Well, I'm not altogether sure whether I should thank Bob Sheehan for his welcome to me today. Somebody did say to me yesterday when I arrived, I ought to say they said it with a smile on their face, "What on earth are you doing here?" And I may share with you I've had one or two moments in the last few hours when I've wondered that myself, partly because Geoff Thomas, who spoke to us so wonderfully yesterday afternoon, was already something of a legend among my friends when we were students. And he was already a figure of some note in the churches. It touched me deeply when Mr. Leith Samuel was called upon to pray last evening because I remember with great vividness a series of addresses he gave, I think probably 28 years ago when I was a teenager, on the epistle to Titus, or as I recall, he called it the epistle to Tettus. I can still rather vividly remember many of the wise things that he said, including one which he probably has forgotten, when he urged us as young men, particularly I think, not to marry the ugliest girl we could find simply because she was a Christian believer. And I'm glad to say I took his advice. I'm not sure whether that was part of the preparation or part of what Jeff was talking to us about in terms of the spontaneity of the moment. And Errol House, who is chiefly responsible for bringing me here to share in the conference today. My first encounter with, although he had gained considerable notoriety in my mind already as the author of Reformation Today, some 18 years ago when I first visited the Westminster Conference, I whispered to the gentleman sitting on my left, "Who is that sprightly individual dressed rather brightly who keeps popping up and asking these interesting questions?" You can imagine my astonishment when the man stared at me as though I had come from another planet and said, "You mean you don't know Errol House?" So it is, as you will understand, somewhat of a daunting experience for me to find myself among men who are now friends. Thankfully, in the work of the Christian Gospel, to whom I have long looked as models and leaders.
The simple practical reason, I think, why I am here with you today is because I was not here with you this time last year when I was supposed to speak on the subject of the law and was laid low by influenza. And this has caused me to reflect that I am before you as a wonderful illustration of the fact that what the law could not do because it was weak through my flesh, namely bring me to a conference of Baptist brethren, the Spirit of God has done.
Now I am to consider two aspects of the biblical teaching on the ministry of the Spirit with you. That is today the subject of knowing the Holy Spirit and tomorrow morning the theme of experiencing the Holy Spirit. And what I want to try to do is in essence very simple, and that is to try to expound for us the two passages in Scripture that seem to me to be most central and significant in the exposition, understanding, and application of these two themes: the theme of knowing the Spirit and the theme of experiencing the Spirit.
And I am sure you would have caught the sense in these verses in John 14 and then again in John 16 which Bob has read for us this morning, that the central theme, in a sense, of these passages is the theme of the knowledge of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, Jesus virtually puts his own finger on this when he says to the disciples in John 14 concerning the Holy Spirit, "You know him." Verse 17b: You know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. And the burden of his ministry at this point in the Farewell Discourse is to enlarge on this principle that they now already, because they are believers, do in some sense know the Holy Spirit. But the day is going to come for them when they will know the Holy Spirit in a marvelous and glorious way in the future. And clearly throughout this passage there is a kind of double entendre operating in John's record. He is looking forward, of course, to the day when Jesus will leave them. He is not going to stay with them. He is going to leave them. But he is going to return to them. And the question that John is obviously posing for us in the way he records this teaching of Jesus is the question: does Jesus refer to his return to them at the time of his resurrection, or does Jesus refer to his return to them in the power of the Spirit in the day of Pentecost? And while it is certainly true that in a very profound sense he returns to them at the day of the resurrection, There is no doubt that in this section in John's Gospel, the day of the resurrection and the day of Pentecost are so much two sides of one and the same coin that these verses here point us forward not only to Jesus' return to them at the resurrection, but to that new coming of Jesus which the disciples are to experience on the day of Pentecost.
