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Post by Admin on Mar 31, 2024 13:15:54 GMT -5
D. Assuring the Disciples (14:1-31)
Jesus’ interchange with Peter exposed the disciples’ confusion and anxiety. They struggled to
process the things He was telling them, but they must have realized that everything they’d known
in their relationship with Him was about to change. Peter presented a strong and resolute front,
but he had to have been just as troubled as the others. These men had some sense of what lay
ahead, but the trauma would exceed anything they could imagine. Shock, horror and paralyzing
fear awaited them along with distress and discouragement sufficient to push them to the point of
despondency. Jesus knew what was about to befall them and the same love that motivated Him
to warn them led Him to temper His warning with words of comfort and reassurance.
This is a familiar passage, but a challenging one. First of all, the text itself is marked by variant
readings and grammatical ambiguities. But there are other interpretive hurdles, one of which is
the very fact of its familiarity. When a context is well-known and commonly cited, the tendency
is toward a widely-accepted, even unquestioned interpretation. Meaning is assumed and the
reader no longer looks at the text with careful, inquisitive eyes. So it is with this passage.
1. Jesus’ words left His disciples perplexed and anxious, but their distress had only just
begun. If their hearts were troubled as they reclined in the Upper Room, it was only going
to get worse. Jesus could see their distress and He knew that the events about to transpire
would press them to the verge of despair. He could not remove the agonizing trial coming
upon them; indeed, it was just as necessary that they go through it as that He do so. But
He would not have them overcome by it; they needed to face this trial in faith and, in that
way, find relief for their troubled hearts (14:1-4).
a. Thus Jesus began His consolation with an exhortation recognizing the disciples’
distress: “Stop letting your hearts be troubled.” He knew they were struggling
with the things they were hearing and He wanted to set their hearts at ease. Their
world was about to be turned upside down and everything they believed was
going to be dismantled and refashioned. Their past experiences and expectations
for the future could not afford them comfort or peace; faith was the sole remedy
for their distress – faith directed toward both the Father and His Son (14:1).
The general thrust of Jesus’ words is evident, but His exact meaning is less
transparent. For John’s grammar allows both verbs (“believe”) to function as
either indicatives or imperatives. Here, then, are the possibilities:
1) “Believe in God, believe also in Me.” (both verbs treated as imperatives)
2) “You believe in God, believe also in Me.” (first verb treated as indicative,
second verb as imperative)
3) “You believe in God and also believe in Me.” (both verbs indicative)
4) “Believe in God even as you believe in Me.” (first verb treated as
imperative, second verb as indicative)
It’s impossible to know for certain which meaning John intended, but the context
seems to argue for either the first or fourth option. Note in particular verse 14:7
which has two likely readings: “If you have come to know Me – and you have,
you shall also know My Father” or “If you had come to know Me – but you
haven’t, you would also know My Father” (cf. also 14:9-10, 18-20, 15:26, 16:25-
33, 17:6-8, 25-26). The first reading expresses a promise to the disciples while the
latter is a rebuke of their unbelief. Both readings are widely represented in the
manuscript evidence and scholars are divided as to which is the original.
Whatever the correct reading, Jesus’ point is not in doubt: The remedy for the
disciples’ distress was to trust Him and the One who sent Him. Jesus was here
speaking in reference to what was about to transpire, but as it concerned them, not
Him. His concern was their well-being and steadfastness, not only through the
trials of the next few days, but into the future as they fulfilled their commission to
be His witnesses and interpreters, first to the people of Israel and then to the
Gentile world (cf. 15:18-16:5, 17:14-20).
Thus Jesus’ exhortation to faith was very specific; He wasn’t calling them to
“saving faith” (“believe that I’m about to die for your sins”) or a general
acknowledgment of and confidence in God, but to trust that the traumatic things
they were about to experience were the outworking of God’s good purpose in the
One He’d sent. Their Lord’s coming desolation and death was neither a tragic
misfortune nor His defeat. Quite the opposite, it constituted God’s complete
victory – the triumph of deliverance, cleansing and renewal He’d been promising
all along. What would appear to them to be the demise of their messianic hopes
would actually be their realization. Their beloved Messiah’s brutal death was
going to bear the fruit of life, reconciliation, liberation and ingathering.
b. The apostles needed to trust their Lord and the One who’d sent Him; they needed
to turn aside from their uncertainty and fear and fix their gaze on the God behind
their circumstances. And this God they were to trust is the God who’d sent Jesus
as His promised Servant-Messiah; He is the God of Israel who’d made a covenant
with Abraham on behalf of the world and then demonstrated His unwavering
commitment to it over two millennia. Now the time had come to fulfill His
covenant pledge to make Abraham the father of many nations and gather those
children to Himself (Genesis 17:1-7). Jesus’ exhortation to faith was a call to
trust the God who’d promised and shown Himself faithful by sending the Messiah
– the One who was now assuring them that His departure was going to secure
their place in His Father’s house as true children of Abraham (14:2-3).
These observations are fundamentally important to interpreting Jesus’ imagery of
His Father’s house and its many dwelling places and how those images pertained
to His apostles. Many Christians believe Jesus was talking about His impending
departure into heaven and His intent to prepare a dwelling place there for His
followers. From this vantage point, He was reassuring His troubled apostles that
they had a place with Him and His Father in heaven when they died.
But a careful reading of the entire statement shows that Jesus was speaking about
a reunion with Him when He returned; the issue wasn’t the apostles rejoining
their Lord in heaven, but Him returning to them and so gathering them to Himself.
(Some commentators try to resolve this quandary by arguing that Jesus’ “return”
to “receive” His own amounts to His retrieval of the souls of His saints at their
death in order to escort them to heaven and their abode in His Father’s house, but
neither John’s language nor the larger context supports this interpretation.) Verse
3 is critically important for interpreting verse 2, but both must be treated within
John’s overall account and the scriptural salvation history it interacts with.
Jesus was returning to His Father for the purpose of preparing a place for His
disciples in His Father’s house. But they were to take possession of that heavenly
dwelling by His return to them – not to take them to heaven, but to be with them
on the earth. Moreover, their enduring life in the Father’s house was somehow
tied to the Son gathering them to Himself in an everlasting bond. To be joined
with the Son is to dwell with the Father in His house.
In John’s gospel, God’s “house” is a reference, not to heaven, but to His
sanctuary (ref. 2:14-16; cf. also Psalm 5:7, 23:6, 26:8, 27:4, 42:4; Micah 4:1-2;
Haggai 1:1-2:9; Zechariah 1:16; Luke 6:1-4). So dwelling in God’s house is
dwelling with Him, and Yahweh promised this inheritance to the faithful among
His people (ref. Psalm 52:7-8, 65:4, 84:1-4, 92:12-13). But the Scriptures also
importantly associate men’s place in Yahweh’s house with the work of His
messianic Servant. Isaiah, in particular, directly correlated presence in Yahweh’s
dwelling place with Messiah’s ingathering – an ingathering embracing the nations
as well as the children of Israel (cf. Isaiah 2:1-4 with 11:1-13, cf. also 49:1-13
with 51:14-52:15 and 53:1-12 with 54:1-17; ref. also Zechariah 2-3, 6:9-15).
So John previously emphasized that Jesus is the embodiment of Yahweh’s
sanctuary (1:14, 2:13-21, 4:19-26) and also both the door of the sheep (10:7-9)
and the source and substance of their life (6:53-58). He is the One through whom
men come to His Father (14:6) and He grants this entrance by means of His self giving sacrifice
(6:51, 12:27-33). John carefully crafted his account with the goal
of enabling his readers to understand the meaning, purpose and effect of Jesus’
person and work. So he recorded this final, climactic discourse believing that his
readers would interpret it through the lens he’d so precisely ground for them:
Jesus’ disciples were deeply distressed that He was leaving them, but they needed
to know that He was departing (through death) in order to prepare a place for
them in His Father’s “house” – that is, the sanctuary He Himself embodied and
which He was going to bring them into by gathering them to Himself. And not
these eleven apostles only, but all who would come to believe through their
foundational witness (ref. 12:32, 17:20; cf. Matthew 28:18-20; Ephesians 2:11-22;
1 Peter 2:4-10). And this entrance into His Father’s sanctuary – this receiving
unto Himself for which His departure would make preparation – was going to
take place when He returned in His Spirit (14:16-18, 20:11-22; cf. Acts 1:1-8).
This interpretation is reinforced by 14:23 which contains the only other New
Testament occurrence of the Greek term rendered “dwelling place.” There it
refers to the human abode which Jesus promised He and His Father were going to
inhabit together by the indwelling Spirit (ref. 14:16-23; cf. 1 Corinthians 3:16,
6:19-20; Ephesians 2:11-22; ref. also Romans 8:9-11).
This reading associates the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise with His sending of the
Spirit at Pentecost. The other option is to situate this return and ingathering at the
Parousia. Jesus’ statement about “coming again” points most readily in this
direction, but very shortly He would tell His disciples that He was going to return
in the person of His Spirit (ref. again 14:16-18; cf. also 16:12-16). Indeed, it’s not
necessary to choose one option or the other, for each implies the other:
- Jesus’ Parousia doesn’t represent His return from going away, but His
visible manifestation. In the person of His Spirit, Jesus has remained with
His people (Matthew 28:18ff; Revelation 1:10-20), but by sharing His life
with them as they are taken up in Him. Pentecost is thus the premise and
basis for the Parousia and its ingathering (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:14-17 with
15:20-23; Philippians 1:6 with 3:20-21; Colossians 1:24-27 with 3:1-4).
- Conversely, Jesus’ return to His disciples in the person of His Spirit has its
goal and full realization in His Parousia. For Jesus’ presence with His
people is characterized by the union of their persons with His person. That
union is now an inward reality, but it anticipates and promises the fullness
of person-to-person union and communion in the resurrection of the body.
At the Parousia, Jesus’ Pentecostal return to receive His disciples will
obtain its consummate fruition (cf. Romans 8:9-11, 18-27; 1 Corinthians
15:20-28; Philippians 3:20-21; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).
c. Jesus’ assertion in verse 4, especially considered alongside His answer to
Thomas, supports the interpretation presented here. Thomas’ question (14:5)
points to the disciples’ bewilderment at Jesus’ statements about departing and
returning to them. They didn’t understand what He was talking about (note John’s
use of the plural pronoun in verse 5; cf. also 13:36), but Jesus reminded them that
they should have; He wasn’t speaking cryptically of esoteric mysteries, but of
matters He’d already disclosed to them: “You have known the way where I am
going.” That is, He had instructed them concerning His Father’s purpose in
sending Him, the general scheme for accomplishing that purpose and how it
implicated them, Israel and the world. All four of the gospel records bear this out.
However imprecise or incomplete their insight, these closest associates should
have grasped Jesus’ general meaning when He spoke of departing, preparing a
place and returning. They should have understood that He wasn’t going away to a
physical location and that their future entrance into His Father’s house involved,
not a journey to a destination, but a vital, living connection with Him: He is the
way to the Father, but also the dwelling place He was preparing for them. And He
is both precisely because He is truth and life.
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Post by Admin on Mar 31, 2024 13:18:44 GMT -5
2. Jesus sought to calm the apostles’ distress over His impending departure by explaining
His purpose in leaving and reassuring them of His return. They should have understood
what He was talking about because He’d always been open about the reason His Father
sent Him into the world and what He was going to accomplish as Israel’s Messiah. So
also He’d instructed them – in word and practical experience – regarding their calling as
His apostles and how their calling related to His own mission (ref. Matthew 10:1-42,
16:13-17:13, 19:16-20:19; Mark 3:13-19, 4:1-34, 9:1-13, 30-50; Luke 8:1; etc.). To use
Jesus’ present language, He had disclosed to them where He was going and the way
associated with it. Yet they failed to understand; speaking for the group, Thomas objected
that they couldn’t possibly know the way when they had no idea where He was going.
Jesus responded in two parts: First, He answered Thomas’ objection and then He
confronted their lack of understanding with the promise of new insight (14:6-7).
a. Jesus insisted to His apostles that they knew the way where He was going; they
were equally adamant that they didn’t. In a certain respect both were right, but
there was a problem of meaning as well as understanding.
