Who is the Holy Spirit?

In John 14:15-26, Jesus promises His followers “another Helper” who will be with them forever. In this study, Dr. Toby Holt explains who the Holy Spirit is and what He does in every believer.

The Holy Spirit, Dr. Holt explains, is not a vague force but a Person — Helper, Comforter, and Counselor — who comes to live permanently within God’s people. This is a greater privilege than even the Old Testament saints knew. Jesus links love for Him with obedience, and promises that the Father and Son will make their home with those who love Him. The Spirit teaches believers, reminds them of Christ’s words, convicts them of sin, makes them holy, and gives them courage — turning fearful disciples into bold witnesses.

Questions this study answers:

1. Is the Holy Spirit a force or a Person? A Person — the Helper sent by the Father. He is God Himself, not an impersonal power.

2. What does the Spirit do in a believer? He teaches, reminds us of Christ’s words, convicts us of sin, makes us holy, and gives us courage.

3. Why is the Spirit’s coming such good news? Because God now lives permanently within His people — a closeness even the Old Testament saints longed for.

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

Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt is the President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, a Reformed seminary in Colorado Springs. He is known for clear, down-to-earth Bible teaching, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio.

Listen and go deeper: This sermon is part of the John Explained study from New Geneva Theological Seminary. Find more verse-by-verse teaching across the Bible at newgeneva.org. To support this teaching ministry, visit newgeneva.org/give.

[background music] For roughly three years, Christ's disciples had spent all their time with Jesus. But as they ate the Last Supper, he had told them he would be leaving soon, and they became afraid. At that point, Jesus encouraged them with this great promise, that upon his departure, he would be sending them a helper. A helper that we know as the Holy Spirit.

In what way is the Holy Spirit at work in your life today? In what ways is the Holy Spirit doing something real, something substantive, something you can point to, something you can talk about? For a lot of Christians, even some who've been Christians for some period of time, they just don't understand what it means to be indwelled by the Spirit and how that benefits them. They understand the Spirit is there, but they appeal to it as this cosmic force. I assure you that's not [chuckles] what the Spirit is. In today's text, we're going to see that the Holy Spirit is a person. He is a helper. He is an advocate. He is a paraclete. He is an intercessor. He is someone that Jesus is going to tell his disciples is so important to arrive that Jesus is going to say later in chapter 16 that if he himself, if Jesus the Son doesn't go, it's going to be disadvantageous to the disciples themselves because it's far better that the Spirit show up. In today's text, we're going to try and unpack why it was valuable and important to the disciples, but also why it matters to you all these years later. All right, let's look at verses 15 through 18, and then we'll work our way through the text. Verse 15: "If you love me, keep my commandments." If you love God, do what he says. Verse 16, "And I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Helper." This is interesting. "Another helper that he may abide with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him," not it, "neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you." Indwelling. "I will not leave you as orphans," which they're afraid he was going to, "but I will come to you." All right. As we said before, today's text occurs during a very scary part of the Lord's Supper. Death and betrayal and denial all hang in the air. Jesus had just told his disciples his death is at hand, the very night he would be betrayed, his betrayer was there, in fact, he just laid at the table, and that those at the table would not be as stout in their conviction as they might otherwise thought they would be. But even Peter himself would deny Jesus three times before the rooster crowed. This is a scary night. With that said, as an aside, do you know the number one prohibition that Jesus ever told his disciples? The number one prohibition. What's a prohibition? Prohibition is when you say, "Do not." As parents, you know how this works. "Do not get a cookie. Do not touch that switch. Do not go outside. Do not, do not, do not." Right? What was the main thing that Jesus said "do not" to his disciples?

Fear not.

