In this segment on the Holy Spirit, I want to take a look at the other part of what Jesus said in John chapter 14. In John chapter 14, he said, " The Holy Spirit would remind them of everything He said and how we looked at how that tied in with the inspiration of Scriptures and the confidence we can have in the writings of the apostles. But he also said that the Holy Spirit in John 14:26 it said the Spirit will teach you all things. Very similar statement in John chapter 16, I want to read verses 12 and 13.
Jesus said, " I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when he, the Spirit of truth has come, he will guide you into all truth. For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak and he will tell you things to come. So he says the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth. Just like he said before, the Holy Spirit will teach you all things. Now the big question here is who is the you that he's referring to?
And depending on how you answer that question, who the you is, you can end up where the early church was or you can end up far, far away from there. So I want to take a look at that. And I've heard over time, I've heard three different answers that people will give to this question. One is that the you applies to the church.
Therefore, when he says the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth and will guide you and teach you all things that the Holy Church, the Holy Ghost would over time guide the church in the direction that he wanted it to go. That's the first possibility. It refers to the church and the Holy Spirit will continue doing it over time. The second possibility is the Holy Spirit is going to apply to every individual who's reading this. I've heard this and say, " Well, the Holy Spirit is guiding me into all truth.
As I'm sitting in my armchair reading the Bible that I can have confidence that the Holy Spirit is guiding me into all truth personally because this is a promise that God has made, the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth. Of course, the obvious problem with that is that the guy who's across the street reading his Bible and the guy who's next door and one block over are all being led to different conclusions. How is the Spirit going to be leading people all over the place to different conclusions?
And the third option is that the Holy Spirit, when he says will lead you into all truth, he was talking to the people who were in the room. He's talking to the apostles who were there when he's speaking. So they would be the ones guided into all truth. So how you understand this passage right here, this promise of what the Holy Spirit is doing will have a tremendous impact on your faith and your understanding.
So as I mentioned earlier, a lot of Protestants, the attitude is the Holy Spirit is personally this is a promise to every individual, every future believer, the Holy Spirit is personally guiding me. And the fact that there are so many groups out there, each one convinced that the Holy Spirit is guiding them in every church, an individual in the church thinking the same thing. It can't possibly be logically that the Holy Spirit is guiding these people all in completely different directions.
So that to me is an inherent contradiction that's just logically not possible. Now I was brought up as a Roman Catholic and the Roman Catholics had a different understanding of this passage. And they see the you as referring to the church. And in their case, it would be Roman Catholic Church. So the way they want to understand is Jesus is promising here that the Spirit would be guiding the church into all truth.
And that revelation and the guidance of the Holy Spirit will continue over time through progressive revelation. So you know if you run into a Catholic and you say, well, wait a minute, I don't see this thing that you're teaching that you're saying I have to believe is found in Scripture anywhere. I don't see it in the early church. This didn't show up until some time later. They say, " Well, that's not a problem because the Holy Spirit promised that He guide the church and He's revealing new things to us.
" I'll give you an idea of the Catholic understanding of this. So you don't just have to take my word for it. EWTN is the oldest Catholic newspaper in the U.S. I'm sorry, the National Catholic Register is the oldest Catholic newspaper in the US. It's owned by EWTN, which is a large Catholic cable TV and media company. So they certainly understand what the Catholic Church teaches. And here's a quote from the National Catholic Register.
So quote, " In John 14:26 and John 16:13, this is the two passages we just read, Jesus says the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth. " The church, meaning the Roman Catholic Church, learns things through the ages. Theological or spiritual knowledge did not cease to grow or expand after the apostles. We still reflect upon doctrines today. So notice the way that they take this passage. They assume that the you refers to the Roman Catholic Church.
So, therefore, if something is a new teaching, this is completely consistent with their understanding of what Jesus taught here. Now, I'll give you an idea, a more formal presentation of this teaching, I think it's always good for me to understand, even if I disagree with someone, how do they get there? What kind of a paradigm are they following? This is from Cardinal John Newman. This is in a famous 1848 essay on the development of Christian doctrine.
So Newman taught that doctrine would be developed over time like a person has developed. You know, you're born as a baby and you grow, you become mature, then you get older. So people develop. You plant a tree and it's a little small tree and it gets bigger and bigger and bears fruits. The tree is developed. And so his attitude was that the church would develop as well, or he used the example of a flower that goes through different stages. It's a bud and then it opens up and it becomes a full flower.
