Secrets of Spiritual Constancy - Motyer

[Eli Brayley]

This is an excellent series. Be blessed!

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SECRETS OF SPIRITUAL CONSTANCY
by J. Alec Motyer

1. THE SAFEGUARDING POWER OF PRAYER

IN His last long discourse, the Lord Jesus explained that His words were intended to safe-guard His disciples against the possibility of spiritual breakdown: "These things have I spoken unto you, that you should not be made to stumble" (John 16:1).

The verb 'to cause to stumble', skandalizo, is an important one and is variously rendered, with possibly the most helpful translation that given by the N.E.B.: "to guard you against the breakdown of your faith". By this verse we see the purpose that the Lord Jesus had in the teaching which comprises the three most important chapters of John 14, 15 and 16. It provides a recipe which will keep us from breaking down spiritually.

A concordance study gives us a passage which encapsulates all that the New Testament implies in its use of skandalizo. This is found in Romans 14:21: "It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do anything whereby thy brother stumbles". If we consider the passage which leads up to that verse we will find that a certain number of other verbs are used before what we may call this key verb appears. There is "grieve" and "destroy not" (v.15) and a very strong verb translated "overthrow" (v.20) which has the implication of pulling down a building. Then there are the opposite ideas which contrast with these three negatives, namely, "the things which make for peace, and the things whereby we may edify one another" (v.19). These, then, are the ideas which cluster around the verb skandalizo . There is a kind of behaviour in others, both Christians and non-Christians, and also in the incessant pressure of circumstances, which can pull down a believer and work to destroy him.

This is all real to experience. The world is littered with people who once ran well. Why did they stop running well? Something caused them [27/28] to stumble; it entered in as a grief, it imperilled their peace and then it went on to erode the foundations of faith. This happens to some people at some times; it is a threat to all of us all the time. We call it 'backsliding'. In John 16:1 the Lord Jesus exposed the danger and He also prescribed the remedy. This remedy is found in the totality of the Lord's discourse recorded in John Chapters 14 to 16 and on into His prayer in Chapter 17.

I have tried to sort out four lines of teaching which appear in these chapters, so that we can say to one another, Well, at least these are some of the things which will guard us against the breakdown of our faith and give us greater knowledge of the ongoing peace and edification which there is in Christ. The first of the four is The Safeguarding Power of Prayer:

1. 14:13-14 "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in my name, that will I do."

This has often been called the blank cheque of prayer. The words 'anything' and 'whatsoever' inform us as to the bounty of God and so entice us into the place of prayer. What is it that you need? What is it that is grieving you, destroying your peace and pulling you down instead of building you up? Have you prayed about it? Have you availed yourself of this counsel of your Lord?

The first part of verse 13 and the first part of verse 14 are parallel in their command that we ask. Why then did the Lord suddenly introduce that second part of verse 13 with the allusion to the Son and the Father? Twice over the Lord stresses the bounty and the liberality that is there waiting for us in the place of prayer; twice over He drives it home, but why does He place in between the explanation: "That the Father may be glorified in the Son"? May I use an illustration? If you are skilled in the running of a car, for you to say that it is running well would be using a statement in a different way from me. You would base your appreciation of the car on quite a different set of evidences from mine if I said that it was running well. What I would mean is that I know what it does when I do things to it. I know what happens when I turn on the ignition and I know what happens when I press the accelerator. I know the feel of a car that is running well. You however, if you are skilled, know what is going on under the bonnet and have an informed basis on which to base your opinion.

I suggest that this is what is happening in these statements about prayer. In the first part of verse 13 and the first part of verse 14, the Lord Jesus is speaking the plain truth of that fact when it is running well; it is a simple matter of asking and receiving: But the second part of verse 13 lifts up the bonnet, as it were, and lets us look inside to see what is going on in the unseen realm. In effect the transmission whereby this thing works with power is introduced to us: the fact of the Father in heaven and His own work of mediation. In the experience of prayer made and prayer answered in the name of Jesus, the Father is glorified because the prayer goes to Him through the Son and the answer comes back from Him through the Son.

There is no other way of explaining how, in the matter of prevailing prayer, the Father is glorified in the Son. It is as though the Lord says: 'See what is going on when you pray to Me and your prayer goes through Me to the Father, and see what happens when the answer comes back from the Father through the Son'. Prayer is therefore a living experience and a proof of the mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is why Jesus speaks of prayer and answers to prayer as that which is powerful to safeguard us from the breakdown of faith. It imposes on our experience the wonder of our salvation. Praying as those whom God has saved through the mediation of Jesus Christ, we have the blessed experience of a proof of the real fact that Jesus is at the Father's side and that His mediation is real and effective.

2. 15:7 "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you."

Once again we find the great word 'whosoever', and notice that there is no diminution of that wide-open word. "And it shall be done unto you." Here again we have the glorious bounty of God to His praying people. Notice, however, that it is all related to a condition. If you abide ... then it shall be done. Not that this in any way reduces the dimensions of the 'whosoever'.

People often ask, 'Do we have to say in prayer, Thy will be done? Do we have to talk like this?' Well, ask yourself what lies behind that question. [28/29] Why do people look tragedy in the face and so often resignedly say, 'Thy will be done'? One surmises that the implication of this is that if only we had the running of things, how much better that would be. If only we could ask and get just what we wanted!

But see what you are doing when you ask in His name. You are praying in the name of the One in whom all the fullness dwells. This cannot be limitation at all, this bringing our requests into the name of this One. It rather lifts up the 'whatsoever' into a much larger bounty than we could ever hope to achieve. Furthermore, to pray in the name of Jesus is the blessed safeguard of prayer. I affirm one thing to you and it is this: that if we got everything we ask for in prayer, when we ask for it and in the measure in which we ask for it, we would stop praying tomorrow. We would find that we had far too dangerous a weapon in our hands. For such a liberality of prayer and such an automatic efficaciousness of prayer committed to our poor wisdom would be nothing less than a gun pressed to our head. To pray in the name of Jesus is to pray in the blessed conditions which He lays down which not only lifts prayer into a greater bounty and a greater liberality but puts prayer into the only place where it is safe.

