Add parallel Print Page Options

The Advocate. 15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.(A) 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate[a] to be with you always,(B) 17 the Spirit of truth,[b] which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you.(C)

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. 14:16 Another Advocate: Jesus is the first advocate (paraclete); see 1 Jn 2:1, where Jesus is an advocate in the sense of intercessor in heaven. The Greek term derives from legal terminology for an advocate or defense attorney, and can mean spokesman, mediator, intercessor, comforter, consoler, although no one of these terms encompasses the meaning in John. The Paraclete in John is a teacher, a witness to Jesus, and a prosecutor of the world, who represents the continued presence on earth of the Jesus who has returned to the Father.
  2. 14:17 The Spirit of truth: this term is also used at Qumran, where it is a moral force put into a person by God, as opposed to the spirit of perversity. It is more personal in John; it will teach the realities of the new order (Jn 14:26), and testify to the truth (Jn 14:6). While it has been customary to use masculine personal pronouns in English for the Advocate, the Greek word for “spirit” is neuter, and the Greek text and manuscript variants fluctuate between masculine and neuter pronouns.