When the Comforter Came

“I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you.” John xiv. I.

OF’EW years ago a striking Christmas card was published, with the title ‘If He had not come.’’ It was founded upon our Saviour’s own words ‘If I had not come.” The card represented a clergyman falling into a short sleep in his study on Christmas morning and dreaming of a world into which Jesus had never come. In his dream he found himself looking through his home but there were no little stockings in the chimney corner, no Christmas bells or wreaths of holly, and no Christ to comfort, gladden and save. He walked out on the public street but there was no church with its spire pointing to heaven. He came back and sat down in his library but every book about the Saviour and the Gospel had disappeared. A ring came to the door bell and a messenger asked him to visit a poor dying mother. He hastened with her weeping child and as he reached the home he sat down and said, “I have something here that I am sure will comfort you.” He opened his Bible to look for a familiar promise but it ended at

Malachi and there was no Gospel and no promise of hope and salvation, and he could only bow his head and weep with her in bitter despair. Two days afterwards he stood beside her coffin and conducted the funeral service, but there was no message of consolation, no word of a glorious resurrection, no open heaven, but only ‘’dust to dust, ashes to ashes,’’ and one long eternal farewell. He realized at length that “He had not come” and burst into tears and bitter weeping in his sorrowful dream. Suddenly he awoke with a start and a great shout of joy and praise burst from his lips as he heard his choir singing in the church close by:

“Oh! come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant,

In Bethlehem/s manger lies the King of Angels.

Oh! come let us adore Him Christ the Lord.”

This striking illustration suggests to us something of what we would have missed if the Holy Spirit had not come. There could have been no Comforter and no comfort. The work which our Lord accomplished at so much cost could never have been completed. There could have been no conviction of sin, no repentance, no faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, no sense of forgiven sin, no balm of peace for the troubled conscience, no “Spirit of adoption crying, Abba Father,” no revelation of Jesus Christ to the heart, no sanctification from the power of sin, no Spirit of intercession to help us and teach us to pray, no power to anoint us for our Christian work, no supernatural presence in our Christian life and in the life and work of the Church of God. All this would have been lacking if the Spirit had not come and our hearts would be orphaned indeed.

An orphan is one who has had a parent, a mother, a home and all the sweetness and help of fostering love and care, and has lost it. The disciples of Christ were in this very condition. The Lord had been to them as a Teacher, a Guide, a Friend, and a spiritual mother. And now He was to leave them, and to leave them utterly unfitted for their lonely and orphaned condition. Their knowledge as yet was dim, their faith was feeble, they were little children who had scarcely learned to walk alone, and it was with utter consternation that they had heard Him tell that He was going away. How could they ever face the world alone, lambs in the midst of wolves, orphans in a hostile homeless wilderness?

He has not failed to mark their anxious faces and their falling tears and He hastens to reassure them ^T will not leave you orphans.’’ And then He adds something that it must have been hard for them at first to understand after what He had already told them about His going away. “I will come to you’’ He says. But how could He come to them if He was going to leave them? And then He proceeds to explain to them that the One who is to succeed Him, the Presence that is to take His place and abide with them for ever is just His Own very Self in another form, the Spiritual Christ, the Heart of Jesus returning to abide with us forever, just as really as when He walked in Galilee and yet in a manner wholly different and infinitely better.

‘’At that day,” He says: “Ye shall know that I am in the Father and ye in M’e and I in you.” The coming of the Comforter is to make Jesus intensely real, more real indeed than the Comforter Himself. For He adds a little later: “He shall not testify of Himself, He shall testify of M!e.” “He shall take of the things that are Mine and show them unto you.” Still further He assures them that through the coming of the Comforter He will manifest Himself to the hearts of the disciples and He and the Father together “will come unto them and make their abode with them.”

There is a subtle danger that in our theological conception of the glorious Trinity we sometimes make three Gods instead of one. While there are three Persons in the Godhead, yet there is one divine presence which the Holy Spirit brings to the heart and that is the presence of the Lord Jesus who is to us the Living Word and the one eternal Revelation of the Father. Let us not fail to grasp this precious truth that as Jesus Christ while on earth never did anything without the Holy Spirit, so now the Holy Spirit never does anything apart from Jesus. The coming of the Comforter, therefore, to the heart means the indwelling and abiding of the Lord Jesus Himself as our ever present all-sufficient and everlasting Friend.

Alas! how many of the Father’s children are as yet strangers to His manifested presence, and orphans indeed! Poor orphaned hearts, the heart of Jesus is calling you to His love and fellowship and the fulness of the blessed Holy Ghost. All that your heart has ever known of fatherhood, motherhood or home, God is waiting to give to you through the indwelling of the blessed Comforter. Will you answer to His call even as you read these lines?

Jesus, without Thee we’re orphaned and lonely,

Come as our Teachbr and Guide;

Leave us not comfortless, send us the Comforter,

Come to our hearts to abide.

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