Parakletos: The One Who Comes to Help

Word of the Week

November 1, 2025

Paraklētos: The One Who Comes to Help

 

And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever.

John 14:16 NASB

 

I’m not a handy man.

Oh, I can put a new washer in the faucet or swap out the furnace filter.  But it doesn’t take much to send me calling for help.

Fortunately, I have some friends who have come more than once to rescue me from a problem that was beyond my resources.  In particular, I have two friends named Denny who possess remarkable skills.  So when the washer stops working, I call Denny.  And when I need to install a new fan in the bathroom ceiling, I call Denny.  One Denny or the other.

And I just watch while they work their magic.

We all know what it’s like to face a situation that we can’t handle on our own.  And it’s immensely refreshing to know that someone who brings the right resources can come to our rescue!

That’s true in the Christian life, not just plumbing. We regularly run into challenges that are way too complicated for us to figure out, problems that simply won’t respond to our efforts, people who won’t listen to the truth.

Thank God that He has provided Someone to help us!

In the Greek New Testament, there is an intriguing title for this best of all helpers.  The word is paraklētos [pah-RAH-klay-towss], a term that only appears 5 times, all in the writings of John.

Bible translators have puzzled over the best way to translate paraklētos. The New American Standard says “Helper.”  The King James Version says “Comforter.”  Look at the New International Version and you’ll find “Advocate.”  The Amplified Bible offers a smorgasbord of options: – Helper (Comforter, Advocate, Intercessor—Counselor, Strengthener, Standby).

So what does it mean?

When you go all the way back to classical Greek, the word appears in courtroom settings to describe not a professional attorney, but a legal assistant or a private citizen who appears in court to testify on your behalf.  As time passed, paraklētos took on a more general meaning and could be used for help of all kinds.  We have to look at the context to determine what kind of help is being given.

Who is called a paraklētos in the New Testament?

1. Jesus is our paraklē

My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin.  And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.  And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world (1 John 2:1).

In this passage, John is talking about the problem of sin in the believer’s life.  He just finished telling us that we all wrestle with sin.  We all fail and we all need forgiveness.  If we have to depend on our own resources, we will constantly be shrinking from God’s presence.  We need help!

Fortunately, we have someone who stands by our side and intercedes for us.  Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty for every sin we will ever commit.  As a result, God is “propitiated.”  In other words, His righteous demands are satisfied.  We don’t have to fear nearness to an angry God ready to blast us.  We can boldly approach a loving Father because our paraklētos has fixed the problem.

 

2. The Holy Spirit is our paraklētos

It was the night before the crucifixion and Jesus had announced that He was leaving.  The disciples around the table were devastated.  The past three years with Jesus had taught them that they were totally inadequate to carry on the Kingdom on their own.  They had learned a lot, but they were often confused.  They couldn’t predict what Jesus would do in a given situation, and they certainly didn’t know what they should do.

How could He leave?

At this moment, Jesus revealed that He was sending a replacement helper.  Not just a rabbi or a scholar, but someone who would be the same kind of resource that He had been.  All the remaining uses of paraklētos appear in His explanation during this Last Supper.

And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever (John 14:16).

When Jesus said “another” Helper, He chose the Greek word allos, which means a helper of the same kind.  Previously He had been the one to whom they could look for aid and guidance; now He will send a Replacement.

This new paraklētos is the Holy Spirit.

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you (John 14:26).

What kind of help will the Holy Spirit provide?

• He provides His constant presence (John 14:16).
• He will teach them all that they need to know and remind them of the things Jesus had told them (John 14:26).
• He will bear witness to Jesus (John 15:26).
• He will convict the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:7).

Jesus was leaving His disciples with a commission to spread the gospel to the entire world – an impossible task!  But He wasn’t asking them to do it themselves.  The Father and the Son were assigning the Holy Spirit to be the power that would drive the Kingdom forward.

Whatever the challenge we face, there is Someone who is there to help us.

 

Study Hint:

Would you like to see how this works out in practice?  Simply read the book of Acts and look for all the places that mention the work of the Holy Spirit.  He is so central to the growth of the church that some scholars have suggested that we should switch the title of Acts to “The Acts of the Holy Spirit.”

To dig more deeply into this word, you can also look at my article on the corresponding verb parakaleo.

 

Coming Up

Next week we will take a closer look at a familiar verse:  Romans 12:2, focusing on the two words that tell what to do and not to do with the pressures of the society around us.

Ezra Project 2025