If you’ve spent any amount of time in church gatherings or around church people, you might have heard talk about somebody “receiving Christ.” Hopefully you have. If not, a suggestion would be to look for a different congregation. But I’m quickly getting off track. So anyway, faithful Bible teaching would lead us to tell each other about Jesus and encourage us to receive Him into our lives. And at some point we’d hear how we have to “receive Christ” in order to be saved. The apostle John tells us the only people who have any true place in God’s family are people who receive and believe in Jesus—Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God (John 1:12).
But many of the people John wrote to 2000 years ago had seen Jesus standing right in front of them, offering Himself to them in person, and now He’s not here. So somebody telling us to receive Jesus could be confusing.
Thankfully John gives us more truth later in his gospel, leaving us a record of a fascinating teaching Jesus provided His closest followers (John 14). Jesus gave them some good news and some bad news. The bad news was that He was leaving. The good news was, it wasn’t permanent.
Picking up in John 14:1, it’s the night before Jesus is crucified, and it seems like He’s abandoning the very people who had “received Him.” The disciples are worried because they don’t know what they’ll do without Jesus around. They already left their jobs and families to go minister with Him. How could he leave them now? Then Jesus says something I never understood until recently: “You believe in God, believe also in Me” (John 14:1b). Why did He say that? Since the disciples had believed in God (who nobody had ever seen – John1:18), they could keep believing in Jesus even though He was about to be invisible too. But how?
Then Jesus said something amazing in John 14:16—"I will ask the Father, and He will give you ANOTHER HELPER, so that He may be with you forever.” God the Father was sending a replacement. Jesus had helped them along this far. Now they’re getting “another Helper.” The Greek word allos (another) means “another of the same kind” or “just like.” Somebody “just like Jesus” was coming to the rescue! The Greek word “Helper” is parakletos. It basically means a “Counselor” and “Advocate.”
We see in John 14:17 this Helper, Counselor, and Advocate wasn’t new to the disciples. Jesus said the disciples knew Him because He had been “living with them.” But it’s the Helper’s relationship to the disciples that was about to change—the difference herein described as moving from “living with them” to “living in them.” This distinction highlights the change in ministry of the Holy Spirit before and after the day of Pentecost as detailed in Acts 2. It’s the simple, simple difference between the Old Covenant and the New.
Today, when a sinner “believes and receives” Jesus Christ as Savior, he is receiving Jesus’ temporary replacement – the Holy Spirit – who lives within the body and soul of the reborn child of God. The Helper is “the Spirit of truth” (John 14:17). He intercedes between heaven and earth by communicating the very thoughts of God to our minds and witnesses to us by the truth of the written Word of God (1 Corinthians 2:16b). The Holy Spirit is our “Helper” in the sense that He lives in us and through us, thereby mediating God’s kingdom on earth. Thus the prayer “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Mat. 6:10) is fulfilled through us, the saints, in our generation.
Today, the Holy Spirit in us is better than Jesus beside us. At Jesus’ baptism by John, the Bible tells us, And immediately coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon Him (Mark 1:10). They say mourning doves mate for life. The Holy Spirit is like that. He’s our permanent spiritual mate, counselor and in Him you have been made complete (Col 2:10)
In Christ, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of the promise, who is a first installment of our inheritance, in regard to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.
We can be comforted that we are not left alone to live life on our own. Be reminded today that the Holy Spirit lives in you to be your own personal counselor and guide. Give us a call at 864-224-5557 or click on the Counseling button below if you would like to talk with someone.