“The world cannot accept him, because it neither
sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in
you,” (John 14:17).
I was about to skip
this passage since I didn’t intend to teach about these chapters verse by verse, when
the Lord opened my spirit to something very interesting. Jesus said that the
disciples knew the Holy Spirit because He lives with them
and will be in them. Note that at the time Jesus that said
this the Holy Spirit was, according to Jesus, already with them
and would have been in them at a future date. What is the
difference between the ‘with’ and the ‘in’ in this passage? The Holy
Spirit lived in Jesus since the day He was baptised with
the Holy Spirit. Because Jesus was with the disciples and they saw the Holy
Spirit in action through Him and believed, Jesus stated that they have known
the Holy Spirit for He was with them through Jesus. The reason
why the World can neither see nor know the Holy Spirit is simply because
they will see Him in action but refuse to believe.
Jesus however also
stated that the Holy Spirit “will be in you”. What we see here is that even
though the disciples had been with Jesus for almost three years, they had not
been baptised with
the Holy Spirit yet and therefore did not have the Holy Spirit living in them.
This is the reason why they were weak and hid in a room after His crucifixion
and even after His ascension. At the time of our passage they
were not even born again yet. It seemed that they were only born again at the
moment recorded in John 16:30-31: “‘Now we can see that you know all things and
that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us
believe that you came from God.’
‘You believe at last!’
Jesus answered.”
This was the moment
when faith entered their hearts and they thus got born again. It was only after
they were baptised with
the Holy Spirit (Acts 2) that they received power to preach the gospel (Acts 1:8) and confirmed it with
love and miracles. A practical example was Peter who, at the time of Jesus’
arrest had been born again, but still had no love or courage, which is why he
selfishly and fearfully denied that he knew Jesus. After the outpouring of the
Holy Spirit, however, we read in Acts chapter 2 and several other chapters that
this same weak man acted with tremendous courage and boldness.
We get exactly the
same situation today. Many believers believe in the Lord Jesus and are saved (Mark 16:16, Romans 10:9), but experience no power.
They feel too fearful to preach the Gospel, have no confidence to pray for the
sick, do not act with the power of the Word of Knowledge and Wisdom, and in
general do not walk in the Spirit but in the flesh - acting on the prompting of
the mind rather than that of the Spirit. These people only live with the
Holy Spirit. However, when we are born again and baptised with
the Holy Spirit, we have the Holy Spirit with all His gifts and power
living in us. All that power, love, knowledge and wisdom are
then available to us to enable us to effectively build the Kingdom of God there
where we are called to.
How do you get baptised with
the Holy Spirit? Either ask the Father yourself to give you the Holy Spirit as
Jesus offered in Luke 11:13: “If you then, though you are evil, know how to
give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give
the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Otherwise you
can ask someone to lay the hands on you (Acts 19:2-6).
Holy Spirit, please
come and live in me and fill me with your presence and everything that comes
along as promised in the Word of God.
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