And it seems to me that one of the things that Jesus is doing here in the Farewell Discourse is seeking to encourage his disciples to understand as well as to believe that because this is the entail of his going, that the Spirit will come to them. It is to their advantage that Jesus should leave them. Now, I think it is possible for us to put ourselves, as it were, in the shoes of the pastoral problem which Jesus is facing here. Here are these disciples gathered round him in this intimate moment in the upper room. They have loved him. They have received his ministry by word of mouth, by action, by expression of affection. They are in all their failure and sin utterly devoted to the Lord Jesus. He is everything to them. He alone has the words of eternal life. There is none other to whom they can go. But he is announcing here to their devastation that he is going from them. And they are beginning to understand, of course, that he is going from them by cruel crucifixion. And now he says to them, beloved, it is to your advantage that I am going from you, because in my stead and room the Holy Spirit will come. Now from their point of view, He could not have given them a greater disappointment.
I suppose we might catch that if I posed the question in this way: What would you rather have at the Kerry Conference in these days? Would you rather have Jesus as He was there in the flesh in the upper room so that you could see Him return home and tell your wife the color of Jesus' eyes, the tone of His accent, the character of His gracious gesticulations, the bearing of His person? Or would you rather have the Holy Spirit at the Kerry Conference or on the Lord's Day? And of course there is something instinctive in us as those who believe in Jesus Christ. Something instinctive in us that says, I would give worlds to have seen Jesus, to be with Jesus, to have His physical presence in this way, to sit under His ministry as they did in the upper room. So how can it possibly be to my advantage that He is no longer with me in that fashion but instead, for my benefit, sends me his Holy Spirit.
6 · Ferguson reframes a common diagnosis: the Spirit is not the forgotten person but the faceless person of the Trinity
In a way, the disciples' dilemma and frustration underlines for us that it was probably always false when it was said, as it often was in my hearing decades ago, that the church has forgotten the Holy Spirit But the Holy Spirit is no longer the forgotten person of the Godhead. The truth was that the Holy Spirit was probably never the forgotten person of the Godhead. But he was very frequently and remains frequently to many Christian believers a rather faceless and anonymous and nameless person in the Godhead. To the very name of Father, we respond with all our God-given instincts. To the name of the Son, we respond because he has become incarnate in our flesh, understands our needs, has identified himself with us, and in some sense we learn what it means to identify ourselves with him. But Holy Spirit, or worse, Holy Ghost, rather than, as it were, bring us into intimate knowledge of the third person of the Trinity, in a sense almost bespeaks the apparent facelessness, namelessness, anonymity of the mysterious third one in the divine being.
7 · Ferguson establishes that Jesus as pastor-theologian introduces the Spirit through names and titles that make him knowable and glorious
And what Jesus is doing, I think, especially in this 14th chapter of John, in the second half of it, is coming to these disciples as the great pastor-teacher, the great pastor and true theologian of the Christian church. And he is introducing them to the knowledge of the Holy Spirit. You do know him, he says. You do know him. But he begins to introduce them to the significance of that knowledge in a very simple but nevertheless remarkable way by providing for them as for us names. Titles, descriptions, epithets by which the Holy Spirit and the character of His ministry in the life of the believer may greatly be known, appreciated, and enjoyed so that He may be glorified together with the Father and the Son. We need to remember in this connection But while it is indeed the Spirit's ministry not to bring honor to himself but to bring glory to Jesus Christ, that is never an excuse for us not to bring honor and not to bring glory to the Holy Spirit and not to grow in our knowledge of the Holy Spirit as he is given to us in the grace of God by the Father and comes to us as Jesus here teaches us. Because he has gone to the Father and asked the Father to send to us the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ.
8 · Ferguson traces John's theology of the Spirit's origin: the Spirit comes from Jesus through his crucifixion
Now, what are these names that our Lord Jesus provides for the Holy Spirit? Well, I think it's important for us to understand that in John's Gospel, in general terms, The Holy Spirit comes to us by means of the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. That, of course, is what is underlined in Jesus' great words at the Feast of Tabernacles in John 7:37-39, when he cries out with that loud voice on that significant occasion when the people of God are looking forward to the great messianic age and the outpouring of the Spirit promised in the Isaianic passages of prophecy. And Jesus urges upon the people that they should come to him. And we are told that they should come to him because those who come to him will find, as I think the text ought to be read, that from him, that is from Jesus, The smitten rock, the new temple. From Jesus there will flow rivers of living water to slake our thirst. Thus he spoke, says John, of the Holy Spirit who was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified. And of course, almost certainly when Later on in John's Gospel, the spear is thrust into Jesus' side and water and blood flow out. We are intended to be reminded of the promise that out of him, from within him, there would flow these rivers of living water. And this is the one who in his resurrection invites his disciples to thrust their hand into his side, from which wounded side, by God's grace, the Holy Spirit will flow. And then breathes on them in John 20, breathes on them the Holy Spirit who flows from the crucified and risen Messiah.
