John 15:26-27

John 15:26-27. When the Advocate is come, whom I will send onto you from the Father, the Spirit of the truth, which goeth forth from the Father, he will hear witness concerning me, and ye also bear witness, because from the beginning ye are with me. Up to this point Jesus had encouraged His disciples by the assurance that they shall be strengthened to overcome whatever hatred and opposition from the world they shall have to encounter in the performance of their work. Now He further assures them that this is not all. They shall not merely meet the world unshaken by all that it can do: they shall also receive a Divine power, in the possession of which they shall bear a joyful and triumphant witness even in the midst of suffering. The Advocate shall be with them, and with them in a manner adapted to that stage of progress which they are thought of as having reached. In the promise of the Advocate here given there is an advance upon that of chap. John 14:16; John 14:26. In the latter passage the promise had been connected with the training of the disciples for their work; in the present it is connected with the execution of the work. First of all, the Advocate ‘will bear witness' concerning Jesus, will perform that work of witnessing which belongs to heralds of the Cross. But He will do this in them. We are not to imagine that His is an independent work, carried on directly in the world, and apart from the instrumentality of the disciples. It is true that there is a general influence of the Holy Spirit by which He prepares the ear to hear and the eye to see such an influence as that with which He wrought in Judaism and even in heathenism; but that is not the influence of which Jesus speaks in the words before us. It is a specific influence, the power of the Spirit, to which He refers that influence which, exerted through Himself when He was upon the earth, is now exerted through the members of His Body. In the two last verses of this chapter, therefore, we have not two works of witnessing, the first that of the Advocate, the second that of the disciples. We have only one, outwardly that of the disciples, inwardly that of the Advocate. Hence the change of tense from the future to the present when Jesus speaks of ‘ye,' the Advocate ‘will bear witness, ye bear witness.' The two witnessings are not on parallel lines, but on the same line, the former coming to view only in and by the latter, into which the power of the former is introduced. Hence also the force of the emphatic ‘Ye.' The personality and freedom of the disciples does not disappear under this operation of the Advocate; they do not become mechanical agents, but retain their individual standing; they are still men, only higher than they could otherwise have been. Hence, finally, the reason assigned for the part given to the disciples in the work; they are from the beginning ‘with Jesus,' with Him as partners and fellow-workers; and this ‘from the beginning,' that is, from the beginning which belongs to the subject in hand the beginning of His ministry.

The 26th verse of this chapter (John 15:26) is often thought to be of great importance in regard to the doctrine of the ‘Procession' of the Holy Spirit, the Greek Church finding in it its leading argument for maintaining that that ‘Procession' is only from the Father, not from the Son. So far as this text is concerned, the question resolves itself into the further one, Is Jesus here speaking of the Person or of the office of the Advocate, of the source of His being or of His operation? Attention to the preposition used with ‘the Father' ought at once to decide this point. It is ‘from' not ‘out of' that is employed: it is of office and operation, not of being and essence, that Jesus speaks (comp. chaps. John 1:6; John 1:14; John 7:29; John 9:16; John 10:18; John 16:27; John 17:8). The words ‘which goeth forth from the Father' are not intended to express any metaphysical relation between the First and Third Persons of the Trinity, but to lead our thoughts back to the fact that, as it is the distinguishing characteristic of Jesus that He comes from the Father, so One of like Divine power and glory is now to take His place. The same words ‘from the Father' are again added to ‘I will send,' because the Father is the ultimate source from which the Spirit as well as the Son ‘goes forth,' and really the Giver of the Spirit through the Son who asks for Him (comp. chap. John 14:16). In the power of this Spirit, therefore, the connection of the disciples with the Father will, in the time to come, be not less close, and their strength from the Father not less efficacious, than it had been while Jesus was Himself beside them. The emphasis on the ‘I' of ‘I will send' ought not to pass unnoticed. It is as if Jesus would say, ‘You tremble at the prospect of my going away, you fear that you will be desolate, but it is not so. I will not forget you; I will be to you, through the Spirit, all that I have been;. will send the Advocate to be in you and by your side.' Could more be necessary to sustain them? The consolation offered reaches here its culminating point; but all has yet to be made clearer, fuller, more impressive; and to effect this, not to introduce new teaching, our Lord proceeds to what we have spoken of as the second of the double pictures of this part of His discourse.