Prayer is efficacious for those who are joined to Christ and keep His word; it is for those who abide in Him in the light of His word. Notice that the two things are put together; we must abide in Him but not in a Christ of our imagination, not in some Jesus we have fancied for ourselves, but in Him as He has made Himself known by His word. In this way we are living with Him in the light of what He has revealed about Himself. In that case we may ask what we will, and it will be done for us. We pray as those who are joined to Christ and in the experience of efficacious prayer we learn the reality of being at one with Him.

I remember years ago Billy Graham came over for one of his campaigns and in a T.V. interview was confronted with that extraordinarily pervasive bogey about having a closed mind. Billy Graham was not a bit abashed. He said, 'Of course I've got a closed mind'. He said, 'Consider, for example, the question of marriage. My wife and I have been happily married for many years and over the course of our married life, my mind has been completely closed to the thought of ever going with any other woman'. He said, 'I wouldn't want it any other way. The experience of happy marriage has closed my mind so that it snapped tight and remains so'.

So it is that in the experience of prayer our minds can snap tight on the reality of our union with the Lord Jesus Christ, so that this becomes something upon which the mind is closed. So it henceforth becomes axiomatic: 'I am one with Jesus'. Prayer, bringing us that assurance, brings us into the place of security from breakdown. When prayer is the fruit of union, then in prayer the union comes alive and its living power places us beyond the possibility of any insecurity.

3. 15:16 "Ye did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. "

Here prayer is set before us as one item in an age-long programme of God. Prayer is a part of a plan God has made for us and part of a plan which he is implementing for us. The plan began in His own mind, He chose us: "Ye did not choose me, but I chose you ...". Isn't it extraordinary that over and over again the Bible expresses its vast impenetrable truths in language that cannot be misunderstood. In this sentence there is not a word beyond one syllable, yet you could exhaust your mind from now until the Day of the Coming of Christ without penetrating its full meaning. Nevertheless it is as plain and clear as it can be.

We may say, 'But I did choose you Lord. I remember the occasion well. It was at 7:15 in the evening of 23rd February in the year 1940. I remember it so well. That was when I chose you'. To which the Lord will reply, 'But dear child, you are like a young man who runs up to a girl who has taken his fancy and says, "The Lord has told me to marry you". She, however, being a well-instructed young lady may reply, "Well, He hasn't told me that I'm to marry you". In that case your choice of her would be invalid, and would remain so until it was made valid by her choice of you. And you, my child, could only choose Me validly because I first chose you'.

Behind all is the great and blissful reality that He determined to have you. He chose! He appointed you to this circumstance. He appointed [29/30] you that you should go and in your obedient going to discover that obedience is a fruit-bearing business; so to you He opened the avenue of answered prayer. You are to ask 'whatsoever', and God will give it you. What does this teach us about prayer? It is that in prayer we discover and experience our position of security in the will of Christ. Prayer is not something isolated; it belongs with the four-fold reality of His choice, His appointment, His commandment and His promise.

And as we act upon the promise and find it true, we realise the validity of those things which lie behind the promise. Yes indeed, He chose me; yes indeed, He appointed me; yes indeed, He commanded me, and here I am living within the eternal counsels of God,

4. 16:23-27 "In that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If ye shall ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name; ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be fulfilled. ... In that day ye shall ask in my name; and I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you; for my Father himself loveth you ...".

Our final point is that prayer brings us into direct touch with the loving Father. Of course the Lord Jesus did not mean that He would not pray for us. He is eternally the Mediator, as verse 23 reminds us. Jesus never steps out of His mediatorial role; we can never come to the Father by any other way than in Him by the Spirit. But in verse 26 He tells us so graciously that His mediatorial role runs on oiled wheels, so that we do not notice it. The reality which it secures is the reality which He shares with us, so that we are aware of direct access to the Father. It seems that the Lord was concerned that at that moment they should not think so much of His part by mediation as of the direct relationship with the Father which He secures for His people. Just then He was not telling the disciples of His prayer to the Father because He wanted them to realise how much the Father loved them. This is the privilege which Christ has won for us, the privilege of access to the Father, an access in which we bask in the Father's love.

How, then, does prayer safeguard us against breakdown? What are the edifying powers of prayer? In a word, they are experience. In the place of prayer we come into immediate experimental awareness of the truths which would otherwise just be facts expressed in a creed. In Chapter 14 we have the Reality of our Salvation. We are informed of Christ's role as Mediator, bringing us to God and keeping us with God. In Chapter 15 we are given the Reality of our Security as those whom God has chosen and included in His eternal purpose. In Chapter 16 we are told of the Reality of our Welcome before the Father's throne. These are great truths, but are they meaningful truths to us, are they nourishing truths?

Truth in a creed is like food in a freezer. It is potentially nourishing but it is not actually nourishing anybody. Its nourishment is locked up inside it. To get its value you must take it out of the deep freeze, bring it to the cooker and put it into boiling water. Then it must go on a plate and be dealt with by knives and forks. NOW it is truly nourishing. The truths have become experimental.

Here then are four great truths, set out before us that we may experience them in the place of prayer. It is there that we enter into the nourishment of them and into their power to safeguard us from any breakdown in our faith.

[Eli Brayley]

2. THE SAFEGUARDING PRESENCE OF THE SPIRIT

THIS second article will deal with the Comfort of the Holy Spirit. Comfort is a beautiful word for a beautiful idea. Here is a person who is worried; for him comfort speaks of soothing in respect of worries. Here is a person who is weak; for him comfort speaks of strength in respect of weakness. Here is a person who is afraid; for him comfort speaks of reassurance in [47/48] respect of fear. It is a strong word but it is not a harsh word; it has a strength which is full of competence, of warmth and of calmness. All of this is embraced in the New Testament idea of the comfort of the Holy Ghost. We touch here one of the richest doctrines in the whole Bible and we find it to be the warmest, most assuring and least frightening of all New Testament doctrines.

