John 15:27 Commentary and Bible Study

The Holy Spirit is not going to do it all without them. He is not going to do it instead of them, leaving them as spectators. He is going to use them. In 1 Corinthians the apostle Paul puts it this way: ‘Ye are helpers together with God’ – exactly the same point. ‘Because ye have been with me from the beginning’ you will be qualified. Christ had already told the disciples, ‘You have witnessed everything and the Holy Spirit will bring everything to your remembrance’, so that the record of Christ will be inscripturated, set down in the inspired New Testament. The Holy Spirit would do that, and he would also work in individual hearts. The disciples did not know it yet, but soon it would be Calvary and then the resurrection, and they would be even more qualified to represent Christ, because they will have been witnesses of the resurrection. And to authenticate their witness, they – not us, but they – would be given by the Holy Spirit power to do signs and wonders, signs of apostles to authenticate the apostles and their witness to the resurrection.So there is the hatred of the world. There is the reason for the hatred of the world because you are born again. True Christians are different, we are not of the world, and we should not be of the world. There is the necessity for the distinctiveness of the Christian church and the Christian life. There is dependence upon the Holy Spirit as the one who must break through the hostility of man, and so we preach and so we teach. And although we must be friendly of course, and although we must be winsome, and although we must long for souls and be tenderly sympathetic to people in their plight, the same plight we were once in, yet at the same time, we lead with the truth, with the appeal of God, the call of Christ, with Calvary, human need, the atonement, the need for conversion. These things are paramount. These are the things we declare.