I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
In a little while the world will no longer see me,
but you will see me, because I live and you will live.
Although they could not see the Spirit of truth, they would see Jesus, risen from the dead and, as Peter wrote, "brought to life in the Spirit". They didn't see the Spirit directly, but they witnessed the transformative effect he had in the life of Jesus, beginning from his baptism, and culminating in the resurrection. Thus, as Jesus revealed the Father who was invisible so too did he revel the Spirit. He did so preeminently by his resurrection. It is therefore appropriate that the creed calls the Spirit "the LORD, the giver of life". Because of this can understand that the situation described in Acts, when Peter and John prayed for and laid hands on those in Samaria to receive the Holy Spirit, that what they in fact experienced was like a spiritual resurrection. It was the being "born from above" about which Jesus spoke with Nicodemus.
I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
In a little while the world will no longer see me,
but you will see me, because I live and you will live.
On that day you will realize that I am in my Father
and you are in me and I in you.
The disciples experienced the sorrow of feeling as they had been orphaned when, Jesus, the one who revealed the Father was taken from them in his crucifixion. It seemed for a time that the talk about the unity of the Father and the Son was an unhelpful abstraction at best and a falsehood at worst. The world around them seemed to celebrate while they mourned. But this feeling was only their experience of reality. It was not reality itself. The resurrection corrected this misapprehension. It not only proved that Jesus was the one beloved and chosen by the Father. It opened the door for his disciples to be united to him through his Spirit. They not only saw the words of Jesus fulfilled and proven. They experienced the truth of the reality of his claims in their own lives. They began to participate themselves in the very reality about which Jesus had been teaching them, the life of the Trinity that he himself shared with his Father and with their Spirit. Far from being orphans, they were now sons and daughters, united with the Son to the Father in the Holy Spirit.
The world remains fixed in opposition to the truth because it is invested in falsehoods and addicted to sin. Thus it cannot receive the Spirit and does not want to do so. It would spoil all the fun, or so the thinking goes. Moreover, the world was not privileged to witness the resurrection of Jesus and thus continues to function as if death is the end. It therefore tries to impose its own ideas about making the best of things. The result of imbibing what the world is selling is the darkening of the intellect. It involves succumbing to the spirit of the age, which is a spirit of falsehood. It is this since it is the spirit of the devil himself who "is a liar and the father of lies" (see John 8:44). Since Christians will have to consistently contend with this spirit, directly and indirectly, from without and even from within their own minds, they need the Spirit of truth. The Advocate is not optional with an Adversary of this hostile, hateful, and deceitful. We can't rely merely on what we think and feel. We need God's perspective. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit makes it possible to for God's perspective to become our own. It is not just superimposed externally. Rather we choose it and cooperate with it. We know him not so much because we see him or understand him abstractly as because he remains with us and dwells in us. Thus the trajectory of degeneration on which the spirit of the age sets our minds is more than outmatched by the renewal in the Holy Spirit. We can no longer say with the world that we are not loved, that things are pointless, or that they are heading nowhere. We know that we are loved, the reason God made us, and that it is toward him that our lives are meant to lead.
Always be ready to give an explanation
to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope
Obviously it is impossible to describe the exact nature of the experience of the Holy Spirit, or what it is like to share in the life of the Trinity. But we should be able to say something. We know that Jesus is the reason for our hope. We know that it is him that made the difference in our lives. It is because he came back to us that we are not now orphans. It is because he gave us his Spirit that we see things differently from others. We might not be able to give the precise formulae from Nicea or recite the Athanasian creed from heart. But we can tell others the difference it makes to know and to love the adorable Trinity.
Elevation Worship - Resurrecting
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