John 14:15-17

“ If you love me, keep my commandments. 16. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another support, that he may abide with you eternally, 17. the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it sees him not neither knows him;but you know him, because he abides with you; and he shall be in you. ”

Here is the supreme gift, because it is the source of all the rest, through the prayers which it inspires in the believer. And first, John 14:15, the moral condition necessary to the end that this gift should be granted to man. A preparation is needed: “Love me! Fulfil my will! ” John 14:17 will justify this moral condition. The commandments of which Jesus speaks are the charges which He has given them while He has been with them, and particularly the instructions which He has given them on this last evening (John 13:14-15; John 13:34, John 14:1). The T. R., with almost all the Mjj., the Itala and the Peschito, reads the imperative τηρήσατε, keep, while B L read τηρήσετε, you will keep. The first is a direct summons to obedience in the name of the love which they have for Him. The second contains a reflection on the necessary relation between the two things. It seems to me that there is no reason to hesitate between these two readings. The second probably arises from the following future: and I will pray.

To the moral condition Jesus adds the objective condition, or the efficient cause of the divine gift, His own intercession. This intercession will have for its object the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The words of John 16:26, where it is said: “ I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you,” refers to the time which follows after this gift.

The term παράκλητος, literally, called towards, was taken by Origen and Chrysostom in the active sense: comforter παρακλήτωρ (Job 16:2 in the LXX). It was under the influence of the Vulgate that this false sense passed into our French versions. It is acknowledged at the present day that the word παράκλητος, of the passive form, must have a passive sense: he who is called as a sustaining help, as a support; it is precisely the meaning of the Latin term advocatus, and of our word advocate: the defender of the accused before the tribunal. Perhaps the term used by Jesus was Goel, champion, defender. The Greek term has this meaning also in profane Greek, as in Demosthenes, Diogenes Laertius, Philo. John himself gives it this meaning in his first Epistle John 2:1, “ We have a paraclete (advocate) with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. ” The meaning teacher (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Ernesti, Hofmann, Luthardt) has no foundation philologically, and the expression the Spirit of truth (John 14:17) is not sufficient to justify it.

What Jesus will ask of the Father on their behalf is, therefore, another supporter, ever within their reach, ever ready to come to their aid, at the first call, in their conflict with the world. From this fundamental signification the following applications easily proceed: support in moments of weakness; counsellor in the difficulties of life; consoler in suffering. Thereby He will do for them what the beloved Master, who was now leaving them, had done during these last years. By saying another, Jesus implicitly gives Himself the title of Paraclete; it is an error, therefore, to find here a difference of idea from that in the first Epistle (John 2:1). This gift which the Father will make to them, will come not only at the request of Jesus, but, as He says in John 15:26, through His mediation: “ The Paraclete whom I will send to you from my Father. ” As it is He who asks for Him on our part, so also it is He who sends on God's part. And He will not come, soon to withdraw Himself, as Jesus does; but His dwelling in them will be eternal. Meyer understands εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα : “ even to the coming age. ” But the word αἰών, in the N. T. as in the classics (ἐξ αἰῶνος, δἰ αἰῶνος, εἰς αἰῶνα) denotes an indefinite duration, and, with the article, eternity.

The Holy Spirit, a divine being, sent from the Father, to take the place of a mere man supposing that Jesus were only this is this conceivable?

The appositional words, the Spirit of truth (John 14:17), serve to explain the term Paraclete, which was still obscure to the disciples. This expression can neither signify who is the truth it is Jesus who is the truth, nor who possesses the truth, this would be useless. The teaching of the Spirit is here contrasted with that of the word, as in John 16:25. The teaching by means of the word can never give anything more than a confused idea of divine things; however skilfully this means may be used, it can only produce in the soul of the hearer an image of the truth; so Jesus compares it to a parable (John 16:25). The teaching of the Spirit, on the contrary, causes the divine truth to enter into the soul; it gives to it a full reality within us by making us have experience of it; it alone makes the word a truth for us.

But, as Jesus has already intimated in John 14:15, in order to be fitted to receive this divine teacher, a moral preparation is necessary. The soul in which He comes to dwell must be already withdrawn from the profane sphere. This is the reason why Jesus says: Keep my instructions; and the reason why He here adds: whom the world cannot receive. It was not owing to any arbitrary action that, on the morning of the day of Pentecost, the Spirit descended on one hundred and twenty persons only, and not on all the inhabitants of Jerusalem: the former only had undergone the indispensable preparation. Jesus explains wherein this preparation which is wanting in the world consists: it is necessary to have seen and known the Spirit, in order to receive Him. The Spirit identifies Himself too intimately with our personal life to allow the possibility of His being imposed upon us; that He may come to us, He must be desired and called, and for this end we must already have, in some manner, formed acquaintance with Him. But how can this be, if one has not yet received him?

The example of the disciples teaches us. During the years which they had passed in the society of Jesus, His word, His acts, constant emanations of the Spirit, had furnished them the means of beholding this divine agent in His most perfect manifestation and of knowing what was most holy and exalted in Him, and their hearts had rendered homage to the perfection of this inspiration from above which constantly animated their Master. This had not been done by the world, the Jews, who, on hearing Jesus speak, said: “He has a demon,” and who, on seeing His miracles, ascribed them to Beelzebub. They thus remained strangers to the action of the Spirit, they even became hostile to it; this is the reason why they were not in a condition to receive Him. It is impossible for me to understand what meaning Weiss can give to the two verbs: to see and to know, outside of this explanation and without falling into the petitio principii: in order to receive the Spirit, it is necessary to see Him; and in order to see Him, it is necessary to have Him. If a reply is made by saying that these two present tenses: to see and to know, are presents of anticipation, which refer to the time when the disciples will have received the Spirit, the fact is forgotten that the question here is of the moral conditions for receiving Him.

The preparatory action of the Spirit on the disciples is expressed by the words: He dwells with you; and the more intimate relation which He will form with them from the day of Pentecost by the words: “He shall be in you. ” We must not, therefore, read either, in the first clause, μενεῖ (in the future), shall dwell, with the Vulgate, nor, in the second, ἐστί, is, with the Vatican and Cambridge MSS. The whole meaning of the sentence lies precisely in the antithesis between the present dwells (comp. μένων, John 14:25) and the future shall be. This contrast of time is completed by that of the two limiting words: with you (comp. παῤ ὑμῖν of John 14:25) and in you.

To make the last clause: And he shall be in you, depend on the ὅτι, because, which precedes, leads to no reasonable meaning: You know Him now because He will be in you! This last phrase expresses, on the contrary, a new fact, an advance of the highest importance: “ And thus, in virtue of the knowledge which you have gained of Him by beholding Him in my person, He will be able to come into you. ” This distinction between the preparatory action of the Spirit on man (by means of His historical manifestations in Christ, and then in the Church) and His real dwelling in the individual, is, as it were, at the present day effaced in the consciousness of Christianity, and the confounding of two such different positions involves incalculable consequences. “Until now Jesus, living with them, had been their support; now they will have the support in their own hearts” (Gess); and this support will be the Holy Spirit, that is to say again, Jesus Himself in another form; it is this last idea so delightful to the hearts of the disciples which the following words, John 14:18-23, develop.