The Teacher Spirit
A. Maclaren, D. D. John 14:25-26 These things have I spoken to you, being yet present with you.… I. THE PROMISED TEACHER. 1. "The Comforter" 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. 2. This comforting and strengthening office of the Spirit is brought into immediate connection with the conception of Him as a Teacher. That is to say, the best strength that God can give us is by the firm grasp and the growing clearness of understanding of the truths which are wrapped up in Christ. 3. This Divine Teacher is the Holy Ghost. We might have expected, as indeed we find in another context, the "Spirit of Truth" as appropriate in connection with the office of teaching. But there is the profound lesson for us in this, that, side by side with the thought of illumination, there lies the thought of purity built upon consecration. (1) There is no real knowledge of Christ and His truth without purity of heart. The man who has no ear can never understand music. The man who has no eye for beauty can never be brought to bow his spirit before some gem of art. The scholars in Christ's school have to come there with clean hands and clean hearts. (2) On the other hand, the truest motives for purity are found in that great word which 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. All fanatical professions of possessing Divine illumination which are not warranted by purity of life are lies or self-delusion. And, on the other hand, cold-blooded 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. 4. The Holy Ghost is "sent by God" in Christ's name. (1) He acts as Christ's Representative; just as Christ comes in the Father's name and acts as His Representative. (2) He has, for the basis of His mission, and the sphere in which He acts, the recorded facts of Christ's life and death, these and none other. 5. This Messenger is a Person. "He." 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. That Divine Spirit is more than an influence. "He shall teach," and He can be grieved by evil and sin. II. THE LESSON. 1. Christ is the lesson book. 2. The significance of this lesson book, the history of our Lord, cannot be unfolded all at once. The world and the Church received Christ, as it were, in the dark; and, like some man that has got a precious gift into his hands as the morning was dawning, each fresh moment that passed revealed as the light grew new beauties and new preciousness in the thing possessed. Christ's words are inexhaustible, and the Spirit's teaching is to unveil more and more the infinite significance that lies in the apparently least significant of them. 3. If this be our Lord's meaning here, He plainly anticipated that after His departure there should be a development of Christian doctrine. The earlier disciples had only a very partial grasp of Christ's nature. They knew next to nothing of the great doctrine of sacrifice; about His resurrection; that He was going back to heaven; of the spirituality or universality of His kingdom. None of these things 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. 4. If Jesus Christ and the deep under. standing of Him be the true lesson of the Divine Spirit, then real progress consists, not in getting beyond Christ, but in getting more fully into Him. I hope I believe In the continuous advance of Christian thought as joyfully as any man, but my notion of it — and 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." All other teachers' words become feeble by age, as their persons become wrapped in 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. III. THE SCHOLARS. 1. The apostles, in all this conversation, stand as the representatives of the Church. For this very Evangelist refers to this promise, when he says, addressing all his Asiatic brethren, "Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and know all things." And, again, "The unction which ye have of Him abideth with you, and ye need not that any man should teach you." So, then, every believing soul has this Divine Spirit for His Teacher. 2. But let us not forget that the early teaching is the standard. As to the first disciples the office of the Divine Spirit was to bring before them the deep significancs of their Master's life and words, so to us the office of the teaching Spirit is to bring to our minds the deep significance of the record of what they learned from Him. "If a man think himself to be spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord." Conclusion:(1) Let this great promise fill us with shame. What slow scholars we are! How little we have learnt! How we have let passion, prejudice, the babble of men's tongue's, anybody and everybody take the office of teaching us God's truth, instead of waiting before Him and letting His Spirit teach us! "When for the time we ought to be teachers, have need that one teach us which be the first principles of the oracles of Christ."(2) Let it fill us with desire, diligence, and calm hope. They tell us that Christianity is effete. Have we got all out of Jesus Christ that is in Him? Is the process that has been going on for all these centuries going to stop now? Ah! depend upon it the new problems of this generation will find their solution where the old problems of past generations have found theirs, and the old commandment of the old Christ will be the new commandment of the new Christ. Foolish men both on the Christian and on the anti-Christian side stand and point to the western sky and say, "The Sun is setting." But that which sank in the west rises fresh and bright in the east for a new day. Jesus Christ is the Christ for all the ages and for every soul, and the world will only learn more and more of His inexhaustible fulness. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. WEB: I have said these things to you, while still living with you.