I find that there are at least twelve different titles given to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. We cannot do more than rehearse them but by doing so we can let a great wave of truth wash over our souls.

There are titles which declare that He is a divine Person, He is the Holy Spirit; He is the Spirit of Holiness, holiness being the central characteristic of God, the attribute which makes God to be God. He is the Spirit of Glory. There are titles which declare His divine oneness with the Father and the Son; He is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead, the Spirit of the Living God, the Spirit of Jesus, of Christ and the Spirit of God's Son. There are also titles which declare His relationship to the believer -- He is the Spirit of adoption by whose agency we are brought into the very family of God and He is the Spirit of life who makes the divine nature real to us. He is also the Comforter. Then lastly, there are those titles which declare His relationship to the Word of God: He is the Spirit of truth, and the Spirit of promise.

Is there not a richness and what we might call a solidity in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament? Just in reading out the twelve titles, there is the beginning of the comfort of the Holy Ghost. And this is the doctrine which we find so prominent in John Chapters 14 to 16, being the doctrine dwelt upon by the Lord Jesus in connection with our key verse which tells of His provision against the breakdown of our faith. This is not just truth but on the lips of the Lord Jesus it is safeguarding truth. Amongst the other things which He spoke of as safeguarding truth, He spoke of the Holy Spirit. The references are in 14:16, 14:26, 15:26 and 16:7. They provide a continuing strand in the teaching of Jesus in these chapters, and therefore we may legitimately say that here is a truth upon which He dwelt and to which He returned four times while He was guarding His disciples against a breakdown of their faith.

1. The Holy Spirit as Companion

"I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever" (14:16). This One is to accompany you, to be alongside with you, the Paraklete. This is a lovely name, traditionally translated as the Comforter and becoming in more recent versions the rather colder and more obscure title, The Counsellor. We all know that the word paraklete means 'one who is called alongside'. It seems to me that instead of Comforter, which has a vague if warm meaning, or Counsellor, which has a precise but rather cold meaning, it might be more accurate and faithful to the teaching of our Lord to render it, The Companion. "Another Companion ... even the Spirit of truth; you know him; for he abideth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you desolate; I come unto you." You see how the idea of companionship is found in this word; it is true to the context in which the word first appears as a title of the Holy Spirit.

In what sense is He our Companion? Well, consider the title given to our Lord Jesus in the words, "We have an Advocate" (1 John 2:1). The Greek says that we have a Paraklete with the Father, one called alongside with the Father. How did He get there? How is He alongside? Not by our will but by the divine will. He has been called into that place of function at the Father's right hand by the Father's own will. The title of Paraklete given to our Lord Jesus is a divinely given title for a divinely intended function.

It is a splendid truth to think that the Holy Spirit is alongside me whensoever I call Him, but isn't it a much more splendid truth to know that the Holy Spirit is always alongside me because the Father called Him to be there? He is the divinely appointed Companion of the believer, and His function is to make real to us the abiding presence of the Lord Jesus. Jesus speaks of Him as the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive and then goes on to say. "I will not leave you bereft ... I will come unto you" (v.18). So it is that the Spirit is called 'another Companion'. They had had a Companion already in the person of their Lord who by the divine will had been alongside them. Now the day would come when they would have another Companion, but when that other Paraklete came, the reality would be that Jesus Himself would be with them. They would have His abiding companionship. [48/49]

Christ is my abiding Paraklete. He keeps me secure in the Father's presence, and by His Holy Spirit He makes His presence known to me here. Don't you find that a safeguarding truth? The Holy Spirit guards me by making the presence of Jesus real. Of course there are conditions of enjoyment of this blessing for Jesus said: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments, and I pray ..." (v.15). If you love me, then you will keep my commandments, and if you do that, then He will give you another Companion ...". One of the astonishing things about the New Testament is that the passages which seem to be about the Holy Spirit have as their central theme the person of the Lord Jesus. In this case we are challenged as to whether we wish for a consciousness of the presence of the Spirit, with the statement that if we do, then the condition of that is an emotional and moral involvement with the Lord Jesus. To love Him and to obey Him are the conditions for enjoying the Spirit's companionship.

2. The Holy Spirit as Teacher

"... He shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said unto you" (14:26). "... when he the Spirit of truth is come, he shall guide you into all the truth ..." (16:13). The Holy Spirit continues the teaching office of the Lord Jesus. That is what these two passages have as their basic common truth. In the first reference He works in relation to truth already made known. The Companion would bring back to their remembrance what they had already heard. Jesus had been with them as their Teacher and none of that teaching would be lost because the Holy Spirit would carry on the teaching function, recovering all that Jesus had said and making it real in their mind and memory.

So we have His teaching function in relation to the past teaching of Jesus. In balance of that we have the thought about the future teaching. Jesus spoke to His apostles here in a 'now' and 'then' contrast. "I have many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now" but when the Spirit comes, then "he shall guide you into all the truth" (16:12-13). There was an expression of the truth which Jesus Himself knew then, but for merciful reasons He did not reveal it to His followers. He therefore expresses here the thought that His teaching function with His own would be continued by the Holy Spirit, who would make known to them the things that He had not felt it right to reveal to them in their present state. So we have, first the work of the Holy Spirit to confirm and continue the teaching office of Jesus and second, to convey to the disciples that which will be made known to them from the Father and through the Son. The origin of truth is the Father, the mediation of the truth is through the Son, and the bringing home of that truth is through the Holy Spirit (16:13). So we see the involvement of the Holy Trinity in bringing the truth to the Church.