Ah. Do not be what? Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Number one prohibition that comes in is "do not be afraid." But generally speaking, mankind is afraid of things that are new or scary or threaten their comfort zone or their life in the case of the disciples here. So there was a lot of scary things going on for these disciples, but Jesus knew that if their fear was to remain and if our fear in the 21st century was to establish itself, that that would cripple the church. It would cripple the early church, it'll cripple the present church if believers are afraid. So Jesus says, "Do not let your hearts be troubled." Guys, chin up. You believe in God, believe also in me. The things I'm telling you, they're stamped from the throne room itself. You can take it to the bank. Everything else I told you came true, right? If I tell you I'm going to go, yes, I understand that's sad and depressing in a sense, but I'm going to come back. I'm going to come back. And not only that, he says to those who are scared and fearful, he says, "Not only that, but I'm going to send you someone. I'm going to send you a helper." Now, if you have 10 different translations of this text, open up King James, New King James, ESV, NASB, whatever, you might see that word translated six different ways, give or take. In our text, New Kings James, it's referred to as the helper. Other passages talk about it as the advocate, comforter, and the like. But the idea is this, that Jesus himself would depart, but another helper would come to them and be of tremendous blessing to them. So the desire here in these first three verses, verses 15 through 18, is to remind them that he is departing, but he will return. I'm not going to leave you as orphans. This is not the end of your story. How many times do we think something terrible happens, and this must be the [chuckles] end? They probably thought this must be the end, but he says, "I'm not going to leave you as orphans. I will come to you, and I'm going to send someone." All right, so let's expand on exactly who it is that he's going to send. Let's look at verses 19 through 24. "Now a little while longer, and the world will see me no more." Death hangs over the balance here. "A little while longer, and the world will see me no more, but you will. You will see me." In that very upper room, they'd see him. "But because I live, you will live also. And at that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. And he who has my commandments and keeps them, it's he who loves me." He repeats that twice. You say you love God, it should be demonstrated in some substantive way in the choices that you make, is what he's saying. The proof that you ever repented unto faith, that you ever trusted him, that you ever loved him in times past, is you continue to love him, and your choices reflect that love. If you love me, keep my commandments, is what we see here. Then he says, "He who has my commandments and keeps them, it's 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 Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, "Lord, how? How is it that you will manifest yourself to us?" Remember, all this is brand new to them. They know death, and they know that those who die stay dead. I mean, there was the Lazarus guy, so they know Jesus is capable of some wonderful stuff. But generally speaking, when you depart, you don't return. And he's using terms which we translate into English as manifest, and it's not catching with fishermen and tax collectors. So Judas says, "Lord, how? How is it that you will manifest yourself to us, but not to the world? How is it you're going to appear to us, but not everyone else? How exactly is this going to work?" In verse 23, Jesus explains. Jesus answers verse 23, "And said to him, 'If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.'" Notice that comes up three times. In Hebrew, if you repeat something, that is always for emphasis. They didn't have exclamation points. They didn't have bold, big caps, all font, whatever. They didn't do that. But they did repeat things. He repeated that same thing three times in this short text. "If you love me, you'll do what I said."That is the proof that you have loved me. Judas didn't love me. Look what he's out doing. But if you love me, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. So it says in verse 23, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him." And then listen to this. "And we will come to him and make our home with him." Every religion under the sun, including most of the Eastern religions of our day, sees God as somewhere else that you travel to, which is why saints always take pilgrimages. Got to go to Mecca, got to go to Jerusalem, got to go somewhere in order to be with God. Well, what does God here tell his disciples? He says, "My Father will love him, and we will come to him." We will come to the individual. He doesn't have to climb a staircase to get to us. We will come to him and make our home with him. It's this idea of being indwelt by the Spirit. Verse 24, "He who does not love me does not keep my words." Interesting, that keeps showing up. "He who does not love me does not keep my words, and the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me." All right. As parents, there's a lot of prohibitions we give to our children. Now, some of them are born in reality, and some are born out of perceived reality, but one of the things that we tell our kids in order to keep them safe is we say, "Don't talk to strangers." We say if a car of a van rolls up to the curb and someone offers you candy, you say what? No. So we do that, why? We do that as a safety, as a prohibition, because there's no relationship between us and that guy who just rolled up in the van. The child has no relationship with the stranger who says, "Come to me." But the child does have a relationship with their parents, and they will obey and listen when the parent says, "Come inside." A child will obey their mother, their father, because that relationship is unique among all relationships on the globe. You only have one human mother, one human father, so to speak. So ideally, assuming all parties are doing their jobs, ideally, a child will love and obey his or her parents and will dwell with them in love and in safety and in security. However, that relationship that parents have with their children that are in their house does not extend to the children on the street or to every child on the globe. It doesn't, and it can't. In a sense, this is what Jesus is saying in verses 19 through 24. Specifically, he says, "Hey, you guys. In fact, all who love me and all who love the Father and all who keep my commands, you all are separate from them, from the rest of the world. You all have been adopted into God's royal family. You are children. You are sons and daughters." In fact, earlier in John, he talks about his little children, right? You are children of the Most High God. This is a unique relationship. And because of that, in verses 19 through 24, he says you obey. Because you have this unique relationship with God the Father, you obey God the Father in the way you wouldn't obey the stranger in the van. Why? Because you have a unique relationship with your Father. You keep his commandments. And as a result of being God's children, or as an outworking, I guess, of being God's children, you dwell with him, and he dwells with you, as is standard in most families. You dwell with your parents, your parents dwell with you. Verse 23 says that God makes a home with us. So what Jesus is saying is, he's saying, "Look, guys, let not your hearts be troubled. Come here." And he huddles them close and says, "You guys, through no action or work on your own, Matthew, you tax collector, through nothing good you've ever done in times past, God has volitionally placed his love on you, and he's called you his own, and he's made you children. You didn't earn this. This is his sovereign choice. He has called you and adopted you as children. But guys, this is such a tremendous advantage to you. Now that you're children and you obey the commands of your Father, we have a relationship that doesn't exist to everyone else on planet Earth. But it does extend to you. And because of that, you're the recipient of promises and gifts that no one else gets. And the number one promise and gift that you're going to get is going to come in Acts 2, the pouring out of the Spirit in your hearts. We're going to dwell with you." You don't have to climb a ladder to get to the top of a mountain, to scrape your knees, to climb up to God. He's going to come and dwell in your midst. Now, did they fully understand that? Do we fully understand that? The answer is no in both cases, but it's a substantive and a real promise. Let's build on that by looking at our last verses for this morning. Let's look at verses 25 and 26, and then we're going to linger on this with the balance of our time. So verse 25. "Now these things I've spoken to you while being present with you." So he says, "I'm here right now, and I'm sharing this with you." Verse 26. "But the Helper,"

