John 14:17 Commentary and Bible Study

The Trinity is obvious in the Old Testament when we read it through New Testament eyes, with the eye of faith, but many of the people in olden times may not have grasped this. Look, for instance, at Isaiah 48.16. These are words put by the prophet into the mouth of Messiah – ‘Come ye near unto me, hear ye this; I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there am I: and now the Lord God, and his Spirit, hath sent me.’ That is Messiah speaking, and he is speaking as God, the one who has been present from the beginning with the Father. And not only has the Father sent him, but the Spirit who is mentioned as if he is a distinct entity. The Spirit has sent him. You get a passage like that which is so Trinitarian. The three persons of the Godhead mentioned in a single sentence. And there are others also.So the Trinity is in the Old Testament, and maybe the most spiritual people, the prophet himself and others saw it clearly. King David clearly saw it. You see that in the Psalms, but I think that the Jews as a whole did not see it and to this day they do not see it. One of the great tragedies today is that Jews do not believe in the Trinity. And without the Trinity, you cannot understand the Redeemer, the Saviour who would come and die in our place and make an atonement: God who would come himself in the person of his Son. The disciples needed to know these things; they needed to be clear in their minds, and this is the explanation to them before the Lord leaves them.The Spirit is the enlightener or the illuminator of human hearts. Now Christ was teaching this long before these verses. You think of John 3, you think of that discourse of Christ to Nicodemus, the leading Pharisee, telling him he must be born again, explaining to him the work of the Spirit in salvation, but the disciples did not understand this. And now it is repeated to them in very clear terms, and they are given a kind of Ordo Salutis, an order of salvation. This is how people are saved: they are illuminated or enlightened by the Holy Spirit.He has worked in your heart, he has brought you under conviction of sin and shown you your need of salvation. He has shown you Christ, and you have had these experiences of him. The world does not even acknowledge him. ‘The natural man,’ says the apostle Paul, ‘receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him.’ He cannot know them for they are spiritually discerned.