9 · Ferguson exegetes 'the Spirit who was not yet' as referring not to ontology but to epoch-making redemptive-historical significance: the Spirit given at Pentecost is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, so identified with Christ's ministry that to have the Spirit is to have Christ himself
And the point that John is making, as we will see Jesus underlining in marvelous ways in these verses, the point that John is making is precisely this: that the Spirit who was not yet is not a description of the Spirit's ontology. Of course he was from the beginning with the Father. Of course he was throughout redemptive history and in Jesus' ministry. But what is of epoch-making significance is this: that the Spirit who is now going to be given to the people of God in the New Covenant era is the Spirit of this Lord Jesus Christ. It is from him, the incarnate Son of God, the crucified Redeemer, the exalted Savior, from him the Spirit who has been upon him and in that sense has identified himself with the whole course of Jesus' ministry. It is this Spirit whom Jesus describes, of course, as another Paraclete. Allos Parakletos. And while it's certainly true, as many of you will know, that in the New Testament the distinction between allos and heteros does not always hold, it is certainly true here in John's Gospel that when Jesus says, I'm going to send you another, paraclete. It is abundantly clear that he means such another who has been so identified with me in my ministry that to have him is one and the same in terms of his ministry and the economy of grace. To have the Spirit is to have Christ.
10 · Ferguson identifies Jesus' pedagogical method: he explicates 'another Paraclete like myself' by showing how the Spirit's names and titles correspond to ministries Jesus himself exercised
And one of the marvelous ways in which Jesus underlines this in John 14 is by the way in which the names he gives to the Holy Spirit are precisely names and descriptions of ministries which he has exercised himself. In other words, when he says to the disciples, I'm going to send you another Paraclete like myself, he doesn't leave them to exegete what that means. He indicates to them what like myself means. He exegetes the word myself in my ministry to you and then underlines for us how it is that the Holy Spirit continues, reinforces, and advances the very ministry that the Lord Jesus had begun.
11 · Ferguson introduces the first title—Teacher—showing that Jesus first establishes his own teaching ministry (verses 23-24) before announcing that the Spirit will continue this ministry by teaching all things and reminding disciples of Jesus' words (verse 26)
Now what are those titles that give to us the knowledge of the Spirit? Well, the first of them obviously in this passage is the title of teacher. Verses 23 and 24, Jesus said: If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. Verse 24: He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me. And here Jesus gives us a clear indication that his ministry to the disciples has been a ministry of teaching and instruction and edification in the truth of the gospel, which he himself is. But then do you notice what he goes on to say in verse 26? The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will what? He will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
12 · Ferguson identifies verse 20's 'on that day' as Pentecost and isolates 'you will realize' as teaching vocabulary
But what is it that the Holy Spirit in particular will teach the disciples? Well, he tells us in verse 20. He says, on that day. And surely he is speaking here not about the resurrection day so much as about the day of Pentecost. Certainly the day of Pentecost brings to consummation in the knowledge of the apostles, what they began to learn on the day of resurrection and in the 40 days between then and the day of ascension. On that day, he says, you will realize. And that, of course, is teaching vocabulary. On that day, he says, the light will be switched on. It will dawn upon you. What will dawn upon you? Well, look at what will dawn upon us on that day when the Spirit comes. You will realize that I am in my Father and that you are in me.
