Anonymous Asks (290)

“What does it mean that the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth?”

The Lord Jesus promised his disciples that when the Spirit of truth came, the Helper from the Father who would convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgment, he would guide them into “all truth”.

Before we look into the meaning of this promise, we need to remember that every member of the Lord’s audience at the discourse that began in the upper room was in a unique and impossible-to-duplicate position.

Foundations and Gates

Each of those eleven Jewish men has his name inscribed on the foundation of the New Jerusalem as an apostle of the Lamb. Each was also a descendant of one of the twelve tribes of Israel whose names are on its gates, a devout Jew and member of the remnant of Israel. Several would write books of the New Testament that form the knowledge base of the Christian faith. These are things that will never be true of most of us, no matter how much we love the Lord and how dedicated we are to his service.

So then, one of the things we need to ask ourselves when reading any recitation of what the Lord Jesus said to his disciples is whether he was speaking to them (1) as representatives of the godly Jewish remnant, (2) as apostles and earliest builders of the church he was about to begin constructing, or simply (3) as believers generally. If it is the last of these, anything he promised them will also be a promise to each and every Christian today, something we can lay hold of and enjoy for ourselves. If not, we would be presumptuous to try to claim such promises on our own behalf, right?

Eliminating Possibilities

In this passage from John 16, we can quickly eliminate the first possibility. The Lord is not in “Jew mode”, he is in “church mode”. If you want to see the difference, consider a passage like Matthew 24, which addresses the disciples as Jews living in Jerusalem and Judea. Some of the things they are told, like “Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath” have absolutely nothing to do with you or me. This is not that.

In John 16:12-15, I believe the Lord Jesus is speaking to his eleven closest followers as apostles of the Lamb, as those who would prophesy in his name and either be privileged to pen the very words of God, or perhaps to be the source of the inspired Word for a writer like Luke or John Mark. I think that because of verse 12, in which the Lord tells them, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” That’s a statement that could only be true of the apostles. None of us were there, so there was never any question of whether we could bear or not bear the words of Christ at that particular time and place.

Further, in verse 13, he says to them, “He [the Holy Spirit] will declare to you the things that are to come.” That is only indirectly true of you or me, having had that prophetic word declared to us second hand by those who have read what the Spirit wrote in the New Testament through his chosen vessels. What he’s talking about is not a predigested, interpreted understanding received from a preacher of the Bible, or even a correct opinion formed in the head of a modern Bible reader. He’s talking about the direct transmission of the prophetic word of God to those who first heard and spoke it.

All Truth

What did the Lord Jesus mean by “all truth”? He surely did not mean every fact in the universe; no human being has ever been guided into all that, the apostles included. It might be nice to have that sort of knowledge, but no human mind could hope to read it, contain it or process it.

Nor did he mean that each and every one of the inspired writers of the NT word of God would be privy to the sum total of his wonderful revelations. Herod killed James the brother of John some three to ten years before the first book of the New Testament was written, so James got a fair bit less “all truth” than you or me. (For that matter, most of the apostles probably did not survive to read the book of Revelation or other books of the New Testament thought to be later in date.)

The Lord certainly was not suggesting that even the most diligent and knowledgeable believer of our present era knows “all the truth”. That is simply not the case.

No, I think what the Lord was promising his apostles is that, collectively rather than individually, their little group would receive every bit of truth necessary for life and godliness in the present age. The faith would be “once for all” delivered to the saints, and the saints would deliver the faith to believers down through the ages.

But What About Me?

That raises a good question. What about me? Can I be guided into all the truth I need to know, love and please God in this life? Certainly. I just don’t think you find that promise in John 16, unless it is by inference or extended application.

Where do you find it? Well, Paul writes, “We have the mind of Christ.” He is speaking there not of the apostles exclusively, but of “spiritual persons” generally. The believer is capable of understanding truth that the natural man can never comprehend because the Holy Spirit of God guides him into it. We find this precious truth threaded all through 1 Corinthians 12, where the apostle describes how it is possible for the average believer to speak “in the Spirit of God”. We find it in Galatians 5, where this same average believer is “led by the Spirit”, and therefore not under law. We find it in Ephesians 1, where Paul prays for Christians that the Father of glory will give “the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him”. And John tells us how to identify the Spirit of God speaking through another believer: he will confess Jesus Christ come in the flesh, confirming his trustworthiness. Finally, the Lord Jesus himself prayed only one chapter after the words we are considering for “those who will believe in me through their word” [the word of the apostles], that we too may “see my glory that you have given me because you love me”. From the perspective of fallen humanity, the glory of Christ is probably the single most important truth ever revealed.

The Importance of the Promise in John 16

There is plenty of evidence in the New Testament that the Spirit of God within us guides believers into the truth of God, and that no genuine truth of God is available apart from his ministry. But I think the greatest importance of the promise in John 16:13 for the modern reader is to remind us that we can have total confidence in the documents that form the basis of our faith. They are not the studied opinions of man, but the end product of the risen Christ sharing not just some truth but all relevant truth through his Spirit to his apostles.

These in turn have shared that truth with us in written form, and we can use that word to guide our minds and hearts as we read the Bible, comparing scripture with scripture.