So he used these kind of analogies to explain that the human development, flowers, ripening fruit, seasons changing, that there's a progression in all of nature and the church was no exception to that. This is a quote from Newman. So you understand how people read this passage. Newman says, " Lastly, scripture distinctly anticipates the development of Christianity both as a polity and a doctrine.
In one of our Lord's parables, the Kingdom of Heaven is even compared to a grain of a mustard seed, which a man took and hid in the field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds, but when it's grown is the greatest among the herbs and becomes a tree. And as Mark words, it shoots out great branches so the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches. And again in the same chapter mark, so it is the kingdom of God.
As if a man should cast seed in the ground and should sleep and rise at night in the day and the seed should spring and grow up. He knows not how, for the earth brings forth fruit of herself. Here an internal element of life where the principal or doctrine is spoken of rather than any merely external manifestation and it's observable that a spontaneous as well as gradual character of the growth is intimated. So he completely misunderstands the parable here.
He says the kingdom of God is like a tree and he says that as the tree grows and changes that the church is going to grow not only numerically, not only extending into new lands, but also gaining new truth and new teachings over time. Like the flower, it starts off as a bud and becomes a full flower. So he's saying that basically what was handed down to the apostles was like the bud which then turns into the flower and then if it's an apple tree turns into fruit after that.
So there's a greater and greater understanding over time. And this fits in with the Catholic Church where they can start adding new teachings over time that were not known previously. You know In the creed, they said in the beginning it said the Spirit proceeds from the Father and then they could add later on the proceeds from the Father and the Son. So a lot of the things the Catholic Church does, you see, well, where do they get that from the Bible? Well, they don't.
They believe that these things were added and revealed by the Holy Spirit over time. Things like praying to Mary and the saints, venerating statues and images, the doctrine. You have to believe Mary was bodily assumed into heaven, the Bishop of Rome as the head of the church who can speak infallibly, celibacy of priests in the church, presbyters, and purgatory, just wars, crusades, things like this.
And so all of these doctrines can be perfectly acceptable, even though they're not found in Scripture, because they believe that Jesus promised the Holy Spirit would be inspiring and guiding the church. And of course, the church they take is the Roman Catholic Church. Now, so we looked at the Protestants who tend to think that every individual is inspired. The Catholics who will say, " No, no, it's one church, the Roman Catholic Church that he's talking about that that will be inspired by the Holy Spirit over time.
" The early Christians understood the you as referring and this reference to Jesus when he says the Holy Spirit will guide you as referring and limited to the apostles. So let's reread John 14:26 and see if this makes sense logically. First of all, we can see this for ourselves. In John 14:26, Jesus says, " The helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name will teach you all things and remember and bring you to your remembrance all things I have said to you.
" Now, when the Holy Spirit is bringing to your remembrance all things I have said to you, who is the " you " referring to? Obviously, it's not referring to me. It's not referring to the Catholic Church. It's referring to the apostles. When he says, " The Holy Spirit will bring to your remembrance all the things I have said to you. " So the you that he's talking about is clearly the apostles. It's the people who are there when he's speaking.
So logically, it makes perfect sense that the one you is applying to the same you as the other one. So this part of the promise as well. So that's how the early church understood it. He's speaking to the apostles. The apostles would be reminded of everything Jesus said. I won't, and the church in the future won't. And also the apostles would be the ones who would be taught all things by the Holy Spirit.
Now I'll give you some examples from early Christians that this logical way of looking at the passage is exactly how they saw it. This is taken from Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs, an article on the apostolic faith. There's several quotes there. I'll give you a few from Irenaeus, who is Bishop of the Church in Lyon in modern-day France, right around the year 180 AD. Now he had been taught as a youth by Polycarp in Smyrna, and Polycarp had been a direct disciple from the Apostle John.
So it's interesting to me because he's only one link removed from the Apostle John who wrote John 14 here and John 16. Here's what he said. He said, " It is unlawful to assert that the apostles preach before they possess perfect knowledge, as some do even venture to say boasting themselves as being improvers over the apostles. For after our Lord rose from the dead, the apostles were energized with power from on high.
When the Holy Spirit came down upon them, they were completely filled and had perfect knowledge, perfect meaning complete. They departed to the ends of the earth preaching the glad tidings of the good things sent to them. This is taken from Against Heresies, book three, chapter one. You can find that also in Ante-Nicene Fathers Volume 1 page 414. So here he's saying, " Anyone who claims to be an improver on what the apostles taught is automatically dead wrong. You're unlawful.
