A twofold promise, so wide as this, required, it must be felt, not indeed limitation, but qualification - let us say, definition - so far as concerns the indication of its necessary conditions. Unlimited power of working by faith and of praying in faith is qualified by obedience to His Commandments, such as is the outcome of personal love to Him. [5735] And for such faith, which compasseth all things in the obedience of love to Christ, and can obtain all by the prayer of faith in His Name, there will be a need of Divine Presence ever with them. [5736] While He had been with them, they had had one Paraclete, [5737] or Advocate,' Who had pleaded with them the cause of God, explained and advocated the truth, and guarded and guided them. Now that His outward Presence was to be withdrawn from earth, and He was to be their Paraclete or Advocate in Heaven with the Father, [5738] He would, as His first act of advocacy, pray the Father, Who would send them another Paraclete, or Advocate, who would continue with them for ever. To the guidance and pleadings of that Advocate they could implicitly trust themselves, for He was the Spirit of Truth.' The world, indeed, would not listen to His pleadings, nor accept Him as their Guide, for the only evidence by which they judged was that of outward sight and material results. But theirs would be other Empirics: and experience not outward, but inward and spiritual. They would know the reality of His Existence and the truth of His pleadings by the continual Presence with them as a body of this Paraclete, and by His dwelling in them individually.
Here (as Bengel justly remarks) begins the essential difference between believers and the world. The Son was sent into the world; not so the Holy Spirit. Again, the world receives not the Holy Spirit, because it knows Him not; the disciples know Him, because they possess Him. Hence to have known' and to have' are so conjoined, that not to have known is the cause of not having, and to have is the cause of knowing. [5739] In view of this promised Advent of the other Advocate, Christ could tell the disciples that He would not leave them orphans' in this world. Nay, in this Advocate Christ Himself came to them. True, the world, which only saw and knew what fell within the range of its sensuous and outward vision (ver. 17), would not behold Him, but they would behold Him, because He lived, and they also would live - and hence there was fellowship of spiritual life between them. [5740] On that day of the Advent of His Holy Spirit would they have full knowledge, because experience, of the Christ's Return to the Father, and of their own being in Christ, and of His being in them. And, as regarded this threefold relationship, this must be ever kept in view: to be in Christ meant to love Him, and this was: to have and to keep His commandments; Christ's being in the Father implied, that they who were in Christ or loved Him would be loved also of His Father; and, lastly, Christ's being in them implied, that He would love them and manifest Himself to them. [5741]
One outstanding novel fact here arrested the attention of the disciples. It was contrary to all their Jewish ideas about the future manifestation of the Messiah, and it led to the question of one of their number, Judas - not Iscariot: Lord, what has happened, that to us Thou wilt manifest Thyself, and not to the world?' Again they thought of an outward, while He spoke of a spiritual and inward manifestation. It was of this coming of the Son and the Father for the purpose of making station' with them [5742] that He spoke, of which the condition was love to Christ, manifested in the keeping of His Word, and which secured the love of the Father also. On the other hand, not to keep His Word was not to love Him, with all that it involved, not only as regarded the Son, but also the Father, since the Word which they heard was the Father's. [5743]