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Class 7: Another Comforter!
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Part 4: God's Holy Spirit is a Person
(This is part 4 of 7 parts in this class)
As you study the New Testament you will see how often scripture links the action and presence of God's power to the coming and presence of God's Spirit. Please don't though begin thinking that the Holy Spirit is power. The Holy Spirit is a Person. Jesus introduced Him to the disciples at a time when He was comforting them and when He did He called the Holy Spirit another Comforter.
Jesus had begun to comfort his disciples because they were greatly distressed by the news that He was going to be leaving them. Their distress is understandable when you realise how Jesus had become everything to them.
Those disciples who had come to Him possessed He had delivered. When his disciples were sick He healed them. When they were hungry He fed them and when they had needs He supplied them. When they were afraid He displaced their fear; when they were bewildered He taught them and when they were in ignorance He instructed them.
Out of understanding for the disciples' distress, Jesus comforted them promising them,
I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever.
John 14:16 - KJV
For over three years He had been the One to Whom the disciples had looked as their Comforter. Now He was departing but it was not going to mean they would be left abandoned. He was going to ask the Father for another Comforter, the promised Comforter, Who would come to make His home with all believers Who received Him.
Jesus was going to ask the Father and He was going to send another Comforter to them. The original Greek word for "another" in this Bible text conveys the meaning that this Comforter was going to be of the same kind that He was - the personal, loving God-kind!
Jesus promised another Comforter to His disciples so that they would never be without a Comforter. He was leaving but He wasn't leaving the way they were used to being left; feeling abandoned and bereft.
He said,
I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.
John 14:16-17 - NKJV
The Spirit of Truth was going to be given to them by the Father. He was going to be a Helper to them as Jesus had been a Helper to them. The Spirit of Truth was coming and He was going to be ever present with each one of them personally. He would be to them all that Jesus had been to them.
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