John 14:26 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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John 14:26

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Christ’s first point is that love learns. Everything hangs on verse 23 – ‘If a man love me, he will keep my words.’ First of all, the sense is that the Holy Spirit will be the illuminator, the enlightener of Christian people. It is by him that we shall understand the Scripture. He illuminates us in the first place, when we are in spiritual darkness and far from God and unconverted. The day comes when suddenly our eyes are opened, and we realise that spiritual things are true, and we realise that the gospel is true, and we understand it in a way that we never grasped it before. The Holy Spirit illuminates dead souls and begins the work of grace in their lives. Then even after conversion, he goes on reminding us, opening our minds as we read the Scripture, helping us to understand. Once the Scripture is complete he will not teach anything which is not in the Scriptures. He will often remind us of the Scripture; things will come to our attention, but he will not reveal anything new. No authoritative truth comes to any Christian outside the Scripture.Now this brings us to the next ‘all things’ – ‘and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.’ By the Holy Spirit, the apostles will be inspired, the Gospels will be written; the epistles will be written. Many things in the New Testament will be written by people who are not apostles, but everything must be attested, authenticated, verified by the apostles, because the Holy Spirit is especially given to them for the revelation of the New Testament, and some are enabled to remember so vividly and so clearly everything that Christ did and said which is to be recorded in the word of God. So the Bible with the passing of the apostles was complete. All things were revealed by the Spirit to them. The Old Testament was already complete, and now the New Testament is going to be completed by the inspiration and the direction of the Holy Spirit of God so that Jude when he writes his epistle can look back and can already say, ‘the faith once delivered unto the saints.’ The wisdom of God saw to it that the entire Scripture was given within the time of the apostles, complete, inerrant, and perfect. At no time would we be confused by new revelations, by claims of men, by additional ideas. God would complete it in the lifespan of the apostles, and it would stand as a sure guide, as a yardstick in all disputes, as the sole source of authority.

Application

Do we see in a congregation somebody asleep? Not because they are tired, but because they are bored, not interested so their eyes are roaming everywhere. Well, the reason is they do not love Christ because if they loved him, they would want to learn. Of course we allow for the fact that the preacher can be boring, the preacher can mangle the truth and take the interest out of it – he has got a heavy responsibility not to do that. However, the fault may be in the hearer who is perhaps not a Christian and so naturally bored, or is perhaps a Christian that is somewhat backslidden and whose love for Christ is low. Love for Christ is expressed in a longing to learn and to know, even a desire to be convicted, a desire to be moved, a desire to be blessed.

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John 14:26 Commentary and Bible Study