What Is the Holy Spirit to You? Another Comforter in John 14

It is the night before the cross. In John 14, the Lord Jesus is sitting with His disciples, and He has just told them He is going away. They have walked beside Him for three years. Now He is leaving.

And right there, in the middle of their fear, He makes them a promise. He will not leave them alone. He will send them another Comforter: the Holy Spirit.

“If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.” (John 14:15-18)

Not long ago I was challenged by a book written in 1939. The author asked a question I have not been able to shake.

What is the Holy Spirit to you?

Most of us know the right answer. He is the third person of the Trinity. That is absolute truth. But it does not answer the question. You can say every true thing about Him and still not know Him.

“Another Comforter” means Jesus was the first

There is a word for the study of the Holy Spirit: pneumatology. It is one of those five-hundred-dollar words. As far as I know, it is rarely preached in churches and mostly left for the Bible institutes. I think that is a loss, and I have been working through the Word of God on this for my own heart.

Notice the word another in John 14:16. Christ was the first Comforter. He was present with them in the flesh. But He told them plainly that the second Comforter could not come until He left:

“Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.” (John 16:7)

Christ would ascend. The Holy Spirit would come and stay. He would be the One who teaches and reminds:

“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” (John 14:26) “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:” (John 15:26)

If you are a true believer, this is the person of the Godhead who lives in your heart. And sadly, He is the most neglected one. Most Bible believers rarely acknowledge His presence in their lives at all.

He is not an it

Let me say this at the outset. Looking at the Holy Spirit is not the same thing as promoting Pentecostalism. They have a wrong view of who God the Holy Spirit is.

The Holy Spirit is not an it. He is a person. He is co-equal with the Father and the Son, and like them, He is very God. I will deal with His personhood in the next message. For now, hold on to this. The One who lives in you is not a force or a feeling. He is God, and He has put His seal on you:

“And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” (Ephesians 4:30)

I believe that with the Lord’s help, you can come to know Him as a friend and not just a doctrine. He can be that friend Solomon wrote about:

“A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” (Proverbs 18:24)

The Holy Spirit was there in the beginning

Start with who He is. He is God, and that means He is Creator alongside the Father and the Son.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:1-2)

The word for God there is Elohim, a plural form, meaning the self-existing One. And all three persons are at work in creation. The Father gives the command. The command is the Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the living Word. And the Holy Spirit moves upon the face of the waters and carries it out. He brings life, order, and form out of darkness.

You may say that is hard to wrap your mind around. I agree with you. But that is how it is.

My wife tells me I teach and preach. I tell her that some nights I preach-teach. Somebody once told me a midweek service is “just a Bible study.” I thought, God never told me to hold a Bible study. He told me this:

“Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.” (2 Timothy 4:2)

You can teach while you preach. So look at what Job said about the heavens:

“By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent.” (Job 26:13)

The heavens were made by the Spirit of God. The Father gave the command. And of Christ it is written:

“And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” (Colossians 1:17)

There are three persons, and yet there is one God, working together in creation.

He breathed life into you

The same is true of the creation of man.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” (Genesis 1:26-27)

Let us. God does not speak to Himself in the plural by accident. That is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in divine counsel, one Godhead working together to make man in His image.

Then look closer:

“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7)

LORD is Jehovah. God is Elohim, the plural form again. And that breath is the spirit of life. It was the Holy Spirit who breathed life into man, and man became a living soul, a perfect spirit without sin. Job knew it:

“The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.” (Job 33:4)

This is serious. If you are saved, that same Spirit lives in you. He watches. He sees everything going on in your life. He knows what you think before you think it. He knows you better than you know yourself.

The first conviction of sin

He is also the One who convicts of sin. Look at the moment after Adam and Eve sinned:

“And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.” (Genesis 3:7-8)

They had never known shame before. So where did that sudden guilt come from?

It came from the Holy Spirit. He had given them the breath of life. Now they were dead spiritually, and the sweet fellowship they had known turned into immediate conviction. They brought the guilt and shame on themselves by their sin. The conviction came from Him.

Then they hear the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden. I believe that is a pre-incarnate appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ, what theologians call a Christophany. The Word of God came reaching out to fallen man. But the conviction came first, and it came from the Spirit.

This is the same work Jesus described in the upper room:

“And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on me; Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.” (John 16:8-11)

The prince of this world is Satan. And notice that the One who reproves the world is the same One called the Comforter. When Adam fell, fellowship was severed. The Holy Spirit went from communion with man to being man’s reprover, man’s convictor, and the restrainer of evil.

