“But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me.

And you also will bear witness, because you have been with Me from the beginning. (John 15:26–27)

In 1900, 80% of the world’s Christians were in Europe and North America. About 18% were in Asia and South America, and about 2% were in Africa. One hundred years later, in the year 2000, 40% of the world’s Christians were in North America and Europe, and 60 % were now split between South America, Asia, and Africa. If the current trends continue, by 2050, only a little more than 20% of the world’s Christians will be in North America and Europe. The other 80% will be South America, Asia, and Africa. Africa is predicted to have the majority of the world’s Christians by then, with just over 40%. Africa is set to be the population centre of world Christianity in the next 25 years.

Unfortunately, we who are on the ground here in Africa know that too often the kind of Christianity that is spreading is a mile wide and an inch deep. We know it is a Christianity fused with indigenous religions and ancestor worship, a Christianity shot through with the prosperity gospel, and therefore Christian only in name. We also know that by and large, the Christianity that is growing and dominant in Africa is essentially a Christianity that profoundly misunderstands the Holy Spirit. It misunderstands His nature, it misunderstands His work, it misunderstands His purposes. Instead of having a theology of the Holy Spirit derived from Scripture, it is almost entirely a theology derived from experience. What we do in our services, what we see happening, what we know we experienced – this becomes truth, this becomes doctrine, not what the Bible teaches.

It was John MacArthur who said, “I have been convinced for a long time that the most ignored, the most misrepresented, the most dishonoured, the most insulted, and the most abused person in the Trinity is the Holy Spirit. That is a very serious thing to do because that is a form of taking the Lord’s name in vain, which is a violation of one of the Ten Commandments. The Holy Spirit is regularly spoken of with irreverence, foolishness, and flippancy. People ascribe to the Holy Spirit things that He has no part of, and they fail to honour Him for His true work.”

It is here in John 13 through 17 that we have some of the deepest and yet clearest teaching on the Holy Spirit. Here in Jesus’ Farewell teaching to His disciples, He explains that the way to live the Christian life when He is no longer present is through the presence of another Person who is just like Him. Someone just like Jesus, someone with the mind, thoughts, loves, will of Jesus will be able to be with all believers of all times and in all places. It will be Jesus, but no longer located in and restricted to the geographical area of Israel. It will be like having Jesus everywhere.

Here is really where Jesus first introduces the disciples to a clearer understanding of who the Holy Spirit is. For three years He has acclimatised them to the teaching that He and the Father are distinct and yet one. And now He is taking them to the next level to show them that there are in fact three that are one. There are five passages in this whole discourse where Jesus deals with the Spirit. We’ve seen two of them already in chapter 14, and now we come to the third one in verse 26.

If we listen carefully to the words of Jesus, we can better understand the misunderstood Holy Spirit. In just verse 26 and a few other verses, we can overturn three errors regarding the Holy Spirit, and come to know Him rightly.

I. He is a Person: Not the Impersonal Spirit

“But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me.

The first thing we should notice is that Jesus speaks of this Helper, this Spirit of truth, as a person, not a force. Some of it is very visible in our English translations. At the end of verse 26, you see the word “he” – He will testify of me. Jesus doesn’t say “it” will testify of me, but “He”.

In fact, Jesus speaks this way three other times in the verse, which is not as obvious in the English. When He says “the Helper”, in Greek the word “the” can be masculine (he), feminine (she), or neuter (it), and singular or plural. Here it is a masculine singular, which means he. That happens again in the word “whom I shall send” – masculine singular – and in the words “the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father” – again, masculine singular in the Greek – He.

In fact, in this whole discourse, I counted 13 times Jesus uses the masculine singular pronoun or relative pronoun to refer to the Spirit. It is easy to say “it” in Greek, but John, recording the words of Jesus, gives us the words that mean He.

But notice Jesus gives us more clues that He is a Person. First, He calls Him the Helper. This is a term for a person. Jesus doesn’t call the Spirit the instrument, the tool, the machine – mere things which help – He calls Him the Helper. Again, for the grammarians keeping score, this word is also in the masculine singular. This is the word also translated Comforter or Advocate. It means someone who comes to your side, and speaks on your behalf. It is someone who aids you in trouble, who strengthens you when you are weak, and who comforts you when needing consolation.

Jesus also says that He testifies. He is someone who speaks, gives testimony like a witness in a trial, speaking the truth. Only a Person with thought, intellect, reason can testify.

The Spirit is a Person. Later on, in John 16 Jesus says, “And when he is come, he will convict the world…” Convicting of sin requires that He be a Person, not a force. Later on, He guides. It takes personality to guide someone intelligently.

Outside of the Gospel of John, Scripture is filled with examples of things that He does that only a Person can do. In Romans 8:26, we find that the Spirit prays for believers. An object cannot pray. It takes a Person to pray.