You can't do that because the apostles didn't preach until they had received from the Holy Spirit complete knowledge. Another quote from Irenaeus, " True doctrine is that which consists in the doctrine of the apostles and the ancient constitution of the church throughout all the world. It also consists in the distinctive manifestation of the body of Christ according to Succession of Bishops. For by this they've handed down that church which exists in every place and which has come down even to us.
She is guarded and preserved without any forging of scriptures by a very complete system of doctrine, meaning teaching. She neither received any addition to nor does she allow any diminishing of the truths which she believes. True knowledge also consists of reading the Word of God without falsification, but with a lawful and diligent exposition in harmony with the scriptures, both without danger and without blasphemy.
Above all, it consists in the preeminent gift of love, which is more precious than knowledge, more glorious than prophecy, and which excels all the other gifts of God. That's from Irenaeus Against Heresies. Book 4, chapter 33, found in Ante-Nicene Fathers Volume 1 page 508. So he's saying that the faith is handed down. It's preserved. It's the same faith that the apostles received complete and the church neither adds anything to it nor takes anything away from it.
It hands down from generation to generation that original deposit of the faith. Tertullian writing around the year 197 AD in Carthage, a writer from Carthage, North Africa, early Christian writer, it says, " When he, the Spirit of truth will come, he will lead you into all truth. " That's a quote from John 16:13. " Thus he shows there was nothing of which the apostles were ignorant to whom he had promised the future attainment of all by the help of the truth of the Spirit.
" And then there's last quotes for a debate between Archelaus, a Christian bishop and Manes, a heretic who founded, apparently founded Manichaeism. So he says, " As Paul himself seems to tell us, and as we have also learned from early account given the gospel, to introduce new preaching, teaching, evangelizing, or prophesying is not, in this life at least, held out on the same terms to any person in the later times after the apostles.
And if the opposite ever appears to be the case, that person can only be held as a false prophet or a false Christ. That's from disputation found in Ante-Nicene Fathers Volume 6, page 210. And then one last quote, " Those who seek to set up any new dogma have a habit of readily perverting into conformity with their own notions, and he proves they care to take from the Scriptures. " The apostolic word marks out the case in these words.
If anyone preaches any other gospel to you other than that which you have received, let him be accursed. That's from Galatians 1:8-9. Consequently, in addition to what has been once committed to us by the apostles, a disciple of Christ should receive nothing as new doctrine. That's from Disputation Ante-Nicene Fathers Volume 6 page 213 to 214.
So basically, the early church, quoting from several sources, they understood when Jesus said the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth, it meant that and the Apostle and the Holy Spirit will teach you all things that they understood that to mean that the apostles would have the complete faith and nothing would ever be added to it and nothing could be taken away from it. That our job is to preserve and maintain the original deposit of faith.
So Jesus ' promise the Holy Spirit would guide them into all truth, would guide you into all truth. That applies to the apostles, not to all of us. It doesn't apply to any church group and it certainly doesn't apply to us as individuals. And that if they would be led into all truth, if I have a cup here and the cup is full and it's full and it has all water in it, you're not going to add anymore.
So that's the idea that there would be no further additions later in anyone who claimed that they were adding something the apostles didn't know be considered to be ruled out as a false teacher. So our job is to guard, protect, advance, preserve the faith that was originally handed down. That's what it says in Jude, I think it's verse 3. It says, " Let us contend for the faith once for all entrusted to the saints, the original faith.
The Holy Spirit is not going to be giving us any new teachings or new doctrinal truths. " Now, why is this important today for us? Why is it so important to understand this about the Holy Spirit? Well, I'll give you an example that this is not just an issue for the Catholics, but also in a lot of other churches as well.
Prominent Christian teacher, I heard many lessons from him over the years, who just doesn't get this basic foundational concept about the Holy Spirit handing the faith down complete to the apostles, who made an interesting claim and a lot of people are following what he's saying. I'm sure you've heard the same thing elsewhere. And he says, " Look, God is gradually revealing more truth to us over time. " And he gave the example. He said, " Okay, the United States, we had slavery up until the 1860s.
