THE LORD AS PARACLETE
Contributed by A. J. Gaskin
When the beloved disciples heard the Lord speaking these words to His Father, what happy memories of His service to them must have been recalled to their minds. He had already spoken of another Comforter of whom He could say, “ye know him, for he abides with you”.
The kind of service which the Spirit was to undertake on their behalf had already been made known to them by that of the Lord Himself. How many times He had protected them, for they had continued with Him in His temptations, but on each occasion He had given them some fresh impression of His glory.
They walk through the cornfields and the Pharisees impugn their liberty to eat the ears of corn on the sabbath, but in defending them the Lord shows that He is Lord of the sabbath also (Luke 6: 3). The disciples are accused of transgressing the tradition by eating with unwashed hands, and the Lord shows not only that God’s commandments are being transgressed by the accusers, but discloses the great matter of the essential sinfulness of the heart of man which He had come to remove for ever from God’s sight by His death (Matthew 15). It is amazing how much the natural mind loves to find fault; “Why do thy disciples not fast?”, they ask. All the blessedness of the new character of things in Christianity comes to light—a new garment and new wineskins, what takes character from the Bridegroom Himself. How our hearts look forward to seeing Him again! What joy they must have experienced as being in His presence!
“Blessed the king, that comes in the name of the Lord”, they cry, and the Pharisees would have them rebuked, for their hearts were harder than the stones which would otherwise have cried out.
Again, these accusers are indignant as the children cry, “Hosanna to the son of David”. But how blessed the answer, that has encouraged His own down the ages, “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise”. Then in John 13 it says, “Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them to the end”, and He says therefore, “If ye seek me let these go away”, and that at the hour of supreme pressure. Blessed Paraclete, who had kept them in the Father’s name!
It was not only the disciples as together that He had guarded; there were such persons as the woman in the Pharisee’s house who “loved much”, the woman in Luke 13 who was a “daughter of Abraham”, and Zacchaeus a “son of Abraham”. Even His own disciples took on the character of the accuser, but in grace the blessed Paraclete could set all right and justify Mary’s choosing the good part. When the disciples would have repulsed the children He calls them to come to Him, for of such was the kingdom of heaven. “Let her alone”, says the Lord, of the woman that anointed His head, “she has wrought a good work as to me … what she could she has done”. How much He appreciated a heart that thought only for Himself!
There were other forces that He preserved His own from. Satan had demanded to have the disciples to sift them as wheat, but the Lord says to Peter, “I have besought for thee that thy faith fail not”. It is wonderful to see that, even before the failure, the blessed Paraclete was speaking of recovery—“Once thou hast been restored, confirm thy brethren”. What would they have done without His constant service?
What Christ then did on earth He now does in heaven—“Now to appear before the face of God for us”—and we have the Holy Spirit—another Paraclete—here below. It is the same character of service, and we can learn from what Jesus did what is available now by way of divine support to carry the saints through for God’s pleasure in the face of every kind of opposition, and to produce in our hearts a response to all that divine love has effected.
Aberdeen