The Spirit Advantage (John 16)

In John 16, Jesus tells His disciples that it is to their advantage that he go away. I'm sure at the time they had a hard time believing that. The years they had spent with Jesus undoubtedly had been the best years of their lives. Yes, they had left home and family. Yes, there had been tension with the religious leaders. But they had seen miracles every day. They had heard Jesus' wonderful teaching. More than that, they had performed miracles and gotten to teach themselves. How could Jesus going away be an advantage?

That is the question that Jesus answers here in John 16. To paraphrase, Jesus says that the advantage of His leaving is that the Holy Spirit (the Comforter) is coming. Believe it or not, we live in a more advantaged age than the disciples. That is hard for us to believe. We think that if Jesus were with us like He was with the disciples we would have a much easier time with our faith and Christian living. But that is not necessarily the case. Jesus says we have several advantages over the disciples in having the Holy Spirit:

1. The Holy Spirit gives power to our message. He convicts people of the truth of the Gospel message
2. The Spirit guides us into truth. He is an inner revelation to our minds and hearts of all that God has to teach us. The disciples had Jesus as an external teacher. We have an internal revelation from God that unfolds the Scriptures to us.
3. The Spirit is omnipresent. Jesus, being fully God and man, was limited by His human body to being in any one location at a time. The Spirit knows no such boundaries so He is able to be with every believer.

The blessings of the Spirit are far more than those outlined in John 16. We should rejoice that we live in a time where we can say that "the Comforter has come."