13 · Ferguson explores the meaning of Jesus being 'in' the Father through John's emphasis on mutual indwelling expressed through love
Blessed Spirit of God, what will you teach us? Answer: I will teach you that the Lord Jesus is in the Father. Now, I don't know how to begin to exegete that word 'in.' It's clear that throughout his Gospel, John has been giving us various hints about what it means, especially in the interplay between the love that the Father has for the Son and the love that the Son has for the Father. And it's one of the striking features of John's Gospel that there is actually more emphasis on the former than there is on the latter. Great emphasis on the Son's love for the Father being expressed in the totality and comprehensiveness of His obedience, His whole-souled consecration to His Father, His utter devotion to His Father. His Father's will is His meat and drink. He lives for His Father, and therefore He lives in love for the Father. He dwells in the bosom of the Father in his devotion of love to the Father. But even more emphasis in John's Gospel in a remarkable way on the fact that the Father loves his Son, that the Father is in his Son. That is to say there is something in the nature of the very being of God even when the Son becomes incarnate of which we as the image of God know but a pale expression. When we love someone so much, we want to be in them. We want to be in their minds. We want to be part of their being. And that is, as I say, but a pale reflection of what is actually true in the mystery of God's being, even when the Son becomes incarnate. He does not leave the bosom of the Father but dwells there from all eternity through all eternity and throughout the whole course of his ministry.
14 · Ferguson contemplates the Father's love for the Son reaching its apex at the cross, when Jesus' obedience unto death both expresses the Son's love for the Father and evokes the Father's overwhelming love for the Son—a mixture of pride and grief that 'cracks open the divine emotions
And so says Jesus, as it were, giving us the moment of realization which the Spirit will lodge in our souls and cause us to gasp because our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. He says, "The reason My Father loves Me is because I lay down My life for the sheep." You ever thought what that must have meant in that holy moment in glory when the Father's love for His Son reached, as it were, the pinnacle and apex and bursting point of holy divine emotion When His Son died and the Father's heart was, as it were, wrung with an admixture of most glorious pride and deep, deep-seated grief and sorrow. I love My Son because He lays down His life for the sheep. That's how much I love Him because I see Him in the totality of His obedience. His allegiance to me. And that is not only an expression of his love for me, but touches the inner soul of God himself and cracks open the divine emotions of passionate devotion to his Son.
15 · Ferguson addresses the disciples' fear of knowing less of Jesus and declares that the Spirit will reveal more—the depths of God's triune fellowship
And whatever else this means, Jesus is saying to the disciples, my dear disciples, You see me now in my ministry. And of course, their great anxiety, their great anxiety, you can understand this, was that Jesus was going to go from them. They were going to know less of Jesus now. Less of Jesus. They were never, they thought, they couldn't believe in the resurrection. They were never going to see their dear Jesus again. And Jesus is really saying to them, oh, my beloved disciples, you haven't begun to know me yet. Because on that day you will know that I am in my Father and my Father is in me. Remember how Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 2, that the Spirit who makes known to us the blessings that are ours now and then in the gospel is the Spirit who searches into and searches out the depths of God and reveals them to us. And this, my brothers, is the depths of God. There is nothing deeper in God that the Holy Spirit wants us to know than that the Father is in the Son in the communion of the Spirit, and that the Son, through the communion of the Spirit, is also in the Father. We can only grope at the edges of that, but it opens up for us the panorama of the divine being and causes John at least to rejoice and gasp with awe because of this knowledge which the Holy Spirit has come to teach him that his fellowship is with the Father and with the Father's Son in the communion of the Spirit, in their triune fellowship, each with the other in the heavenly glory. And this is what the heart of God is exposed to do for those who trust in His Son, to bring them into a taste of such glorious fellowship.