another helper he said earlier, because he's the first helper, another helper, the Helper, "the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you. He will teach you all things. He will bring to your remembrance all the things that I said to you." So verse 25, Jesus says, "Yes, I have spoken to you. While I'm in your presence, you're learning from me. And if you're worried that when I go, you're going to stop learning, good news. The Spirit, a helper, another helper, is going to come, and he's going to lead you in truth. He's going to reveal things to you that you do not otherwise know. You're not going to be left as spiritual orphans. You're not going to be left to wonder your way through this hard, rocky world. But the Helper, the Spirit, is going to teach you and instruct you and guide you and comfort you," which is another way that this word is oftentimes interpreted, as the Comforter. Now, let me ask you this. Was the Holy Spirit around in the Old Testament? Yes. You can all say yes to this. Thank you, Pastor Fish. Yes. The Holy Spirit was around in the Old Testament. With that said, did he work the same way, Pastor Fish? No, not quite.No, he did not work the same way. Now, in what way did the Spirit not work? Well, let's start with this premise. Were believers in the Old Testament saved in a similar way that we are? Yes, yes, and yes. They were regenerated through the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit didn't just start regenerating people in the New Testament. He regenerated people in the Old Testament as well. And people come to faith in the Old Testament by looking forward to Messiah, to the seed, to the one who was going to come in the same way that we look back to the same one. They were saved in the same way. The Spirit regenerated their hearts. They looked to the Messiah, and they were told what the Messiah would do in chapters like Isaiah 53. So they were saved substantively in the same way. But here's the difference. In the Old Testament, in the old covenant economy, before the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus Christ, and notably before Pentecost, the outpouring of the Spirit in Acts 2, before this time, the believers in the Old Testament, they were regenerated through the Spirit, but the Spirit did not indwell them in the same way that he later would. The Spirit's engagement in the lives of believers was what we would phrase as selective and temporary, and you see that the Spirit would come, the Spirit would depart. Now, is that the most advantageous way for the Spirit to work? No. But there was a prophecy, one among several, but there was a prophecy in Jeremiah 31 that said, "Hey, guys, in the future, there's going to be something that's going to happen with our relationship with God that's going to be better than what we have right now," specifically with regard to the working of God's Spirit. Jeremiah 31, I'm just going to quote a small portion of it. Jeremiah says there's this new day. A new day is coming. A new covenant is going to be made between God and mankind. "This is the covenant," God says, "that I will make with the house of Israel after those days," says the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds. I will write it upon their hearts. I will be their God, and they shall be my people." Jeremiah anticipated a day when God would not only dwell in a temple between the cherubim's wings or in heaven, so to speak, but would dwell in man's hearts. If you were to ask an Old Testament believer, where's God? Where would they point to? They'd point to the temple. They'd pray towards Jerusalem because that's where God is. Now, if you were to ask a child in the education wing, where's God? They're going to give you two answers, and they're both right. What's one of the two? Heaven. Right. [chuckles] If you ask where's God and they say heaven, you give them a gold star. That's exactly right. He is in heaven. But where else is he? And some kids will go like this, and they'll point right here. He lives in my heart, and that's right, too. But it's different, and it's better than what they had in the Old Testament. It's different, and it's better, and the Old Testament authors and prophets knew it. They knew a better day was coming. They knew a better day was coming when the Holy Spirit's engagement and relationship with the individual was not just to regenerate them and not just to operate selectively and temporarily in the lives of his people, but would indwell them. And this is what Jesus is speaking to. He says, "Guys, it's going to be so great. When I go, I'm going to send you a helper, and he's going to operate differently than he's operated in times past. He is going to indwell you permanently. I will make my home with you. I'm in my Father, my Father's in me." This is Trinitarian language. The Triune God is going to take his presence and make it manifest not simply between the angel's wings, but in your heart. Do you know what to make of that? Do the disciples know what to make of that? Well, not necessarily. They had questions. And two chapters later, they're going to hear all this and go, "Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm," right? [chuckles] And two chapters later, in John 16, they're still going to be saying, "Jesus, don't go. No, it can't happen." In John 16, he's going to say this: "I tell you guys, I tell you the truth, it's to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, then the Helper will not come to you. The Spirit will not come to you. The Paraclete, the Intercessor, the Comforter, the Advocate, he will not come to you. But if I depart, I will send him. I will send him to you." And that happened in Acts 2. Now, what happened in Acts 1?