"He shall not speak from himself". This warns us that the teaching of the Holy Spirit is not self-authenticated. There is no ground for anyone to say, "The Lord has said that to me!" As soon as anybody does say that, the legitimate and indeed required response is to ask, "How do you know?" I base this on the single word 'for' in the middle of verse 13; "... for He shall not speak from himself." How will we know what we have is all the truth? By the Scriptures which he has inspired. The Spirit does not come as self-authenticated teacher, but rather as the bearer of truths from elsewhere. And it is the origin of truth in Jesus and in the Father that authenticates the truth to the Church. "but whatsoever things he shall hear, these shall he speak". He is not the originator of truth but the bearer of truth from elsewhere.

He continues the revelation of Jesus and the revelation of the Father: "He shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you" (v.14). 'Mine ' involves something deeply wonderful for it is "all things whatsoever the Father hath" which are included in that word. When the Lord said, "He shall take of mine", He said it in the sense that all that He possesses is what the Father possesses and what has been deposited in Him for the Church, and then brought from the Father and the Son to the Church by the office of the Holy Spirit.

Thirdly, we are told that the Spirit is our Teacher to make known to us the saving work of Jesus. We have that mysterious phrase: "He shall declare unto you the things that are to come". The words are not written for us in the middle of an otherwise empty blackboard; they occur in a context, so that we do not just ask what they mean but what do they mean in this context. In verse 12 Jesus spoke of known truth and unknown truth, saying that He had many things yet to say. The implication is that He had many more things to say. He had said much, [49/50] and there was more to follow, but He held them back and would not then deliver them because they could not then bear them.

The word 'bear' is unusual in connection with the truth. It is as though the Lord had said, "If I were to tell you this now, it would be like the hanging of a great stone around your necks; it would pull you down." The word is used of burdens that have to be carried; it is a burdening word. The truth therefore that Jesus was holding back from them would at that time have been for them a burdening truth to drag them down. When then it is described as the truth which the Holy Spirit when He came would make clear to them, it was because then they would be in a position to carry it, finding it no longer burdensome.

What then did this coming truth mean? What was it that if they had known it then would have been a burden too heavy for them to carry? Why, it was the truth of the cross. The revelation of what would happen to Jesus and the understanding of what was involved was more than they could bear. If we search the Scriptures we will find that up to this point, this was the one thing which had not been revealed to them with any degree of amplification. This truth about the atonement was more than they would know how to carry at that point in their experience. When, however, the Holy Spirit came, there would be a gracious amplification of that which in mercy Jesus left unsaid, and then they would be able to bear it.

When He came, the whole of those coming things would have been performed. Jesus would have gone to the cross; He would have gone to the tomb; He would have come out in resurrection; He would have been with His followers and would have been lifted up to the right hand of the Father. In His exaltation they would have received that which had been poured out upon them so that now they could bear it. The Holy Spirit opened their eyes to that over which Jesus had drawn the veil, making known His saving work on the cross.

I find that there is a great deal of difficulty in these chapters of the teaching of Jesus in deciding what we must understand as spoken particularly to the men who were there with Him and what we may understand as applying directly to us. In the matter of the teaching function of the Holy Spirit, these two passages in which He is mentioned as Teacher are passages which are anchored into the immediate context. Therefore the truth which they declare and the promises which they enshrine can only come to us derivatively and not directly. Look for example at what verse 14 says of His teaching function being to bring to the remembrance all that He had said to them (14:26). Now that belongs to a particular group of people who had walked with Jesus, talked with Him and listened to Him. The promise was directly and specifically to them, that they who had actually heard His teaching, would afterwards be enabled to remember it. It was a promise made to one group of people. Insofar as that promise has any meaning to us, it can only be indirect or derivative.

Likewise in Chapter 16 He again spoke specifically to a certain group of people in the 'now' and 'then' balance of the sentence. He could not tell them 'now' because they were in no condition to receive it, but presently the Holy Spirit would come and then they would be able to bear it. Once more, that belongs to a long past historical context, a historical context which bridged the gap between the words of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Here again is something which belonged directly to that group of people, but only indirectly to us.

How then can we say that we must look to the Holy Spirit as our Teacher of the things of God? Clearly He is not here to reveal to us the meaning of the saving work of Jesus in that fresh and originating way in which He did to those who had previously not been able to bear it. The promise of the Holy Spirit as our Teacher is exercised for us indirectly as compared with the way in which He operated for them, since He brought to them with fresh directness the full truth of the Atonement and by His inspiration -- as we most certainly believe -- called them to write it down. He therefore exercises His function of teaching in our case by means of the written Scriptures. In those writings, the apostles encapsulated that which was brought to their remembrance of the speaking of Jesus. What is more, the Holy Spirit taught them to supplement and bring to fullness all the truth, including the things which Jesus left unsaid. For us to be taught means to attend upon the Holy Scriptures. The Spirit binds us with the truth of the Father and the Son and so gives us a safeguarding for our faith.

3. The Holy Spirit as Leader

"When the Comforter is come ... he shall bear witness of me: and you shall also bear witness [50/51] ..." (15:26-27). "When he is come, he will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment" (16:7-8). So we see that the uniting theme at the end of Chapter 15 and into Chapter 16 is that of witness. The Spirit comes to tell the world about Jesus: that is His function. We are told that He comes to bring a three-fold revelation of the Lord Jesus. "Of sin, because they believe not on me". This is a revelation of Jesus as the object of personal sin, of the sin of not finding Jesus as the object of personal faith. That is what sin is -- not to believe on Jesus. "Of righteousness because I go to the Father, and you behold me no more". Men must believe on Jesus as the Finisher of salvation.

We should realise what a glorious thing it is that we do not now see Jesus. The fact that He has gone to the Father and we behold Him no more means that He has been accepted in the Father's presence. He went there to register the claims of the One who had finished the work of salvation and the claim was accepted before the Father's throne. He has not come back as one who is banished from heaven: He is set at the Father's right hand because He is the Righteous One, accepted before God as the full Saviour of sinners. The Spirit comes to make that truth known. He has also come to make Jesus known as the Arbiter of eternal destiny: "Of judgment, because the prince of this world hath been judged." He makes known Calvary as the moment when the two princes interlocked in single combat and the Prince of life won the day. It follows that eternal destinies are set at the cross. Man's allegiance goes either to Jesus or to the prince of this world.