16 · Ferguson transitions from the Spirit revealing the depths of God (Father-Son mutual indwelling) to the heights of grace (Christ-believer mutual indwelling)
And so says Jesus, the Spirit comes as teacher in order to reveal the depths of God to us. They will not know less of Christ but more of Christ because the Spirit will come and shine upon Jesus' glory. Cause us to know both the Son and the Spirit. But you notice that Jesus tells us that the Spirit's teaching ministry is not limited to revealing the deep things of God. In the same statement, he tells us that the Spirit will come to reveal the great heights of grace. And this is equally impossible to exegete. On that day, verse 20, you will realize that I am in my Father And then this: On that day you will realize that you are in me and I am in you. It is the hint which is later expounded here and of course throughout the rest of the New Testament that there appears to be in the gracious provision of God a kind of analogy between the Father's relationship to the Son and the Son's relationship to the believer. The Father dwells in the Son, but there is a mutual indwelling, and the Son dwells in the Father. And so the Son dwells in the believer, but there is a mutual indwelling, and the believer also dwells in the Son.
17 · Ferguson traces how Jesus immediately expounds the union-with-Christ theme through the vine-and-branches teaching in John 15 and brings it to consummation in John 17's prayer for believers' oneness modeled on Father-Son unity
And this clearly is so vital an aspect of the Spirit's teaching ministry that almost immediately Jesus, as it were, hands over to the Spirit a package to unfold its significance in the teaching on the vine and the branches at the beginning of chapter 15. This is such a significant mystery of the gospel that it demands immediate exposition. And so Jesus expounds it to them. That He is the vine, they are the branches. He dwells in them and gives them life. They dwell in Him and live for His glory. And it is brought to the glorious consummation in the prayer of John 17:21-23 when Jesus prays that believers may be one as He and the Father are one. Verse 23: I in them as you in me.
18 · Ferguson demonstrates union with Christ as the Spirit's central pedagogical emphasis throughout the New Testament, particularly in Paul, who applies it as the solution to every pastoral pathology
And you know, it is, when you see it, in a sense, it is crystal clear that this is a major aspect of the Spirit's teaching ministry. Wherever you turn in the New Testament, obviously in Paul's letters, he keeps coming back to this. Virtually every pastoral situation that arises in the churches, he comes back to this principle of Christ and union with him as the solvent of the pathologies and distortions of the life of a Christian fellowship, a Christian individual, a Christian congregation. Because the Spirit wants to to teach the people of God that when He comes, He so unites us to Jesus Christ that it may be said and revealed that Christ is in us just as we are in Him. The life I live by the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me, who lives in me. Christ lives in me. This is what the Holy Spirit brings, and this is what the Holy Spirit seeks to teach us.
19 · Ferguson shares a personal story from his teenage years hearing Colossians expounded on 'Christ in you, the hope of glory
I must be in a reminiscent mood at the turn of the year because I've been reflecting recently on the very first time I ever heard this taught or expounded when I was a teenager. From Paul's words at the end of Colossians, how as he magnifies his ministry among the Gentiles, he proclaims this mystery: Christ in you, the hope of glory. And I've never forgotten as a teenager coming out of the church late that day, making sure, because I was a Presbyterian and you know Presbyterians, making sure nobody was looking. And Errol House will forgive me for saying this. What I did was I ran and I danced along the road, knowing that Christ was in me as the hope of glory. That's the Glasgow blessing incidentally.
20 · Ferguson establishes the Scripture-Spirit connection: Jesus prepares the apostles to write the New Testament under the Spirit's guidance
Now, do you see what is so marvelous about this? It is on the one hand that Jesus makes it evident in this whole exposition where it is that the Holy Spirit will teach these things to us. Because, of course, the whole context in which he is speaking about the Spirit's ministry is in the preparation of these men to become the penmen of the New Testament Scripture. And throughout this passage, the punctuation of it emphasizes that this is so. For example, in 14:26: When the Spirit comes, he will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. And then later on in 16:13: He says to them, when the Spirit comes, he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. And at the end of 15, when the Counselor comes whom I'll send, who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning. When the Spirit comes, he will lead you into all of the truth. And in a sense, these are simply different ways of summarizing the whole of the New Testament. Reminding them of what Jesus has said and done. Leading them into the truth about Jesus. And showing them the things that are to come.
