet heard or understood it. Three stages!
But there can be error in each. There are some who do not begin with the Scriptures. They consider the Bible to contain the words of men rather than the very words that the Holy Spirit taught to the apostles. There are others who accept the Bible as the Word of God but who do not allow the Holy Spirit to teach them. Then there are those who accept the Bible as the Word of God and who do meet with Jesus Christ, but they testify in their own power in a way that brings glory to themselves, and few are won.
We do a farmer’s work. First, we prepare the soil. Then we take a seed and plant it. We water it and we wait for it to grow. But we do not give life to the seed. The seed already has life in it. Moreover, we can scratch a furrow and put the seed in it, but the ground must have the nutrients that God has placed there. And even then the work of God is not finished, for the seed will not grow unless the sun shines upon it. The Holy Spirit must be the sun in our witnessing. We must be faithful in scratching the furrows, watering, even pulling out weeds. But we must look to God to give life.
Taken from Come to the Waters by James Boice ISBN 9798887790954 used with permission from P&R Publishing, Phillipsburg NJ 08865
Scripture quotations are from the ESV (the Holy Bible English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.