abiding in us

Study Notes for 10-27-13, John 14:15-24

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Below are study notes for John 14:15-24

14:15-17 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. [16] And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, [17] even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

“If” You Love Me

Here we see that the prerequisite for obedience to Christ’s commands is a love for Him.  That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?  I mean, if we are in love with the Lord Jesus, then of course we will want to obey Him!

But the next thing that should come to mind is that we can’t obey the law even if we do love Jesus.  The disciples don’t even get a chance to ask the question, which should be: How are we supposed to follow all of your commands, or even want to do that all of the time? Instead, Jesus anticipates the problem and promises the Holy Spirit to them.  Until now they have had Him as their helper – that is why Jesus says “another” helper.  The first “helper” was Jesus, and the second is the Spirit (later I will explain the term “paraklētos” which is the Greek term translated “helper” here).

If we examine the passage closely, we’ll notice that all the way from verse 15 or so through about verse 26 there is a theme that Jesus develops for the disciples, namely, that the Holy Spirit will come to represent Himself.  Jesus is going away, and He wants to comfort the disciples and prepare them for that absence by explaining not only what they will need to do, but how they are going to do it.

Now the Holy Spirit’s role is obvious from the verses we read here, and what we’ll read below. Here the Spirit is said to help us by causing us to love Christ. You might not see that immediately, but that is the clear implication.  For those who love Christ obey His commands, and because its clear that Jesus knows we need help to obey commands, we must also need help to love Him.  John would write about this in his epistles:

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. (1 John 4:11-13)
 
We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19)
 

And so it is that the Spirit is the one who creates in us a love for God. He softens our hearts, and speaks softly to us, explaining the great truths of God’s gospel.  Without His initiative, we would still be dead in our trespasses.

Jesus explains here also that “the world cannot receive Him”, that is to say that on our own we cannot receive the Spirit of God. It isn’t up to us who receives the gift of the Spirit. God is the one who sovereignly chooses who He will to abide with. We’ll address this in more depth in just a moment…

You know Him Already

The last thing Jesus says in these three verses is that the disciples already know the Spirit. This is a mysterious thing.  Pastor Scotty Smith writes:

As Jesus continues instructing his disciples in advance of his ascension we enter the most profound teaching about the Trinity to be found anywhere in the Bible. There is much mystery here, but let us affirm what is clearly in the text. The better we know Jesus, the more Trinitarian we will become. The gospel is the means by which we enter the fellowship, love, and joy shared by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit throughout eternity – a staggering thought indeed.
 

Therefore, we should look closely here at what Jesus is saying and marvel a bit…Jesus can say, “You know him” Because, “he dwells with you and will be in you.” Let’s not miss this, because I think it’s a really important statement. What Jesus is saying is that even though they don’t yet have the Spirit living inside of them, they have been with Jesus, and that is tantamount to knowing the Spirit already. For not only is Jesus filled with the Spirit, but when the Spirit comes it will be as if they have Jesus right there with them – only now instead of having Jesus walking the hills of Judea with them, they will have Him in their hearts.

Why is this important?  Because you have that same Spirit, Christian! You have the Lord Jesus’ Spirit living within you, you are the temple of the living God. His mind, His will, His love for you is embodied in the fact that He sent His Spirit to you.  What I mean by this is that He has a plan and a love for you, and He is working that out through the power and person of the Holy Spirit.

To have the Spirit is to have Jesus, and to have Jesus is to have the Father, as we shall soon see…

This is why it is vital to understand that our God is a triune God, and that He is three persons, each with different roles.

14:18-20 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. [19] Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. [20] In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

First, I want to note that at the end of verse 18 we see here that Jesus says, “I will come to you.” This just further shows what I mention above about how Jesus Himself is coming to us in the form of His Spirit.  They are not one in the same person, rather, they are so alike in their mind and purpose that we cannot tell them apart.  They are on the same mission, and they are both part of the One Godhead. Having the Spirit is tantamount to having Jesus live within us – that is what Jesus is saying here.

The entire idea is tied up together in verse 20, “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” That is the whole idea!  This is DEEP water we’ve just wandered into.  But what an amazing thing.  Jesus is teaching us something about the Trinity here, and about how role in the Kingdom. He is saying that His bride, that’s us, will be “in Him” and He will be “in us” just as He is “in” the Father. Don’t miss this. Cherish this. This is such profound, such wonderful truth that you can’t forget it.

