HELPER

In Genesis, the Lord God looks at Adam and determines it is not good for the human to be alone. The prescription is a mutual helper. A companion, a friend, a partner with whom to share life seems to be the answer to Adam’s loneliness. Shared human relationship, then, takes form as woman is introduced.

It is interesting that, in John’s gospel, as Jesus shares an intimate Passover meal with His disciples, he tells them that he will send another helper. He explains that this helper is the Spirit of truth who will teach them all things. Jesus proceeds to speak of how a branch alone cannot bear good fruit and that apart from Him they can do nothing. And in this most tender of moments, Jesus says He no longer sees them as mere servants. “You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants anymore, because a servant doesn’t know what his master is doing.” Jesus establishes Himself as a companion, as one who will display a love for them greater than they have known, revealing what He is about.

It seems apparent from Genesis that Adam could have used a companion like Jesus in the Garden. Adam did not see Yahweh as a friend, evidently. It may be safe to assume that Adam understood his role as servant to God. Yahweh was his master, and he was a servant. It also is apparent that the Spirit of God did not indwell Adam, leading him to truth. The Lord God used the corporeal world to bring Adam to a notion of truth, but Adam was far from knowing the Spirit of truth indwelling.

Revelation of truth was at the center of the purpose for Jesus’s coming into this world. In the teachings of Jesus, He is always speaking wisdom to help His disciples understand the values of the kingdom of heaven. He helps them understand who God is and how God wants people to live.

During His ministry on earth, Jesus was constantly speaking of truth. In one scene, we find Jesus sitting with a woman at a well talking about truth. In another scene, Jesus describes himself as the Truth. The fact is that Jesus was the incarnation of divine truth in living, breathing, teaching, dying, and resurrecting clarity. Jesus lived out God’s wisdom so that He could say to believers, “Follow me.”

Something else to consider, though, is that I am not the first to make a connection between the old and new helpers. The renowned church father John Chrysostom observed a parallel between Genesis 2:18 and the Holy Spirit. He states:

Then [the Lord] said, “Let us make for him a help” (Gen. 2:18LXX), but here He said nothing of the kind. What other help shall he need, who has received the gift of the Spirit? What further need of assistance has he, who belongs to the Body of Christ? Then He made man in the image of God, now He hath united him with God Himself; then He bade him rule over the fishes and beasts, now He hath exalted our first-fruits above the heavens; then He gave him a garden for his abode, now He hath opened heaven to us; then man was formed on the sixth day, when the world was almost finished; but now on the first, at the very beginning, at the time when light was made before. From all which it is plain, that the things accomplished belonged to another and a better life, and to a condition having no end.

Chrysostom is delivering the goods. His point is my point precisely. As Savior, Jesus does not return us to an original state lost in the garden. Jesus clothes us. Jesus restores us, yes; but Jesus exalts our status.