- From Jesus’ vantage point, the apostles knew the way because they knew
Him. He had shown them by His words and works who He is, the purpose
of His coming, what He was going to accomplish and the means of
accomplishing it. In a word, He’d shown Himself to be Israel’s Messiah,
which defined Him and His work in terms of the salvation history
recorded in the Scriptures and all that God had promised concerning
Israel’s destiny and, through Israel, the world’s destiny.
- Jesus’ apostles believed that He was the Messiah, but as they understood
that concept and its significance for Israel. Their messianic convictions
had no place for what was about to unfold and so no facility to rightly
interpret those events and outcomes. In that sense they didn’t know where
their Lord was going or the way associated with it.
The apostles were unable to truly comprehend the One they embraced as their
Messiah because they observed, assessed and interpreted Him through a distorted
lens. Jesus spoke and acted from the vantage point of an accurate self understanding
and with the goal of representing Himself according to the truth of
who He is (ref. 5:19-38, 7:28-29, 8:14-18, 12:44-50, etc.); His disciples heard and
observed Him from a flawed, natural perspective. And so, when Jesus spoke of
the way where He was going, they thought He was talking about His departure to
some place and the directions for getting there. But He wasn’t referring to a
destination, but an outcome – one He’d disclosed to them and discussed with
them. Thus they knew, and yet they didn’t.
Jesus was speaking about the completion of His messianic task and what was to
come from it, and so when Thomas objected that they didn’t know the way, Jesus
replied that He is the way. He Himself is the path to where He was going; He is
the way to the Father and to the outcome toward which He was moving (14:6).
The first thing to consider in Jesus’ statement is the relationship between the three
nouns (way, truth and life) as they pertain to Him. All sorts of views have been
proposed through the centuries, beginning with the early Church fathers. But the
immediate context argues for a scheme in which Jesus as truth and life helps
explain that He is the way. The place to begin is to define the terms truth and life.
And, in this context, these terms must be defined in terms of Jesus Himself.
Jesus first identified Himself as the human embodiment of truth: “I myself am the
truth,” not “I conform to the truth.” He wasn’t referring to the integrity of His
thoughts, attitudes, words and deeds, though He could claim that (8:29, 45-47).
Jesus lived a life of truth without flaw or failure, but He was here asserting that
He is the truth. And He is the truth in three distinct but related respects:
1) First, He is the truth of God. To observe and know Him is to observe and
know His Father because He is the full embodiment and consummate
manifestation of the unseen, incorporeal God (ref. 1:1, 14-18, 7:18, 10:30).
2) Jesus is the incarnate Logos, and He’s therefore identical with the Creator
God who reveals Himself to His creation. But this God reveals Himself
through His enacted purposes in the creation. Thus Jesus is the embodied
truth of the will of God even as He is God incarnate: To witness Him is to
witness God’s person, purpose, words and works (ref. 3:34, 5:15-23, 43,
6:38, 8:42-47, 12:44-50).
3) But God’s will for His creation has its focal point in man and his role in
the creational scheme and destiny. Hence Jesus is the truth of man; He is
Yahweh’s Messiah, and so the Seed of Eve, Son of Abraham, Son of
David and True Israel as Yahweh’s faithful covenant Son. By taking the
title, Son of Man, Jesus was identifying Himself as the human being in
whom man finds his true identity, nature and function; He is the Last
Adam in whom man becomes man in truth (3 Corinthians 3:18).
Jesus secondly identified Himself as the life. This corresponds with His self identification
as the truth: each implies, depends upon and defines the other.
1) Jesus is the human embodiment of the God who has life in Himself. If,
therefore, He is the truth of God, He is also the life which inheres in God
and defines and distinguishes Him as a being (ref. 1:4, 5:19-26).
2) So Jesus is True Man as “living being” – man as image-son animated and
ordered by the life which characterizes the Living God. And as True Man,
Jesus is the One in whom men obtain life: “eternal life” as the life of the
eternal realm – not unending animate existence, but participation in the
divine life so as to become man in truth. And men participate in this life
by sharing in the living Son; Jesus is resurrection and life and He bestows
them to men by bestowing Himself (6:53-58, 11:23-26, 14:16-20).
What, then, is the relationship between way, truth, and life as Jesus identified
them with Himself? Once again the immediate and wider contexts are instructive.
- The way to where Jesus was going (i.e., to the Father – 14:2, 28) was the
question at hand and He answered that He is the way, further explaining
that no one comes to the Father except through Him. This contextual
emphasis indicates that Jesus declared Himself to be the truth and the life
in order to substantiate and clarify His claim to be the way to the Father.
And He is the way with respect to His disciples: By reminding them that
they knew the way to where He was going, He was telling them that they
were to join Him in that outcome; they, too, were going to His Father. But
they would come to the Father by Him returning and gathering them to
Himself. Thus the disciples’ participation in Jesus’ return to His Father
was their participation in Him, and this participation followed upon His
work of preparation accomplished by His departure. Jesus is the key to
coming to the Father; He is the way because He is the truth and the life.
- The three definite articles (the way, the truth, the life) also support this
view, for they make the ideas of “way,” “truth” and “life” identical with
Jesus Himself. In other words, He is Himself the way to the Father
because truth and life are bound up in Him. But He is truth and life by
virtue of the relationship He has with His Father – the God who Himself is
truth and life (ref. 1:14-18, 3:31-33, 5:26, 6:51-53, 7:14-29, 8:14-16,
11:25, etc.). Truth and life inhere in and are defined by the Creator God,
but He has embodied them and made them fully present in His creation in
the incarnate Logos; to behold and know the Son is to behold and know
the Father (ref. 1:14-18, 10:30, 14:7-10; cf. also Hebrews 1:3-4).
- Coming to the Father involves knowing Him as He is, and such knowledge
is inherently relational. It consists in sharing in the Father’s life and being
conformed to the truth as it exists in Him. This relational “knowing” is
fundamental to becoming a true worshipper (4:19-24). So also it is the
essence of what it means to be a son of the Father – an image-son in
whom the life and truth of the Father are present; a son who embodies and
reflects the glory of his Father. But this sonship exists in and is mediated
by the singular Son who is truth and life in the same way as the Father
(17:3). People become sons in the Son, and thus the Son is the way to the
Father because He is the truth and the life (cf. 17:3).
And so, when Jesus insisted that He is the way, He was saying that He is the way
to the Father. But this entails and implies more than Christians tend to think. He
was speaking about salvation, but beyond the idea of personal forgiveness of sins
and going to heaven. The goal of His coming and work is new creation: man, the
image-son, sharing in the divine life and conformed to the truth as embodied in
the man Christ Jesus so that the creation can itself be restored to its Creator.
b. Thomas’ question betrayed the apostles’ flawed sense of Jesus’ mission. Though
He’d told them in general terms what was coming, they were baffled when He
spoke about departing and returning. They didn’t grasp the messianic work, which
meant that they really didn’t know Him. For everything Jesus said and did was
calculated to connect Him with the messianic figure and work revealed in the
Scriptures, thereby showing Him to be that Messiah: Yahweh’s Servant-Messiah
in contrast to the many claimed messiahs who’d arisen in Israel (5:39-40). To
misjudge Jesus’ works is to misjudge Him (cf. 5:36, 10:22-38 with 14:8-11). And
to misjudge Him is to misjudge the One who sent Him (5:10-23, 10:31-47).
Thus Jesus followed up His declaration of being the way, the truth and the life
with the assertion that knowing Him amounts to knowing His Father (14:7a). This
statement also has textual variants indicating two possible meanings:
- One variant is a first-class condition: “If you have known Me – and you
have, you will also know My Father.” (NAB)
- The other variant is a second-class condition: “If you had known Me – but
you don’t, you would have known My Father also.” (KJV, ASV, ESV)
Both variants have strong textual support, making it difficult to determine the
original reading and Jesus’ exact meaning. If the first reading is correct, Jesus was
encouraging His disciples that they were going to know His Father even as they
knew Him. The second reading, however, is likely correct in that it better fits with
the context, especially vv. 9-11. The disciples’ response to Jesus (13:36, 14:5, 8)
showed their confusion and lack of understanding and His words here promise
that that was going to change when He returned in the Spirit. At the time, and
forevermore, they would truly know Him and so also know His Father. And they
would know the Father and Son in truth because the “Spirit of truth” was going to
enliven them to share in the life the Father and Son possess together (14:16-20).
Thus their knowledge was about to take a quantum leap into a radically new
dimension: The person-to-person knowledge of their Lord which they presently
possessed was to be transcended by a person-in-person knowledge. When Jesus
returned in the Holy Spirit and received them to Himself, they would henceforth
know Him in the most intimate manner by being taken up in His life – them in
Him and Him in them (cf. 14:19-20, 17:20-23). And because He is in His Father,
their being in Him is their being in the Father. From that point on, they would
know the Father even as they know the Son; from that point on, they would fully
grasp the truth that beholding the Son is beholding the Father. This, then, is the
thrust of Jesus’ assertion in verse 7: Even these closest disciples didn’t truly know
this man whom they’d embraced as the Messiah. The knowledge for which they –
and all who would come after them – were destined could not be obtained until
their Lord received them to Himself by His Spirit. Then, animated and informed
by His life and mind, they would at last discern the relationship which exists
between Father, Son and Spirit, even as they themselves would participate in it.
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Post by Admin on Mar 31, 2024 13:21:51 GMT -5
3. Even as the Upper Room episode brought Jesus’ self-disclosure to its climax, so it
displayed in climactic fashion the apostles’ lack of understanding. By deed and word,
Jesus sought to explain the significance of what was about to transpire, but these, His
closest disciples, failed to grasp His meaning. Whether Peter with Jesus’ foot-washing,
the confusion over His identification of the betrayer, the argument over who was the
greatest during the Passover meal, or the questions posed by Thomas and Philip, the
gospel writers make it painfully clear that these men remained largely in the dark
concerning their Lord and His mission. They believed they knew Him, but all of their
convictions were about to be shattered and reconstructed.
And so, when Jesus insisted that knowing Him was identical with knowing His Father,
Philip responded by asking Him to show them the Father (14:7-8). Jesus was making the
point that His apostles knew neither Him nor His Father, and Philip proved Him right:
They were witnessing the Father in the very One speaking to them, but that truth eluded
them, even after three years with Him as His closest circle of followers (14:9). And not
recognizing the Father in the Son, they revealed that their knowledge of both was flawed.
Scholars have speculated what Philip had in mind when he asked Jesus to show them the
Father; some think he was requesting a verbal description, while others believe he
expected some sort of visionary manifestation. In the end it’s impossible to know,
because John wasn’t concerned with Philip’s expectation, but the fact that the theophany
he sought was already present in the person of the Son.
a. Jesus had repeatedly told His disciples (and His detractors) that He spoke His
Father’s words and performed His Father’s works, but now He asserted a more
intimate and thorough connection between the two of them: He is in the Father
and the Father is in Him. It wasn’t merely that He spoke and acted according to
His Father’s instruction; His words were His Father speaking: When the Son
spoke, the Father was doing His own work (14:10). Jesus’ words conveyed the
truth that He was in the Father and the Father was in Him, but so did His works; if
the apostles couldn’t arrive at this truth from what He said, his actions should
have led them there (14:11). And this was especially the case in terms of the work
they were about to witness – the work which would bring to a climax the mutual
testimony and glorification of Father and Son (cf. 12:23-28, 13:23-32, 17:1).
Jesus’ assertion of being one with His Father identified the unity of their will and
purpose (cf. 10:25-32), but He was saying more than this. The Father and Son are
one in intent, word and work because they share the same essence; the Son is the
incarnation of the Logos that is identical with God (1:1, 14). The God who’d
made Himself known in the preparatory salvation history through His deeds and
words in the mouths of His prophets had now revealed Himself exhaustively in
His Son (Hebrews 1:1-3). This God was Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, who
had promised to return to Zion in connection with the coming of His messianic
Servant. He’d now fulfilled that promise in the person of Jesus of Nazareth; Jesus
was Yahweh returned to Zion to accomplish His work of liberation, cleansing,
renewal and ingathering (cf. Isaiah 40:1-11 with Matthew 3).
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b. Jesus’ works testified to His relationship with His Father, but those same works
would also attest the same sort of relationship with His disciples. For, He was
going to reproduce His works in those who believe in Him. And when that
happened, their working His works would show that He is in them and they are in
Him, just as His working His Father’s works showed that He is in the Father and
the Father is in Him. Not only so, but Jesus insisted that His disciples’ works were
going to exceed His own, and that because He was going to the Father (14:12).
