In Greek this verse reads literally “When the Helper comes whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, which comes from the Father, that one will testify concerning me.” The Helper was first introduced in 14.16 (see there). Good News Translation translates “the Spirit of truth” as the Spirit who reveals the truth about God (see 14.17). Because of the complicated clause relationships, Good News Translation restructures the Greek by making the temporal clause of Greek (“when the Helper comes”) into an independent clause. Then the main clause of the Greek sentence (“he will testify concerning me”) is combined with the relative clause (“whom I will send to you from the Father”) into a separate sentence: I will send him to you from the Father…. New English Bible follows essentially the same restructuring.

Who comes from the Father does not refer to the inner life of the Trinity (which became a great theological topic during the fourth century), but rather to the source from which the Helper comes to the disciples.

The Helper is described not only as coming from the Father, but also as the one whom Jesus will send to his disciples. In 14.26 the Father is spoken of as the one who sends the Spirit, but it is doubtful if any theological distinction is to be made between these two verses. Whereas in 14.26 the pronoun referring to the Spirit is neuter, here a masculine pronoun is used, indicating that the Spirit is thought of in personal terms.

Since Helper is used as a title for the Holy Spirit, it may be essential in this type of context to indicate that the term is a title, for example, “the one who is called the Helper will come.”

The locational relations in the clause I will send him to you from the Father are rather complex; and since the role of Jesus as the agent is primarily causative, it may be necessary to translate this clause “I will cause him to go from the Father and to come to you.”

The verb rendered speak about is the verb normally rendered “to testify” or “to witness” by most translators. On this verb and the related noun, see the discussion at 1.7. In some languages it may be necessary to indicate to whom the Spirit speaks. One could say either “he will speak to you about me” or “he will speak to people about me.” However, since the role of the Spirit was primarily in relation to the believer, and since the previous clause states specifically that Jesus is to send the Spirit to the believers, it seems preferable to render the final clause of verse 26 “and he will speak to you about me.”

In verse 27, however, the grammatical goal of speaking would be other persons, for example, “and you will speak to others about me.” It need not be assumed that too in verse 27 means that the two instances of the verb speak must have the same grammatical goal.

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .