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?