Considered in isolation, this statement is more baffling than instructive. But Jesus
wasn’t trying to confuse His apostles. Rather, He was hinting at a theme He was
about to introduce, namely the crucial role of the Holy Spirit in His return and
abiding presence with them (ref. 14:25-31, 15:26-16:15). These men, chosen by
Him to proclaim His gospel and interpret Him to the world, were going to
continue His work in the power and leading of the Spirit. In this way, Jesus
Himself would continue working (cf. Acts 1:1-2). The apostles needed to
understand that their Lord wasn’t commissioning and charging them only to
abandon them to their task; He would return and abide with them by His
indwelling Spirit and so continue His work through them. As Jesus did His
Father’s work through their mutual indwelling (10:37-38), so they would do His
work as abiding in Him and Him in them (ref. 14:16-26, 15:1-7, 26-27, 16:5-16).
This dynamic of the Spirit’s indwelling and empowering helps explain Jesus’
statement that His disciples would do “greater works” than He had. He wasn’t
saying that their works would transcend or be superior to His, whether in
orientation, accomplishment, significance or power. Indeed, that would be
impossible given that His works, as theirs, were performed in the power and
leading of the one and same Spirit. But in one critically important sense Jesus’
work transcended all that followed after, for He accomplished the supreme work
of forgiveness, cleansing and renewal which was the basis for everything His
disciples said and did. In fact, it was because of this very supremacy that His
disciples would do greater works than His, and that in two respects:
- The first pertains to the matter of scope: Jesus came to the lost sheep of
Israel and He carried out His self-disclosure and ministration within the
confines of that nation and its boundaries. But He’d come to restore and
reconstitute Israel in Himself toward the end that the Abrahamic mandate
should be fulfilled: Jesus came to Israel so that Israel could at last mediate
Yahweh’s blessing to all the earth’s families. He was rebuilding His
Father’s covenant house on the foundation of twelve apostles whom He
appointed to convey and interpret Him to the world of men.
- The second, then, pertains to the matter of completion: The work which
Jesus initiated He entrusted to His disciples and He empowered them, by
His Spirit, to carry out that work unto its completion at the end of the age
(cf. Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:1-8). Their work was greater in terms of
outcome; through them, Jesus would complete what He began.
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c. The same dynamic which explains Jesus’ disciples doing greater works than He’d
done also illumines His insistence that He would give them whatever they asked
in His name. Such an open-ended promise raises all sorts of questions, and the
fact that Jesus stated it a second time suggests that the apostles were just as
startled and puzzled by it as people are today (14:13-14). But however peculiar
and puzzling it may seem, Jesus showed this promise to be a fundamental
principle of His future relationship with His disciples by returning to it repeatedly
in the balance of the discourse (cf. 15:7, 16, 16:23).
Many Christians take this promise at face value as Jesus giving them a virtual
blank check for whatever they want, the only qualification being that they must
submit their petition in His “name.” For some, attaching Jesus’ name to their
requests functions like a kind of verbal talisman moving Him to act on their
behalf; as long as they include that formula, they will receive what they ask for.
Others believe that offering up petitions in Jesus’ name amounts to connecting
them with His will (cf. 9:31; 1 John 5:14-15). This view isn’t entirely incorrect,
but the alignment of will and petition typically occurs in the wrong direction, with
Jesus’ will being conscripted into the service of the petitioner’s agenda. In the
end, human nature insures that both approaches to Jesus’ promise (and others as
well) tend to arrive at the same place.
Jesus was implicating His will when He specified petitions being offered in His
name; indeed, asking in His name necessarily entails asking according to His will,
for who Jesus is (signified by His “name”) is inseparable from what He wills and
does. But this dynamic doesn’t work in the way many assume; once again, the
connection between Jesus and His disciples by and in the Spirit is the key to
discerning the true meaning and significance of this promise.
The mutual indwelling of Father and Son is the reason the Son’s words and works
are identical with the Father’s (vv. 8-11). But Jesus was here promising that the
same dynamic was going to characterize the relationship between Him and His
disciples: Their words and works would be His when He indwelled them and
them Him. And this conjunction would come about when He departed to His
Father and then returned in the person of His Spirit to gather His disciples to
Himself. At that time both He and His Father would make their abode in them as
they became the “dwelling of God in the Spirit” (vv. 12-20).
This is the context for interpreting Jesus’ promise. The relationship of mutual
indwelling and “christiformity” effected by the Spirit (14:25-26, 16:13-15; cf. 2
Corinthians 3:18) is the reason His disciples receive whatever they ask in His
name (15:7). The crucial premise behind the promise is that Lord and disciple
have become one even as Father and Son are one. The Son always receives what
He asks of the Father because His petitions are identical with the Father’s mind
and will (11:1-42, 17:1-26). Thus the Father is glorified in what the Son desires
and seeks (as also by what He says and does), and so it is with the Son’s disciples
in whom He is perfecting His life and work (cf. 14:13 with 15:7-8).
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Post by Admin on Mar 31, 2024 13:23:59 GMT -5
4. Jesus reassured His apostles that His departure would see them endowed with effectual
power; because He was going to the Father, they were going to do greater works than He
had done and His Father would give them all that they sought in His name. His departure
was not going to leave them aimless or powerless; He would grant them all that was
needful for fulfilling their role in His purposes for the world. But this provision had a
critically important premise: The effectual power Jesus was promising presupposed their
oneness with Him. For their work was not going to be their own done on His behalf, but
His work performed through them, just as His work had been His Father’s. And at the
center of all of this was Jesus’ promise of the Spirit (14:16-20).
a. This is the context for Jesus’ statement in verse 15 and it is the lens through which
it must be interpreted. Noting that the statement seems out of place in the flow of
the passage, some treat it in isolation as a general principle marking out Jesus’
true disciples. Others largely ignore it, regarding it as a later addition to John’s
original manuscript. But examined within the larger context, this statement is
neither foreign to Jesus’ argument (cf. 14:21-24) nor merely an ethical sidebar.
The first task is to examine John’s language and grammar. He recorded Jesus’
words in the form of a third class condition. Conditional statements consist of two
clauses: an “if” clause (protasis) and a “then” clause (apodosis), with the latter
following as a consequence of the realization of the former. Conditional
statements thus take the form, if this, then this. Greek has four such conditional
structures, the difference being the way the fulfillment of the protasis is viewed.
With the third class condition, the protasis is viewed as undetermined, but likely
to be fulfilled, with the degree of likelihood determined by the context. Here,
Jesus was speaking about the likelihood of His apostles’ actual and abiding love
for Him and the implication for their obedience: If it was indeed the case that they
loved Him, then they would keep His commandments. This points to two further
considerations, namely Jesus’ meaning in the “then” clause (what He meant by
“keeping His commandments”) and the relationship between the two clauses (how
the love and obedience Jesus was speaking about relate to one another).
Those who regard Jesus’ statement as a general ethical maxim tend to treat the
idea of “commandments” broadly as encompassing the body of moral, ethical and
spiritual duties to which Christians are obligated. Some interpret these obligations
in terms of the so-called “moral law” said to be summarized in the Decalogue;
others believe Jesus was referring to just those directives He personally issued
(“My commandments”). Still others take a somewhat broader view, making Jesus’
statement encompass every New Testament commandment and directive (often
referred to under the title, “the law of Christ”), whether or not it originated with
Jesus Himself (so note 1 Corinthians 7:1-13). Finally, others take a more
constrained view, defining “commandments” in this verse in terms of the specific
directives Jesus issued during the course of the Upper Room episode. Those
commandments focus on the disciples’ obligation of love: love for their Lord
expressed in their love for one another, thereby testifying of Him to the world
(ref. 13:12-17, 34-35, 14:15, 21, 23-24, 15:4, 9-17, 26-27, 17:20-23).
John’s terminology is also important in determining Jesus’ meaning. The noun he
used here rendered commandment has a wide semantic range. It can denote a
particular command or directive (13:34), but also a general set of precepts or
instructions (12:49-50). Here, John seems to have employed it more in keeping
with the latter idea. For while Jesus spoke of “commandments” which His
apostles were to keep, in context they all pertained to their overarching obligation
to live into and manifest the truth of their new life in Him which He was going to
bring about by His departure and return in His Spirit. He wasn’t calling them to
obey a set of laws or commandments as a new (or restated) code of Christian
conduct, but instructing them concerning what was to come, how it would
implicate them and what it would require of them as His disciples and witnesses.
From the time He called them, Jesus had instructed His apostles by disclosing
Himself to them and showing them how all of the Scripture testified of Him –
how it was that Israel’s God was fulfilling all of His promises in and through
Him. He’d revealed Himself in truth and they had embraced Him as devoted
disciples. They believed they loved Him and were fully committed to Him, but
Jesus understood what they didn’t: Everything was about to change, sorely testing
their devotion and commitment. And even if they stood firm in the trial of the
next days and weeks, their lives with Him were going to be very different from
this point forward. But if they truly loved Him, they would trust Him and bind
themselves to His instruction. His “commandments” – the truths to which He
called them – would light their path, steel their resolve and secure their peace and
joy as they carried out their calling in His name.
And so there was nothing mysterious, complex or out of place in Jesus’ assertion.
He was simply affirming a truth which these men had witnessed in Him and
should have understood: Love presupposes a true knowledge – a relational
intimacy and bond – that is compelling (15:9-10). People frequently think and act
in ways that are inconsistent with the facts they understand and embrace;
informational knowledge doesn’t elicit love or the devotion of mind and heart.
But true knowledge of the person of Jesus, who is the human embodiment of all
truth, does bind, animate, reshape and redirect the mind, affections and will.
Knowing Him means loving Him and being conformed to Him (Philippians 3).
b. Authentic love for Jesus compels conformity to the truth as it is in Him. But this
conformity transcends intellectual and ethical compliance; it is conformity of
union and transformation. Jesus was affirming to His apostles that loving Him
involves becoming like Him – not just behaviorally, but inwardly. But this sort of
conformity – this christiformity – lies beyond human capacity. Thus Jesus
followed His exhortation to “keep His commandments” with the promise of the
Spirit: Love for Him and conformity to Him were essential to their mission on His
behalf, but He would meet their need by the provision of the Spirit (14:16). Here
Jesus expressed this in terms of the Father sending the Spirit in answer to His
petition (cf. 14:26); later He would say that He was sending the Spirit (15:26,
16:7). In this ministration, too, Father and Son are perfectly and entirely one.
The Father and Son were going to send the Spirit, but as the Son’s abiding
presence and power with His own in the world and for the sake of the world.
Jesus identified the Spirit as the Paraclete – one called alongside as an advocate
and helper, but an advocate and helper of the same sort as He had been. And not
in the sense of similarity, but sameness: In a profound way, the Paraclete would
be Jesus returned to gather His disciples to Himself (14:3) by taking them up in
His own life. The Spirit was coming as the Spirit of Christ, so that Jesus would
remain with His disciples by indwelling, renewing and transforming them into His
own likeness (14:18-20). It is important to note that this truth doesn’t imply a
change in the person of the Spirit or confusion of identities within the Trinity, but
simply the fact that the Spirit’s role – like every component and aspect of God’s
purposes for His creation – was to find its destiny in relation to Jesus. Up until
that point in the salvation history, the Spirit had functioned in Israel and in the
world as the Spirit of Yahweh; henceforth, and by virtue of the fulfillment of the
divine purposes in the Messiah, the Spirit would forever interact with the creation
as the Spirit of Jesus. If the Spirit was God’s presence and power in His creation
and on its behalf, that role was now bound up in Jesus. Like everything else in the
divine plan, the Spirit’s role was to be forever christified.
c. The Spirit was soon to be sent into the world as the Spirit of Jesus – here, the
Spirit of truth, which is to say, the manifest presence and power of the truth as it
is in Jesus (cf. 14:26, 15:26-27, 16:13-15). And precisely for this reason He is the
Spirit whom the world does not perceive or discern and therefore cannot embrace
(14:17). He is Yahweh’s Spirit who directed and empowered Jesus’ messianic
work (cf. Isaiah 42:1-4 and 61:1-11 with Luke 4:1-21; cf. also Matthew 12:9-28;
Mark 1:1-15; Luke 10:17-22; Romans 1:1-4; Hebrews 9:13-15), so that men’s
unbelief and rejection of Jesus is their disbelief and refusal of the Spirit.