In Ephesians 4:30, Paul says, “grieve not the Holy Spirit of God’. He can be grieved by our sin, as a Person with emotions. We read earlier in I Cor 2:10-11, of Him knowing and searching the things of God. This means He has intelligence. He can also be treated badly as a Person. We see Ananias and Saphira lying to the Holy Spirit, we see Jesus saying that the Pharisees were blaspheming the Holy Spirit, we see the writer of Hebrews stating that we can insult the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is a Person. Now this is important to understand, because throughout church history, those who deny the doctrine of the Trinity usually do so by deny two things: one, the deity of Jesus, and two, the personality of the Spirit. Unitarians, cultists, say that Jesus is not God, and they say the Spirit is not a Person. The Spirit is a force, energy, action, movement, but not a Person. God’s Spirit, they say, is like when Scripture speaks about God’s hand, or God’s eyes – a metaphor for God’s action, but not a separate Person.

But Scripture is absolutely clear that the Holy Spirit is a He: a someone with will, intellect, emotion. No, this Spirit is a Person, a Person who can be known, loved, responded to.

De-personalising the Spirit is what leads many to treat His work as if it is irrational, and uncontrollable. That’s why many like to take one image of the Spirit – fire, and make it the only image. Because fire is a force, a power, an energy, but it is not rational or orderly. So when you de-personalise the Spirit, you can stop thinking about His intentions, His goals, His nature, and think only about His effects. As if He is nothing more than invisible wind, invisible power, inexplicably knocking people over in a service, inexplicably making them writhe in fits of spiritual electrocution, inexplicably making people babble in a non-linguistic language. This is what you expect if He is not a Person, if He is a non-rational force.

For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. (1 Corinthians 14:33)

Let all things be done decently and in order. (1 Corinthians 14:40)

He is not the impersonal Spirit. He is a Person. Now that has led some people into other errors. They have thought He is either identical to the Father and Son, or He is inferior to the Father.

II. He is a Distinct and Equal Person – Not Inferior or Indistinct

“But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me.

Notice, Jesus distinguishes the Spirit both from Himself and from the Father. Jesus says He sends the Spirit. We see this again in 16:7 :

Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.

But we also read that the Father sends the Spirit.

And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— (John 14:16)

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. (John 14:26)

If He is sent by the Father, and sent by the Son, we know He is not identical to the Father or to the Son.

He often mentions Himself, the Father, and the Spirit in one verse.

whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me.

And notice again in 14:16 and 14:26 all three are mentioned. The Spirit is distinct from the Father and the Son.

We think of Scriptures that mention all three together (Matthew 28:19, 2 Corinthians 13:14, Ephesians 4:4, 1 Cor 12:4-6 “Spirit…Lord..God”, 1 Pet 1:2). This tells us that the Spirit is truly and completely God, but He is not the Father, and he is not the Son. He is distinct, but He is also equal.

Now this prevents us from two heresies. One is the false teaching of modalism, that the three Persons are just three different masks, faces, or ways that the one Person of God adopts at different times. And since it is a kind of Christianity spreading through Africa, it is important that we confront and refute this heresy.

The other heresy is Arianism which teaches that only the Father is really God, the Son and the Spirit are lesser beings, emanations, sub-deities. This is the view of Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the Christadelphians, Unitarians. It’s the view of other so-called monotheistic religions. The Spirit is demoted to an agent of God, an action of God, but not God.

Now why does this matter? First, because it’s true. It is the very nature of God, and true Christians care about the nature of God. We want to know who it is we worship, so we should love any doctrine which explains and explores the nature of God.

Second, if you either think the Spirit of God is inferior to God, or identical with the other Persons, then you don’t have the biblical, saving gospel. You haven’t believed the truth that will save your soul and give you eternal life. The good news is that God the Father sent God the Son to take on humanity and die on the cross for our sins. On the cross, it was not the Father or the Spirit, but the Son paying the price, satisfying the wrath of God. He did this because He was conceived of the virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, enabled to live and die and rise for us by the Holy Spirit. And once ascended, the entire transaction of applying the death and resurrection of Jesus to you, regenerating you, giving you a new heart, sealing you, is all the Holy Spirit.

You can’t have biblical Christianity unless you believe in the Holy Spirit distinct and yet equal with the Father and Son. He is not impersonal. He is not identical with the Father and Son, nor is He inferior.

III. He is a Familiar Person – Not Incomprehensible

For many people, the Holy Spirit is mysterious, strange. Some have even called him the anonymous Person of the Trinity. They note that Father and Son seem to be symmetrical, but the Spirit doesn’t seem to fit. They can’t place Him, or understand Him. He seems incomprehensible, unfamiliar, inscrutable. In fact, this thinking that He is unfamiliar or strange makes people nervous to even address Him or speak to Him.