The book of Acts starts with what we call the Ascension. Remember Jesus, he was crucified, he was resurrected, he spends a period of time with his disciples teaching them, but in Acts 1, we read of the Ascension. He goes up into heaven, everyone's looking around, and the angels come to them and say, "Hey, guys, why are you looking? Don't you know he's going to return the same way that he went?" So in Acts 1, Jesus ascended the same way he said he would. The same way. He fulfills every prophecy, every word he ever spoke. He says, "This is going to happen." And they saw it happen. He literally ascended up into heaven in full view. They watched it happen. And they probably kept looking, which is why the angels showed up and said, "Hey, guys, what are you staring at? He's going to come back in the same way." Which is another fulfillment of what he promised. "I will come back. I'm not leaving you as orphans." But in Acts 2, one chapter later, moments later, so to speak, in the history of redemption, what happens? Well, in Acts 2, we come to an event that's called Pentecost. In Pentecost, the very things that were promised here by Jesus, the very things that Jeremiah anticipated in Jeremiah 31 happened. The Spirit is poured out upon the people, upon the early church. It had immediate effects. It had immediate effects in the room, that if you were in that room when the Pentecost occurred and you hear the tongue-speaking and the wind and all these different things going on, you know something substantive had happened. Well, indeed, something substantive had happened, but it wasn't just to the people in the room. It was to every believer in all the centuries since. God says, "I'm going to honor and fulfill everything that was prophesied in the Old Testament and everything my Son said in the upper room. I'm going to send my Spirit, my Helper, my Advocate, and he will indwell my people, and that will be of distinct advantage to them." So as we close this morning, let me ask you, in what way is your life better or different because the Holy Spirit is within you?