In their alienation and blindness men cannot discern or embrace the Spirit, and
Jesus’ apostles had certainly experienced this over the previous three years. Now
the world’s refusal of the Spirit of truth was about to reach its climax in the
Messiah’s crucifixion, and even His most devoted disciples would stumble in the
hour of testing. The Spirit had abided with them and manifested His presence and
power in the person of their Lord, but their knowledge and experience of Him
were about to become living and inward: The Spirit had been with them, but soon
He would be in them. In that way Jesus Himself would be in them and they in
Him (14:18-20). And, because of the inherent union between Him and His Father,
Jesus’ presence in His disciples would be His Father’s presence in them. In the
person of the indwelling Spirit, Father and Son were going to make their abode in
men, thereby gathering them into the Father’s dwelling place (14:23).
d. Jesus prefaced His introduction of the Spirit by speaking of the obligation of love
and obedience and now He returned to that theme (14:21). He wanted His
disciples to understand that this obligation must be understood in terms of the
Spirit’s role and work, even as the Spirit is the premise and power for meeting it.
What He was requiring of them (and all men), He’d secure by His Spirit.
But once again, the Lord’s meaning was lost on His hearers. Peter, Thomas and
Philip had already expressed the disciples’ lack of understanding and now it was
Judas’ turn. (This Judas was also known as Thaddaeus; Mark 3:16-19.) When
Jesus spoke of disclosing Himself to those who love Him and hold to His
instruction, Judas heard Him to say that He was limiting His self-disclosure to His
inner circle of disciples (14:22). Rather than hearing what Jesus was affirming
and promising, his ears were tuned to what Jesus seemed to be implying. He had
been speaking in terms of what lay ahead for them, His chosen apostles, and Judas
assumed He was still referring to them when He promised to disclose Himself to
those who love Him. The apparent implication, then, was that this intention didn’t
extend to the world of men. Judas was startled by this, highlighting the fact that
the apostles had understood Jesus’ mission in global terms. And so they should
have, for this was exactly how He presented it (ref. 3:14-17, 4:1-42, 6:24-51,
7:37-38, 8:1-26, 9:1-5, 10:14-16, 12:30-32, etc.).
The Lord responded to Judas’ question in a way which seemed to avoid it
altogether. Rather than answering him directly, Jesus restated in a modified form
the same assertion which had provoked Judas’ question (cf. 14:23-24 with 14:21).
He substituted His word for His commandments and reversed the order between
loving Him and keeping His instruction. He also added the antithetical
proposition, namely that those who don’t love Him don’t keep His word. The
other notable difference is Jesus’ modification of His promise: He restated His
pledge to disclose Himself to those loving Him and keeping His word in terms of
Him and His Father coming and making their abode with them.
At first glance it appears that Jesus didn’t answer Judas’ question, but He
answered him in a way which addressed the erroneous thinking behind the
question and not just the question itself. It was clear that Judas was missing His
point and so Jesus brought him back to it; there’s no benefit in answering a
misguided question without first correcting the misunderstanding that provoked it.
The answer to Judas’ question was that Jesus wasn’t going to limit His self disclosure
to a select group of individuals; His mission was indeed global in
scope. For He was Israel’s Messiah – the seed of Abraham and Davidic Servant
appointed to restore and regather all the earth’s families. And toward that end, He
would soon commission Judas and his counterparts to carry on His work by
taking the good news of His triumph and kingdom to the ends of the earth.
And yet, the universality of Jesus’ mission was subject to a very real limitation.
Judas was wrong in concluding that Jesus was not going to show Himself to the
world, but it was true that His self-disclosure would be limited – not in terms of
presentation, but with respect to reception. The response Jesus had encountered in
Israel was going to be repeated in the Gentile world; as Israel had treated her
Messiah, so the world would treat His witnesses (15:18-27). Thus Jesus answered
the question about the extent of His self-disclosure by reasserting its nature: This
disclosure concerns relational knowledge (vv. 20, 23) expressed in authentic love
and conformity to the truth. This is why it pertains to disciples and not the world.
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Post by Admin on Mar 31, 2024 13:26:23 GMT -5
5. The discourse in the Upper Room was first of all Jesus’ response to His apostles’ concern
over His departure. He’d announced that He would soon be leaving them and this left
them deeply troubled: Jesus was the Messiah, sent by Yahweh to establish His kingdom
in a restored Davidic throne and dynasty; departure in death at the hand of Rome was
antithetical to this mission. And so it wasn’t simply that they feared being left alone and
powerless; Jesus’ announcement dashed all of their hopes and expectations. Thus He
followed His announcement with words of assurance and comfort. It was true that His
death was going to change everything, but so as to fulfill their messianic hopes, not
destroy them. He was indeed Israel’s Messiah and God was going to accomplish all that
He promised concerning Him and His work. But the unexpectedness of His death had a
counterpart in its outcome; what was coming for the apostles was going to transcend
anything they could imagine. Their Lord’s departure in death was not the end of the story
or their relationship with Him, but the foundation for a profoundly new and richer
relationship. This first part of the discourse details that outcome and appropriately opens
and closes with Jesus’ encouragement to set their hearts at ease (cf. 14:1, 27).
a. Jesus assured His apostles that His departure would see His return and the
transformation of their relationship with Him in new knowledge and power. And
these promises were “yes and amen” because He and His Father were sending the
Spirit. Dark and desperate days lay ahead for them, but a new dawn awaited at the
end of the darkness. They needed to trust Him and hold fast to the things He’d
taught them, and indeed they would do so. Just as all of Jesus’ other assurances
were grounded in the promise of the Spirit, so it was with this one: The One who
was coming to them as Advocate, Helper and Comforter was also coming as
Teacher. Jesus understood that His instruction that evening was going to be lost in
the tumult of the next days. And so it would be with all that He’d taught His
apostles during His years with them. His presence and ongoing reminders were
critically important to their conscious remembrance and so their ability to carry
out their testimony on His behalf. They needed their Teacher and His continual
instruction to fulfill their calling and He was going to satisfy this need in the
person of the Holy Spirit (14:26, cf. again 15:26-27, 16:13-15). Jesus was
returning to be with them in the Spirit, and so the Spirit would carry on His
discipling ministration, teaching them by way of both reminder and new insight.
b. The promise of the Spirit was Jesus’ answer to the apostles’ distress and fear. He
knew that His words were upsetting, but His design in speaking them was that
they should have peace. And not merely the calm of a relieved mind, but peace as
He knew and experienced it (14:27). Jesus highlighted this in two particulars:
First, He expressed it in terms of the characteristic Jewish shalom salutation.
Invoking peace upon another person was a means of greeting (upon arrival and
departure) as well as blessing (cf. 1 Samuel 25:5-6; Psalm 122:6-8, 125:4-5,
128:1-6; Daniel 10:18-19; Luke 10:5-6), and Jesus seems to have had both in
mind. He was departing from them with the blessing of peace, but in a unique
fashion reflecting the nature and outcome of His departure; He invoked peace
upon them, not as a hollow gesture, but as an actual endowment.
Jesus was leaving His apostles a legacy of peace, but of a particular sort and in a
specific sense: He was endowing them with His peace – a peace which He
personally enjoyed, but more importantly, which was unique to Him. This is a
peace which the world cannot give because it neither possesses nor discerns it.
This is true of the human world, but also the natural world that is the created
order. Human beings cannot give to other humans the peace Jesus was speaking
of, but neither can life “under the sun.” The peace Jesus promised to His apostles
is a transcendent peace; it is not beyond human experience, but it cannot be
obtained from within the natural realm. It transcends the natural order, not
because it’s divine, but because it derives from the divine purpose and work as
they are bound up in the Messiah. Raymond Brown’s comments are helpful:
“In verse 20 Jesus used the Old Testament phrase, ‘on that day,’ implying that his
indwelling with his disciples after the resurrection would fulfill the eschatological
dreams of the prophets. For the prophets, the messianic king sent by God was to
be a prince of peace (Isa. 9:6) who would ‘command peace to the nations’ (Zech.
9:10). The bringer of good tidings was to be one who announces peace and
salvation (Isa. 52:7). The theme of peace also belongs to the covenant mentality
we have seen exhibited at the Last Supper. In Ezek. 37:26, Yahweh says to
Ezekiel: ‘I will make a covenant of peace with them.’ [cf. also Ezekiel 34 and
Isaiah 54] (Ezekiel makes it clear that an essential part of the covenant is that
Yahweh would set His sanctuary in the midst of His people forever; so also Jesus’
covenant with his followers involves his indwelling forever.)”
c. Jesus’ talk of His departure left the apostles stunned and grieved. In their minds,
there was nothing good or advantageous about it; He was going to be taken from
them in death and they’d be left alone to pick up the pieces and get on with their
lives without Him. Their reaction of sorrow and fear betrayed their lack of
understanding, but it was their lovelessness that Jesus rebuked. He recognized that
it wasn’t their confusion, but their concern for themselves and their own future
that caused their distress (14:28a). Indeed, the distraction of their self-concern
helped to obscure the things He was telling them. It’s true that He was opening
new vistas to them that evening, but only as building on the things He’d already
taught and explained. They should have understood His words, and had they truly
loved Him, they would have rejoiced with Him at the news that the time of His
glorification had come (ref. 12:23-24, 13:31-32). But their concern lay elsewhere,
so that all they heard was that their Lord was about to leave them.
It’s noteworthy that Jesus here spoke of His glorification in terms of “going to the
Father who is greater than I” (14:28b). This statement, too, has often been treated
in isolation, primarily as a proof-text in trinitarian arguments. Beginning with the
early church fathers, both trinitarians and non-trinitarians have cited this verse in
support of their doctrinal position. Trinitarians tend to argue that Jesus was
referring to the personal and relational distinction between Him and His Father,
not a difference in their essential substance as deity. Non-trinitarians, on the other
hand, see in Jesus’ statement clear proof that the Son is subordinate to the Father.
There are two obvious problems with approaching this verse in this way:
It is non contextual as well as anachronistic. That is, it reads into Jesus’ statement a
doctrinal issue that is foreign to the context and which only later became a topic
of controversy in the Church. (The Trinitarian controversies came to a head with
Arius and Athanasius in the first half of the fourth century.) Readers are always
inclined to make their own concerns the concerns of the text and those looking for
a trinitarian proof-text can find one here, but interpreting Jesus’ words within the
larger discourse will guard against this error.
In context, Jesus was explaining why the apostles should have rejoiced at His
departure. He was going to the Father – the Father who is greater than He, and He
was returning to His Father in view of completing the work for which the Father
sent Him. Thus the point of their rejoicing was not His departure as such, but
what it signified, namely His completion of His messianic mission. The Father
had sent Him to accomplish the messianic work, and so fulfill the Law, Prophets
and Writings (Luke 24:25-45). Jesus was the Father’s Servant dispatched to do
His will, and it’s in this sense that He referred to the Father as greater than He.
The Son’s return to the Father was a matter of rejoicing because it spoke to His
glorification. And it did so because He was returning in triumph: Jesus, the
faithful Servant, had accomplished Yahweh’s mission of conquest, deliverance,
renewal and ingathering. Thus His triumph and glory were His Father’s triumph
and glory (ref. again 12:23-32, 13:31-32, 14:8-13, also 17:1-5). Hence Jesus’
point: If the apostles had understood what was transpiring and actually loved
Him in truth as Israel’s Messiah, they’d have rejoiced in His departure, not only
because it heralded His glorification and so the glorification of Israel’s God, but
also because it portended their own glory as partakers in the glorified Son and
Father through the sending of the glory-Spirit (cf. 14:28 with 14:12-20, 16:5-15).
d. Jesus knew that His apostles didn’t yet understand what He was telling them, but
it was important that they hear His words so that, when the time came, they would
have the deposit of truth necessary for the formation of faith for the sake of their
own calling (14:29). Indeed, He recognized that there was much more to be said,
but He understood the timeliness of His work. There were things that needed to be
communicated that night and further instruction reserved for the appropriate time
(cf. 16:12-13 with Acts 1:1-8). Between the two lay the hour of the world ruler
and the power of darkness – the climactic, triumphal hour for which Jesus had
come into the world (14:30-31; cf. 12:27-31 with Luke 22:47-53). His statement
is rich and dense and needs to be examined in its various particulars:
The first is His assertion that “the ruler of the world is coming.” Jesus didn’t
identify this ruler, but the context indicates that He was referring to Satan as the
power which informs and drives the world in its alienation from God (cf. 12:31,
13:27, 16:8-11; cf. also Matthew 4:8-9 and Luke 4:5-7). Satan is the power behind
the earthly powers – the overlord whose mind and will are reflected in the various
dimensions of fallen human existence and human power structures.
