Easter 5

John 16:5-15 - Cantate - April 24, 2016
Speaking from God

Dear saints in Christ, grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

The Gospel lesson I just read from the lectern is from the New King James Version of the Bible.  In this translation, we read that the Spirit of Truth does “not speak on his own authority.”  The English Standard Bible says the same thing – “on his own authority.”  The New International Version says, “He will not speak on his own,” and omits the word authority.  That’s actually closer to the original Greek in which the Holy Spirit first inspired these words (the word authority isn’t there).  The King James Version comes closest, “He shall not speak of (that is, from) himself.”  That’s exactly what St. John records.  The Holy Spirit does “not speak from himself.”  Now, what does this mean?  And what does this have to do with authority? 

Although the word authority does not appear in the original language, the idea is certainly there.  Of course, the Holy Spirit most definitely does have authority.  He is the author of life, after all, as we say in the Creed, “the Lord and Giver of life … who spoke by the prophets.”  The Holy Spirit spoke with authority as he inspired the writers of the Old and New Testaments to write the word of God.  And through their words he continues to speak with authority today.  But the authority of the Holy Spirit can never be understood as separate from the authority of the Father and the Son.  That’s the point.  He does not speak or do anything from himself, as though he introduces something different from what Jesus taught.  No, the Holy Spirit speaks and does everything as he proceeds from the Father and the Son. 

And this isn’t as complicated as it sounds.  This procession from the Father and the Son is not simply a factoid about God.  Nor is it unimportant.  Who God is and what he does go hand in hand.  Although the divine doctrine that God is three Persons in one divine Essence might be incomprehensible to our human understanding, it is not a difficult thing to confess.  The Bible clearly teaches this great mystery to us.  Like many other articles of faith, it is not given to us to figure out or master, but simply to believe and humbly ponder.  That’s why we call it a mystery — not a secret that is unknowable, but a mystery that is un-figure-out-able.  And yet the Spirit of Truth teaches us to know the truth about God.  God is not a mere concept that we examine and scrutinize and put into a tidy system.  God is God.  We do not approach God with certain principles of what the almighty and transcendent deity must be, and then plug them in to what the Bible tells us in order to learn his will.  No.  We approach God with ears to hear, humbly trusting that he will disclose himself to us as he sees fit.  Who, after all, can discern the mind of the Lord to figure out the things he would have us know?  No one.  “But,” St. Paul tells us,

… God has revealed [his hidden wisdom] to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.  (1 Corinthians 2:16, 10-11)  

So here we have it.  The Holy Spirit is not some autonomous or independent deity.  He is the Holy Spirit of the eternal Father and the Holy Spirit of the Father’s Eternal Son – three in one, one in three – who makes known to us who God is and what he would have us know and believe. 

The Holy Spirit does not speak from himself any more than the Son speaks or acts from himself.  Consider what Jesus said in John 5:19, “Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.”  Just as the Son does nothing of himself, but always speaks and acts as the only begotten of the Father, united in mind and will, so also the Holy Spirit does nothing of himself, but always speaks and acts as he proceeds from the only begotten Son of the Father. 

And surely the Father does the same.  He does not act as a unilateral ruler over the Son and the Holy Spirit.  He is not more God than Jesus or the Holy Ghost.  He is the Father.  It is he who said, not by himself, but as in conversation within the Godhead, “Let Us make man in Our image,” that is, let us make man and woman to know and trust us as we are, one true God in perfect love and equal majesty from eternity into eternity. 

Neither Father, nor Son, nor the Holy Spirit operates independently of the whole Godhead.  On this we can rely.  He is one God.  When Jesus suffered for our redemption, he was paying the price his Father willed him to pay out of love for his fallen creation.  When the Spirit comforts us with the gospel and intercedes for us in our prayers, it is the gospel of Jesus that consoles us, the gospel that teaches us how he has reconciled us to his Father, and it is the holy blood of Jesus by which the Spirit makes our prayers acceptable before the Father. 

Now, if this all seems confusing, please consider and don’t totally tune out yet – or at least begin to listen again, and listen well.  Here is the point:  You cannot expect the Holy Spirit to speak to you, to relay any message to you, to grant any comfort to your soul, or to assure you of his presence at all – UNLESS he is speaking that word that proceeds from the Father and the Son.  This is outstandingly important!  The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son together.  This means that he does not communicate with humanity apart from that which the Father and the Son together have planned and accomplished for humanity.  This means that what the Spirit speaks always has everything to do with the work of Christ for you, his reconciliation of the Father to you.  In this way, when we listen to the word that the Spirit of Truth inspired in Holy Scripture, it is then that he is, as we confess, “with the Father and the Son together worshiped and glorified.” 

This is the true worship of God – to believe what the Bible says about how Jesus brings you peace from the Father.  This is true worship of God – to know how to apply the gospel to your life – not by twisting it or changing it or turning it into a unique message of some sort, meant only for you — no you worship God by seeing how the mercy of God in Christ toward sinners who pine under the curse of the law is the root and source of every comfort you could hope for – whether in the face of death, sickness, depression, addiction, a hectic household, a problem child, a troubled marriage, poverty, or what else have you – the gospel in is purest, most straightforward sense, is what you need to know.  You need not a special message from the Spirit.  You need what Jesus sent him to make known to all of us: Your sins are forgiven.  You have before God the righteousness of Christ your Savior.  He does not judge you. 