21 · Ferguson guards against short-circuiting: the Spirit's teaching comes to believers mediately through Scripture, not immediately
And it's important for us both in our understanding and in our ministry to people, because so often we and others short-circuit this teaching. It's important for us to understand that Jesus says these things not immediately to us, but immediately to the apostles, and in a mediated way also, yes, to us. But where is it that these things are true for us? They are true for us in the sacred scriptures whom Jesus is preparing these apostles to pen under the superintendence of the Spirit. That's why he's giving them the Spirit. And so if I ask, where may I learn these things? Where may I become the pupil of the Holy Spirit? Jesus' answer is: You become the pupil of the Holy Spirit where I have led these apostles into all the truth, reminded them of everything I have said, and shown them the things that are to come. That is, of course, in the pages of the New Testament Scripture. And in this way, it is notable, in this way Jesus marries together the ministry of the Spirit as he is sent to us with the ministry of the Spirit in the work of the inscripturation of the New Testament. And these two things— can never be severed from one another. Why? Because what Jesus has joined together, let no man dare to put asunder.
22 · Ferguson explains why the Spirit excels as teacher: unlike human teachers who cannot get inside their students, the Spirit both speaks objectively through Scripture and dwells subjectively in believers' hearts, combining inspiration and illumination
But you notice there is another aspect of this, and it is so beautifully balanced. Why is it that the Spirit is so eminent a teacher? Well, we are all teachers here. Some of us doubtless have been teachers perhaps in day school or in Sunday school. But whenever you are a teacher, you invariably reach the point of frustration with some of your disciples or pupils where you say to yourself, especially perhaps when you are marking their exam papers, "If I could only get inside him." or her. If I could only get inside and begin to unpack and to unlock. And you remember how John will later put it. He says, you don't need anyone to teach you. Not in the sense that you don't need teachers in the church to expound Scripture, but that there is a more eminent teacher given to the church. You have received the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Holy One. The glory of the Spirit's ministry, thank God, is that He not only speaks to us in the indicting objectively of the Scripture, but He dwells in our hearts by faith in order that the Scriptures He opens up in their inspiration may be drawn in by their illumination. To the apostles: It is to your advantage that I am going away. I have been your teacher, and you have known me as such. But now you will know the Spirit as your teacher, not only because you know him because he dwells with you, but because he will also dwell in you. Holy Spirit, we need to pray, be such an instructor to me and make me your disciple.
23 · Ferguson applies the doctrine of the Spirit as Teacher to Bible reading: believers should pray for the Spirit to be their instructor and make them his disciples as they read Scripture
Holy Spirit, we need to pray, be such an instructor to me and make me your disciple. Isn't that the way we should read our Bibles?
24 · Ferguson introduces the second title—Paraclete/Counselor—showing that Jesus first establishes his own counseling ministry (responding to heart-cries like 14:5) before promising another Counselor who will continue this pastoral work
But then Jesus has a second title for the Spirit. He is indeed the Teacher of the Christian church and the individual believer. But he is, in the second place, the Paraclete or the Counsellor. And again, it is noteworthy that Jesus marries together here his own ministry with the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, after all, this is true earlier on in chapter 14, Jesus has been their Counsellor. He has responded to their heart-rending cries, as for example in chapter 14, verse 5: Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? Counsel us. That is not just a cry for information. That is a cri du cœur, a cry for pastoring. And Jesus counsels him. But says Jesus in verse 23, he says, if anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him. We will come to him and make our home with him. He intends to do something fresh and new in the disciple's life because, as he goes on to say, the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, will be sent by the Father, verse 26. In Jesus' name. And notice again earlier on in verse 16, I will ask the Father and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever.