Satan had been the ruling power in the world since the fall and he’d actively
opposed the messianic mission from the moment of Jesus’ birth (cf. Luke 4:1-13
with Matthew 16:21-23; also John 8:31-59, 13:27). How, then, could Jesus speak
of him coming? In context, He was speaking of the coming climactic hour of
satanic power arrayed against the divine purpose (cf. 13:27 with Luke 22:47-53).
The world ruler was “coming” in the sense that he was about to arise and unleash
his full power and resources in order to thwart the work of Yahweh’s Messiah.
Satan was coming against Him in this way, yet Jesus insisted that he “has nothing
in Me.” Some interpret this in terms of Jesus’ sinlessness (Satan had no charge he
could bring against Him), others in terms of His power (Satan had no power or
authority over His life; cf. 10:14-18, 13:27). The larger statement seems to
support a nuanced version of the second view: Though Satan was arrayed against
Him as a powerful and determined adversary, he would not be able to gain any
ground or foothold because the Son was fully committed to His Father and the
work He was sent to accomplish. Beginning with the wilderness testing, Jesus had
consistently demonstrated that He could not be deterred (cf. 4:34; Luke 4:1-13).
Jesus’ unwavering devotion to His Father pressed Him forward toward the
completion of His mission; His death under the sway of the world ruler would
demonstrate the power of His love, not the power of the adversary. He was going
to die as an act of obedient love, faithfully accomplishing the commission His
Father gave to Him. And though the horror of Calvary would obscure it as a work
of love (Matthew 27:35-43), the truth was going to come to light; not merely the
apostles, but the world would soon learn – through the apostolic proclamation –
that the Son’s brutal, agonized death was the pinnacle expression of His devoted
love for His Father, and so also for the creation which the Father so dearly loves.
(It’s notable that this is the only instance in the four gospels where Jesus spoke
directly of loving His Father, and He did so in the context of His commitment to
accomplishing His messianic mission on behalf of the world.)
e. John has Jesus closing out this first section of His discourse with a call to the
apostles to arise and depart with Him (14:31b). This is puzzling in light of the fact
that He then continued on with His instruction with no indication by John that
they’d left the Upper Room. Rather, he recorded that Jesus and the apostles made
their way toward the Garden of Gethsemane after He’d finished speaking (18:1).
There are several ways interpreters answer this difficulty. Some argue that Jesus’
discourse actually ended with 14:31 in John’s original manuscript and chapters
15-17 were later additions. Another more plausible view is that the meal had
ended and so Jesus instructed everyone to get up from the table and prepare to
leave. While they were doing so He continued to speak with them. The obvious
problem with this view is that it has Jesus providing crucial instruction while the
apostles were busily distracted with other matters. Perhaps a better explanation is
that He was encouraging their resolve going forward: “In view of what I’ve told
you and promised, let us arise and go from this place determined to embrace the
Father’s will and work, fully assured of its glorious outcome.”
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Post by Admin on Mar 31, 2024 13:29:03 GMT -5
E. Charging the Disciples (15:1-27)
This discourse is John’s record of Jesus’ final instruction to His inner circle of disciples before
His crucifixion. He initiated it by announcing His impending departure in death and followed
that announcement with a series of assurances and encouragements. He wasn’t leaving them
permanently, but was going to return to them. And then He would be with them forever, not in
the way they had known to that point, but with a new intimacy through His indwelling Spirit by
which He’d endow them with new knowledge and power. The thought of what lay ahead left the
apostles troubled and fearful and Jesus reassured them that the agony of the next few days would
produce glorious fruit; indeed, they were going to experience a joy, peace and intimacy with Him
that they couldn’t begin to imagine at that time.
Everything about their relationship with Him was going to be renewed and transformed, but this
new relationship would bring new responsibilities. Jesus was going to join them to Himself and
His Father by giving them His Spirit (14:18-20, 23), but they would need to own that union. His
abiding in them would obligate them to abide in Him, a point He poignantly made by drawing
upon the imagery of a grapevine and its branches. This metaphor was suitable for at least two
reasons: First, it suited Jesus’ emphasis on fruit-bearing as the central issue in the disciples’
obligation to abide in Him. But it also connected Him with Israel in that the grapevine was a
common scriptural symbol for the covenant nation.
1. The heart of Jesus’ encouragement to His apostles was that His departure was only
temporary. His death wouldn’t end their connection with Him; quite the opposite, it
would facilitate a new and profoundly intimate union: He in them and them in Him. But
this new relationship would introduce new dynamics and new responsibilities and Jesus
used the grapevine metaphor to illumine these truths. He began by identifying Himself as
the true grapevine and His Father as the vinedresser (15:1-2). This self-depiction served
first of all to illustrate the relationship between Himself, His Father and His disciples:
They are joined to Him like the branches of a vine and His Father tends to them with the
goal of making them fruitful in their participation in His life.
a. This relational dynamic will be examined in greater detail, but it’s appropriate
first to consider the grapevine symbolism itself. As mentioned above, this was a
longstanding scriptural symbol for Israel. Most importantly, this symbolism
wasn’t arbitrary, but used specifically in relation to Israel’s election, calling,
performance and future as Yahweh’s covenant son (cf. Psalm 80; Isaiah 3:13-15,
5:1-7, 27:1-6; Jeremiah 2:14-21, 5:1-11, 6:1-9, 12:7-10; Ezekiel 15:1-8, 17:1-21,
19:1-14; Hosea 10:1; Nahum 2:1-2; etc.).
As the corporate embodiment of Abraham’s covenant seed, Israel was a select
vine, well tended and cared for by Yahweh, the vinedresser, but one which
nonetheless bore only bad fruit. By taking up this imagery and applying it to
Himself, Jesus was alluding to the truth highlighted by Isaiah that unfaithful Israel
was to find its healing and covenant faithfulness (its “fruitfulness”) in a faithful
seed – a true son of Abraham. In Him, Israel would at last become Israel indeed –
Yahweh’s fruitful vine – and so fulfill its covenant election.
b. Jesus depicted Himself as the true vine and His Father – Israel’s covenant God –
as the vinedresser. The Greek noun denotes a farmer or person who tills the
ground, but in context it refers to a vinedresser as the person intimately involved
in cultivating and tending to the grapevine to insure its optimal fruitfulness. Jesus
described this role in terms of taking away the branches that bear no fruit and
pruning the fruit-bearing branches to make them even more fruitful (15:2). This
statement has challenged readers and scholars across the centuries, especially as it
is interpreted in terms of Jesus’ saving work.
The focal point of the difficulty is Jesus’ assertion that His Father “takes away”
the branches in Him that are unfruitful. For some, this seems to support the notion
that a person can lose his salvation: If someone comes to Christ so as to become a
branch in Him and then proves unfruitful in this union, God will remove him (cf.
15:6). Others interpret the verb (“take away”) in the positive sense of bearing or
taking up (cf. Matthew 4:6; Mark 2:3; John 5:10), arguing that Jesus was saying
that His Father supports and nurtures the fruitless branches in Him so that they
can become fruitful. The verb has a broad semantic range and the negative and
positive connotations referenced here are widely represented in the New
Testament. In the end, the context must determine the intended sense.
- The first thing to note is the parallel assertion about fruit-bearing branches.
The two statements draw a contrast between the two kinds of branches
(fruitful and fruitless), but also parallel each other in that they both speak
to the Father’s dealings with them.
- Secondly, Jesus directly identified the unfruitful branches as being in Him.
His statement implies the same thing concerning the fruitful branches and
the wider context supports this conclusion; fruit-bearing depends upon
vital connection between the branch and the grapevine (ref. vv. 4-5).
- Jesus used the grapevine metaphor to highlight the critical importance of
the union between Him and His disciples. Accordingly, He exhorted the
apostles to “abide in Him,” suggesting the possibility that they might not
continue to do so (vv. 4-7). This emphasis seems to align with the idea of
the Father “taking away” branches that prove unfruitful.
- One other consideration involves grammar and syntax rather than context.
The issue is the prepositional phrase, “in Me,” and its intended referent.
Its position right after the noun branch (i.e., an unfruitful branch) strongly
suggests that the prepositional phrase modifies it. But it’s also possible
that it modifies the participial phrase (“not bearing fruit”) that immediately
follows it. In this case, the prepositional phrase qualifies the matter of
fruit-bearing: Every branch not bearing fruit in Me, He takes away. The
implication, then, is that there is a kind of fruit-bearing that exists apart
from vital connection with Jesus. Hence He was contrasting this false fruit
with the authentic fruit of those abiding in Him (cf. Matthew 7:15-23).
These considerations point to three possible interpretations. The first two have
Jesus contrasting the two kinds of branches “in Him” – those that bear fruit and
those that don’t. The first option is that His Father removes (“takes away”) the
barren branches; the second is that He nurtures them (“takes them up”) so that
they become fruitful. The third interpretation has Jesus contrasting the branches
that bear fruit in Him with those that bear their fruit apart from Him. Of the three
options, the one that is most likely correct – the first one – is the most
challenging; indeed the difficulties it poses are a primary reason for promoting the
other two alternatives which the context less supports. For many, the
awkwardness of the latter is preferable to the problems inherent in the former.
But there are ways to embrace the natural reading – “My Father removes every
branch in Me that doesn’t bear fruit” – without getting embroiled in the question
of whether a person can lose his salvation. One approach is more obvious and
widely held; the other is more in keeping with the scriptural grapevine imagery
and its relation to the covenant nation of Israel and its destiny in the Messiah.
1) The first approach is to treat the unfruitful branches as only appearing to
be in the vine. The idea is that these branches symbolize people who seem
to have been joined to Jesus (i.e., been saved), but really haven’t. They
have a pseudo-faith, proven out by the absence of fruit in their lives. In the
end, such branches are completely removed from the vine, Judas being an
obvious case in point. In contrast, branches that are truly in the vine bear
fruit and the Father prunes (“cleans”) them to make them all the more
fruitful. The other eleven apostles were such “clean” branches (15:3).
2) The second approach parallels the first, but it assumes a wider salvation historical perspective
more in keeping with Jesus’ messianic mission and
Israel’s role in it. Here the unfruitful branches correspond to unbelieving
Israel rather than individual persons. This view conforms more closely to
the Old Testament’s portrayal of the covenant nation as unfruitful and
therefore subject to Yahweh’s removal. This imagery was used in relation
to Israel’s judgment in exile, but as that judgment looked to another future
removal associated with the coming of the Messiah. So the synoptic
records have Jesus drawing upon the song of the vineyard in Isaiah 5 to
explain what awaited His generation because of their unbelief – that is,
their failure to bear fruit in Him. His Father was going to cut them off by
taking the kingdom from them and giving it to those who would bear its
fruit (cf. Matthew 21:33-43; Mark 12:1-11; Luke 20:9-17). Judas was
representative of the fruitless nation, even as the Eleven were to be the
beginning of the new, fruitful Israel Jesus was going to reconstitute in
Himself as the “chief cornerstone” of Yahweh’s restored sanctuary (note
Matthew 21:42; Mark 12:10-11; Luke 20:17). For the most part, Israel had
shown itself to be a fruitless branch refusing to abide in the messianic
vine; thus Yahweh was going to break it off and throw it into the fire of
His wrath (cf. 15:6 with Luke 19:41-44; also Romans 11:13-21).
The second interpretation better captures the thrust of Jesus’ messianic mission
and the dynamics of Israel’s response to Him, but it doesn’t preclude the first one
in the sense that the nation of Israel consisted of individual people. The covenant
house of Israel was a barren branch in the messianic vine, and therefore soon to be
cut off. But within the unbelieving nation there were apparent disciples like Judas
(ref. 2:23-25, 6:14-15, 8:31-32), even as there were numerous authentic ones.
2. Jesus declared Himself to be the true vine and His Father the vinedresser; He then
brought His apostles into His metaphor, identifying them as among the fruit-bearing
branches which the Father prunes clean (15:3). Again, the reason for the metaphor was to
highlight the issue of fruitfulness in those sharing in the Messiah. Jesus had told the
apostles that their relationship with Him was going to change in an astonishing way (vv.
