When he, the Spirit of truth has come, he will guide you into all truth; … he will tell you things to come. He will glorify me.
John 16:13.14
Among the last things the Lord Jesus said to His disciples before going to the cross, His announcement of the coming of the Holy Spirit takes a particularly important place. In the verses quoted above the Lord mentions a threefold working of the Spirit:
He guides believers into the whole truth. At that time the disciples were not yet able to comprehend what the Lord was explaining. But the Holy Spirit would be able to guide them into a deeper understanding of the truth. He would even motivate and inspire some of them to record God’s Word in writing. In our day, too, it is the Holy Spirit who reveals to us all the truth.
He makes future events known. How many portions of the New Testament contain prophetic statements! This is true of the gospels, the epistles and, not least, the book of the Revelation. Even now the Holy Spirit seeks to occupy us with the manifold descriptions of the glorious future of the Lord Jesus. And His future is ours, too.
He seeks to glorify the Lord Jesus. The entire work of the Holy Spirit has this great objective. Just as the Lord came to earth to glorify His father, so, too, the Holy Spirit’s presence here is ultimately for the glory of the Son. This He achieves not merely through the scriptures; He endeavours to do so daily in your life and mine. This was so with Paul. He wished that Christ “be magnified” in his body, whether by life or by death (Philippians 1:20).