Our Teacher of Teachers

 

 

“These things I have spoken to you, while abiding with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” John 14:25 – 26. (See also 14:16 – 17; 15:26; 16:5 – 15).

 

Christianity, a relationship with Jesus Christ, is personal but it is not exclusively private. Yes, we have communion with the Trinity deep within our souls, but it is also a shared communion beyond the veil (Heb. 10:19 – 25). The Holy Spirit does not so much teach us as individuals, but rather as the Body of Christ, rather as the People of God. What the Holy Spirit reveals to us as individuals, He gives to be shared with the Body and to be completed within the Body.

 

What I mean by completed within the Body is that we need one another to fully understand and see what the Spirit teaches, just as we need the entire Bible to see and understand any part of the Bible.

 

And so while it is true that we “have an anointing from the Holy One, and…know all” (1 John 2:20) and that “you have no need for anyone to teach you” because of the anointing of the Holy Spirit (1 John 2:27); let us remember that these words are written to a People in Christ – the Body of Christ does not need mankind to teach it because it has the Holy Spirit – but within the Body of Christ we need one another for teaching and learning and growing  - gifts are given to the Body of Christ, for the Body of Christ; that we all might be built up in Christ and that Jesus Christ might be glorified. (See Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4).

 

As God’s People in Christ, we have the assurance that the Holy Spirit will teach “us” – a People. Then we have “and bring to remembrance all that I said to you.” Now while Jesus is speaking directly to the apostles in the Upper Room, I want to suggest that this is a promise to His Body down through the ages, just as all His promises in the Upper Room are for His Body down through the ages.

 

What does this mean? While it may be straightforward to see what it means to the apostles in the Upper Room, or what it means for other disciples who knew the incarnate Christ, what does it mean for succeeding generations?

 

Let me suggest two meanings. One is that we can trust the Holy Spirit to preserve Jesus’ Word within us as we read, hear, and obey His Word and mediate upon it. We can trust the Holy Spirit as individuals and we can trust the Holy Spirit as God’s People.

 

The second meaning is that the Holy Spirit will preserve the Word of God through the ages and that He will ever and always bring it to God’s People – no matter the fierceness of opposition, no matter the attempts to suppress Christ’s Word. Here we have the Holy Spirit working in and through “the communion of saints”.

 

The Word of Christ, the Scriptures, are miraculous on many levels – and while they are transmitted through human vessels, they are spirit and truth, they are Divine – and God will preserve what He has authored. The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church of Jesus Christ.

 

One of the things this means is that I do not want to ever preach or teach anything new or novel. I do not want to say or write anything that hasn’t been said or written before in the Kingdom of God, in the Body of Jesus Christ. To be sure I do want to communicate, by God’s grace, in ways that can be understood. I do want to speak, in Christ, within the times and seasons in which I live – but this, by the nature of the Word of God, will be counter-cultural, it will be against the grain of this world. God’s Word is a call to repent and follow Jesus, to turn from the world, the flesh, and the devil.

 

The Teacher of teachers for the Body of Christ must always be the Holy Spirit – He will make the Word of our Good Shepherd alive to our hearts and minds, He will tune our ears to hear Jesus, He will plant the Word of Jesus deep in our souls and cause it to grow and bear fruit.

 

We can trust the Holy Spirit.

 

Do we?

What Then Has Happened? (5)

 

“…and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” (John 14:23b)

 

In 14:17 we have the promise of the Holy Spirit living within us. Here, in 14:23, we have the promise of the Father and Son living within us. In John 15 Jesus gives us the marvelous image of the Vine and the branches, with the branches drawing their life from the Vine. Throughout the Upper Room we are given the promise, again and again, of the Trinity living within us and of us living within the Trinity.

 

“In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” (14:20).

 

This, my friends, is Christianity – God living within His People and His People living within Him. In our communion with the Trinity, loving obedience, treasuring and obeying the commandments of Jesus Christ, is our Way of life in Him. God’s enabling grace, and His very Spirit, live and breathe within us – and obedience produces obedience produces obedience – for our delight is to please the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, our joy is to serve God and to serve one another. If we would serve God we must serve one another, and if we will serve one another we will find ourselves serving God.

 

This is the principle we find in 1 John 4:20 - 21, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.”

 

Just as Jesus lived by the life of the Father, so we learn to live by the life of Jesus, for if Jesus did nothing out of Himself, surely we also must learn to do nothing out of ourselves – but rather to live by His life (John 14:10; 15:1 – 5; Gal. 2:20).

 

One of the distinctions between the Old and New Covenants is that under the former, obedience is impossible, while under the latter, obedience is the norm. Under the Law, we are powerless to keep the commandments of God, under grace we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to keep His commandments as our natural – supernatural Way of Life in Jesus Christ. How have we failed to see the glory of the New Covenant? Why do we insist on thinking that we are still in slavery? Why do we deny the glorious reconciliation that our Father has accomplished in Jesus Christ?

 

As messed-up as the Corinthians were, Paul nevertheless addresses them as “saints” who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus; affirming the grace given to them in Christ Jesus, testifying that they have been enriched in Jesus and that they are not lacking in any gift. Paul affirms that Christ “will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor. 1:1 – 9).

 

Why can’t we see our glorious present-day inheritance in Jesus Christ? Why do we insist on wearing grave clothes (John 11:44)?

 

O dear ones, the creation is awaiting and yearning for the manifestation of the sons and daughters of God, it yearns to be set free from the bondage of corruption into “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:18 – 25; 2 Cor. 3:17 – 18).

 

When will we finally say, “Enough of Egypt, enough of Babylon, enough of living like bottom-feeders; let us live in that day in which we know that Jesus Christ is in His Father, and that He is in us, and that we are in Him”?