20-23); now He explained what would come from that new intimacy: He was going to
abide in them and them in Him in order that they would bear the fruit of His life in them.
a. Jesus identified His apostles as fruit-bearing branches by noting their cleanness,
thereby connecting them with those whom the Father cleans (v. 2). Moreover, He
explained that this pruning work was accomplished through His word. Keeping
with the metaphor, fruit-bearing is the premise behind the pruning of a grapevine
and this action has its goal in increased fecundity; the vinedresser doesn’t prune
dead branches, but prunes the fruit-bearing ones to enhance their fruitfulness. In
terms of human branches in Jesus, the true vine, the Father accomplishes this
pruning through the Son’s word. So Jesus previously insisted that His words were
not His own, but His Father doing His work (14:10; cf. 8:42-47, 12:48-50). Jesus
had joined these men to Himself with spoken and enacted “words” that are Spirit
and life (6:63). And this communication was the work of His Father by which
He’d “cleaned” them in preparation for their mission of fruit-bearing on behalf of
the Son. Thus Jesus’ declaration, “you are already clean,” must be understood in
terms of fruitfulness, not cleansing from sin as some suppose. (This is all the more
evident in the fact that Jesus’ word accomplished this “cleaning.”)
b. The apostles’ “cleanness” implied their union with their Lord as fruit-bearing
branches in the true vine. They were already “abiding” in Him, but that
circumstance wasn’t ultimate; they were yet obligated to remain in Him (15:4),
just as He was committed to remaining in them. This “already-but-not-yet”
dynamic points back to what Jesus had already told them: They were even then
joined to Him and “clean” (prepared for future fruitfulness) because of His
ministration to them by the Spirit, but their present union anticipated the greater,
ultimate union to be realized with the Spirit’s outpouring; the One who had been
with them in the Messiah would be in them as the indwelling Messiah (14:16-20).
Thus the apostles’ present abiding in the vine was the promise of a future, more
profound abiding. But this future abiding would impose a unique obligation – the
obligation to actively and purposefully live into and live out their living union
with Jesus as branches in the vine. Only by abiding in Him in that way would they
bear the fruit for which they were set apart and prepared. Indeed, apart from that
vital union and their conformity to it, they would be barren and useless (15:5-6).
c. The apostles – and all those who would come after them (ref. 17:20-23) – were
marked out for the work of fruit-bearing, but fruit of a specific sort. Like branches
in a grapevine, they were to bear the fruit that is the product of the life and vital
energy of the true vine flowing into and through them. The fruit appears on the
branches, but it is the fruit of the vine – fruit that carries in itself and manifests
the unique life bound up in that particular vine. So it is with those who share in
Jesus; their fruitfulness is His fruit-bearing in and through them.
By implication, all other manifestations of fruit-bearing are fraudulent and empty.
Men can bear all sorts of “fruit” apart from vital union with Christ, but it is
ultimately bad fruit because it originates from themselves in their natural state; it
is shriveled fruit that appears on lifeless branches. This is what Jesus meant when
He said that, apart from Him, men can do nothing (15:5b); they can accomplish
many things, but are utterly incapable of bearing authentic fruit. However fruitful
they may appear, they are as branches severed from the vine, lifeless and
withered, fit only to be gathered up and burned. Conversely, those who abide in
Jesus, drawing upon His life and power, will bear abundant fruit – perhaps not
fruit that the world recognizes and hungers for, but true fruit nonetheless.
d. These observations are the key to understanding Jesus’ promise in verses 7-8.
This promise reiterates what He said previously (14:13-14), adding further color
and light to it: There Jesus promised that He’d grant all petitions offered in His
name because doing so would glorify Him and so His Father in Him; here He
attached the same promise to the condition of abiding in Him, but for the same
reason of His Father’s glorification. Putting the two together shows that asking in
Jesus’ name amounts to asking as one who is in Him; so the Father’s resulting
glorification in the Son is His glorification in the Son’s disciples who bear His
fruit in the world as those sharing in His life and carrying out His mission.
Thus the union with the vine that results in fruit-bearing is a union of oneness:
The “abiding in Me” of which Jesus spoke involves unity of mind and will. Just as
the branches are the instrument for the vine’s production of its fruit, so Jesus
bears His fruit in and through His disciples who abide in Him in a living union.
And as the vine and branches share one will – the will of the vine which energizes
the branches and determines their work, so it is with those who share in Jesus, the
true vine: Their fruitfulness is the product of their union with His will.
This is why Jesus could assure His apostles that He would give them anything
they asked of Him. Abiding in Him and animated and directed by His word like
branches drawing their life, energy and direction from the vine, their will would
become one with His. Their longings would express His designs, so that granting
their petitions would see the production of rich and abundant fruit – the authentic
fruit of new creational life for which the Father sent the Son and which the Father
and Son produce through the renewing and indwelling power of the Spirit. In such
disciples – such fruitful branches abiding in the vine – the Father, together with
the Son and Spirit, is eminently glorified.
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Post by Admin on Mar 31, 2024 13:32:58 GMT -5
3. Jesus’ metaphor of the vine and branches illumined a couple of critical dimensions in the
new relationship He was going to establish with His disciples. They were going to know
Him in a new way because of sharing in His life – them in Him and Him in them. And
this union would secure the continuation of His presence and the outworking of His
purposes in the world; His disciples were going to bear His fruit abundantly as branches
in the vine. But this fruitfulness depended upon them abiding in Him: living out His life
in them by yielding to His Spirit and His leading according to His word to them.
a. Jesus’ departure and return in His Spirit was going to inaugurate a new
relationship imposing a new responsibility of intimacy and mission: The disciples
were to abide in Him in order to fulfill their calling to bear His fruit in the world.
And abiding in Him meant more than simply holding tightly to the things He’d
taught them and the charge He was giving them; it meant abiding in His love.
Jesus’ love motivated and directed His interaction with them (13:1) and His love,
in turn, reflected and expressed His Father’s love for Him and the world He
created; Jesus had come into the world as the beloved Son to fulfill the Father’s
loving design for His creation and the image-son at its center (3:16, 35, 5:19-21).
And that design involved taking human beings up in the divine life and love –
people gathered to the Father through union with the Son by the indwelling Spirit.
Jesus’ abiding in His own is the work of love, and so it must be with them: The
apostles were to abide in Him, which is to abide in His love (15:9).
Jesus’ love for them was the premise behind His exhortation; He could direct
them to continue in His love because He’d already bestowed it. Most importantly,
He had loved them just as His Father loved Him. The tendency is to pass over this
as Jesus merely stating that He was following His Father’s example: “My Father
has loved me and so I’ve loved you.” But He was affirming something far more
profound; He was telling His apostles that He loved them in the same way and
toward the same goal as His Father’s love for Him. The love the Father had
bestowed upon the Son the Son had bestowed upon His followers. And this was a
love bound up in mission. The Father’s love sent the Son into the world to fulfill
His purposes for it (cf. 3:26-36, 5:16-23, 10:14-18) and the same purpose
governed the Son’s love for His Father and His own (13:1, 14:30-31, 17:20-26).
Jesus had loved His disciples and now He was exhorting them to remain (abide)
in His love – the love which reflected and expressed His Father’s love for Him.
The implication, then, is that abiding in Jesus’ love is abiding in His Father’s
love. And abiding in the Father’s love entails being governed by the missional
orientation of the Father’s love just as Jesus had been. In terms of Jesus’ imagery,
abiding in His love means bearing His fruit as branches in Him, the True Vine.
The Father had sent the Son to bear the fruit of creational purging, renewal and
reconciliation and this fruit was to hang on the branches of those abiding in Him
and His love. In this way they would carry forward His mission in the world.
Thus Jesus’ love for His disciples was to become His love in and through them –
His purposeful and effectual love directed toward the same design as the Father’s
love which sent Him into the world (cf. 15:16, 17:18).
b. This is the critical framework for interpreting Jesus’ assertion that abiding in His
love depends upon keeping His commandments (15:10). Many treat this statement
in isolation and so embark upon the task of compiling a list of Jesus’ directives in
order to assess their obedience and love for Him. But this cheapens His statement
and misses His point. As throughout the context, “commandment” here refers to
specific instruction concerning a particular matter (13:34, 14:15, 21, 15:12). Jesus
wasn’t talking about a laundry list of moral and ethical directives (whether
conceived as “moral law” or the “law of Christ”), but the apostles’ obligation in
view of His departure and return in the Spirit. Those events were going to
inaugurate a new creational reality and new relationship between Him and them
and so between them and His Father and His Spirit. Everything was going to
change – including them – and they were obligated to conform to the truth of that
change in the way they ordered and governed their thinking and lives.
Embracing this new reality and new relationship means abiding in Jesus and His
love and this involves His word abiding in them (informing and directing them).
Thus the apostles would “keep His commandments” by conforming to the truth as
it is in Him – the truth to which the Spirit would enliven and empower them by
joining them to Him. Jesus had “kept His Father’s commandments” by
conforming to His Father’s mind and purpose in the leading of the Spirit (ref.
4:34, 6:38-40, 10:14-18, 14:30-31) and so it was to be with His disciples.
c. Participating in and yielding to Jesus’ life and mind would ensure the apostles’
fruitfulness, but also their joy. But just as their fruit was going to be His fruit in
them, so it would be with their joy (15:11). Once again, the context illumines
Jesus’ meaning. He wasn’t talking about some sort of subjective, ethereal delight
or elation, but His joy – the joy that characterized Him as the true Image-Son (cf.
14:27). And Jesus’ joy was informed, disciplined and directed; it was the deep
sense of satisfaction and delight which He derived from His conformity to His
Father’s life, mind and will. This is the joy He was promising His apostles, and
they would experience His joy when they were taken up in His life so as to bear
the fruit of His will and work in the world (16:19-24, 17:1-14). When they
experienced His joy in this way, their joy would be authentic and full.
d. Jesus exhorted His apostles to abide in His love by keeping His commandments.
He then elaborated by telling them that His commandment was that they love one
another as He had loved them (15:12). He transformed the plural commandments
into the singular commandment, indicating that the obligation of mutual love was
somehow the marrow of all that He was requiring of them (cf. 15:17). Moreover,
this mutual love was to correspond to the love He had for them – the love which
corresponded to His Father’s love for Him. Once again Jesus was emphasizing the
new relationship that was coming with the Spirit. As their fruit would be His fruit
and their joy His joy, so it would be with their love: Their Lord’s love for them
was going to manifest itself in their love for one another; in turn, this mutual love
would be the means by which they would bring forth the fruit of His purposes for
the world – the fruit for which He’d called them and set them apart.
Such love is no vague or emotional sentiment; it is the love that inheres in the
God who is love. It is the love of the Father that sent the Son into the world and
the purposeful, self-giving love of the Son exerted on behalf of that beloved
world. Jesus had demonstrated this love and instructed His disciples concerning it
in all of His interaction with them and through His words and deeds in their
presence. He had loved them from the beginning and now His love was about to
reach its apex in the cross (15:13, ref. again 13:1).
Jesus directed His apostles to abide in His love, which they would do by keeping
His commandments. His “commandments” consisted in the body of instruction
He’d given them in light of what was about to transpire. And at the heart of these
instructions was the obligation to love one another with the same love and in the
same way that He had loved them. Hence verse 17: “These things I command
you, that you love one another” (cf. again vv. 10-12). They’d experienced Jesus’
love and were about to witness its supreme expression. Calvary was going to
reveal love as they’d never known it, but for a greater purpose than merely their
instruction. Calvary was going to show them what it meant for them to keep their
Lord’s commandment: They were to give themselves for one another as He had
given Himself for them. In this way they would show themselves to be true and
intimate friends of their Lord (15:14-15). And when they kept His instruction in
this way, they would bear His fruit in themselves such that the world would
perceive the meaning of His coming (cf. 13:34-35 with 17:20-23).
e. This fruitfulness was Jesus’ intent in choosing them (15:16a). He had come as the
Seed of Abraham to bring Yahweh’s blessing to all the earth’s families, but He
was going to carry out this mission of fruit-bearing through those who share in
His life by His indwelling Spirit (cf. Matthew 28:18-20 with Galatians 3:7-29). As
the faithful embodiment of Israel, Jesus was going to reconstitute Israel –
Yahweh’s elect “image-son” – in Himself, but upon the foundation of His chosen
apostles; the first Israel had been founded on twelve men and so would the new
Israel (Ephesians 2:11-22; cf. also Hebrews 12:18-24 with Revelation 21:1-14).
f. Thus their fruit would remain, being the produce, not of themselves, but of the
ever-living vine in which they possessed their life and vitality. This scheme of
fruitfulness – the vine bearing its abundant, enduring fruit in its branches lovingly
prepared by the vinedresser – is the Father’s purpose in the Son by the Spirit, and
thus a matter of infinite glory and great joy. Animated, informed and directed by
the life and mind of the Messiah-Vine, the branches give themselves eagerly and
fully to their blessed task of fruit-bearing – fruit that is the produce of “abiding in
His love” and “keeping His commandments” by living out His love in the world.