In what way? That's sometimes where we stumble because we know we should have a lot of answers to that, and sometimes we have a couple, but sometimes we just don't know what the Spirit is up to. Let me give you at least five quick things that will remind us what the Spirit does, what the advantages that we have that we sometimes neglect to consider. If you look back at verses 25 and 26, where Jesus says this Helper is coming, he says, "The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name." Jesus then goes on to explain two of the things that the Spirit will do when he shows upSpecifically said this, "The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you. He will teach you all things." And then the second thing, "He will remind you. He'll bring to remembrance all the things that I have said to you." Let's start with he teaches you. I think I've explained this in times past. My glasses, if I take them off, I just see a sea of colors. It's truly all I see. The choir robes stand out. But Daniel could be smiling at me or frowning at me, I can't tell the difference. I truly can't. So if I ever looks like I'm looking at you over the top of my glasses, the reality is I'm not really looking at you. I can't discern much of anything at all. With that said, if you ever see me looking at you through my glasses, it's another story, okay? I can see every time you look at a cellphone, everything that happens. Every time you look at your watch, how long is this sermon going? I see it all [audience laughing] when I'm looking like this. So with that said, the human heart

apart from spiritual glasses, so to speak, it can operate, it can function, but it can't really see. It can't really discern. It can encounter the same data sets. Like, I don't know, abortion's bad, and the unsaved, unregenerate heart might be going, "I don't know. Maybe it's not so bad at all." With that said, when the Holy Spirit descends upon our heart, it gives clarity and vision to that which we believe, that which we profess, that which we confess. We see things in ways that we otherwise wouldn't see. The Spirit teaches us, even in a sermon, Sunday school, devotional time you'll have this week, there's things you will encounter in the world around you, ideally also in God's word, that the Spirit will illumine your mind to, that otherwise you would have no great grasp thereof. So the Spirit teaches us. That's one thing it does. Secondly, the Spirit reminds us. I've used this example on multiple occasions, but our brains really are like Swiss cheese. And that's without any cognitive impairment. That's without senior moments. That's without old age. Our minds are like Swiss cheese as it is. The example I always give is if I ask you what color was my tie last week, you all looked at it for 35 some odd minutes or so, maybe two of you will know the answer. Maybe you have a guess because you know which ties are in my rotation. But the truth is, even I don't know what tie I wore last week. [audience laughing] Why? Because I don't recall these things. I don't remember these things. I'd have to look right now to see what I'm wearing right now. You see, our brains are like Swiss cheese. With that said, when you encounter hardships in this world, when you encounter difficulties in decisions and choices that you will face in your vocation, in your personal life, in your finances, the Spirit within you will bring to mind things that help you to understand how to walk, how to step down the road that's before you. If you have issues of health, if you have issues with children, with parents, or what have you, you'd be amazed, surprised, maybe not surprised, at how often verses and precepts come back to your mind that help you address that very situation. The Spirit prompts us, reminds us, nudges us about all things. That brings us to item number three the Spirit does. He is our conscience, so to speak. In cartoons, Bugs Bunny cartoons, if a character was ever anticipating one of two different choices, one good, one bad, what would happen? Well, you'd get the little figures that show up on his shoulder, the angelic one with the harp and so forth, and you'd have the one with the horns on the other side. And the idea is that if the character's making a good choice, that they're listening to their inner angel, so to speak, or their conscience. Well, newsflash, if you're a Christian, what you call a conscience, far more often than not, is the working of the Holy Spirit. As a Christian, let's say you're watching something that you know you shouldn't watch, or doing something you shouldn't do. You just had a conversation that you know you shouldn't have had. You've had that experience where the Holy Spirit convicts you that what I'm doing is wrong. What I've done is wrong. Maybe I should repent, maybe I should act differently. Maybe I shouldn't do that again. That inner monologue or dialogue that you're having with yourself, many times, whether you understand it or not, is the work of the Spirit nudging you in ways that just imagine the seared conscience of a man who doesn't benefit from that. It's no wonder people engage in all sorts of depravity in this world around them and then call that good when they don't have the Spirit indwelling them to tell them it's bad. This is one of the benefits of the Holy Spirit. Let's look at number four. The Spirit sanctifies us.