25 · Ferguson unpacks 'Paraclete' as forensic vocabulary—advocate, one called alongside to defend
Parakletos, someone called alongside. One of the great elastic words of John's vocabulary, hence the multitude of translations of it: advocate, strengthener, comforter. Paraclete. And it does seem certainly in this context that the title paraclete, whatever encouraging and counseling overtones it may have, has an undertone, an undergirding of the expression of the world of the law court, belongs to the universe of discourse of the law. This is how Paul uses it. For example, in Romans 8, we have an advocate, he says. As John does later on in 1 John 2, we have an advocate, one who pleads our cause. And it is interesting to notice how Jesus appears to develop that notion here. For example, in the passage in chapter 16 that we read, one almost has the impression that Jesus is speaking here about the Spirit as his own advocate, as his own counsel, but engaging in the prosecution of the world. He will bring conviction to the world of sin and righteousness and judgment because Christ goes to the Father, because the devil is judged because they will see him no more. Jesus sends the Spirit as the Counselor, the Advocate, in order to bring us to the conviction of sin. But Jesus also sends the Counselor, the Spirit, to be his Advocate, not only in defending his case and cause in the world but in defending His case and cause in the life of the Christian believer. Jesus' counsel will come to the believer's defense. He will thus bring glory to Jesus.
26 · Ferguson traces the Spirit's defensive ministry through redemptive history: the Spirit provides a bulwark at moments when God's kingdom faces eradication
You know, in a sense, we saw something of that yesterday evening as our brother expounded that glorious passage to us. That when the Spirit comes, as it were, the Spirit of the Messianic age, among the many things he does, as he did proleptically and incipiently in the Old Testament age, he always seems to come to provide a bulwark for the people of God. Isn't that one of the reasons that those extraordinary outbursts of divine power in the Old Testament always seem to take place at times when the kingdom of God is in danger of complete eradication. And God sends his Spirit and mighty things are done to defend as well as to advance the kingdom of Jesus Christ. And in a sense, you see that throughout the Gospels. This is why there is so much demon possession in the Gospels. Not because this is characteristic of every age in the history of God's purposes, but it was inevitably characteristic of the age in which the Messiah came, when all hell was let loose. It doesn't take a legion of demons to keep a man from Jesus. It takes only one demon to keep a man from Jesus. But it takes more than a legion of demons to keep Jesus from going to the cross. And so the Holy Spirit comes in mighty power in those days, partly to defend the church of Jesus Christ against the possibility of total annihilation. I'm building my church, says Jesus, and the gates of hell are attacking it. But they won't be able to prevail. And what is true of the church in general is true of the individual believer in particular. He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. And so the Spirit is sent as Jesus' defense counsel to defend the cause of Jesus in the heart of the weakest believer.
27 · Ferguson addresses pastors directly with pastoral encouragement: the same Spirit who defended Jesus against legions of demons now dwells in the weakest believer, providing immense comfort when counseling those who are floundering spiritually
Isn't that, my beloved friends, isn't that unspeakably precious to you as a pastor as you counsel those whose lives have become fragmented, whose faith is who seem to be floundering upon the rocks, that the poorest, weakest, frailest, but true Christian believer has one and the same Holy Spirit in his or her heart who defended Jesus against a legion of demons and is able to prevail and to keep the cause of Jesus, the seed of faith in Jesus, secure and real.
28 · Ferguson contrasts modern legal practice with ancient practice: in Jesus' time, you didn't hire a stranger but called on your best friend as advocate—someone who knew you intimately
But to me, the most marvelous thing really about this title that is given to the Holy Spirit, Parakletos, is that unlike in our own society, when you need defense counsel, you go to the local law office. And read down the 3 names and wonder which one of them will be your counsel. And you know that unless you can get legal aid, which I suppose most of us in trouble would be able to get, you know that you are in for dealing with somebody who is highly educated and sophisticated and whose prices will knock your socks off. But the law was not thus organized in Jesus' time. When you were in trouble with the law, when the case was pending, you didn't go to the local firm of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with your bag of shekels. Who did you go to? You went to your best friend. You went to somebody who had been there. You went to someone who knew you and who was able to stand up in the court of law and say, I know him and I testify the truth about him. And you know, this is what Jesus is saying. I'm absolutely persuaded this is what Jesus is saying. He is saying The Counsel I am going to send to you, may I put it like this, is my best friend. The one who knows me most intimately. The one who has been on me since my conception.