This fruitfulness deriving from the obedience of love is the eternal purpose of the
triune God; is it any wonder, then, that Jesus repeatedly insisted that such
“branches” would see their petitions granted (15:16b; cf. again 14:12-14, 15:7-8)?
“Drip down, O heavens, from above and let the clouds pour down righteousness; let the earth
open up and salvation bear fruit and righteousness spring up with it. I, the Lord, have created it.”
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Post by Admin on Mar 31, 2024 13:34:53 GMT -5
4. Jesus’ departure and return in the Spirit was going to result in a new relationship of
mutual indwelling with His disciples. He wasn’t returning in some ethereal, mystical
way, but so as to perpetuate His own life and ministration in and through them. They
were going to carry forward His work in the world – the work for which His Father sent
Him – as branches in the vine. Their fruit would be His fruitfulness in them; for that
reason, their work would amount to the Father being glorified in the Son (14:12-14).
This fruitfulness had its premise in their union with Jesus in the Spirit, but it also
depended upon them abiding in Him (15:4-8). Whatever fruit they might bear would only
be His to the extent that they lived in conformity to His life and mind. Being connected to
the vine isn’t enough; branches can only bear the vine’s fruit when they draw upon the
vine’s vital life forces. Thus the fruit that appears on such branches is acknowledged and
received as the vine’s produce, not their own.
a. So it would be with the disciples’ fruit-bearing: Jesus was going to yield the
produce of His own fruitfulness through them, so that their words and works
would be His just as His words and works had been His Father’s. The fruit
testifies of the vine and the inspectors and harvesters receive it as such. So the
world was going to receive the disciples’ “fruit” as their Lord’s; men would hear
in their words and observe in their works the words and works of Jesus Himself.
And abiding in Him and bearing His fruit, the disciples were going to receive the
same response as He had (15:18-20).
Specifically, Jesus told them to expect the world’s hatred: “If the world hates you
– and it does (and will), remember that it has hated Me before you.” He was
going to join them to His own resurrection life by His Spirit. And sharing His true
humanity as the Last Adam, they would no longer be sons of the first Adam. In
this sense Jesus was extracting them from the world defined and ordered by
fallen, Adamic mankind (“If you were of the world, but you’re not…”).
Participating in Jesus’ life was going to render them aliens in the world such that
it would no longer recognize them as its own. Like a lioness that pushes away or
even kills a cub she doesn’t recognize as hers, the world’s once loving embrace
was going to turn to loathing and rejection (15:19).
Jesus was going to transform His own by conforming them to Himself. It wasn’t
merely that the world would no longer recognize them as it had; it was going to
see Him in them. His return in the Spirit would result in them sharing His image
and likeness (as servants are the extension of their master) and so also men’s
response to Him. Those who persecuted their Lord were going to persecute them,
and those who embraced Him and His word would embrace them and their
proclamation of His gospel and kingdom (cf. 1 John 4:4-6).
b. Jesus wanted His apostles (and all subsequent disciples) to understand that men
would be responding to Him when they responded to them; whether rejection or
embrace, persecution or discipleship, the response would come “for His name’s
sake,” even as His disciples are branches in Him appointed to bear His fruit.
Though this dynamic is universally true, Jesus was particularly concerned with
what lay ahead for His apostles in terms of Israel’s response to them (15:22-25).
His reference to those who “don’t know the One who sent Me” suggests this, but
His subsequent statements show clearly that He had His Jewish countrymen in
mind (ref. esp. verse 25). For they were the ones who’d heard His words and
witnessed His works and then refused Him. Those words and works demonstrated
to the house of Israel that Jesus was the promised Messiah, sent by Yahweh to
redeem them and bring their exile to an end. But, rather than finding deliverance
and restoration in Him, most only heightened their guilt and condemnation. It is in
this sense that Jesus’ words and works caused them to “have sin” (vv. 22, 24).
And committing this sin of unbelief by rejecting their Messiah, they exposed the
delusion of their confidence before God: They believed that refusing Jesus was an
act of zealous devotion to Yahweh, but it actually proved that they neither loved
nor knew Him. By hating Jesus they were hating the One who sent Him – the One
whose promises He’d come to fulfill on behalf of Israel and the world.
And this hatred wasn’t going to end with Jesus’ death; it was merely going to shift
to His disciples. Most in Israel – certainly the religious establishment – were
committed to the Judaism and messianic vision familiar to them and so perceived
Jesus to be a false messiah. More than an irritating distraction, He was a threat to
the status quo and eliminating Him meant that the nation could return to its
business of worship and ministration. No doubt the Jews repaired the torn veil in
the temple and recommenced the temple rituals until God brought it all to a
complete end in 70 A.D. But killing Jesus didn’t end either the distraction or the
threat; His disciples simply picked up where He left off. His words continued in
their mouths – amplified by their insistence that the things He’d declared had now
been fulfilled – and their hands wrought His works of power and renewal. Indeed,
it was as if Jesus still remained alive. The vine was bearing its fruit in its branches
and the ire formerly directed toward it was now coming against them.
c. News of Jesus’ resurrection and subsequent appearances didn’t reverse Israel’s
hatred; quite the opposite, the activities of His Spirit-filled disciples only
intensified it. The rulers and people sought Jesus’ death in order to eradicate His
impact in Israel, but that hadn’t happened. It soon became clear that Jesus would
not be completely eliminated until all of His followers were silenced, whether
through threats, imprisonment or death. And this is precisely what the authorities
and zealous Jews set out to do (ref. Acts 3:1-4:31, 5:12-42, 6:8-8:4, 9:1-2).
This hatred and rejection of Jesus was conscious and willful (5:39-40, 10:22-39;
cf. Matthew 21:23-44), but it was also a crucial point of fulfillment (15:25).
Israel’s sin was entirely its own, and yet it was scripted into God’s purposes from
the very beginning. In making this point, Jesus alluded to two psalms (35 and 69)
which share a couple of important features. First, both are ascribed to David;
secondly, the statement Jesus cited highlights the same central theme in both
psalms, namely David’s appeal to Yahweh for justice in view of the unfounded
and unrighteous hatred and persecution he was enduring from his countrymen.
Jesus was drawing on David’s plight, but not merely as an example of His own.
He was connecting Himself with David in terms of prophetic fulfillment. He
understood David’s prophetic role as Yahweh’s prototypical king – the royal seed
of Judah and man after Yahweh’s own heart through whom He established the
kingdom promised to Abraham (cf. Genesis 15:18, 17:1-7, 22:15-17 with 2
Samuel 8:1-15 and 1 Kings 4:20-21). David was the preeminent typological
precursor of Israel’s coming messianic deliverer-king; indeed God’s covenant
with David specified that this individual would be his royal descendent (2 Samuel
7; cf. Matthew 1:1). Thus the title, “Son of David,” assigned to Jesus by many in
Israel who believed Him to be the Messiah (Matthew 9:27-29, 12:15-23, 20:30-
21:16; Luke 18:35-43); so also Jesus’ own self-affirmation (Matthew 22:41-46).
God had established David’s kingdom – the kingdom He covenanted to Abraham
and reaffirmed at Sinai and in His covenant with David – through his suffering in
hatred, rejection and persecution. No sooner did Samuel anoint David as Israel’s
true king than he was driven away to endure years of humiliation and unjust
treatment before finally taking the throne of the theocratic kingdom (1 Samuel 16-
31). Yahweh established this pattern for David, not primarily because it served his
personal development and preparation for ruling His kingdom, but because of
David’s typological role in the salvation history. He intended David’s experience
as His elect, anointed king to presage and portray the messianic king to come
from him; Messiah, the regal Son of David, would also take Yahweh’s throne
through unjust suffering; He, too, was to be “hated without cause.”
Jesus’ citation, then, connected Him with David as the Lord’s prototypical son king,
but in a particular sense: Like David, the messianic king was to be exalted to
Yahweh’s throne through rejection and persecution. Thus Israel’s response to
Jesus was prophetically necessary. Yes, it was willful and uncoerced, but it was
also a crucial component of His messianic credential; without it, the Law (“torah”
in the broadest sense of referring to the Scriptures) could not be fulfilled.
d. Jesus’ announcement of His impending death horrified the apostles; they saw in it
the end of His messianic mission and their hope of the kingdom. These
circumstances were utterly foreign to their understanding of the Messiah and his
role in Yahweh’s coming kingdom. But contrary to what they imagined, this
outcome precisely fulfilled the divine plan as revealed in the Scriptures.
Rejection, suffering and death were not a tragedy, but the glory of the Father and
Son, being the very means by which everything promised was to be fulfilled (ref.
12:23-32, 13:31-33; cf. also Luke 24:13-27, 44-48). The apostles needed this new
insight and understanding if they were to fulfill their obligation of fruit-bearing in
testimony to Israel and the world. Jesus gave them a glimpse into it by connecting
Himself with David in this way, but full illumination awaited the coming of the
Spirit. Sent from the Father at the dispatch of the enthroned Son, the “Spirit of
truth” would lead the apostles (and all disciples) into the truth as it is in Jesus.
Thus He’d equip them to fulfill their role as branches in Him, bearing His fruit by
testifying in truth and power to the triumphant King and His kingdom (15:26-27).
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Post by Admin on Mar 31, 2024 13:37:34 GMT -5
F. Encouraging the Disciples (16:1-33)
Jesus told His disciples that He was going to continue His presence in the world in the person of
His Spirit. The Spirit would carry forward His testimony in word and work, but now through
Jesus’ followers in whom He reproduced His life and mind. In this way, the Spirit’s relationship
with Jesus’ disciples would parallel the Son’s relationship with the Father: As Jesus’ witness in
the world consisted of speaking the Father’s words and performing His works, so the disciples
were to speak the words and perform the works given to them by the Spirit. And because the
Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus, the disciples’ speech and actions would be Jesus speaking and acting
through them; their testimony, led out by the Spirit, was going to perpetuate and extend His own
(cf. Acts 1:1 with verses 3-8). They were obligated to testify of their Lord as those who’d been
with Him from the beginning, but as men who now knew Him in truth by the illuminating power
of the Spirit of truth (15:26-27).
1. But precisely because their witness would perpetuate their Lord’s, they needed to expect
to receive the same reaction He had gotten. For the most part Israel had rejected Jesus as
a deluded man whose claims to be the Messiah were both blasphemous and dangerous.
Though many likely never saw Him personally or heard Him speak, the assessment of
Him by the ruling elite and their minions was doubtless persuasive. Who better to judge
this man and His claims than those anointed by God and schooled in the Scriptures? And
their assessment was that Jesus was a false prophet and false messiah who, if allowed to
continue, would lead many Israelites away from Yahweh and bring Rome’s wrath upon
the nation. Now Israel’s fear and hatred were reaching a fever pitch about to climax in
Jesus’ crucifixion. The covenant house was poised to execute its Messiah and that same
fate should be expected by those who embodied His life and testimony.
