Jesus Sent Help

What Did Jesus Do?

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper,
to be with you forever.”
John 14.16

When I wrote about my personal salvation I described how, for a long time, I had believed the Lord to be far away from me at the Father's right hand, but that when I had my first real conversation with Jesus he explained that he had in fact always been with me (See WDJD for 11/8/10). It occurred to me that some further clarification is appropriate, because someone might think that in saying he had been with me always the Lord could not have been in heaven with the Father.

The fact is, Jesus is present with all believers, even when, like me, they may go for years quite insensitive to his presence. And, at the very same time that he is present with us, the Lord is also attendant upon the right hand of the Father. This is possible because Christ's presence with, actually within, every believer, is through the agency of the “Helper.”

You see, Jesus was painfully aware of the approach of his crucifixion, and anxious that his disciples should not feel abandoned and alone in a world where persecution was certain. They were all going to need help, and the Lord knew just what help to ask for from the Father. The help the Son would request, and the Father would send, was the Holy Spirit. And, by the promise of Jesus himself, we can believe and know that the Spirit is with us forever (John 14.16b).

Now, the Spirit is no free agent, but the real presence of the Father and the Son, from whom he issues. The Son came that we should know the Father, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14.9); and the Father sends the Holy Spirit at the request of the Son so that both Father and Son should abide with believers forever, “...and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14.23). It is only in the Holy Spirit that Father and Son come and make their home with us. To slightly expand John 14.9—Whoever has seen the Son has seen the Father, and anyone who sees Father and Son also sees the Holy Spirit, for God the Three in One is inseparable.

In the Book of Revelation the Apostle John was shown a vision of a new heaven and a new earth which will succeed to the place of the first heaven and first earth, which shall pass away (Revelation 21.1). A voice accompanied John's vision, and declared that, “the dwelling place of God is with man” (Revelation 21.3). Though the vision was of an event which lay in the future, it in fact proclaimed a present spiritual reality for the Church, for believers, which is—God already dwells with the Body of Christ, with every believer in every place and every time, until time itself passes away and eternity future opens up. Thus it is that the Church does not put off the celebration and worship that will be the defining characteristics of the new Jerusalem, but experiences them even now. For, again, it is the Helper, the Holy Spirit, who makes manifest the presence of the Triune God, and who transforms the Church into the new Jerusalem even now.

If we need help today, help is here. If others need help, well, we are here. For, even as the Father sent the Son, and the Father and Son have sent the Spirit, so in the Spirit we must be willing to be sent—to go and be helpers. That's what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4