The Holy Spirit in You
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2021 · 10 October 2021
In John 14 is the long description of the promises that our Lord gives His children that is every believer. There is no other passage like this in the Bible. It is the richest section of Scripture summarizing what the Lord promises to those who belong to Him. But before we kind of look into that passage, just a few comments. I do know this: God is joined to His people in union all the time.
Every believer is in constant, eternal communion with the Trinity. And I’m not talking about when you come to church, I’m talking about when you leave here. I’m talking about when you’re all by yourself and you’re driving along in your car alone, you are still in the presence of the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – in full and complete union. This is somehow lost on many evangelicals.
There are many foolish ideas in the church that somehow this notion of communing with God has to be induced by some mechanical means. Now why am I saying that? Because that’s really what John 14:19-24 is talking about. Our Lord prays and asks the Father to do what He has prayed and here in these verses is the heart of it all, “When I go away, you’re going to receive the Trinity.”
Every Christian at all times, forever, is in a life union with the Trinity. Let me say it another way: Your spiritual life is the life of God. The fact that you are alive spiritually, that you have died with Christ – as you read in Colossians – and you are now alive is because the life of God is in your soul. You cannot have eternal life as something God gives without having God, because it is His life.
Just know that it’s very difficult to understand the Trinity. Infinity is totally beyond us, and divine nature is also beyond us. But we can understand what John is saying enough to be responsible for it and see the implications of it. The profound truth of the Trinity goes beyond our ability to grasp, and that is why Deuteronomy 29:29 says, “The secret things belong to the Lord.”
There are some things that only God understands. “Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, these things are unsearchable.” And, yet, we have this revelation on the Trinity because it has such vital impact to us. Initially, it is for the sake of comfort to know that you are in constant union with the triune God, the God of the universe, in all three persons.
It’s a sin and blasphemy to deny the Trinity because you’re denying the nature of God. It is not enough to say, “I believe God is triune. I believe in the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit; I believe in a Trinitarian deity; and I believe that He exists in heaven.” You need to understand that He exists in you if you are a believer. And that’s what our Lord is presenting to us in this incredible passage.
John 14:19-24, “A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. 20 At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. 21 He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”
“22 Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?” 23 Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. 24 He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.”
There is no passage that more clearly presents the Trinity than this. You have our Lord speaking about Himself, about His Father, and about the Holy Spirit. He speaks of the unity of the Trinity, and He speaks of the diversity of the Trinity, one in essence, one in nature, yet three in person. Yes, I understand that these are profound realities, but they have so great importance to our lives.
Let me remind you why. First of all, the occasion is Thursday night when this teaching is given by our Lord, this revelation that John recorded. Thursday night of Passion Week and Friday, He will die. He has been telling them over and over again, “I’m going to be arrested; I’m going to be killed; I’m going to rise from the dead.” But they have a hard time handling it. They didn’t like the notion of it.
This creates panic in their hearts. Remember, they have forsaken all to follow Him. They’ve dropped their nets, if you will. They’ve left their enterprises. They’ve followed Jesus for a three-year period, from town-to-town and village-to-village. He has been the source of everything for them, and now He is leaving. Where are the fulfillments of all the promises given to the prophets?
This is so overwhelming that they are distraught. John 14:1, says, “Stop letting your heart be troubled.” There are only 11 disciples left in the upper room now on that Thursday night Passover meal. Judas had gone to work out the arrest of Jesus in the middle of the night in the garden. And then by morning, there’s a false trial. And then by Friday, He is put on the cross.
And so our Lord comforts them with the promises that are in this whole section. But the main promise is, “I am guaranteeing you that you will have the full presence of the triune God, every moment of every day, forever and ever. That’s the guarantee.” Everything else comes out of that promise. It is a promise for the 11, but it is also for everybody else who will ever believe in Christ.
This is a promise that extends to us. You don’t have to do anything. If you possess eternal life, that eternal life is fully God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You are never separated from God – the Father, Son or Holy Spirit. The world doesn’t really see us for who we actually are. They think we’re just people like everybody else. We’re not. We are alien beings in a real sense.
But because that nature is spiritual and not physical, it is invisible to non-believers. Do you remember what the apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5, “We know no man after the flesh.” What does that mean? It means that we don’t evaluate people based on their physical appearance. What concerns me about a non-believer is nothing physical, but that spiritually that person is a child of Satan.
We don’t see people just at the human level. We don’t see people based upon their social status or their education or their wardrobe or their sense of fashion. We don’t see people based upon their family connections, or based upon their history. We see with spiritual eyes, because we understand the true condition of those who belong to Christ and those who belong to Satan.
