We received an email from Scotty, he asks, "Jesus said when the Holy Spirit comes we will do greater works than Jesus himself did. What does he mean, and how should these greater things be manifesting themselves in the lives of us as followers of Christ?" That is such a perennially good and important and hard question.

Let me just read the verse because you left out part of it and it might be the hardest part. "Truly, truly," this is John 14 12, "truly, truly I say to you whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do," not just greater, but that I do, which is mind-blowing enough, "and greater works than these will he do because I am going to the Father." That's the verse.

And so here's several things to observe. Number one, this is not a statement that certain charismatically gifted people would do greater works. This says every single believer, every single believer, whoever believes in me will do my works and greater ones, okay? Everybody. Nobody's off the hook here and we can't say, "Oh well there's a miracle happening over in China or something.

Somebody got raised from the dead and maybe there's four of those and Jesus only did three." Baloney. That's just absolutely ridiculous. It's not what the verse is talking about. And so the first thing we have to do is realize it says every believer will do my work. So Jesus turned water into wine, he blew the mind and read the mind of the woman at Samaria, he healed the official son, he healed a man crippled for 38 years, he turned a little tiny group of loaves and fishes into enough to feed 5,000.

He walked on water, he opened a blind man's eyes and he raised Lazarus from the dead. Every believer will do that, right? Well, no. We know that's not true and not just from experience. We know it from 1 Corinthians 12. 1 Corinthians 12 says, "Do all work miracles?" Answer, "No." Okay, so he clearly doesn't mean everybody will turn water into wine and everybody will heal the lame and everybody will feed 5,000.

He just doesn't mean that. Because not only wasn't it true for his disciples and it isn't true for us and it isn't biblically true according to 1 Corinthians 12. Here's what I think he means in that first half of the verse. All of them will do the works of Jesus in the sense that all the works of Jesus testified to his truth and his deity.

Every Christian will do these works. Every Christian will let his light so shine before men that they may see his good works and give glory to the Father and good glory to the Son and the risen Christ. We are the aroma of Christ. We are the light of the world.

So the common denominator between Jesus' works and our works is that all of his works were works of love that pointed to his reality. All of our works should be works of love that point to his reality. And in fact, all of our works are more or less as born-again Christians pointing to the reality of Jesus.

So we are, all of us, doing the works of Jesus. Not the precise ones like feeding the 5,000, but the kind of works that validate Jesus, point to Jesus, glorify Jesus. So that's the first half of the verse. There is another part to that verse, and that's the one that people really stumble over, even though I think they should stumble over the first one that we just talked about.

It says, "And greater works than these will he do." So what can be greater than raising the dead, walking on water, feeding 5,000, turning water into wine? What in the world did Jesus mean? And we know that, according to 1 Corinthians 12, God doesn't intend for all of his people to work miracles.

And so it can't be that every believer will do more stunning, supernatural miracles, because the verse does say every believer, and later in the New Testament, every believer is not promised to do that. So here's my best take. I've got a sermon on this, if you want to go and just find it in the sermon on John 14, but I think there are a couple of clues that point in the right direction.

One clue is, at the end of the verse, it says, "When I go to be with the Father, then this will happen, when I ascend to the Father," because it has something to do with his death, his resurrection, his ascension, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit is what makes this possible.

Second clue, in John 20, 21 to 23, "As the Father has sent me," he says to them, "I'm sending you," and when he said this, he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit," I think an acted-out parable of what the Holy Spirit's going to mean, when you get it, when I'm risen, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.

If you withhold the sin of any, they are withheld." Now that's amazing. I'm going to give you the Holy Spirit, you disciples, you followers of me, every one of you, and the effect of this is going to be that you are going to witness to the crucified and risen Christ with such effectiveness that sins will be forgiven or withheld according to your message of the crucified and risen Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now, that had never been done before in the history of the world. Jesus himself had never done that, because he hadn't been crucified yet, he hadn't been raised yet, he hadn't ascended yet, he hadn't poured out the Holy Spirit in fullness yet on these people as the Spirit of the risen Christ.

And so my answer to the question, "What's new? What are the greater works?" The greater works are the normal living and speaking of the new people of God in the fullness of the Holy Spirit in the name of the crucified and risen Jesus in such a way that sins are forgiven in his name, the crucified and risen one.

That shift in redemptive history, Jesus says, puts his people in a category of doing greater works in the sense of proclaiming a finished work of salvation that had not been finished even in his own life, and that in that sense is greater than even what he had done. Thank you, Pastor John.

The sermon on John 14 mentioned earlier is titled "Doing the Works of Jesus and Greater Works." You can find it at DesiringGod.org. I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.