God Speaks to Us through His Spirit

God speaks to us through his Holy Spirit, who must teach us--by building within us--everything we truly know of God. God also speaks to the world through us, by his Spirit who is building his image within us.

As we saw in the last post, Jesus told us that God is speaking to us, each of us, individually. How? He speaks to us through his Spirit:

 “These things I have spoken to you while remaining with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and remind you of all that I said to you. Peace I leave you, My peace I give you; not as the world gives, do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, nor fearful.

John 14:25-27 (NASB)

According to this passage, God communicates with us in three ways. When the Holy Spirit, the Helper, the one who “comes up alongside” us to strengthen us comes, he will–and now does–teach us all things. This really does imply that anything we securely know about God or from God, the Holy Spirit personally taught us. Even when a human teacher, directed by the Holy Spirit, was involved in the process, I cannot really know anything from God until the Holy Spirit brings it personally home to me and teaches it to me. This is true even of things written in Scripture. I cannot truly understand what God is saying in the Scriptures by just reading or hearing them (though this is he first step). I also cannot really understand what the Scriptures are saying just because human authorities tell me what they mean and what I must do (which, unfortunately, is usually the emphasis) as a result. I will not understand the Scriptures until the Holy Spirit teaches them to me. And Jesus here tells us that, if we are listening, the Holy Spirit will, in his own time, teach us all things–nothing we need will be left out of his message.

But, even more importantly, no human can teach me how to know God personally, as a friend. God does that directly, through his Holy Spirit. God forms his own friendships.

God also speaks with us by flowing through his Spirit to bring to our memory Jesus’ words–both those that are in the Bible which we have studied and those he has taught us directly in the past. If I am listening to him, I do not need to worry about forgetting what he has told me. He will remind me of what I need, when I need it.

God also speaks within us by giving us his peace. In situations in which others would be distraught, and even in situations the world views as hopeless, the Spirit will give us supernatural peace. And, yes, the world will think us fools to be calm in such settings. But God is talking to us, and is louder than our circumstances and our fears. So when Paul and Silas were in the high security area of the jail in Philippi about midnight one night, with their hands and feet bound in stocks, after having been beaten “many blows” with rods that afternoon, for the crime of working a miraculous healing, what were they doing? Moaning? Complaining about the obvious injustice of their situation? No, they were “praying and singing hymns of praise to God” for all of the other prisoners to hear! (Acts 16:22 ff.). Such foolish peace! And God responded with an earthquake, delivering them from the jail and bringing the whole family of the jailer–the nucleus of the future church in Philippi–into friendship with Jesus as a result.

And when Stephen was stoned, did he wail and protest? No, he “looked intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” He then told the whole angry crowd what he was seeing, prayed the Father would forgive the crowd for their sin, and “fell asleep.” (Acts 7:55-60). And God delivered Stephen, too, by bringing him into his presence with a standing ovation.

I’m sure I will tell Stephen’s story often, as it is so powerful I weep every time I tell it. I’m not like Stephen yet, Lord!

But while Jesus was still present on earth in a normal, limited human body, teaching his first Disciples, they weren’t the strong, spiritual people into whom the Spirit would later make them, either. They were weak, and spiritually hard of hearing. Before the Resurrection and Pentecost, Stephen wasn’t like Stephen yet, either!

Yes, I realize Stephen was not one of the original Disciples, but the same thing was just as true of Peter, James or John.

Jesus recognized this fact explicitly, in another passage telling of the future work of the Holy Spirit:

I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them at the present time. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take from Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; this is why I said that He takes from Mine and will disclose it to you.

John 16:12-16 (NASB)

Jesus did not dump truth on his original Disciples before they were ready to hear and begin living it. And he does not dump truth on his current disciples, either. Recall that, in this context, “truth” is not, in the Western scholastic sense, and objective “body of knowledge,” which Jesus could have dumped on his disciples and left them to intellectually “figure out.” “Truth” is Jesus himself, John 14:6, and the “truth” they could not yet bear was living the life of Jesus himself in this world, the “way to the Father” that passes only through Jesus.

So, when Jesus left their visible presence as a teacher, he sent his Spirit to guide them into “all truth”–everything they could not yet bear. They could not yet bear it precisely because he was living in front of them, in a separate physical body, rather than within them. But he told them that, once he sent the Spirit of truth to them, the Spirit would “guide” them, from within, into “all truth.” Notice that the promise is that the Spirit will “guide” us “into” the truth, not “tell” or “teach” us the truth. This is not a promise that the Spirit will predict the stock market for us. It is a promise that the Spirit will guide us, as we are ready, into being all that Jesus is.

