In verses 14 and 15 the Lord said that the Spirit of reality “shall receive of Mine and shall disclose it to you.” All that the Son is and has is revealed as reality to the believers through the Spirit. This is to glorify the Son with the Father. The Spirit discloses the Son with the Father to the believers. He makes all that Christ is and has real to us.
Let us now consider some examples of how the Spirit makes God in Christ real to us. The Bible says that God is light (1 John 1:5). The Bible also says that Christ is light (John 8:12). This means that the very light, which is God Himself, is the Son. But how can this light be realized? How can it be real to us? It is realized through the Spirit. When the Spirit moves within us, the light is shining. The light is both the Father and the Son. The Father is the source and the essence of light, and the Son is the embodiment and expression of this light. We realize this light in actuality by the Spirit. When the Spirit moves within us, He is the reality of light.
The same is true with the matter of life. God is life. The Son also is life. God the Father is the source and the essence of life, and the Son is the embodiment and expression of this life. How can this life be ours? By the Spirit. Romans 8:2 says that the Spirit is the Spirit of life. When the Spirit moves within us, He is not only the shining and enlightening light but also the very life which enlivens, nourishes, and strengthens us.
The Spirit is the reality of all that the Father and the Son are. Without the Spirit there is the essence of what the Father and Son are, but there is no realization. Take the example of electricity. Although we may have electricity, it still needs to be applied for a specific purpose. That application of electricity is the realization of the electricity. Likewise, the Spirit is the application of all that the Father and the Son are. Without the Spirit as the realization and application, everything may be real, but it is not available or applicable. If we would apply all that God and Christ are, we need the Spirit. We must praise the Lord that today He is not only the Father and the Son but also the Spirit. He is not only the source and the course but also the application. The Spirit reaches us, entering into us and applying all that we need of the Father and the Son. This is wonderful.
The church life is absolutely dependent upon the Spirit. Mere doctrines concerning the Father and the Son are inadequate. We need a living application of the Father in the Son by means of the Spirit. The Spirit glorifies the Son by revealing Him with all the fullness of the Father. Let us take the example of humility. No one is born humble. People wrongly say that children are humble, but every little child is proud. We are proud by birth and by nature. Moreover, we are proud in our living. What is humility? Humility is Christ. Christ is the reality of every human virtue and every divine attribute. All the human virtues and all the divine attributes are simply Christ Himself. In a good and positive sense, Christ is everything. He is humility, love, patience, and submission. Outside of Him nothing, including us, is good. Every virtue and every attribute is Christ. How does the Spirit glorify Christ? He glorifies Christ by revealing Him item by item. For instance, in all that Christ is, there is an item called humility. One day the Spirit reveals Christ to you as your humility. This is not a doctrine of humility; it is the living person of Christ revealed to you as humility. Spontaneously, a living humility will come out of you. That is the glorification of Christ. The Spirit glorifies Christ, the Son of God, in this way. He does not do it by teaching you about Christ as humility, but by directly revealing Christ as humility to you. This humility then comes out of your very being, and this coming out of humility is the glorification of the Son.
Eventually, every characteristic of Christ will be expressed in the church life. There will be no Jewish, Greek, American, British, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, or any other kind of expression. There will be only the expression of Christ. This is what it means to say that the Spirit glorifies the Son by revealing Him in the fullness of the Father to the believers. We all need to have much experience of this. This will enrich, strengthen, and uplift the church life. If the church life has all of these actualities, it will surely grow.
The church life is a mingling of divinity with humanity. As the Spirit glorifies the Son with the Father, the Triune God is wrought into and mingled with the believers. This matter of the mingling of divinity with humanity has been very much neglected by Christians today. The one matter that is the most central has been neglected by nearly all Christians. Christians care mostly for doctrine. But in John 16, as in 1:14 and 17, the word truth in Greek means “reality,” not doctrine. To take the word truth in John to mean doctrine will cause great damage. In the Greek language it simply means reality or truthfulness. When the Spirit of reality comes, He will guide us into the full reality of Christ and mingle us with the Triune God. The more the Son is revealed to us with the fullness of the Father, the more experience we shall have of the Son. Then there will be more mingling of divinity with humanity in the church life. The church life is a daily mingling of divinity with humanity.
We have seen that the work of the Spirit in John 16 is in three categories: to convict the world, to glorify the Son by revealing Him with the fullness of the Father to the believers, and to disclose what is to come. John’s writings are also of three categories—the Gospel, the Epistles, and the Revelation. The three categories of John’s writings correspond to the threefold work of the Spirit. His Gospel is mainly to convict the world, his Epistles are mainly to reveal the Son with the fullness of the Father, and Revelation is the book unveiling the things that shall occur in the future. In verse 13 the Lord said of the Spirit that “He will disclose to you what is to come.” The Spirit will disclose the things to come, which are mainly revealed in Revelation (Rev. 1:1, 19). In the book of Revelation, four main things are revealed: the church’s progress (chs. 1—3); the world’s destiny (chs. 4—16); Satan’s ultimate consummation—the great Babylon (chs. 17—20); and God’s ultimate consummation—the New Jerusalem (chs. 21—22). The book of Revelation discloses all of these things to us.