Key Text: John 16:7
But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.
There is great irony here. Jesus was leaving His disciples – in the most painful of ways – via His own death. Yet he insisted on telling them, though they could hardly understand, that it was for their own good that He was going away.
Even more, this was the way that, in due time, someone that He called “the Advocate” would come to them – the Holy Spirit – and through the Spirit they would do “even greater things” than He had done among them.
I am sure this stunned and confused them.
After all, how could renewed life come from death? How could hope, and guidance, and the fulfilling of their destiny in the kingdom come from His sacrificial death on a Roman cross?
Yet that was His promise and deep in their hearts and minds they knew He always kept His promises.
So, they stepped forward in faith. What else could they do?
Two thousand years later, Christians all around the world, proclaim that it was all true.
We are not alone. We are never alone.
The “Advocate” – the Holy Spirit – indwells and guides the faithful in all they do.
The kingdom continues to come, just as promised.
