A, Easter 6 - John 14:12-21 "The Spirit of Truth"

John 14:12–14, 15-21 (ESV) “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.  Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.  If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.” 

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever,  even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.  “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.  Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.  In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.  Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”

For the best part of two thousand years, the church has struggled to understand what the love is,  into which God calls us.  And, to know the Holy Spirit and his function in our lives, in the wake of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. 

Love has been misunderstood, and the Holy Spirit has been buried, time and time again, as one looks back through the history of the Christian Church.  This should not surprise us, as the forces of evil confront us and seek to suppress what love truly is and what the Holy Spirit seeks to do for us.

It also might surprise you that Luther’s battle in the Reformation centred on the misunderstanding of love which stood at the heart of the mistaken function of justification and righteousness before God.

Because righteousness and justification were being wrongly centred on what the individual did before God, the Holy Spirit was then the forgotten third member of the Trinity.  But more on that in a moment.

Firstly, love; how does one love God?  How can you love God?  The gospel reading begins with Jesus saying, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Then ends, “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.  And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”  (John 14:15, 21 ESV)

This call to love, seems like a riddle.  The Israelites and Jews could not keep the commandments which are summed up in loving God, with all one’s heart, with all one’s soul, and with all one’s mind, and loving one’s neighbour as oneself.  (Matt 22:37-39, Deut 6:5, Lev 19:18b)

In fact, this is the reason for Jesus coming!  He came to love God and love humanity because under the Law the Jews couldn’t.  He found the Jews and the rest of humanity debased, and rebased us, by doing what we could not do, he perfectly pleased God by keeping the Law, and made atonement for humanity by dying for our sin.  He did not sin, yet he suffered to save us from our sin.

Despite this, the church struggled to stand under this love, to understand this love, and many throughout history and still today think the order of salvation is that Jesus died and now we must obey with self-focused good works.  They forget, “we are his (God’s) workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10 ESV)

The love to which God is calling us is a love that always comes down in creative, and re-creative power.  It finds the unlovable, and those incapable of love, and loves them.  This love is a receptive love, and it has to find us because, like the Jews, we cannot love God or our neighbour as ourselves!

So now we return to the third member of the Trinity.  God sends the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, because he knows without him, Jesus’ death and resurrection, would have just faded into history, and been forgotten, and so would our opportunity to ever love God.

Yet having sent the Holy Spirit, the church struggles to receive and submit to the Holy Spirit, even though he is the only reason, generation after generation remember Jesus in the first place! 

Instead of recognising we are recipients of God’s love, generation after generation, have sought to climb up to God, through the “greater good” and love him.  This type of ego-centred love crept into the early church through Greek thinking.  From that, the grace of God is turned about so it becomes a man-made method of salvation.  Jesus came and did the right thing, and now through his example, we too must do the right thing, and climb up to God.  However, this only returns a person to a law that one cannot perfect.

Jesus names the Holy Spirit, “the Spirit of truth”.  The Greek biblical word for truth is “that which is not hidden”.  The Holy Spirit is he who reveals, he is God who unhides and opens our eyes and ears to the reality of God the Father and God the Son.  He also puts in plain sight who and what we are before God, as sinner, and as saint.

One may have claimed ignorance before Jesus ascended and sent the Holy Spirit.  In Acts seventeen Paul proclaims to the Greek thinkers of Athens, “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,  because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:30–31 ESV)

In other words, Jesus’ resurrection, ascension, and the sending of the Holy Spirit, gives one the opportunity to be returned to Jesus’ righteousness and victory over death, from self-designated good works.  These are the works one does to earn their righteousness before God.  Or works that fail when seeking to climb up to God and love with a love that desecrates his holiness. 

This does not please God because it’s not in accord with his plan of salvation, and once seeking entry into God’s presence through partial goodness, Jesus’ death and resurrection is treated with contempt.

Added to this, once goodness is elevated to holiness, then love becomes presumptuous, conceited, and full of vain glory.  The Holy Spirit is no longer allowed to uncover the truth.  There is no longer need for God’s love in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, and the Spirit’s call to repentance.

But what pleases God is when we turn from our own efforts and trust in him:  in the resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit, who gives faith and gathers us in faith. 

God is pleased and glorified when we daily drown our human spirit, with its knowledge of good and evil, and trust in Jesus Christ, having been given a knowledge of him by the Spirit of Truth, as he wills us, and returns us, time and time again, to hear God’s Word.

Finally, I draw your attention to the verses just prior to the Gospel reading for today.  Jesus proclaims  something quite peculiar.

He says, in John fourteen verses twelve to fourteen, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.  Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.  If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”  (John 14:12–14 ESV)

So, the believer does the works of Jesus because he goes to the Father and the Holy Spirit comes to uncover Christ within.  We pray as Jesus prayed for others, we help others as Jesus helped others, we bear our cross as Jesus bore his cross.  And we do so only because the Holy Spirit comes from God the Father, and God the Son to bring us to the Father and the Son.

But this is not all!  Jesus says, “whoever believes, does greater works than him because he is going to the Father”.  What are these greater works?  In Greek, these are mega works.  How can we do greater works than Jesus?  It seems incorrect, but Jesus said it, so it’s not!  What are these mega works?

One might ask themselves what Jesus did, which we could not do?  The answer is to be perfect and holy in a God pleasing way.  But in addition to this he suffered and died to atone for our sin, even though he did not sin.

Jesus doing no sin is the hint!  The greater work that Jesus could not do, because he was without sin is to confess sin and ask for forgiveness.  We certainly need the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, to confess and ask for forgiveness!  This is because it costs our human spirit its pride, to allow the Holy Spirit to uncover the truth of our sin, which reveals us as debased and unholy before God.

Confession and seeking forgiveness are so counter cultural to human nature.  Every child since Adam hides sin rather than confesses it.  Since the beginning, the devil has been making us guilty because of our sin, telling us our sin is too great for God to forgive.  Or he tells us our sin is not really that bad and to ignore what God says in his Word about sin.

Yet, the beauty of the resurrection is that despite the debased nature of every human being, we now have access to God, without fear of desecrating his holiness, or being annihilated by his holiness.  The Holy Spirit may allow us to feel guilt, but only so we rush to the cross in confession asking for forgiveness.

This work is a mega work of God the Holy Spirit in us, as it demonstrates faith in God, when we are led to turn from ourselves, to do the works God has prepared in advance for us to do. 

In addition to this, it also justifies God sending his Son to the cross, it justifies Jesus’ suffering and death for our sin, it justifies the work of the Holy Spirit, leading Jesus in servanthood as the Son of Man.  It also glorifies the Holy Spirit in raising Jesus from death and raising us daily, so we can die to self and live in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and in the peace of God our Father.

Having been forgiven, we love God in sincere appreciation for what he did and continues to do.  So much so, the Holy Spirit makes us bold enough in our death of self, to risk ridicule and loss of name in proclaiming to others our sin and why God has forgiven us.   Amen.