The Spirit does not speak from himself.  So expect to hear this.  The Spirit of Truth does not teach you by means of shivers down your back or whispers in the midst of meditation.  No, he teaches you in the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures, that is, in the word of the Bible, and nowhere else.  And what does this word say?  What is the purpose and central message of the Bible?  Well, what is it that God has accomplished which he now sends his Holy Spirit to proclaim and declare to the world through the ministry of his apostles?  Consider again those words of Jesus:

“[When] the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak from Himself, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.  He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.  All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you.”

The Holy Spirit guided Christ’s disciples into all truth.  This means that there is no truth that we should seek apart from that which they were sent by Christ to preach, record, and write in letters.  There is nothing that still needs to be revealed to you that is not there in the Bible.  He leads us into all truth.  All truth consists of the fact that he has spoken what he has heard. What has he heard?  He has heard the Father take notice of you and all sinful humanity.  He has heard him express his love and compassion toward you in his command to his Son to assume our human nature and bear our sin.  He has heard, as we sing, the Son reply,

“Yea, Father, yea, most willingly
I’ll bear what Thou commandest;
My will conforms to Thy decree,
I do what Thou demandest.”

He has heard the great cry from Jesus on the cross even as he heard his many prayers while he lived a holy life in our place.  And he has heard the Father’s response to each prayer of the Son, including his response to his Son’s perfect death.  This is what the Spirit hears.  So this is what the Spirit speaks.  When God the Father raised Jesus from the grave, he declared that he truly did pay for the sins of the world.  He declared that all sins have been borne and that all wrath has been satisfied.  He declared the world forgiven of everything that Jesus suffered and died for.  What the Spirit hears he speaks.  And so just as the Spirit hovered over the face of the deep when God spoke his almighty Word and called all creation into existence, so also this same Spirit of Truth accompanies and works through God’s command today to preach the gospel to all creation.  Where Jesus exercises all authority in heaven and on earth, the Holy Spirit works through this authority to create faith in us, making us into God’s new creation by water and the word. 

Jesus tells us that the Spirit of truth will glorify him.  How?  How does he glorify Jesus?  Jesus tells us:  “He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.  All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you.”

This is such a marvelous saying.  Here today we find the glory of Jesus bound up so intimately with the fact that his Holy Spirit declares to us what belongs to Jesus.  Consider this!  He will glorify Jesus by declaring to you in the Bible, through the preaching of the gospel, through the forgiveness of your sins – by declaring to you what belongs to Jesus.  By making you own and possess by faith the righteousness of Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ is thereby glorified!  All glory be to God on high, we sing.  And this is where his glory is found, the glory of the only begotten Son from eternity – when what is his becomes yours.  What a marvelous comfort for us.  We do not find the glory of Jesus where we muster the might of faithfulness to crown him with many crowns.  No. We find the glory of Jesus where the Father of all mercy, our righteous and eternal Maker and Judge, crowns his Son who assumed our flesh and blood to redeem us.  We find his glory where he crowns us with the crown of eternal life. 

The Father crowned Jesus with all authority in heaven and on earth.  And it is by this same authority that the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth.  It is the authority to forgive you your sins by which you have the power to be called a child of God.  It is the authority to teach you the hidden things of God in the words he has caused to be written for our learning. 

The Holy Spirit’s work is threefold.  He convicts.  He convicts the world of sin.  The world knows nothing of sin.  The true depth and nature of our sin cannot be fully understood until we see what it has truly earned.  We see what sin has earned how the Father deals with it in the crucifixion of his Son.  The world is convicted of sin because they do not believe that Jesus bore it for them.  But he did.  We are convicted of sin only insofar as we see Jesus take it away.  We see the true nature of our unworthiness only there where God forgives it and honors us instead. 

But this honor is hidden.  It is the robe of Christ’s righteousness which we wear by faith alone.  The Holy Spirit convicts the world of righteousness because Jesus goes to the Father and we see him no more.  The world knows only the righteousness that it can produce and flaunt.  It calls good evil and evil good.  But we do not judge righteousness based on what we see no more than we judge the Spirit’s guidance by what we feel.  No, facades and masks abound as much as hypocrisy and self-delusion.  But God is our judge.  Our righteousness is hidden with God in Christ.  The righteousness the Spirit bestows on us and convinces us of is the righteousness that Christ fulfilled as our holy Substitute. 

And with this, we will not be judged.  Because the ruler of this world, the devil, is judged already.  Who shall bring a charge against us? The old evil foe is judged, the deed is done; one little word can fell him.  That word that fells him is the objective truth that Jesus has taken away the sin of the world and that God has responded to it by declaring the world righteous. 

Thou holy Light, Guide Divine,
Oh, cause the Word of Life to shine!
Teach us to know our God aright
And call Him Father with delight.
From every error keep us free;
Let none but Christ our Master be
That we in living faith abide,
In Him, our Lord, with all our might confide.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.