The Teacher
I have a confession: my memory is unreliable. Not uniformly — I can hold onto song lyrics and 90s ad jingles for decades — but if I don't write the shopping list down the moment I think of it, it's gone. And there's a low hum of anxiety that comes with that. I don't think I'm alone in it. We reach for our phones at concerts and sunsets and the cute things our kids do, half-present, hoping the recording will save what our memory might lose. We are people afraid of forgetting. And that fear turns sharp when we lose someone we love, and worry about losing our memories of them too. Memory is precious, and fragile, and ours fails us more than we'd like.
On the night before he died, Jesus' disciples were carrying a far heavier version of that anxiety. He had just told them he was leaving — that they couldn't follow now, though they would later. And he seemed to expect that his work would carry on through them; that his message would need to be passed on, and that this would be their job. So on top of the grief of losing him, there was the terror of going on without him. How could they possibly remember it all? How could they carry what he had given them once he was gone?
The answer to both fears
Jesus' answer to both worries is the same: the Holy Spirit. Earlier that same night he had promised the paracletos — the helper, the advocate, the strengthener who would come alongside them so they wouldn't be left as orphans, the Spirit of truth. Here he shows us another facet: the Spirit is the Teacher and the Reminder. "The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you." What a relief for a group of frightened, forgetful people. You don't have to rely on yourselves to hold onto this. The Spirit will be your memory, and bring my words back to you.
Why the Spirit brings Jesus' words
It's no surprise that this is the Spirit's work, because the Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and the Son. The Father had been giving Jesus his words to speak; now, through the Spirit, those same words would be brought to mind and preserved. And it's no surprise the Spirit of Jesus would carry the word of God, because Jesus himself is the Word of God. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Before the Son was called Jesus, he was the Word at creation. So when the Spirit points to the word, he is doing exactly what we'd expect: pointing to Jesus. This was never a new role for him, either. Peter tells us it was the Spirit at work in the prophets long before, pointing them forward to the sufferings and glory of Christ they didn't yet fully understand.
Did Jesus follow through?
Jesus promised it — but did it happen? Open Acts 2 and watch. The Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost, and the very first thing that happens is that Peter stands up and preaches. The disciples go out and speak the word of God, and by the Spirit people of every language understand them. This is the same Peter who, weeks earlier, had blundered and denied even knowing Jesus, the same disciples who are told again and again in the Gospels that they didn't yet understand. Now, with the Spirit, they understand and they teach. Peter speaks clearly and compellingly, reaching back into the prophet Joel to explain the moment: "In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people." The Spirit enables people to hear, understand, and speak the word of God — and as Peter speaks, the crowd responds by the thousand, repenting and receiving the same Spirit. The promise, Peter says, is for them and their children and all who are far off. The Spirit gives Peter the words, points the crowd to Jesus, and enables their response. And he keeps working in Peter for years afterward — in his letters, in the recollections that became Mark's Gospel, in his leadership of the early church.
A word about applying this to us
We should be careful here. The Spirit doesn't remind me of words Jesus spoke directly to me — I wasn't in that room, and it isn't my job to write Scripture. Those first disciples had a particular, unrepeatable task: to record and preserve the testimony of Jesus. But as Peter himself said, the Spirit is promised to us too — young and old, near and far, and to our children. The Spirit still points to the words of Jesus and still calls for a response from everyone who hears. His work is to teach and remind us of the words of God and his Son, because he is the Spirit of the Father and the Son.
Why you can't split Word and Spirit
Here's where this lands with real force. We have a habit of sorting Christians into camps. Spirit people and Word people. Heart Christians and head Christians. Some drawn to freedom and movement, others to accuracy and detail. But Jesus won't let us draw that line. The Spirit and the Word are inextricably linked. Jesus says new birth comes by water and the Spirit; Peter says we are born again through the living word. Again and again in Scripture they appear almost interchangeable, working together. As Paul writes, "our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction." The Spirit directs us to the words of God, and those words arrive with power. So when someone says, "I'm spiritual, but I don't really want much to do with the words of God in Scripture" — that simply isn't how Christian spirituality works. Jesus says the Spirit points toward God's word, not away from it. True spirituality listens to God's word; the one who loves Jesus listens and obeys. That is the mark of a Spirit-filled Christian.
Not boring — transforming
You might think this makes the Spirit sound a bit tame, a bit Anglican — the Spirit reduced to a reading lamp over a Bible. But that misreads it completely. When the word comes with the Spirit, Paul says, it comes in power. Think of the transformation of Peter, and later Paul. Think of the moments many of us can name when God's word, carried by God's Spirit, broke something open in us and changed us. That is anything but boring. There's an itch in us, especially shaped by the spirituality around us, to want something new and private — a special word just for me, an ecstatic experience, God found in a sunset rather than a sentence. God can and does work in personal ways; people have dreams and promptings, and Scripture itself shows this. But the Spirit's chosen instrument is the word of God. To sit under the Spirit is to sit under the word, and the other way round. That doesn't flatten our personalities into sameness — God has wired us differently, and we'll come to his word in a hundred ways, reading, singing, discussing, meditating, teaching, alone and together. But it all circles the same centre: the Spirit of Christ in us, pointing us to what Jesus has done and is doing.
And there is deep comfort in it. Jesus told his witnesses that the Spirit would preserve and protect his message so it would be passed down faithfully — all the way to us. We are not straining to hear a faint echo across two thousand years. We have been entrusted with God's own words, words we can trust, words to sit under and then to share. So the honest question is simply this: what is your relationship with God's words? The Spirit of God living in you is keen to apply them to your heart and mind. How will you make yourself ready to listen?
This post is adapted from a sermon preached by Murray Colville at St Hilda's Anglican Church Katoomba on John 14:25–26, as part of our Holy Spirit series through John 14–16. Visit us at www.katoomba.church.
