ANOTHER HELPER JUST LIKE JESUS

John 14:16 – And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—

This scripture has helped me understand the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. This passage is part of a discourse the Lord gave the last night He was with His disciples. He was preparing them for His departure and the enormous changes that His death would initiate. For the most part the disciples had been observers for the last three years as Jesus moved in the power of the Spirit to minister to hurting people. That was all about to change because Jesus would no longer me with them. From this point forward the disciples themselves would begin to move in the power of the Spirit to touch this hurting world. To understand this we need to look at the phrase ‘another Helper’ in this passage. In the Greek text it reads ‘allos paracletos’. Paracletos means ‘called alongside to help’. Allos is a special word which means another of the same kind. Here is how Vine’s New Testament Dictionary describes it.

“allos (ἄλλος) and heteros (ἕτερος) have a difference in meaning, which despite a tendency to be lost, is to be observed in numerous passages. Allos expresses a numerical difference and denotes “another of the same sort”; heteros expresses a qualitative difference and denotes “another of a different sort.” Christ promised to send “another Comforter” (allos, “another like Himself,” not heteros),”

So let’s think about the ramifications of this passage. Jesus was no longer going to be with them but He would send ‘Another Helper’ to be with them. This Helper would be exactly like Jesus. He would do the things Jesus had done but now He would be doing this work through the disciples and then through those who believed through their ministry. This is the power of the New Testament church. The Jewish leaders thought they had solved their problem when they turned Jesus over to the Romans to be crucified. Nothing could have been further from the truth! Now there would be hundreds of of followers of Jesus moving in the same power that He had moved in. In other words the Holy Spirit would do the same things that Jesus had done He would just be doing it through a multitude of Christians who had received the Paraclete into their lives. We can absolutely see our world turned upside down when the church begins to experience a greater measure of this Holy Spirit power in their lives. Surely, the Paraclete has come and is working in His church.