📖 The Gospel of John — Unit 11: The Spirit and the High-Priestly Prayer

Professor: Dr. Wayne Cook | Director: Dr. Ted Rogers

"I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever." — John 14:16 (NKJV)

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The Certificate track answers the multiple choice. The Associate adds the fill-in-the-blank questions; M.Div. and Th.M. add those and the short-answer questions. 90% of each part is required to pass.

Introduction — "I Will Not Leave You Orphans"

Still in the upper room, on the night before the cross, Jesus kept speaking to His troubled friends. He had told them He was going away, and their hearts were breaking; they did not understand, and grief filled the room. But His leaving would not be abandonment. "I will not leave you orphans," He promised (John 14:18), and He gave them two great gifts to prove it. The first was a Person to come and dwell with them — the Helper, the Holy Spirit. The second was a prayer, His own prayer lifting them up to the Father, the great prayer of John 17 that we call the High-Priestly Prayer. The Spirit would be God with them and in them; the prayer would hold them before the throne. Together they answer the fear of every disciple who has ever felt the Lord seem far away: you are not alone, and you are not forgotten.

I. "It Is to Your Advantage That I Go Away"

The disciples could not see how His leaving could be anything but loss. Yet Jesus said something astonishing: "It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you" (John 16:7). While He walked the earth, Jesus could be in only one place at a time; by the Spirit, He would be with every believer everywhere, always. So their sorrow had a purpose they could not yet see. He compared it to a woman in labor, whose anguish is real but turns to joy when the child is born: "You will weep and mourn... you will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy" (John 16:20–22). This is the deep pattern of the life of faith — that we are often asked to trust the Father in the dark, before we are shown the reason.

Trusting a plan we cannot yet see. Dr. Cook has often said that after half a century of ministry he still finds much of God's working past his understanding — why God allows the wars and famines, why bad things befall good people. He has known deep loss in his own family, watching loved ones taken by a cruel disease while he himself was spared, with no answer he could give. And yet his settled confidence is this: God has a plan, and even what we cannot understand in this world we will understand in the world to come. He tells, too, of a time early in ministry when he felt sure God meant him for a large church, while a tiny, poor congregation in a cold and distant place kept calling. Reluctantly he followed what he could not explain — and it was there that God blessed the work, provided for his family, and opened the door that eventually made him a seminary professor. Looking back, the confusing road was the right one. So the Spirit comes to be our Helper precisely when the way is unclear.

II. The Helper, the Spirit of Truth

The name Jesus gives the Spirit is rich: the Paraclete — the Helper, the Comforter, the Advocate, literally "one called alongside" to stand with us. And He is given not for a visit but forever: "I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever — the Spirit of truth... He dwells with you and will be in you" (John 14:16–17). Notice that "another" Helper — another of the same kind as Jesus Himself, God come close. Jesus tells us what the Spirit does. He teaches: "He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you" (14:26). He testifies of Christ: "He will testify of Me" (15:26). He convicts: He will "convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment" (16:8), awakening the conscience that is dead to God. And He guides: "He will guide you into all truth... He will glorify Me" (16:13–14).

That last point is the key to knowing the Spirit's true work. The Spirit does not advertise Himself; He glorifies Christ. So a life truly filled with the Spirit will not draw attention to itself or to spectacular signs — it will point to Jesus. And this same Helper is our strength when the world turns hostile. Jesus warned that the world would hate His own as it hated Him; but the Spirit, the Advocate, empowers ordinary believers to bear bold witness even under persecution, so that the church has often grown fastest exactly where it has suffered most. The Comforter is no luxury for calm days; He is the courage of the martyr and the steady voice in the storm.

Jesus does not merely send help; He sends a Helper — a Person, God Himself, to dwell within the very people He has saved.

This is the wonder the disciples could not yet grasp that night: the same God who had walked beside them on the roads of Galilee would now live within them. The Helper is not a force or a feeling but a divine Person who knows us, loves us, and never leaves. He prays in us when we do not know how to pray, He steadies us when our own strength fails, and He keeps quietly turning our eyes back to Christ. What Jesus had been to them on the outside, the Spirit would now be to every believer from the inside.

III. Sorrow Turned to Joy, and a Plan Revealed Day by Day

The disciples kept asking one another what Jesus meant by "a little while." We do the same. We want God to lay out the whole plan at once, plainly, the way a machine spits out an instant answer to a typed question. But God rarely answers that way. He revealed even to the disciples only what they could bear, a partial light for the next step, because He is not training slaves who obey blind orders but sons and daughters who are to grow into the very mind of Christ. "I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now" (John 16:12). We learn more by seeking His will over time than we ever would from an instant reply; the seeking itself shapes us. And through all of it the promise holds: the grief will turn to joy that no one can take away, and "whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you" (16:23). The God who works in us "both to will and to do for His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13) unfolds His purpose patiently, day by day.

IV. The High-Priestly Prayer (John 17)

Then Jesus lifted His eyes to heaven and prayed — and we are allowed to listen. John 17 is rightly called the High-Priestly Prayer, for here the great High Priest intercedes for His people on the eve of His sacrifice. First He prays for Himself: "Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You" (17:1), and He defines for us the very heart of salvation: "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent" (17:3). Eternal life is not first a place or a length of days; it is to know God. Then He prays for His disciples: not that the Father would take them out of the world, but keep them from the evil one, and "sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth" (17:17). He commits the frightened eleven to the Father's keeping.

And then He prays for us. "I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word" (John 17:20). Every believer who has ever come to Christ through the apostles' testimony was named in that prayer on that night. And what He asks for us is oneness: "that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me" (17:21). The unity He prays for is not a forced uniformity or a mere organization; it is a shared life that mirrors the very oneness of the Father and the Son, and its purpose is evangelistic — so that the watching world will believe. He ends by reaching beyond this life altogether: "Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory" (17:24).

So put the two gifts together. Jesus did not leave His own as orphans. He sent the Helper to be with us and in us, teaching, convicting, comforting, and glorifying Christ through us; and He Himself, our great High Priest, prays for us still before the Father's throne. Whatever your confusion, whatever your sorrow, whatever the hostility of the world, the Comforter is beside you and the Son is interceding for you. You are not alone, and you are not forgotten.

Unit 11 Final Exam

Certificate track: the 20 multiple-choice questions. Associate: multiple choice and the 10 fill-in-the-blank questions. M.Div. and Th.M.: multiple choice, fill-ins and the 10 short-answer questions. 90% of each part is required to pass. If you do not pass, the exam waits a short time before you can try again.

📖 Course Readings — Required and Honors
Certificate and Associate: honors is optional. Read any three of the five selections for honors; no separate required-reading exam is needed.

M.Div. and Th.M.: all five assigned readings are part of the course. Their separate exam is required after activation; see its page for the current rule. Honors remains optional and does not replace the exam.

Open Course Readings →