What are the consequences?  Well I can think of several, but especially one: if we are that close to Christ and that “in” the Trinity, then surely there is nothing (as Paul writes in Romans 8) that can separate us from His love!  In other words, to separate us from the love of Christ would be like separating Jesus from the Father, or the Spirit from Jesus.  It is unthinkable, in fact, it is impossible.

Adoption and Love

Now, secondly, since we have seen and laid the foundation for understanding how Jesus will be with us, and how it is that we will do those greater works (in and because of the Spirit), we see that there is a side-benefit to having Christ go away…we are adopted into His family!

I think that verses 18 and 20 are closely tied to 21 and 15.  What I mean by that is that Jesus is saying that by loving Him, it shows that you are part of His family. Love is a by-product of family membership. Love happens for two reasons: First, because the Spirit has adopted us into the family by regenerating us to everlasting life and enabled us to love as Christ loves, and secondly, because of His work we have a desire to love. So there is His initiating action here, and our obedient response.  Jerry Bridges calls this “dependent responsibility” because not only to re require Him to start us off on the path, but we rely on His help to stay on the path.

So we see here that love is a mark of family membership.  We love because we are adopted!

Lastly, and more particularly to this passage, I want to note how Jesus says, “because I live, you also will live.”  What He means here is to signify the importance of the resurrection. Because we are “in” Him, that means that when He conquered death, when He arose from the grace, when He ascended into heaven, that we, too, arose and are guaranteed heaven.  Why? Because, again, we are “in” Him.  To be “in” the Lord is to be guaranteed all of the promises that He has earned for us.

Listen to how Paul describes the Spirit’s interaction with our spirit in reminding us of this great promised adoption:

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (Romans 8:15-17, ESV)
 

Therefore, because He earned life, we get life. Because He was perfectly righteous, we are made perfectly righteous in the eyes of God. Because He broke the bonds of sin and death, we too have been loosed from sin, and will never taste spiritual death.

Think about the significance that the resurrection now has in your mind and your life. If Jesus never rose from the grave, then all of this is moot (1 Corinthians 15:12-19). We’d still be dead in our sins. But Jesus is here saying (ahead of all of this even occurring, mind you) that when He rises from the dead, we too will walk in “newness of life.”  This is what Paul was saying in Romans 6:

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:4-11)
 

Later Paul adds:

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8:9-11, ESV)
 

14:21-24 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” [22] Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” [23] Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. [24] Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.

Here we have once again the reiteration of what Jesus said earlier.  Verse 21 and verse 15 are almost identical. If we love Him we keep His commands.  It harkens us back to the sermon on the mount where Jesus said that those who bare fruit are those who are His.

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. (Matthew 7:15-20)
 

The second thing that Jesus says here is that, “my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”  This is very much like verse 20 when He said, “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”  The idea here is that not only is Jesus in us, but that the Father is also in us.  This would have been enough to blow the minds of the disciples.

NOTE: this passage, along with others, has been historically used to support to filioque insertion in the Nicene Creed which states that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. It is this addition that eventually helped create a schism between the Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin/Catholic) church (the major historically recognized year of this is 1054, even though the problems and disagreements started well prior to this). 
 

We read earlier how Philip said ‘just show us the Father and that is enough for us Jesus!’  And I explained how the Jews thought of seeking the face of the Lord, and the face of God, and how Aaron’s benediction embodied this idea of being blessed by the revealing of God’s face to us one day. The idea derives from the time when Moses learned that no man can see God and live, but was allowed to view God’s “hindquarters” (in anthropomorphic language).  The idea being that God’s face is so glorious and so bright and resplendent that to view it would be too much for a finite creature to handle – we would die instantly.

Now here we begin to see the sweetness of the revelation we have in NT times. Not only has God sent His Son to us in the incarnation, not only did He die for our sins and impute to us His own righteousness, but He has gone a step further still.  He is going to live within us – His Spirit abiding in us! Meaning, as Jesus says here, that the Father and the Son will essentially be using us as their temple on earth.  They will be manifesting their presence on earth through us!

Have you stopped to consider the ramifications of this? We have become to used to the idea of the immanence of God, that we forget who it is we’re talking about here. We forget so easily in our day that this Being who inhabits the believer is the same one who spoke the universe into existence!