Someone might say, why doesn’t He have a name like the Father and the Son? Actually, the Father is not a personal name, it is a title, as is Son. Holy Spirit is a title.

But Jesus tells us to baptise in the name (the one name) of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The one personal name shared by Father, Son, and Spirit is the divine name, Yehovah. That’s the Father’s name. That is also the Son’s name. And that is the Spirit’s name.

What is the Holy Spirit’s name? Jehovah. Everything you know about the person of God from Old and New Testament – His ways, His will, His attributes, His nature, His essence – that’s the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Helper, the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth. He is not incomprehensible, but already known to us.

And He is even more familiar than that.

And when the second Person took flesh, He received a human name – Jesus. Jesus, as we’ve seen in John revealed God to us. “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” (John 1:18)

Never did we know who Yehovah is as clearly as when the Son walked among us as one of us.

And this Spirit is called the Spirit of Jesus Christ in Philippians 1:18-19; He is called the Spirit of Christ in Rom 8:9, and 1 Peter 1:11.

That’s why in the Upper Room Discourse, the Spirit’s work is not divorced from Jesus. He is entirely about Christ.

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

“But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me. (John 15:26)

He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.

All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you. (John 16:14–15)

So the Spirit is not anonymous. He is Jehovah. And He is the Spirit of Jesus. In fact, here is how to think about it: The Spirit is not the same person as the Father or Son, but He is the same personality.

Now here we need to clear up some concepts. When we say there are three Persons in God, it is likely that we can import our modern ideas of person into that concept. We think of a person as a discrete individual, with independent mind, emotion, and will. And that’s true. But if you apply that unthinkingly to the Trinity, you end up with three independent beings, who happen to be one in a kind of social unity, like a council, or a family. But then you really don’t have one God anymore, you have tritheism.

What the Bible teaches is that these three indwell each other, so that each one fully partakes of the life that is God. There is one mind, one heart, one will in God, and each of the three shares that will. Not 33 1/3, but each one 100% partakes of the one nature that is God.

To put it in modern terms, we think of a person as a personality – a distinct collection of traits, likes, dislikes, emotions, temperaments. In God there are three persons, but not three personalities. There are not three distinctive and different personalities, as if the Father has different likes and loves and temperament from the Son, who has a different personality from the Spirit.

No, there is one personality in God: one nature of perfect love, perfect holiness, meekness, goodness, wisdom. Each of the three has that identical personality, the nature, the personality of God. They are distinguished in their relation to each other, but not distinguished as differing personalities.

So what is the personality of the Father? The identical personality that was expressed by Jesus when among us. What is the personality of the Spirit? The identical personality to that expressed by Jesus when among us.

This is why G. Campbell Morgan expressed it well when he said that the Holy Spirit is ‘the other Jesus’.

So if you began thinking about the indwelling Spirit not as some ghostly apparition haunting your body, but as having the personality of Jesus indwelling your spirit. The mind of Jesus. The words of Jesus. The desires of Jesus. The attitude of Jesus. The goals of Jesus.

This is having the Lord Jesus with us everywhere we go.

One of the great errors around today is to so highlight and emphasise the ministry of the Holy Spirit, but with no reference to Jesus Christ. The Spirit of God is like a spotlight aimed at Christ. Spotlights don’t point at the audience, they point at the one the audience is supposed to see. So some ministries talk endlessly about the Holy Spirit, but not about the one thing He does most- point to, lift up, and show us Jesus Christ. The Spirit of God, takes the Word of God, and shows us the Son of God, so that we might know the Person of God.

Try to picture the Christian life without the Holy Spirit. Try to imagine, in some hypothetical world, that the Son comes and dies and rises and ascends, but no Spirit is sent. What would that look like? Jesus ascends, but there is no Pentecost. So there’s no church. No empowering the apostles. So no New Testament, and no illumination to even read the Old Testament. No one to apply that death and resurrection of Christ to anyone, so no rebirth. No one to fill, control and help us from the inside to know and be like Christ.

In essence, the whole work of Jesus would become only a historical memory. We’d be no closer to knowing God, we’d have no Gospel to preach or receive. To sum it up, we’d have no Christian life.

He is the key to experiencing Christ in You, the hope of glory.

• He is not impersonal. He is a Person.
• He is not inferior or indistinct from the Father and Son. He is the third of the Godhead, distinct and equal with the Father and Son.
• He is not incomprehensible and unfamiliar. He is familiar to us as God revealed in Jesus Christ.

As Christianity spreads through Africa, let it be truly Spirit-filled, Christ-centred, God-glorifying Christianity.