So it is that the Spirit comes to make the gospel witness on a worldwide scale, and in this He is but a Leader of the Church for Jesus said, "You also bear witness ..." (15:27). Because the Holy Spirit comes witnessing, the Church must go witnessing. Notice in Chapter 16 the relationship between verses 7 and 8. "I will send Him to you, and when He is come ...". When He is come where? Why to you? Because the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church means that the voice of the Holy Spirit is made known through a witnessing Church so that by this means the convincing work concerning sin, righteousness and judgment is carried forward. There is a parallel work to be done: He bears witness and we bear witness (15:26-27). There is a voice to be provided and -- let us say it humbly and softly -- the Holy Spirit comes to the Church in order that by the voice of the Church the convincing message of the Lord Jesus may go forward.

We have a shared life because of this shared objective. I have discovered that while courtship by post is just about possible, marriage by post is quite out of the question. There has to be a 'being together', a sharing of objectives, and therefore a growing together. How does the Holy Spirit safeguard us from the breakdown of faith? If we accept Him as Leader, if we identify with His objectives by sharing in His actions, we become wedded to Him, and His presence becomes a reality in the work of testifying in the world to the Lord Jesus Christ.

So the Lord assures us that our faith will be safeguarded from breakdown by the absolute reality of the presence of the Holy Spirit, guaranteed by the Father and the Son, the sense of that presence being made real by our love and obedience. We are kept safe by having Him as our Companion, our Teacher and our Leader. This is the comfort of the Holy Ghost.

[Eli Brayley]

3. THE SAFEGUARDING POWER OF THE TRUTH OF THE TRINITY

OUR key verse is John 16:1 but first of all I would ask you to consider Joshua 2 where we find a sequence of verses which remind us what a powerful thing the truth is. Rahab said to Joshua's spies: "I know that the Lord has given you the land, and your terror has fallen upon us, and all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you, for we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you" (2:10). Joshua may have been in great anxiety as to how to conquer Jericho, but in fact Jericho was already conquered. Jericho's armies were already overcome; the mortar between the stones of its walls was already loosened and ready to fall out; and the agent which had done the work of overcoming was the truth about God.

According to Joshua 2:9-11, truth is powerful in the conquest of the world. Once the truth about God penetrates, the world's defences begin to crumble.

Christian liberty in individual experience is related to the liberating power of the truth as it operates for those who make God's Word their home. Jesus said to the Jews who had believed Him: "If you make my word your home, then are you truly my disciples". This, I feel, is a very vivid translation and is followed by the assurance: "... then are you truly my disciples, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:31-32).

As we follow the sequence in John's Gospel we find the Lord Jesus saying: "This is life eternal, that they should know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ" (John 17:3). The very possession of life depends upon this knowledge of the truth. What a powerful thing the truth is, God's truth! Powerful against the world, powerful to bring life to the Christian, powerful to bring the Christian into the full enjoyment of life.

When we come to John 16:1 we find that the Lord Jesus referred to this matter when He said: "These things have I spoken unto you ...". I have shared this truth with you because it is so powerful that once it enters into you, then there will be no breakdown of your faith. The truth will hold you in Christian constancy. This is the recipe and remedy for spiritual breakdown, the guarantee of a steady course against life's pressures and the sudden onslaughts of the world, the flesh and the Devil, namely, the knowledge of the truth.

Our privilege now is that we are not considering what might be called an ordinary truth, not even an ordinary truth about the Lord Jesus, but the truth about all truth, the truth about The Godhead. Our privilege is to listen to God talking about God. There are four statements in this connection.

1. 14:16

"I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Companion."

2. 14:26

"But the Companion, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you."

3. 15:26

"When the Companion is come whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, he shall bear witness of me."

4. 16:15

"All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine, therefore I said that he taketh of mine and shall declare it unto you." [61/62]

We are confronted with what God says about God, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. This is the ultimate truth, and it is therefore the ultimately safeguarding truth. The Holy Trinity is not a mathematical puzzle. God is not a subject for curiosity or research. Consequently we read that Mount Sinai was guarded by a clear boundary lest, as the Lord said to Moses, "the people break through unto the Lord to gaze ..." (Exodus 19:21). God is not to be the object of man's curiosity. That is why the cherubim covered their faces (Isaiah 6:2). Why did they do this? Because God is not to become a matter of curiosity, He is not there for research, even by the cherubim.

The Biblical revelation of God the Holy Trinity is not given to satisfy our logical curiosity about the nature of deity, but to bring us into the ultimate safeguarding truth which above all truths will guard us against the breakdown of faith. This was St. Patrick's breastplate:

I bind unto myself the strong name of the Trinity;

By invocation of the same, the three in one and one in three.

Against the demon snares of sin, the vice that gives temptation force,

The natural lusts that war within, the hostile men that mar my course.

Or few or many, far or nigh, in every place and in all hours,

Against their fierce hostility, I bind to me these holy powers.

So, with the teaching of the Lord Jesus, we bind ourselves to the strong name of the Trinity, trying to approximate our thinking in some measure to His as we contemplate the mystery of the Three who are also One.

The Unity of Complementariness

I am not at all sure that complementariness is the best word to use, but it is as good as any to describe what in the first place I want to share with you, the idea of the dove-tailing functions within the Holy Trinity as affirmed in these four passages. The unity is displayed in the absolute integration and interlocking of activities.

i. The Presidency of the Father

Within the Trinity there is the presidency of the Father. It is His prerogative to act and to take the initiative in blessing: "I will pray to the Father and he will give you"; "The Holy Spirit whom the Father will send ...". Likewise it is the Father who has the resources to perform the actions and to bring blessing to the Church: "The Companion whom I will send to you from the Father". The resources are stored up in the Father and come from Him. Likewise, the Father possesses the authority which rules over all: "... the Father is greater" (14:28) and "I am the true vine. My Father is the husbandman" (15:1). These few verses bring out the obvious thought that there is a presidency and primacy of the Father, as the very name Father, in relation to the name Son, would of course suggest. It is worth reminding ourselves that other Scriptures relate that presidency not only to experiences of blessing for the Church, but even to deity itself.

