John 16:14 - The Holy Spirit's Role

The Holy Spirit's role is often misunderstood by many Christians. Based on John 16:14, "He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you", it is commonly understood that the Holy Spirit's role is to "bring glory to Christ". However, this understanding ignores the context of the passage and does not reflect what the verse is actually saying. From a careful reading of John 16:5-14 it is clear that the Spirit's role is to "convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment" (John 16:8) and to "guide you into all truth" (John 16:13) (actually the Bible teaches that the Spirit has a several roles or ministries, but this passage only discusses two of them). Now, the NIV's translation of John 16:14 is a little misleading. It is clear from the Greek that "bringing glory to Christ" is the result of the Spirit's work - not His role, so the verse would be better translated "He will bring glory to me because he will take what is mine and make it known to you." Bringing glory to Christ is the result of the Holy Spirit taking what is Christ's and making it known to us. This means that the Holy Spirit is revealing to us who Christ is, what He is like and what He has done for us. Therefore, John 16:14 is expansion of John 16:13 - it explains how the Holy Spirit will "guide you into all truth" and the result of this guiding. Because of this ministry of the Holy Spirit, we receive a greater appreciation of who Christ is, what He is like and what He has done for us. Because of this, we can now stand in awe of God and worship Him intelligently.