Even after the fall, the Godhead speaks in counsel:

“And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:” (Genesis 3:22)

One of us. There is one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Stop and think about that. All three persons of the Godhead made man for companionship and for worship. And this same God knew full well what it would cost to create man. He knew what man would do to God, and He knew what God would then do for man. He made you anyway.

God lives in you, and you take Him for granted

Go back to John 14:17: “he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.” Christ was with them. The Spirit would be in them. And yet it is one God, omnipresent God.

If you have been born again, God Almighty lives in your heart and soul, sealed unto the day of redemption.

And we take Him for granted. All of us do, at different times and in different places. Nobody is taken for granted more than God is.

“My spirit shall not always strive with man”

Ever since man sinned, there has been a striving between the Spirit of God and the sinful flesh of man. Genesis 6 tells us that the sons of God, whom I take to be fallen angels, took wives of the daughters of men. Then God spoke:

“And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.” (Genesis 6:3)

That is interesting, isn’t it? Think about what you wrestle with most after you are saved. It is not the devil himself. It is your own flesh.

To strive here is to plead. God in His righteousness wants man to do right. Man keeps living in the flesh. It is confrontation after confrontation. So God gave that generation a hundred and twenty years of space to repent.

This is the first time in the Word of God that man is given a time frame. Even God has a time limit. They did not know the number, but they had a preacher:

“And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;” (2 Peter 2:5)

Noah preached, and they would not listen. Only Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. He was saved along with his wife, his three sons, and their wives. That was eight souls out of the billions on the earth.

When the hundred and twenty years ran out, God told Noah to go into the ark, and God shut him in. The Holy Spirit pulled back. The full wrath of God fell in a flood unlike anything this world has ever seen.

The Holy Spirit is holding back the dark

He still restrains evil today. Paul wrote about the man of sin:

“Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;” (2 Thessalonians 2:3)

That is the Antichrist. And then Paul tells us what is holding him back:

“For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:” (2 Thessalonians 2:7-8)

Letteth is an old word for restraining. I believe the One holding back total evil from taking over this world right now is the Holy Spirit. Notice Wicked has a capital W. That is the Antichrist, waiting for the restraint to be taken away.

People say this world cannot get any worse. This world has no idea what is coming when God removes that restraint.

For those who are saved, the Spirit’s conviction looks different. It is the quiet conviction that you are not doing what you know you need to be doing. You know that voice. The question is whether you are listening to it.

The Spirit was making new hearts long before Bethlehem

In the Old Testament, people were saved the same way they are saved now, by repentance and faith. And the work of the Spirit was there. Moses told Israel:

“Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.” (Deuteronomy 10:16)

But only God can do that cutting:

“And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.” (Deuteronomy 30:6) “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: That thou mayest love the LORD thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

Cleave means to be glued to Him. When Moses says “the LORD thy God,” that includes God the Holy Spirit. A circumcised heart is the regenerating work of the Spirit in the heart of the repentant believer.

You must be born of the Spirit

The Lord Jesus tied the Old Testament and the New together in one conversation, with a Pharisee named Nicodemus who came to Him by night:

“Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:3-8)

Water is the natural birth. The Spirit is the Holy Spirit. In the garden, the Spirit of God breathed the breath of life into man, and man became a living soul. In the new birth, the same Spirit does His regenerating work. A man is born of the flesh naturally, then born of the Spirit, and it cannot be undone. Once you have been born again, you cannot lose it.

Then Nicodemus asks his question, and the Lord’s answer reaches all the way back into the Old Testament:

“Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?” (John 3:9-10)

A teacher of Israel should have known. The Spirit’s work of making men new was not a new idea. It had been in Nicodemus’s Bible all along.

So what is the Holy Spirit to you?

Go back to that upper room. Jesus was leaving, and He did not leave His people comfortless. He sent another Comforter. That Comforter moved upon the waters at creation and breathed life into Adam. He convicted the first sinner, pleaded with Noah’s generation, and holds back the darkness today. If you are saved, He lives inside you right now.

He is the most neglected person in the Godhead, and He is the closest one to you.

You know He is the third person of the Trinity. That was never the question.

What is He to you?

Do you know Him?

Or have you been ignoring Him?

Adapted from a message preached from John 14:15-26.