Thus had the Lord prepared His own for the world's hatred, not only because He had known it before them, but because it had fallen on Him with an intensity and groundlessness beyond all experience. As even their law had forewarned of it, they were the more inexcusable. But nothing is so blind as unbelief, nor so cruel as its will irritated by the light of God which treats it as sin, and sin refusing God in sovereign grace, the Father and the Son. For they that dwell at Jerusalem and their rulers, as Paul could say elsewhere, because they knew Him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath-day, they have fulfilled them in condemning Him.
It might seem then all must be swept away by the murderous rancor of man, and especially religious man. But not so. It is not that the Lord was not to die as well as suffer; nor that His feeble followers should escape the lot of their Master, as far as God was pleased to let them taste it; but that He was about to leave the world for glory on high, and to send down the Holy Ghost thence, as a new, divine and heavenly witness here below.
[“But] when the Paraclete is come, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceedeth out from the Father, he shall testify concerning me; and ye too testify, because ye are with me from [the] beginning.” (Vers. 26, 27.)
Here the Holy Spirit is viewed as sent by the ascended Christ from the Father, and consequently as witness of His heavenly glory. This is an advance on what we saw in the preceding chapter, where Christ asks and the Father gives the Paraclete to be with them forever, sending Him in the Son's name. Here the Son Himself sends, though of course from the Father. The Spirit of truth is thus the suited testifier of Christ as He is above; the disciples also testify, as His companions and so chosen from the beginning. For the first time it is said “when the Paraclete is come,” not merely given or sent. He is a divine person in the fullest sense, not only to abide, teach and recall to remembrance, but to testify concerning Christ, and that which the chosen companions, the apostles, of the Lord could not testify; for they as such could not go beyond what they had seen and heard, at any rate what fell within the range of their being with Him from the beginning. The Spirit of truth which proceeds out from the Father could not merely strengthen them to do perfectly that task, but add quite another testimony of hitherto unknown blessedness, as sent by Christ personally from the Father.
Thus is clearly defined the position of the disciples, henceforward in due time called Christians: not of the world, but chosen by Christ out of it, commanded to love one another as loved of Christ, and hated of the world, with the Paraclete the Spirit of truth sent by Christ to testify of Him, of whom they too were bearing witness as being with Him from the beginning. Who so competent to tell of Christ's glory with the Father as the Spirit proceeding forth from the Father; and sent by the exalted Christ? Thus was secured full testimony to His glory morally on earth by the disciples (though not without the Spirit's power already assured), and actually in heaven as the glorified Man by the One who in every way could make it best known.
It is evident that those who personally followed the Lord had a special place in the testimony to His manifestation on earth; and this testimony we have in the Gospels as fully as God saw fit to preserve it permanently for all saints, as the Holy Ghost's testimony to His heavenly glory was pre-eminently presented in the inspired epistles of Paul for like permanent use, though doubtless in no way limited to him or them.
And assuredly in principle the place of testimony abides for those who are Christ's, whatever the change of circumstances and alas! of state. As certainly as Christ abides on high and the Holy Ghost is come, never to leave us, it is not only that we know by faith the Son's relationship to the Father and our blessedness by virtue of it, and in Him who is in the Father as He is in us, but we have all the profit of His place as the True Vine on earth, as we know Him gone on high exalted as man, a quite new thing. And as we have the joy of His relationship to the Father and to us, we are called to bear witness to Him in every way. Wonderful comfort in our weakness! He the Spirit of truth was to testify of Jesus, and especially of Jesus where none could be with Him, none but the Paraclete Himself competent. It was not necessary to repeat here or later that He abides: this had been said at first in relation to us (chap. 14.) where His guaranteed presence with us was most graciously named, lest we might feel orphans indeed. But if we have the comfortable pledge of His being with us forever, it is Without doubt not less but more for testifying of Christ's glory than for our consolation. Of this however we shall hear more in what is to follow, where the Lord renews the subject most fully.