When we speak of the Father and the Son, we are not taking something that in the first place is true upon earth and speaking by way of analogy of what is true in heaven, but rather of that which is first true in heaven and has its only perfect expression in heaven, and then is reflected in the pale and feeble analogy that we see in the father/son relationship on earth. This seems to be the plain meaning of Ephesians 3:14-15 which speaks of the Father "from whom all fatherhood in heaven and earth gets its name". In heaven there is a reality of fatherhood and sonship which itself means that there is a primacy and presidency of God the Father even within the mystery of the Holy Trinity. This is certainly brought out in Hebrews 1:1-3 where the Lord Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, is not only spoken of as Son, but is described as "the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person", as though to say that the Father Himself is light and the effulgence which derives from the light is the Son. The Father is the essence of deity concentrated, and the Son is that essence stamped out as wax upon a seal. These are the images which the writer uses and they stress the presidency of the Father.

ii. The Mediation of the Son

Secondly, in the interlocking functions there is the mediation of the Son. The Son has the office of bringing our needs to God the Father, who is the source and giver of all, and of bringing back from the Father all the resources which He wishes to lavish upon us. So He says: "I will pray the Father, and he will give ..." (14:16). The Son brings our needs to the Father, and in His [62/63] mediatorship and intercession, what the Father possesses becomes ours. The other side of this is found in the statement, "When the Companion is come, whom I will send to you from the Father" (15:26). Here again the Son occupies the middle place. As He brings our needs to the Father so He brings the Father's bounty to us in the Person of the Holy Spirit.

iii. The Applicatory Word of the Spirit

In the complementary functions of the three Persons, it is the work of the Holy Spirit to apply the blessings of God. What the Father wills and the Son mediates, the Spirit brings to us: "All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine; therefore said I that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you" (16:15). In the gracious and almost unobtrusive way in which Jesus fulfils His mediatorial role He mentions that because things belong to the Father, they belong also to the Son, and in the same gracious way the Holy Spirit does the applicatory work. The Father is the Source, the Son is the Ground and the Holy Spirit is the Means of blessing to the Church.

The Unity of Indivisibility

There is the unity of true one-ness, the unity of indivisibility. Behind the functional unity there is the unity of nature: they cannot be divided from each other. The Lord Jesus, who understands all things, does not make this a subject of explanation, but rather a subject for simple statement. There is a one-ness of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit which is an indivisible unity. Let us see how the Lord Jesus tells us how this works out:

First of all, Jesus says that where the Spirit is, there He Himself is: "I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Companion that he may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, for it beholdeth him not neither knoweth him. You know him, for he abides with you and shall be in you. I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you" (14:16-18). When the Spirit comes as that other Companion, it means the presence of the Lord Jesus, the abiding Companion of His people. Where the Spirit is, there Jesus is.

Secondly, where the Son is, the Father is. To know the Son is to know the Father: "If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father ... Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father ... Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself; but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works" (14:7-10). To listen to Jesus, to see Jesus operating, is to hear the words of the Father and to see the works of the Father. Where the Son is, there is the Father.

What is more, the indwelling Son means the indwelling Father, as the Lord told Judas (not Iscariot): "If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him" (14:23). The indwelling Son means the indwelling Father. The explanation of this lies in Christ's words, "I and the Father are one" (10:30). The Greek New Testament shows us that the numeral 'one' in this case is neuter, that is, 'I and the Father are one thing'. A Concordance will show you that this neuter pronoun can mean 'one in intent and purpose'. However it can also mean 'one' in the inner reality of being -- one and only one in indivisible unity. So it is that Paul wrote in Ephesians of how the Lord Jesus had broken down the middle wall of partition and of the two who were formerly sundered, might make "one new man" (Ephesians 2:15), so defining the indissoluble but very complex unity of the people of God as the one new man in Christ.

And where the Spirit is, there are the Father and the Son, for in this passage where the Lord Jesus says, "We will come unto him and make our abode with him", it is of the coming of the Comforter that He is speaking. 'I am going away' the Lord Jesus said, 'and He, the other Companion, will come, and when He comes, I will come.' The Father and the Son come, so in the coming of the Holy Spirit, there is the coming of the Holy Trinity to dwell within the believer.

Of course the Lord Jesus is there in the central place. He is the key, for His condition is, "If a man love Me" (14:23). He is the ground and Mediator, but the operative act of love is the love of the Father, "My Father will love him". So as a consequence of that love of the Father, there is the indwelling of Holy Trinity applied and made real by the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus is always the way in, for salvation is of Christ the Lord, but those who enter into that salvation which Christ brings, enter into the experience of the indwelling of the total indivisible Godhead. [63/64]

Beloved friends, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is not a mathematical puzzle, but it is the ground and essence of our salvation and of our security. The greatness of our God quite surpasses our understanding. The first time that the Holy Trinity is revealed in the Bible was at the baptism of the Lord Jesus. That is the first time in which the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit appear in the one text. The Father spoke from heaven to the Son as He was in the waters of baptism, and the Holy Spirit appeared in visible form as a dove descending from the Father to the Son. As we recall, when the Lord Jesus came to be baptised by John they spoke together in the river. But then everybody who had gone into the water to stand by John spoke to him, for they were openly confessing sin. No doubt those who watched on the bank nodded their heads together in their conversation, presuming that He too was confessing sin. In fact, however, the talking was that although John had not yet seen the Spirit descending, he did not feel that he could baptise this cousin of his. He recognised that Jesus had no need of a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, but the Lord said to him: "Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becomes us to fulfil all righteousness". What did this mean? At its simplest level it was as though He said, 'We must go on with this, John, for this is the way to do what God wants'. What then did God want? He wanted His sinless Son to identify Himself with sinners, and when the Lord did this, the Father could contain Himself no longer and decided that what had been hid for all eternity must be publicly declared, so the heavens were torn apart, the Spirit descended and the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit stood revealed as the Saviour of sinners.

