I need not repeat what I have said in former sermons as to the wide
sweep of that word 'the Comforter,' beyond just reminding you that it
means literally one who is called to the side of another, primarily for
the purpose of being his representative in some legal process; and,
more widely, for any purpose of help, encouragement, and strength. That
being so, 'Comforter,' in its modern sense of _Consoler_, is far too
narrow for the full force of the word, which means much rather
'Comforter,' in its ancient and etymological sense of one who, in
company with another, makes Him strong and brave.
But the point to which I desire to turn attention now is this, that
this comforting and strengthening office of the divine Spirit is
brought into immediate connection here with the conception of Him as a
Teacher. That is to say, the best strength that God, by His Spirit, can
give us is by our firm grasp and growing clearness of understanding of
the truths which are wrapped up in Jesus Christ. All power for
endurance, for service, is there, and when the Spirit of God teaches a
man what God reveals in Christ, He therein and thereby most fully
discharges His office of Strengthener.
Then note still further the other designation of this divine Teacher
which is here given: 'The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost.' We might
have expected, as indeed we find in another context in this great final
discourse, the 'Spirit of _Truth_' as appropriate in connection with
the office of teaching. But is there not a profound lesson for us here
in this, that, side by side with the thought of illumination, there
lies the thought of purity built upon consecration, which is the
Scripture definition of holiness? That suggests that there is an
indissoluble connection between the real knowledge of God's truth and
practical holiness of life. That connection is of a double sort. There
is no holiness without such knowledge, and there is no such knowledge
without holiness.
There is no real knowledge of Christ and His truth without purity of
heart. The man who has no music in his soul can never be brought to
understand the deep harmonies of the great masters and magicians of
sound. The man who has no eye for beauty can never be brought to bow
his spirit before some of those embodiments of loveliness and sublimity
which the painter's brush has cast upon the canvas. And the man who has
no longings after purity, nor has attained to any degree of moral
conformity with the divine image, is not in possession of the sense
which is needed in order that he should understand the 'deep things of
God.'
The scholars in this school have to wash their hands before they go to
school, and come there with clean hands and clean hearts. Foulness and
the love of it are bars to all understanding of God's truth. And, on
the other hand, the truest inducements, motives, and powers for purity
are found in that great word which is all 'according to godliness,' and
is meant much rather to make us good than to make us wise.
So, in this designation of the teaching Spirit as holy, there lie
lessons for two classes of people. All fanatical professions of
possessing divine illumination, which are not warranted and sealed by
purity of life, are lies or self-delusion. And, on the other hand,
coldblooded intellectualism will never force the locks of the palace of
divine truth, but they that come there must have clean hands and a pure
heart; and only those who have the love and the longing for goodness
will be wise scholars in Christ's school. Your theology is nothing
unless its distinct outcome is morality, and you must be prepared to
accept the painful, the punitive, the purifying influences of that
divine Spirit on your moral natures if you want to have His
enlightening influences shining on the 'truth as it is in Jesus.' 'If
any man wills to do His will, he,' and only he, 'shall know of the
doctrine.' Knowledge and holiness are as inseparable in divine things
as light and heat.
And still further note that this great Teacher is 'sent by God' in
Christ's name. That pregnant phrase, 'In My name,' cannot be
represented by any one form of expression into which we may translate
it, but covers a larger space. God in Christ's name sends the Spirit.
That is to say, in some deep sense God acts as Christ's representative;
just as Christ comes in the Father's name and acts as His
representative. And, again, God sends in Christ's name; that is, the
historical manifestation of Christ is the basis on which the sending of
the Spirit is possible and rests. The revelation had to be complete
before He who came to unfold the meaning of the revelation had material
to work upon. The Spirit, which is sent in Christ's name, has, for the
basis of His mission, and the means by which He acts, the recorded
facts of Christ's life and death, these and none other.
And then note finally about this matter, the strong and unmistakable
declaration here, that that divine Spirit is a person: 'He shall teach
you all things.' They tell us that the doctrine of the Trinity is not
in the New Testament. The word is not, but the thing is. In this verse
we have the Father, the Son, and the Spirit brought into such close and
indissoluble union as is only vindicated from the charge of blasphemy
by the belief in the divinity of each. Just as the Apostolic
benediction, 'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God
the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit' necessarily involves
the divinity of all who are thus invoked, so we stand here in the
presence of a truth which pierces into the deeps of Deity. That divine
Spirit is more than an influence. 'He shall teach,' and He can be
grieved by evil and sin. I do not enlarge upon these thoughts. My
purpose is mainly to bring them out clearly before you.
II. I pass in the second place to the consideration of the Lesson which
this promised Teacher gives.