We call the Spirit the Holy Spirit, right? Have you ever called Jesus the Holy Jesus? Generally speaking, the word holy, we append more frequently to the Spirit. Well, here's the thing. One of the reasons we apply the word holy to the Spirit so regularly is because one of the Spirit's principal works is to make you holy. The Spirit in your life today, the primary, principal thing that the Spirit is at work doing in your heart right now is cleaning it up. The Spirit sanctifies us. When the Spirit entered in, dear heavens, it was a mess in there. Dark and depraved and all sorts of nasty stuff going on, and some of that still remains. Some of the corruption of sin is encrusted, calcifying in our heart. But the good news, the Spirit has entered in, and he's at work cleaning that up. He sanctifies the home in which he dwells. That's one of the works he's done. And if you've been a Christian for any period of time, you can look back and say, "Thank God I'm not the man I used to be. I'm not the man I want to be yet either, but at least I'm not what I was." And as you say that, you don't give yourself the golf clap, the pat on the back, and say, "Boy, I really overcame a lot to become the godly man I am now." Don't give yourself the golf clap at all. It's the Spirit's work in you to sanctify you. Now, it is a synergistic work. We work with him in these things. We work with him. At the same time, all the glory is definitely due to him. So he sanctifies us. Now, the fifth thing that he does, and it's most relevant for today's text in which everyone's freaked out in the upper room, is that the Spirit encourages us. There's so much in this life that is scary. There's so much that is dark and just horrible. There's so many losses that we've endured. There are so many scars that are upon our back. It's a wonder we ever get out of bed, given some of the things that we face, and we'll continue to face as long as we live on this mortal coil. With that said, one of the principal things that the Spirit does in those moments when we're weak, and we're fallen, and we're hurting, just broken or on our backs, the Spirit encourages us and lifts us up. The disciples, they're freaked out in the upper room on this night. Death is just everywhere on their horizon. Now, with that said, the very men who would be so freaked out to the point they'd deny they even knew Jesus, let me ask you, how do you think they operated after Pentecost? Were they the same scared individuals? Not from what we see. Not from the records that they themselves wrote. What we see is something different. We see that after Pentecost, the Helper that God gave them encouraged their hearts and gave them the boldness of lions that they previously didn't have, even when they dwelt with him. Even when they were hanging out with Jesus, they weren't this bold. Even when Jesus was literally standing right there, and they could run to him and hold him, they still weren't as bold as they became later when the Spirit entered in and helped and encouraged them. And that's one of the reasons that Jesus looks at these scared, freaked-out individuals, and he knew the lion hearts that they would become. He knew the strength that they would have that would allow them to become martyrs, largely, overwhelmingly, in the years yet to come, and go to their own deaths, in many cases, singing the praises of their maker. He knew the difference that would be wrought, and he knew that difference would be wrought through the giving of the Holy Spirit, and that's why he looked at them and he says, "I must go, and it's to your advantage that I do so, because the Spirit's coming, and he's going to give you the very courage that you need for this hour."

We could go on with this, but the point is this. This morning, you, as a believer, have an advantage that was not granted to the men and women of the Old Testament. This morning, no matter what you're facing in your own personal life, you have the two greatest sources of intercession and help that this universe and the heavens above could possibly hold. You have Jesus, the Son, and you have the Spirit, the other Helper that he has sent you. The triune God has got your back, and he's ordained your future. And because of that, there's nothing so scary that his arms are not extended to you to uphold you in, and nothing so fearsome that he will not give you the courage to face. Let's pray.