Digging Deeper: The Comforter Has Come

Jesus begins to tell his disciples after their last meal together about the future work of the Holy Spirit.

He says:

“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth 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.” 

The primary task it would seem of the Holy Spirit is to reveal the person of Jesus to people. Sometimes people confuse the primary task of the Spirit to be to impart gifts of the Spirit upon believers, such as gifts of prophecy, healing, or speaking in tongues. But the first and foremost goal of the Holy Spirit is to reveal Jesus to the world. Those other gifts are the natural overflow of getting to know and love Jesus and to be shaped and reshaped by him… and not everybody experiences that in the exact same way. Not everybody has the same gifts… but we all get Jesus.

Jesus also says:

“All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me.”

Jesus prophecies here about what is going to happen to his followers. We see the disciples get kicked out of the Synagogue in the Book of Acts, and later we even see Paul, a rabbi himself, get kicked out when he comes to see Jesus for who he really is. But this is nothing new. Back in chapter 9, we already saw the blind man whom Jesus healed get kicked out for his testimony about Jesus. Jesus is saying that this kind of treatment shouldn’t come as a shock to his followers.

He also says about the Spirit:

“But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.” 

Now this passage is a little bit confusing. We’ve already seen the Spirit at work in the ministry of Jesus. Luke’s Gospel even specifically refers to the Holy Spirit at work. And even in the Old Testament we see God’s spirit of power coming upon people and filling them as they perform acts of worship. And yet the Spirit was not given until after Jesus returned to the Father.

So why isn’t the Spirit poured out on all people until after Jesus leaves?

Well, it would seem that the outpouring of the Spirit on all humanity was something that was prophesied about in the Old Testament (see Joel, etc.) as something that would be the inauguration of God’s coming Kingdom on Earth. And while we see the beginnings of God’s kingdom in the Old Testament, and especially later in the incarnation of Jesus, Jesus isn’t inaugurated as King over Creation, the Heavens and the Earth, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, until he returns to the Father to receive his crown from the Father. Once he receives God’s crown and is inaugurated as King (that’s what the ascension is all about), that is when the Spirit is free to inhabit the whole of Creation and not just pockets here and there.

It is because the Creator, in Jesus, became the Created. He became a part of this world, and when he was murdered but came back to life, he conquered the curse of this world… he conquered the world. And when he jumps back up into Heaven 40 days later, he receives the Crown over Creation. He becomes the all-powerful ruler over Heaven and Earth by the command of God… because he triumphed over the grave and over sin. Jesus’ word is now Law. And it is by the order of Jesus that the Holy Spirit is now poured out upon the whole of God’ Creation. Because Jesus has now received the full authority of the Father, and he has made a way for us to have access to God through his Holy Spirit.