Mark the words, 'He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to
your remembrance, whatsoever _I_ have said unto you.' Now as we have
seen in the exposition of the words 'in My name,' the whole
subject-matter of the divine Spirit's teaching is the life and work and
death and person of Jesus Christ. 'He shall teach you all things' is
wider than 'He shall bring all things which I have said to you to your
remembrance.' But whilst that is so, the clear implication of the words
before us is that Christ is the lesson book, of which the divine Spirit
is the Teacher. His weapon, to take another metaphor, with which He
plies men's hearts and minds and wills, convincing the world of sin and
of righteousness and of judgment, and leading those who are convinced
into deeper knowledge and larger wisdom, is the recorded facts
concerning the life and manifestation of Jesus Christ. The significance
of this lesson book, the history of our Lord, cannot be unfolded all at
once. There is something altogether unique in the incorruption and
germinant power of all His deeds and of all His words. This Carpenter
of Nazareth has reached the heights which the greatest thinkers and
poets of the past have never reached, or only in little snatches and
fragments of their words. _His_ words open out, generation after
generation, into undreamed-of wisdom, and there are found to be hived
in them stores of sweetness that were never suspected until the
occasion came that drew them forth. The world and the Church received
Christ, as it were, in the dark; and, as with some man receiving a
precious gift as the morning was dawning, each fresh moment revealed,
as the light grew, new beauties and new preciousness in the thing
possessed. So Christ, in His infinite significance, fresh and new for
all generations, was given at first, and ever since the Church and the
world have been learning the meaning of the gift which they received.
Christ's words are inexhaustible, and the Spirit's teaching is to
unveil more and more of the infinite significance that lies in the
apparently least significant of them.
Now, then, note that if this be our Lord's meaning here, Jesus Christ
plainly anticipated that, after His departure from earth, there should
be a development of Christian doctrine. We are often taunted with the
fact, which is exaggerated for the purpose of controversy, that a clear
and full statement of the central truths which orthodox Christianity
holds, is found rather in the Apostolic epistles than in the Master's
words, and the shallow axiom is often quoted with great approbation:
'Jesus Christ is our Master, and not Paul.' I do not grant that the
germs and the central truths of the Gospel are not to be found in
Christ's words, but I admit that the full, articulate statement of them
is to be found rather in the servant's letters, and I say that that is
exactly what Jesus Christ told us to expect, that after He was gone,
words that had been all obscure, and thoughts that had been only
fragmentarily intelligible, would come to be seen clearly, and would be
discerned for what they were. The earlier disciples had only a very
partial grasp of Christ's nature. They knew next to nothing of the
great doctrine of sacrifice; they knew nothing about His resurrection;
they did not in the least understand that He was going back to heaven;
they had but glimmering conceptions of the spirituality or universality
of His Kingdom. Whilst they were listening to Him at that table they
did not believe in the atonement; but they dimly believed in the
divinity of Jesus Christ; they did not believe in His resurrection;
they did not believe in His ascension; they did not believe that He was
founding a spiritual kingdom, a kingdom was to rule over all the world
till the end of time. None of these truths were in their mind. They had
all been in germ in His words. And after He was gone, there came over
them a breath of the teaching Spirit, and the unintelligible flashed up
into significance. The history of the Church is the proof of the truth
of this promise, and if anybody says to me, 'Where is the fulfilment of
the promise of a Spirit that will bring all things to your
remembrance?' I say—here in this Book! These four Gospels, these
Apostolic Epistles, show that the word which our Lord here speaks has
been gloriously fulfilled. Christ anticipated a development of
doctrine, and it casts no slur or suspicion on the truthfulness of the
apostolic representation of the Christian truths, that they are only
sparsely and fragmentarily to be found in the records of Christ's life,
Then there is another practical conclusion from the words before us, on
which I touch for a moment, and that is, that if Jesus Christ and the
deep understanding of Him be the true lesson of the divine, teaching
Spirit, then real progress consists, not in getting beyond Christ, but
in getting more fully into Him. We hear a great deal in these days
about advanced thought and progressive Christianity. I hope I believe
in the continuous advance of Christian thought as joyfully as any man,
but my notion of it—and I humbly venture to say Christ's notion of
it—is to get more and more into His heart, and to find within Him, and
not away from Him, 'all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.' We
leave all other great men behind. All other teachers' words become
feeble by age, as their persons become ghostly, wrapped in thickening
folds of oblivion; but the progress of the Church consists in absorbing
more and more of Christ, in understanding Him better, and becoming more
and more moulded by His influence. The Spirit's teaching brings out the
ever fresh significance of the ancient and perpetual revelation of God
in Jesus Christ.