The Unity of Unanimity

Towards us the Holy Trinity is a unity of unanimity. Not the impersonal unity of a machine delivering the goods, but the unity of a Person, intently and lovingly determined upon our welfare. As we re-read those key verses, we sense again the confidence which they breathe, as they assume the goodwill of God, the willingness of Father, Son and Holy Spirit to bless us. "I will pray the Father and he will give you another Companion, that he may be with you for ever" (14:16). "will pray ..." -- the readiness of Jesus. "... he will give ..." -- the readiness of the Father. "... that he may be with you for ever" -- the readiness of the Holy Spirit. "The Companion, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you ...". He is ready to come; the Father is ready to send Him; the Lord Jesus is ready to lend His name to the enterprise. "All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine; therefore said I, that he taketh of mine and shall declare it unto you" (16:15). In these words we feel and sense the willingness of God to give us without restraint the very outflow of Himself.

Chapter 14 stresses the willingness of the Father in this enterprise: " He will give you ..." (v.16), "whom the Father will send" (v.26). Then in Chapter 15 we are told of the willingness of the Son: "When the Companion is come whom I will send ..." (v.26); while Chapter 16 emphasises the willingness of the Spirit: "He shall glorify me, for he shall take of mine and declare it unto you" (v.15). Father, Son and Spirit are bound together in the unanimity of determination to bless the Church.

Here, then, in the great truth of the Holy Trinity, we can find the most powerful safeguard against any breakdown of our faith. If we alter Paul's words in Romans 8:31 ever so slightly, we may say in the light of this study of the teaching of the Lord Jesus: "If this God is for us, then who can be against us".

[Eli Brayley]

4. THE SAFEGUARDING REALITY OF CHRIST'S ASCENDED GLORY

HERE is another of those strands of teaching that run through John 14 to 16; He proffers Himself as the ascended glorified Lord. In this way He told His disciples that He had spoken to them to guard against the breakdown of their faith. This time our message is beautifully summed up in the well-known verse:

Peace, perfect peace, our future all unknown?

Jesus we know, and He is on the throne.

There in a nutshell is the truth which will emerge as we study this passage once more.

Our Established Security

In these chapters the Lord gives much teaching as to His going away, but the common truth in this connection is that we have an established security. "Now I go unto him that sent me. None of you asks me, Where are you going? But because I have spoken these things unto you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless I tell you the truth, it is expedient for you that I go away ..." (16:5-7). The New Testament meaning of the word 'expedient' which is most suitable in this passage and indeed most striking is: "It is for your highest spiritual welfare that I go away.' Now can you imagine anything that would have appeared less likely to be conducive to spiritual welfare in the minds of those disciples? How startling and indeed how frightening it must have seemed to them! How it must have brought them in their own minds to a state of insecurity. "We are about to lose Jesus; He is going away; He is going to leave us! How will we manage? How can we be at peace with our future all unknown?" We of course know that the factor which made His going away to be expedient was the sending of the Companion, the gracious Holy Spirit, but I want to isolate this one point of the truth of the Lord's ascension in relation to the security of the believer as it is contained in the words: "He will convince the world of righteousness ... because I go to the Father" (16:10). Do you see how the truth of the righteousness of Jesus is directly related to this reality of His going to the Father, for it not only involved going to the Father but staying with Him -- "and ye behold me no more."

The coming of the Companion was the result of Christ's going to the Father not just on a visit but as a permanency. In the light of His going away, He speaks of two things: the coming of the Companion and the reality of His own state as the Righteous One before the Father. In order to see one facet of understanding of this idea of the status of the Lord Jesus as the One who is righteous before the Father we may relate it to the claim that He registered on the cross. In the moment before He yielded up His life, He cried out in a loud voice: "It is finished!" We speak of the seven words from the cross, whereas actually there were five words and two shouts. Of these two which were not said privately to the Father or to someone standing near but shouted out for publication, the latter was: "It is finished!" This was something that all must hear. Jesus registered his claim to a finished work.

It seems to me that there must be at least five strands to this claim. He registered a claim in relation to His own person and character, claiming before the Father that He is the spotless Lamb of God, for according to the Scriptural regulations, any who is going to be a substitute must be without stain of sin. He also registered a claim regarding His example, the public face and image that He showed to others. Elsewhere He expressed the claim by saying: "He who has seen me has seen the Father", and now He was to affirm that the whole aspect of the work of declaring the Father in the visible reality of His own life had been accomplished; the Father had been fully declared. Moreover He registered the claim in respect of His teaching. It was finished. All the truth the Father had sent Him to declare had been declared; nothing false or misleading had been included and nothing left out. He registered the claim regarding His works; He went about doing good; [88/89] He did the works which the Father gave Him to do. Nothing had been left undone and nothing had been done imperfectly. He had finished.

Finally, and in the context of all that life of perfection and obedience, He registered the great claim that He had proved to be the Lamb of God bearing away the sin of the world; He had discharged the debt before God of all the sinners whom the Father had sent Him to save. The work of salvation was completely finished.

I hope that it is not too foolish to imagine that the three days which ensued express the deliberateness of the Father in weighing up this claim. We imagine that the parental reaction to the death of His Son would be swift and immediate, as if saying that His response to the killing of His Son should be remedied at once. Yet He waited until the third day. There is a lovely deliberateness about the acts of God. Of course we know that the eternal Father does not take time over things, but it may be a little bit helpful if we imagine that those three days were spent examining the claim. Was it really true? Was it wholly completed? Had His character, His example, His teaching, His works been totally finished? And above all, had there really been discharged before the throne of God the debt of all the sinners He had been sent to save? Has it really been completed?

