Daily Reading for May 17
The work of the Spirit, [according to John’s gospel,] is to teach, witness, convince, guide into truth, and declare what is to come, and every part of this ministry is derived from, and in turn points to, the historic mission and teaching of Jesus. Four times the Spirit is named as the Paraclete, and in the first of these instances he is called ‘another Paraclete’. Jesus, it is implied, has been the first Paraclete; now, with the departure of Jesus, the second Paraclete will be sent. We need to ask what the word means. . . .
The usual meaning of parakletos outside the New Testament is ‘one called to help’—the pleader, the legal assistant, the advocate in a court of law. There is much in the discourse which suggests this sense; the work of the Paraclete includes convicting the world, and witnessing to the truth. But it is also relevant that the verb parakalein and the noun paraklesis are used of Christians preaching (cf. Acts 2.40), and this may give to the word Paraclete a nuance reaching beyond the legal sense. So, too, in the Greek Bible, both the verb and the noun are used of the divine consolation expected in the messianic age, and this justifies the rendering ‘Comforter’. It is, then, both as Advocate and as Comforter that the Spirit will aid the disciples.
From Holy Spirit: A Biblical Study by Michael Ramsey (Cowley Publications, 1992).