29 · Ferguson recounts the Spirit's intimate companionship with Jesus throughout his incarnate life: from conception (sanctifying Mary's womb), through growth (developing wisdom per Isaiah's prophecies), to public ministry
Weren't you touched yesterday evening by that? Exposition of the Spirit's ministry in the life of Jesus. How the one who has dwelt in the Spirit in the bosom of the Father from all eternity, when he comes, he comes as the merest embryo in the womb of the Virgin Mary, defenseless, and takes her flesh But sanctified, says the angel, the Holy Spirit will come upon her. That is why the one who is born will be holy, the Son of God. That is not a holy God but a holy man. And so from his germination in the womb of the Virgin Mary through his conception to his birth, the Holy Spirit is on him and leading him. And as Tom said, developing that wisdom and knowledge that was appropriate to the stages of his growth, that were all signs, you remember, as the Isaianic prophecies indicate, all signs of the presence of the Messianic Spirit, the Spirit of wisdom and power and sound judgment and And then as He enters into His public ministry, why is He given the Spirit? He is given the Spirit not because He needs the Spirit in terms of His fellowship with God as the eternal Son of the eternal Father, but because the salvation He has come to work out for us, He has come to work out not in naked deity, but in a perfect humanity that must grow, that must struggle against the principalities and powers, that will require the fullness of the Holy Spirit if he is to consummate the fullness of his obedience to the Father.
30 · Ferguson dramatizes the ascension and Pentecost: the Spirit was promised primarily to the Son, who ascends and claims the covenant promise (Psalm 2)
And you remember how so often by us, I think, neglected, how Jesus says here, I will ask the Father and he will give you the Holy Spirit. And how the Apostle Peter says, what you see and hear poured out is the Holy Spirit who has been promised. Promised to whom? Well, of course, promised to us, but promised primarily to the Son. And as he ascends to the right hand of the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit, In a chariot of glory, he comes to the throne of his Father and he says, as it were, looking down upon these frail and feeble disciples, Father, here am I and the children, the children you have given me. It was necessary for those who are sanctified and him who sanctifies them to be of one. And I have been of one with them. And in this flesh I have borne your judgment against their sin. And by the Spirit's power I have been marked out as the Son of God in power and no longer the Son of God in frailty and weakness. And I come to you, my Father, because you have given me this covenant promise: Ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, my Son. And he comes, he says: Father, it is finished. You promised. How shall I do it, my Son? Give to them the Spirit you gave to me, Father. And in that holy moment of glory, it is as though the the Father— can we put it like this— embraces the Spirit from his Son and pours him out.
31 · Ferguson drives home the identification theme: the Spirit sent at Pentecost is not some abstract Spirit but the very Spirit who was with Jesus through every moment—temptation, Gethsemane, Calvary, resurrection
No more naked Holy Spirit than Jesus was naked God. But the Spirit who has now, as it were, been identified throughout the ministry of Jesus, who has been with him beloved, beloved brothers, the Spirit who has been with him every instant of his life, who has been the great strategist of his ministry, who was there in the awful temptations in the wilderness and in Gethsemane, who was there as we read yesterday evening— what a verse— when Jesus by the Spirit rejoiced. He was there with him on Calvary. And in the tomb and in the glory. Can we grasp that when Jesus says, on that day you will not only know him because he is with you in me, but because he who is with you in me is one and the same as the one whom I will send to be in you.
32 · Ferguson introduces the Spirit as Spirit of truth, interpreting 'aletheia' as not merely propositional but reality itself
Think what Spirit dwells within you. What a Father's smile is thine. What thy Savior died to win you. Child of heaven, shouldst thou repine. But do you see, as such, Jesus says he is not only the indwelling Spirit as the Counselor, he is the indwelling Spirit whose witness is utterly truthful. Verse 17, he says, the Counselor who will be with you forever is the Spirit of truth. And there certainly seems to be a sense in John's Gospel where aletheia means not just propositional truth but reality. And what Jesus means here is that when the Spirit comes, yes, in a sense we are brought into communion with the reality of the incarnate, crucified, risen, ascended, glorified Lord Jesus Christ. But what he means to do in us is to produce truth or reality.