On the third day the women came to the tomb, worrying about how to roll the stone away, only to find that the stone had been removed already. Not, my beloved, in order to let Jesus out, but in order to let us in, so that we may know that He is indeed wholly righteous. On the fortieth day he was lifted up to heaven before their very eyes, in order that they might see clearly that the Father's verdict on His Son is that He is worthy of exaltation to the highest place of all, the right hand of God.

Seated at the Father's right hand, enthroned in heavenly splendour, John describes him as "a Lamb standing as it had been slain" (Revelation 5:6). Did you ever see a slain lamb standing? This Lamb is alive from the dead and shown, as it were on the ascension day itself, in the midst of the throne, accepted at the Father's right hand. In this way the certainty of the work of salvation is fully demonstrated, so assuring the believer of his established security.

If we may be allowed for a moment to stray from our selected chapters to John 20:17 we will read: "Jesus said to Mary, Do not cling to me, for I am not yet ascended to my Father, but go unto my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father ...". God is called the Father as the status word, for God the Father is high over all. But that One, the One who in His own right and perfection is the Father is now also My Father. And He is not only My Father but He is also your Father, for you are accepted in the beloved before the very throne of God.

Our Continuing Security

"Verily, verily I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do because I go to the Father" (14:12). I have to confess an enormous uncertainty as to what the expression 'greater works' means and am not at all satisfied with what the commentators say, but one thing I can see clearly for, as always happens in the verses of the Bible, where there is a perplexity there is a clarity lying side by side with it. In this case the verse clearly says that once Jesus is at the right hand of God, then all the power flows through Him to the believer.

His going away and guaranteeing power for the Church does not mean that He ceases to be here: "I will not leave you desolate, I will come to you" (14:18); "You heard how I said to you, I go away and come to you ..." (14:28). He goes to the place of supreme power, but while doing that He is also here, alongside His believing ones. So there is the continuing security of believers in the continuing outflow of power from the Father through the mediation of the Lord Jesus.

His help is very personal and not a cold thing of help sent from a far country. I once knew a stepson who supported his step-mother quite generously but he never went to see her and did not even come to her funeral. Help can be real and valued and yet remote and cold. The Lord spoke of going to the Father who is greater than He is and through whose almighty power the Church will do greater things than He did, but He made it plain that this did not mean that He will cease to be with us but rather that He will also be here to minister that power in a personal way. We see, then, the continuing security of the believer by reason of the power and presence of the ascended Lord. [89/90]

Our Ultimate Security

We make our last observation from the opening verses of Chapter 14: "Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am you may be also." As we have seen, the truth of the ascended Lord guards us against breakdown, first by offering us what we may call a past assurance, our eternal security in the presence of God. The ascension also offers us a present security, that is that the Lord Jesus who mediates to us all the superlative power of the Father is alongside, the Companion. We now come to the last strand in the security which we have in the ascended Lord, and that is a future security, a security in certain hope, the security of a place in heaven.

Notice first of all the gracious accommodation He makes to the only way in which we can think of these things. I confess to you that I have no patience with those who say that we must not think of heaven as a place. Now will you tell me how else we can think of heaven? If you say, Well, heaven is a state of being, my next question is, Where do I enjoy it? We have no capacity to think of a state of being other than in terms of enjoying it in a certain place. This is that way in which God, by His creatorial providence, has constructed our lives.

How beautifully the Lord Jesus states things in a way that we can rest upon. "I go", He says, "to prepare a place for you, so that where I am, there you may be." How beautifully spatial! I know that everything we think about heaven will be outshone by the reality: "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for them that love Him." I know that, but in the meantime, while we wait for the revelation of things at present incomprehensible, I rest upon the things which He allows me to think: He has gone to prepare a place for me.

In relation to this prepared place, we have an assurance of the demonstrated reality of His exaltation. He said, "I go ..." and they watched Him as He went. If you take the going of Jesus to be His total work of salvation, you may say, He went to the cross; He went to the tomb; He came out of the tomb; He went up to the Father. That is the total content of the matter. But in this particular aspect of His going, you notice that the disciples gathered around Him on a mount called Olivet and watched Him as He went. In the narrative of the opening chapter of the book of the Acts you will find that there are five different expressions as to the visibility of the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was as though, under the Holy Spirit, Luke knew that this fact would be challenged and decided to emphasise in this way the five-fold proof that God allowed them actually to see Jesus as He went. It was not that incredibly foolish idea that He did this in order to teach us where heaven is. Far from that being the case, the lesson is not so much that He went upwards, but that He went away. Of course there is only one manner of going away from the earth and that is upwards, but that is beside the point. The purpose of the ascension is not to show us where heaven is, but to show us who Jesus is. Just as God gave the empty tomb with the stone rolled away to demonstrate the resurrection, so now, in His mercy He demonstrated before the eyes of witnesses the reality of the exaltation of His Son.

When the cloud had received Him out of their sight. God sent messengers to say that this same Jesus would come back again as they had seen Him go -- that is, personally and visibly. Had He not said. "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again"? In the ascension, then, lies all our security for the future. Let us never put a full stop where God only puts a comma. "Believe in God, believe also in me". That is perfectly Scriptural but it is only half of what Jesus said, for He continued straight on with the prospect of the Father's house of many mansions. Believing in Him takes all the worry out of life if we keep in view His sure promise to come again and take us to where He is. It is as though He says, 'I have gone to all this trouble in order to get you safely to heaven. I have undertaken the whole work of the incarnation, the earthly life of perfect obedience, the doing of the Father's works, the sharing of the Father's teaching; and now the bearing away of sins. I have done all that to get you to heaven, and now do you think that I am going to lose you on the way? Having secured the end, could I possibly let you go astray on the road?'

There is nothing more precious, beloved friends, than our eternal security in glory. Dwell much on heaven. The teaching of the Lord Jesus here in these chapters is that only those who think correctly about heaven can think correctly about [90/91] earth. Only those who know where they are going, really know where they are. Only those who are confident about the end can truly be confident in the middle. To think about heaven is not unreal; it is the supreme reality. It is the very crown of our Christian faith and it is this which teaches people how to die without being afraid. Jesus is coming again!