So we’re veiled in a way like Christ was veiled. In His incarnation, His glory was veiled. There was a glimpse given at the transfiguration. So here we live in this world, and we are literally the very temple of the Trinity, but it is veiled in our human flesh. But we need to understand the reality of that presence, and that’s what John has recorded for us from the lips of our precious Lord.
To whom are these promises given? Well, they’re given only to believers. They’re given to the disciples and all who will come after them who believe in Jesus. But that has to be defined further because there are a lot of people who believe in Jesus. So how do we know who the true recipients of these promises are? Well, it’s in verse 15, “If you love Me, you’ll keep My commandments.”
Who is a true believer?” Not someone who believes the facts about the gospel, not someone who believes the facts about Jesus, but someone who loves the Lord and whose love is manifest in a life of obedience. Verse 21, “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”
Now let us look at this from another angle. When we go to heaven, what is it that we receive? It’s about meeting God, fellowshipping with God, knowing God, loving God perfectly, and obeying God. No sin will interrupt that obedience. No sin will interrupt that love or diminish it. But heaven is the triune God. In Revelation 2:7, heaven is called the paradise of God.
Now as believers, we’re headed for the paradise of God. We’re headed for heaven. All through these letters, believers are identified by a phrase: “He that overcomes.” And John in his epistles, talks about the overcoming reality of faith, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. By faith we overcome. The overcomer is the one who has put his trust in Christ. So we are the overcomers.
What do we receive when we get to heaven? Look at Revelation 2:17, “To him who overcomes, that is, to a believer, I will give the hidden manna.” What is the hidden manna? That is Christ Himself. God gave them manna and all the people of Israel were fed in the wilderness. But in John 6:35 Jesus says, “I am the bread of Life. Whoever eats of this bread will never hunger.”
We are not all going to heaven and being in a massive choir of unidentifiable people. No. We’re going to have individual communion with the Trinity, as much as the promises of Revelation 2:17 say, it continues, “And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it.” This is to identify you personally in a relationship with God.
Heaven is not a group experience, it is a personal communion with Christ. At the end of Revelation 2, He talks about what’s going to happen to the overcomer. Just look at verse 28, “To the one who overcomes, I will give him the morning star.” What is that? In Revelation 22:16 it says, “I, Jesus, am the bright morning star.” What happens to the believer in heaven? He receives Jesus, personally.
Revelation 3:12, “He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name.” So we’re going to have a name that Christ gives us, and then we’re identified with our city.
What are you going to get in heaven? You’re going to get God. Verse 21, “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.” It means that where God is, where Christ is, that is where you will be, in constant, intimate, personalized fellowship with the Father, the Son and the Spirit as well. That is heaven.
Last week, we looked at the presence of the Holy Spirit in verses 16 and 17, I won’t go over that. And the important part at the end of verse 17, Jesus says, “He abides with you and will be in you.” He just said He would send the Holy Spirit. Now He says in verse 18, “I will come.” That’s the Son of God talking. He’s simply saying, “I’m coming back. I’m sending the Spirit, but I’m also coming back to you.
In fact, what did He say in Matthew 28:20 at the Great Commission? “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” I will not leave you as orphans. I will come back. Yes, after three days from the resurrection. What He’s talking about is, “I’ll be back to live in you forever. And in that day when the Holy Spirit comes and I come, you will understand the Trinity a little bit more.
You will understand verse 20, “At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” And reminding them again in verse 21, “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” Becoming a Christian is being in living union with the triune God at its core.
You need to acknowledge each person of the Trinity. You can communicate with each member of the Trinity. Communicate with the triune God. Verse 22, Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?” Why does he ask that question? Because they were still holding on the idea that He would bring about the kingdom now.
What does it mean to have eternal life? It means to have God Himself in you, which then leads us to the third member of the Trinity, and we will drop down to verse 23, “Jesus said, ‘If anyone loves Me, He will keep My word and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.” Now this is the third member of the Trinity, God the Father.
On the other hand, verse 24, “He who does not love Me, does not keep My words.” In other words, if you don’t obey the Word of God, you don’t love God no matter what you say. “And the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.” Again, the qualification for being a true believer that Jesus lays out here, He received from the Father. They’re all in agreement.
You don’t have to go someplace to worship God, you are the temple. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, “He that is joined to the Lord is as one spirit.” 10 “You want to live as one who is in the image of the One who created him.” 12, “you should be characterized by compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance forgiveness, and of course, love, the perfect bond of unity.” Let’s pray.