John 16:13-15

“However, when he the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak from himself, but whatever things he will hear that will he speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take of mine and will declare it to you. All things whatever the Father has are mine, that is why I said that he takes of mine and will declare it to you.”

The Spirit when He comes will later guide them into all truth. For that is what He is, the Spirit of Truth. In the same way as Jesus could say, ‘I am the truth' (John 14:6), so also can the Spirit. This special promise in its full significance is unique to the Apostles. All spiritual truth in its entirety will be revealed to them, the truth about God, the truth about Christ, the truth about His ways and purposes. Thus will they be able to lay the foundation for the infant church.

Just as in the Old Testament Moses spoke with God as a man speaks with his friend and wonderful things were revealed to him (Exodus 33:11; Numbers 12:8), even more so will it be for the disciples. The Spirit will take of the deep things of God and make them known. He will speak only what He receives from the Father and the Son. He will make known things to come. He will glorify Jesus, and make His glory known, and will reveal the totality of what belongs to the Godhead.

Jesus stresses here that what the Spirit teaches is what comes from both Father and Son. The truth of God ministered by the Spirit will agree totally with that of the whole Godhead. This does not limit Him to what has been taught in the past, (contrary to some), for what Father and Son reveal is continuing. Indeed He will reveal things to come. Thus is being established the promise of the New Testament. But there is no suggestion that this special enlightenment will pass on beyond the Apostles.

‘He will glorify me.' That is to be the work of the Spirit, to point away from Himself to Another. His ministry is to take of what is of Father and Son and make it known. Activity which concentrates solely on the work of the Spirit should always be viewed with suspicion. When the Spirit is active it is the Father and Son Who are glorified.

'He will glorify Me for He will take of Mine and will declare it to you.' The Spirit will glorify Jesus by taking what pertains to Him and making it known. He will reveal His eternal pre-existence, He will reveal His power as Creator and Sustainer of the Universe, He will make known the inner depth of His teaching, He will manifest the depths of the humiliation through which He will go, He will reveal what He has accomplished on the cross in sacrificial and redemptive power, He will make known the power and glory of His resurrection, and how His resurrection life can be manifested in us, He will reveal Jesus in His exaltation as the Lord of glory, as the One to Whom Heaven and earth will bow, as the One Who is over all, as the One Who will be judge of all, and He will make known through Jesus the fullness of the Godhead in so far as such can be comprehended by human beings on earth.

So while we can apply all these words in John 16:13 to ourselves in a secondary way they cannot apply to us as they did to the Apostles. These are His deathbed words to His chosen men. There have been many great men of God who have received great understanding, but none have received it as the Apostles did. For these other great men have had to have their teachings tested by others, and all without exception have proved in time to have been wrong in one thing or another. But for the Apostles the promise was that they would know ‘all truth'. As He promised them earlier, ‘He will teach you all things and bring back to your memories all things that I said to you.' That could only be said to eyewitnesses.

But that these words can be secondarily applied to us comes out in 1 Corinthians 2:9. There Paul describes the work of the Spirit in illuminating the heart and mind of the believer and revealing to him the deep things of God. Thus we can apply them in a secondary way.

It is certainly of significance that in these verses Jesus has spoken of the expectations of His people. The manifestation of sin, righteousness, judgment, the revelation of the glory of Christ, the ‘coming things', were all expected at ‘the end'. Here Jesus is describing it as coming at once. Like much in John, what is to come in the end of time is already to be experienced by His people. To him these are ‘the end times' (compare the same thought in Acts 2:17; 1 Corinthians 10:11; 1Pe 1:20; 1 Peter 4:7; Hebrews 1:1; Hebrews 9:26).

‘All things whatever the Father has are mine, that is why I said that He takes of mine and will declare it to you.' Here Jesus was declaring that everything that was of the Father was (and is) His, to such an extent that to have what belongs to Jesus revealed is to have the fullness of God revealed. Thus the Holy Spirit by glorifying Jesus will be revealing the fullness of God. There is no limit placed on the words. The totality of what was the Father's, belongs to Jesus. The fullness of the being of the Father was revealed in His being. There was nothing that was of the Father that was not also of Jesus. The Father had no attribute that Jesus did not have. He enjoys the fullness of all that the Godhead is. So much so that when He spoke of the Spirit revealing the glory of God in its fullness He only had to refer to Himself, for that included the revealing of all the glory that was the Father's. This went far beyond a claim to Messiahship. It was a claim to portray in Himself the totality of God. It was a claim that all that the Father was, He was. In other words, He was saying, think of all the attributes that were known of God in the Old Testament, and these were His attributes too.

The remarkable fulfilment of these verses in the early church must not be overlooked. Fourteen men with powerful minds went out without a New Testament, relying only on the Old, and yet remained faithful to what we now know as Biblical truth, and continued to agree together (despite failed attempts to prove the opposite), to such an extent that Biblical truth survived all that followed. We have a partial revelation concerning this fact in the writings of differing Apostolic men in the New Testament. But it needs to be recognised that all the Apostles were involved in founding churches and yet remained true to their common heritage. This was a miracle in itself.