Thinking About Truth
On the evening before His crucifixion, Christ had much to say to His disciples in what has become known as His Upper Room Discourse, recorded in Chapters 14–16 of the Gospel of John. In that discourse, Christ made four distinct references to the Holy Spirit by referring to the Spirit as the Paraclete.
The structure of this Greek term speaks literally of “one called alongside of.” The root meaning of the term conveys ideas such as advising, helping, exhorting, comforting, strengthening, interceding and encouraging. As a noun, the term is simply rendered “Helper” in the New King James Version. The manner of His help depends on each context in which Christ used this designation for the Holy Spirit.
‘Another Helper’
In the first Paraclete passage, Jesus identified the Holy Spirit as “another Helper,” whom He termed “the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees Him nor knows Him” (John 14:16–17).
In the third Paraclete passage, Jesus explained further, “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me” (John 15:26). So, for the second time, Christ referred to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth.
In the fourth Paraclete passage Christ gave His promise to send His followers the Helper, whom He again referred to as the Spirit of truth whose mission would be to glorify Christ by taking His truth and showing it to His followers, thus guiding them into all truth (John 16:13–14).
Any claim to having received some insight or guidance from the Holy Spirit must square with the words of Christ and the written word of God.
Divine truth
To these passages from the Gospel of John, the First Epistle of John adds the summary declaration, “It is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is truth” (5:7).
The Holy Spirit enables Christ’s followers to recall His teachings, as well as to discern those teachings from counterfeits.
Not only does the Spirit of truth enable the recollection of divine truth, He also enables believers of that truth to walk a straight path according to it.
The digest of truth to take away from this session of Theology 101 is that the Spirit of truth always guides us unto Christ, the Person of truth, and does so according to the Bible, the Word of truth.
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