Again John focused on Israel’s response (16:1-3), though the unbelieving world was
equally implicated (cf. 15:18-19, 16:8-11). Jesus mentioned two specifics, both of which
pertained to His Jewish disciples and their Jewish countrymen. First, these disciples
should expect to be expelled from the synagogue. John’s language refers, not just to an
action, but to a change of status; this expulsion from the synagogue meant severance
from the household of Israel. Jesus’ Israelite disciples were going to be branded apostates
– enemies of Yahweh and His Torah. Thus they would share their Lord’s condemnation
and likely His death sentence under the same premise of honoring and obeying Israel’s
God (16:2b; cf. Acts 6:1-8:4, 9:1-2, 21:17-23:12).
a. Ignorance of Yahweh and His Scriptures drove Israel’s rejection of their Messiah
and that ignorance was not going to end with His murder. Illumined and
interpreted by the Spirit, Jesus’ death and resurrection would open the eyes of
many, but that would only fuel the hatred of those whose hearts and minds
remained veiled. What such men had hoped to stamp out was only going to grow
and so would their ignorant zeal. They congratulated themselves that their
treatment of Jesus proved their piety and devotion to Yahweh (ref. 6:24-31, 7:14-
24, 8:1-5, 9:1-29, 19:1-7; cf. also Mark 14:55-64; Luke 22:66-71) and that
delusion was going to persist in their dealings with His followers (16:2-3).
b. Jesus knew the shock, horror and fear awaiting His disciples when they
experienced His suffering and death. And if His death was sufficient to cause
them to stumble, how much more would they be inclined to fall away when the
fury poured out on Him was directed toward them? As troubling as Jesus’ words
were, they expressed His concern for the well-being of these He loved and chose
as His witnesses; He wanted them to be prepared for what was coming so that,
when it did, they wouldn’t stumble. The fact that He’d not told them sooner (16:4)
highlights the difficulty of dealing with such truths. Certainly no one in Israel,
including Jesus’ disciples, imagined that this would be the outcome for the
Messiah. Neither did they envision their own future this way. Even now in these
tender, transparent moments the apostles clearly struggled to process what their
Lord was telling them. But the time had come for them to hear these things; until
then He’d been with them, but now He was returning to His Father and this would
leave them vulnerable on two counts: First, they wouldn’t have him bodily
present to instruct them and carry them in their trials. But His departure also
meant that His maltreatment was going to come upon them. Their circumstances
were about to change in profound ways and they needed to be prepared.
2. Just moments before the apostles were fretting over Jesus’ announcement that He was
leaving them. Now their concern and sorrow took on a whole new dimension and
intensity as He told them what His departure would mean for them (16:5-6). It was
distressing enough that their Lord was going away, but now it seemed they were to be left
alone to endure all of the opposition and persecution He’d experienced. The agony of His
absence was to be compounded by having to bear His maltreatment without Him.
This is the context in which Jesus remarked that none of them asked where He was going.
According to John’s account, Peter had already asked that question and it set the tone for
the discussion going forward (13:31-14:7). Jesus obviously hadn’t forgotten that; what
He was speaking to here was the apostles’ concern at that moment. The things He was
telling them had shifted their attention from the matter of His leaving to its implication
for them. To that point they’d been focused on Jesus’ imminent departure; now their
attention was redirected toward its dreadful significance for them. How despairing to
think that their messianic hopes were to die along with the Messiah. What, conceivably,
would be the use in continuing on with Him dead, especially since their faithfulness
would spell their own suffering and death?
a. Jesus understood their agonized thoughts and immediately assured them that His
leaving was to their benefit, for when He returned to His Father He was going to
send the Spirit to them. He’d already told them this (14:1-26), but now with a
different emphasis. Previously Jesus focused on the Spirit’s coming as restoring
His presence with them and transforming His relationship with them. Now He
emphasized the Spirit’s role in informing and empowering their witness to Him.
Yes, their mission in His name promised suffering and perhaps even death, but
their Lord wouldn’t leave them alone in it; He was going to endure it with them in
His indwelling Spirit (14:19-20). His living union with them would provoke their
persecution and suffering, but it would also sustain them in it.
b. The world was going to come against them as it had their Lord, but specifically
because the world would detect Him in them. Jesus introduced the Spirit’s coming
in terms of its fundamental work, namely uniting people with Him in a new and
profoundly intimate relationship. But the new reality of “I in you and you in Me”
was not the ultimate goal; it was to serve the larger, grander purpose of witness.
Jesus was going to reproduce His life in His disciples so that, through them, He’d
fulfill His mission to the world as the Son of Abraham. They would do His works,
but greater works than He’d done because now He’d have His fullness in them
(14:12; cf. Ephesians 1:18-23). In this way Jesus was going to fill the earth with
His presence and power, and the key to all of this was the coming of the Spirit.
Jesus was emphasizing to His disciples that the Spirit and His work in them was
fundamental and absolutely essential to them fulfilling their calling to testify of
Him to the world. The clear implication – but one that is often missed – is that this
work of witness involves more than merely telling people about Jesus; it involves
manifesting His life and truth to them. This depends upon sharing in His life by
the Spirit, but also being conformed to that life by “walking in the Spirit.” The
witness Jesus was talking about is not men’s testimony concerning Him, but His
testimony through them. And not merely in their words, but in the fragrance they
bear – the witness of who they are and whose they are; the witness of Jesus
Himself through those animated, informed and led by His Spirit. In a Christian
culture that defines “witness” in terms of “salvation formulas” having no essential
relation to the person mouthing them, such a notion is radical indeed.
c. This dynamic between Jesus, the Spirit and the disciples’ testimony is the
framework for understanding His explanation of the Spirit’s work of witness
(16:8-11). Again, authentic witness – the witness to which Jesus was calling His
disciples – is His own witness carried out by the Spirit who testifies of Him
(16:13-15). But the Spirit gives this witness through the words, works and very
lives of those He enlivens, instructs and leads. Jesus was sending His Spirit, not
just to save people and give them life, but to testify of Him through them. And the
Spirit’s witness was going to result in conviction – that is, people being
confronted with the truth as it is in the Messiah. Jesus summarized that conviction
in terms of sin, righteousness and judgment, with each having its own basis.
The Spirit would convict men of sin in view of their unbelief (16:9). But not some
sort of generic disbelief or atheism, but refusal to believe in Him. This connection
between sin and disbelief in Jesus as Israel’s Messiah is a core theme in John’s
gospel and one that Jesus already highlighted in this present discourse (15:22-24;
cf. also 8:21-24, 44-46, 9:35-41). It importantly shows that Jesus wasn’t talking
about sin in general, but the particular offense of rejecting Him. The issue here
isn’t ignorant disbelief, but knowing rejection. Jesus had presented Himself to
Israel openly and purposefully, demonstrating by words and works that He was
indeed Yahweh’s Messiah. He’d spoken and acted in the power of the Spirit, yet
most in Israel rejected Him. They didn’t deny His power, but ascribed it to Satan;
hence their “unpardonable sin” of unbelief (cf. Luke 4:14-30; Matthew 12:10-32).
The Spirit’s presence and power were the unequivocal proof that Jesus was
Israel’s Messiah (cf. Isaiah 11:1-12, 42:1-7, 48:16-49:13, 59:1-21, 61:1-3), yet the
nation refused the Spirit’s witness. He had, through Jesus, convicted Israel of its
sin of unbelief, and so it would be through Jesus’ disciples. The Spirit was going
to continue His witness to Jesus by reproducing His life and mind in His followers
and empowering them as He had done the Lord Himself. In this way, rejecting
Jesus’ disciples would constitute the same sin of unbelief as rejecting Him. So
refusing the Spirit’s witness through Jesus’ disciples would carry the same
sentence of unpardonability. Thus Israel’s sin and guilt would become the
world’s, for what the Spirit testified to the covenant household in the person of
Jesus He was henceforth going to testify through Jesus’ disciples sent out into all
nations (cf. Matthew 10:16-20 with Acts 1:1-8, 2:32-33, 4:1-13, 5:12-32, 6:9-1,
7:55-56, 8:26-39; also Hebrews 2:1-4).
The Spirit was secondly going use Jesus’ return to the Father to convict the world
regarding righteousness (16:10). As with the previous issue of sin, Jesus was here
speaking of righteousness in a particular sense. He wasn’t referring to upright
conduct in the moral and ethical sense, but righteousness related to Him, and
specifically His bodily ascension to His Father. (Hence Jesus’ statement that they
would no longer behold Him, though He was returning to them in His Spirit.) This
righteousness, then, has two dimensions, one pertaining to Jesus and one to men.
The first dimension is the “righteousness” of Jesus’ faithfulness as the Messiah.
He was the embodiment of Yahweh’s own faithfulness, having come to
accomplish all that Yahweh had promised and purposed for the world. Jesus gave
Himself fully to that work, even yielding up His life, as sharing one mind, heart
and will with His Father. This “righteousness” of Yahweh’s faithful Servant-Son
was attested in His resurrection and enthronement as the world’s sovereign King
(cf. Philippians 2:5-11; Ephesians 1:18-23). Not just the empty tomb, but the
ascension in glory evidenced in the outpouring of the Spirit (Acts 2:1-36) testified
that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed Yahweh’s “righteous one” (cf. Isaiah 53:11-12;
Acts 3:12-15, 7:51-56, 22:1-14; cf. also Romans 8:33-34 with 1 John 2:1).
The second dimension is the consequence and implication of Jesus’ righteousness,
which is the righteous obligation to embrace Him in faith. As noted, Jesus’
resurrection and enthronement as sovereign King attest the truth of His person and
work and so call men to respond in truth. In Jesus’ words, His return to His Father
would serve to convict men of “righteousness” – His and theirs. He was going to
send His Spirit, thereby testifying to Israel that the messianic age – the age of the
Spirit – had begun. And that testimony by the Spirit would itself substantiate that
He is the Messiah promised by the Scriptures, the Servant and King who has
accomplished Yahweh’s triumphal work of judgment, purgation, deliverance,
renewal and ingathering. Thus the Spirit, speaking and acting through Jesus’
disciples, would convict Israel (and then the wider world) of His righteousness as
the exalted King of all the earth (Zechariah 14:9; Matthew 28:18) and their
righteousness – that is, their righteous duty to embrace Him as Lord and Christ.
Lastly, Jesus identified judgment as the third aspect of the Spirit’s convicting
work. And He’d convict men of judgment by pointing to the judgment of the ruler
of this world (16:11). Judgment/judging refers to the accurate assessment of
something or someone acording to the truth and thus has a neutral connotation. It
can equally connote vindication or condemnation, depending on the finding. In
this instance, “judgment” as it pertains to men must be understood in terms of the
world ruler undergoing “judgment.” The context shows that Satan is the “world
ruler” who is judged and this judgment consists in his condemnation. And it was
Jesus’ atoning death, resurrection and enthronement that were going to attest this
condemnation and impose its just sentence; the world ruler was to be deposed and
stripped of his authority and dominating power by a new King (ref. 12:23-32,
13:21-27, 14:27-31; cf. Luke 4:5-7; Hebrews 2:14-15; Revelation 12:1-11).
This is the framework for understanding how Satan’s “judgment” convicts the
world of “judgment.” Some suppose Jesus was simply saying that the Spirit
would show the world that Satan had been judged, but He was saying much more
than this. Yes, the events of the coming days would testify to Satan’s
condemnation, but the Spirit’s role was to illumine not merely this fact, but its
crucial implications for the world of men. For Satan is the world ruler – the “god
of this age” whose mind and ways order and administer the world as we know it.
If he has been judged (assessed in truth and condemned), then the “world” – that
is, the human order over which he presides and which conforms to him – has also
been judged and condemned. The Spirit, whose work is to testify of Jesus, was
going to convict the world of “judgment” in the sense of showing human beings
that the world they know – the world which reflects and expresses their
humanness – has been judged as false and condemned in Jesus, the true Man.
The Spirit was going to attest to an atonement that is not so much the payment of
a legal debt as the “putting to death” of the counterfeit satanic humanness by
which every human being is a child of “the Satan” who personifies the reality and
power of antithesis and antipathy toward the truth of God, man and creation as
they are “yea and amen” in Jesus, the true human. But the Spirit would bear this
witness through Jesus’ disciples (15:26-27); they would have to testify of this
judgment and they would do so, not by merely speaking words, but by embodying
the truth they proclaimed. They were going to convict the world of God’s
condemnation and destruction of pseudo-humanness by living out Jesus’ true
humanness in the Spirit’s power (cf. Ephesians 4:1-6:20; Philippians 1:27-2:16).
d. At that moment the disciples weren’t capable of grasping the profound
significance and implications of what Jesus was telling them. Indeed, there was
much more they needed to understand but they weren’t yet ready. Doubtless they
were overwhelmed and baffled, but He assured them that the Spirit of truth would
meet their need of insight and understanding. He would convey and illumine what
they couldn’t presently bear. And what He’d convey was Jesus Himself; the Spirit
of truth is the Spirit of Jesus, and thus He was coming to communicate the Lord’s
life and mind to His disciples (16:13-15; cf. Romans 8:9-10; 2 Corinthians 3:18).
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