It is also in this sense that the Spirit will disclose to us what is to come. This does mean he may sometimes, when needed, disclose future events, or things that lie ahead of us so that we may take appropriate action–and I have personally experienced this. But that is not the primary purpose or meaning of the promise. Mainly, this promise means that the Spirit will disclose to us the future of our relationship with God. When it is needed, he will let us see the future of the image of Christ that is being built within us. And when that purpose requires a peek into the future of the world around us, that will also be provided.

In “guiding” us into the truth of all that Jesus is, and sometimes disclosing what is to come, the Spirit will “glorify” Jesus. What glorifies God in the present world is that his children become like him. This is what happens when the Spirit takes from what belongs to Jesus and discloses it to us. And he withholds nothing we are ready to receive: “All things that the Father has are Mine; this is why I said that He takes from Mine and will disclose it to you.”

But are we ready?

If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, so that He may be with you forever; the Helper is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him; but you know Him because He remains with you and will be in you.  I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you. After a little while, the world no longer is going to see Me, but you are going to see Me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I in you.

John 14:15-20 (NASB)

Jesus had previously told a crowd of Jews who were “astonished” by his teachings–most of them, apparently, in a negative way, questioning his credentials–that the only way to know whether his teachings came from God was to be willing to live them, to “do” God’s will. John 7:15-17. They were not given the option of first deciding whether Jesus was properly qualified, and then, only if they thought him qualified, deciding whether or not they wanted to do what he was telling them to do. Jesus’ only necessary qualification was that he was speaking God’s words, and those who were unwilling to do them showed that they were incapable of understanding where they came from.

In the passage quoted above, Jesus says something similar about the Holy Spirit, our Helper, the one who comes alongside (and within) us. On the one hand, if we love Jesus, we will “keep” his commandments. In this instance, the word “keep” is the one which means to keep watch over, to maintain intact. Jesus is not asking for a promise of perfect obedience as the “price” of having the Holy Spirit come alongside us. Jesus is instead repeating in different words the same concept as in John 7:17. If we love him, we will maintain his commandments intact. We will not arrogate to ourselves the authority to decide that God did not say some of the things Jesus is commanding us, to decide that we will only pay attention to some of them–the ones that are presently convenient to us. People who reject some of Jesus’ words have rejected his direction altogether, and cannot understand where any of his words come from.

But if we love Jesus, we will accept all of the words he speaks to us. We will keep them intact. We do not have, in ourselves, the power to obey them. But we will accept them all. If we do this, he has promised to send his Spirit alongside us. He will remain with us forever, and will be within us. He will show us Jesus, increasingly living his life in and through us. “Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I in you.” We can know this!

But the world–those who reject Jesus and his words (as a whole)–does not understand the Spirit. It cannot see or know the Spirit, though he is all around us in the world. It also cannot see the Spirit at work in us–it sees where the Spirit leads us, but can make no sense of the pattern it sees. John 3:7-8; 1 Corinthians 2:13-14. We see Jesus at work, in us, in the Church and in the world. He is coming to ever more live his life in us, and we are increasingly aware of this. But the world cannot see him now, in us or in the world, because they have blinded themselves to him.

Indeed, all the rejecting world perceives of the Holy Spirit–other than the seemingly senseless or pattern-less things he guides us to do–is his odor. “For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” 2 Corinthians 2:15-16a (ESV). To the world, those who are living by the Spirit stink. We smell like corpses. And from the limited perspective of the world–which cannot perceive the Spirit or see God’s life in us–the world is absolutely correct. We must die to ourselves for Christ to live in us. The world does not see God, but instead only “smells” this death.

But God has provided a remedy for this stench that accomplishes his purposes. The Spirit within us testifies about Jesus to those around us:

“When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, namely, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, He will testify about Me,  and you are testifying as well, because you have been with Me from the beginning.

John 15:26-27 (NASB)

This passage is not a command to go out “witnessing!” “Witness” is not a verb, it’s a noun. A witness only testifies, truthfully, to what the witness has personally seen and heard. And, in this passage, the ultimate “witness” is the Holy Spirit, testifying about Jesus through us. It is all his work, at his time, and under his direction, working within us. He testifies about Jesus through us first of all by making Jesus visible in us, to those who will see it. To the rest, we still stink like death.

What is involved is a way of life, not a flurry of activity or canned “Christian” sales pitches. But when we “stink” badly enough of death to ourselves in order to live in the Spirit, those out of the wold who will understand the Spirit’s message will come to us. And it is also the Holy Spirit that makes this happen, as we shall see in the next post.

Next (for now): The Mind of Christ, and Rejecting It

The Voice of God (God Speaking to Us) Outline