" And then after that, we had blacks were, in many cases, treated badly until the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the 1960s. We had segregation. So there's a progression that takes place in knowledge and understanding. So he says, " All right, now the Christians are having a progressive view. One point we thought slavery was good, then we thought segregation was good. " So it says, " God is revealing through the Holy Spirit. We're moving to a more and more enlightened period of time.
" The Holy Spirit is just like Newman said, " We're going from the bud to the flower to the fruit. " And so he says he was advocating based on this, " We're smarter than they were back in the days of the apostles. " And so he basically said every scripture that talks about distinct roles of men and women basically can be nullified because the Holy Spirit is enlightening us and leading us into a higher, clearer understanding. We have new clear and we understand things more accurately than the apostles did back then.
So what he was advocating based on that was regardless of what Paul said and what it says throughout the New Testament, he says, " Women should be allowed to preach, women should be allowed to teach men, elders and bishops in the church should be women. " So women can be leading not only in the church, but also at home. And husbands no longer be considered the head of the wife because that was an old outdated idea and now we're more enlightened.
And he even said that he and his wife were experimenting with the idea of a headless marriage. So neither the husband nor the wife would be the head, but I guess if they had a dispute, they would flip a coin and, you know, decide whoever called heads or tails, they would get their way going. So what do you do with this passage, like Paul says in Ephesians chapter 5:23, " The husband is the head of the wife as Christ also is the head of the church.
" If the husband's no longer the head of the wife because you think you have a further revelation, what happened to Christ in the church? Do you really want to go to a church that Christ is no longer the head of? I don't think so. So remember, Peter endorsed Paul's writings as saying that Paul was writing according to the wisdom that God gave him. So Peter thought and he said that unstable and untaught people twist them to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures.
So that's why this is so important today. I see so many churches getting blown off course because they think falsely that they know better than the apostles and they're free to pick and choose and disregard because they consider themselves to be more enlightened. I mean how in the world do you get to allowing homosexuality in the church? Homosexual lifestyles, how can this be tolerated in the church? Any more than promiscuity of any type can be. I'm not trying to pick on any one particular group.
But this is the logic that's used as people believe the Holy Spirit is guiding them into a more complete, better understanding of the faith. I was speaking to a friend of mine recently who was listening to a liberal my friend was not from Mennonite background. He's listening to a liberal Mennonite preacher who said if you hear any preacher saying a woman needs to cover her head, you should quickly run in the other direction.
So clearly he's a liberal Mennonite and he was reacting against Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 11 by the attitude is God's enlightening us and bringing us to a further understanding. People say that leadership in the church should be based on gifts.
So if a woman is naturally a better speaker than her husband is, if she has more intellectual ability or she's naturally a better teacher than her husband is, then obviously God has given her the gift and we can see that the Holy Spirit has given her this gift which she obviously has so therefore why should we get in the way of the Holy Spirit? But the Holy Spirit, we know the Holy Spirit inspired the apostolic writers. We cannot improve on what was handed down because it was handed down complete.
And this, as I mentioned earlier, this is not just my understanding. This is not just the understanding of the early church, but this is also backed up in Scripture. Jude verse 3 says, " Contend earnestly for the faith once for all entrusted to the saints. " And 2 Timothy chapter two, verses one and two, Paul tells Timothy the things you've heard from me commit to faithful men who will also be able to teach others.
So the idea is that the faith that Paul handed down as a deposit to Timothy, that Timothy would hand that down faithfully to others who would pass it down to others. So the faith is a trust. It's a treasure. It's a gift that was handed down complete from the apostles. And our job is to restore it in all of its beauty and pass it on with no additions nor subtractions. And that's what Paul said in Galatians 1.
He says, " We should not preach any other gospel than the one that was preached originally in Galatians 1 verses 6 to 9. " So don't be impressed with people who have special titles or seminary degrees or who are leading large churches. There may be very eloquent and entertaining preachers. Paul said in Galatians, even if an angel from heaven should preach a different gospel other than the one that he handed down originally. Let that person be condemned.
That person is a false teacher and may they be cut off from God. So no person, no group of theologians, no church, no institution, not even another apostle nor an angel can change the gospel that was originally handed down. As Paul said in 1 Timothy chapter 6 in verse 20, " O Timothy, guard what was committed to your trust. " The original Christian faith is a trust.
It was given complete to the apostles, inspired by the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus said in John 14 and John 16, " We are called to take this trust given by the Holy Spirit, to know it, to guard it, to defend it, and to protect it. " Amen.