He will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me. All that belongs to the Father is mine; this is why I said, ‘The Spirit will tell you whatever he receives from me.’
Just as the Old Testament prophets knew God well before they proclaimed him, our proclamation should flow from a deep and intimate knowledge of God. The Spirit not only empowers us to proclaim Jesus to the world but testifies to us about Jesus for our own relationship with him (John 16:12-15; see also Ephesians 2:18; 3:16). The Spirit will take the things of Jesus and reveal them to us, glorifying Jesus as Jesus himself glorified the Father. As soon as he returned to them after the resurrection, Jesus gave his followers the Spirit so that they could continue to know him (John 16:16; John 20:20-22).
“The Spirit carries on Jesus’ mission of revealing the Father.”
Jesus promised that whatever the Spirit would hear, the Spirit would make known to the disciples (John 16:13). To someone reading the Fourth Gospel from start to finish, this promise would sound strangely familiar. Jesus had just told his disciples, “I have not called you slaves, but friends, because a slave does not know what the master is doing, but whatever I have heard from the Father, I have made known to you” (John 15:15). Friendship meant many different things to people in the ancient Mediterranean world, but one aspect of friendship was the intimacy that it involved: true friends could share confidential secrets with one another. As God said to his friend Abraham, “Shall I hide from Abraham the thing which I am about to do?” (Genesis 18:17). Moses, too, as God’s friend, could hear his voice in a special way (Exodus 33:11; Deuteronomy 34:10). Jesus was open with his disciples about God’s heart, and promised that the Spirit would be as open with the disciples after the resurrection as Jesus himself had been before the resurrection. Ancient philosophers emphasized that friends shared all things in common; Jesus explained that all that belonged to the Father was his, and all that was his would be the disciples’ (John 16:14-15). In the context, Jesus especially intended God’s truth (John 16:13). They would know the heart of God.
My prayer for us all is the deep revelation of an intimate Christ to us by His Spirit. May we know you Lord, Jesus, friend of sinners, friend of mine!