If that doesn’t lend some sobriety to your walk with Christ I don’t know what will.  Because Jesus is reminding us here that if we really love Him, you will pursue Him, you will obey Him, you will understand the reality that the God of heaven and earth has deigned to come down and live – in you!

D.A. Carson is right to mention that, in a very strong way, this passage builds on antecedent passages about the Spirit, the one that I want to mention most particularly is in 4:23-24 where Jesus (speaking to the Samaritan woman) says:

But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:23-24, ESV)
 

Oh the sweetness, oh the condescension, oh the love of God in this! Can you not see how crucial this is to understand?  God has sought out those who will worship Him in “spirit and in truth” – He is doing this by putting His Spirit within us. He wants us to know Him properly, and for our minds to do this He must be the first to act.  He must take the initiative, and He must powerfully work within us. As we read earlier:

It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. (John 6:63, ESV)
 

Jesus is urging us on here to think DEEPLY about the reality of what is going on here. You must take this seriously and understand the privileges and responsibilities associated with being a Christian. This is a call to loving, awe-filled obedience to your Lord.

Not to the World

Lastly, I didn’t want to skip over what Judas says here because he has a good question. He has heard Jesus say already, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  So if God loved the “world”, why is it that He won’t manifest Himself to the world?

The answer is that while God loves His creation, He has a special and specific plan of redemption for His chosen sheep. We start with the prerequisite understanding that the world cannot receive Him because the world does not want Him.

And contrary to the rejection of Christ, the world will not have a “choice” to accept the Spirit in the same way they saw the incarnate Christ and rejected Him. For the Spirit’s mission, though a continuation of Christ’s, has different objectives, that is to say that Christ is working to accomplish something new through the Spirit (the next phrase of His redemptive plan), namely the quickening of all those whom the Father has predestined to life and the reside within them, fashioning them after His image, and keeping them (preserving them) until the day Jesus Christ returns or we die and join Him in Heaven.

Be sure of one thing: Jesus knows who will believe and who won’t (see John 6:64), and He will not cast pearls before swine. He will not reveal His glory to all. Those who receive the Lord Jesus and the joy of eternal life are those whom He has chosen, those whom His Spirit has softened and called to Himself.  This is, of course, the work of the Spirit. He is the one doing the softening and calling and regenerating.

The world cannot receive the Spirit, not because the Spirit isn’t the one doing the work, not because the Spirit can’t soften the hearts of men. But simply because the Spirit isn’t going to soften the hearts of all men. He isn’t going to be sent to the whole “world”, but rather to those for whom Christ died.

Study Notes 10-20-13: John 14:13-14

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Whatever you Ask, I will Give
John 14:13-14
 

14:13-14 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. [14] If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

The Heart of Jesus for His Sheep

This is one of the most comforting verses in all of Scripture. It speaks to the mind of Christ for His sheep. He cares about us; He is our advocate in heaven. Ridderbos says the focus on this section is “the progress of Jesus’ work and the involvement of his disciples in it, as well as doing this work and keeping his commandments, the assistance of the Spirit as the ‘other Paraclete’, and Jesus’ ongoing fellowship with is own.”

Christ begins by emphasizing in verse 13 that whatever we ask and need while He is “away” He will grant us.  He wants us to know that we will be fully equipped if we ask for the resources He gives. He’s speaking most especially, in this context, of spiritual resources. The disciples here aren’t concerned with material blessings, but with the presence of their master. Jesus wants them and us to know that though He is going away, He will still be with us, He will see our trouble, our needs, and He wants them and us to know that we can come to Him with our troubles. This is the universal teaching of the New Testament. Christ pleads for us to come to Him with our desires, needs, and cares. The author of Hebrews reminds us of this, and says:

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:14-16)

Paul also says:

This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. (Ephesians 3:11-12)

And Christ says in Matthew’s gospel:

Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Matthew 18:18-20)

Note especially that what He is promises in this Matthew passage is His presence.  All of these things can be done because He is here with us. We can do “greater works” (vs. 12) because He is the one here manifesting His power through us to spread the gospel. Therefore His being here is the key, and we’ll talk more about that and we are to understand this clearly in the verses to come.

Whatever We Want?

As we examine the specific nature of what Jesus is saying here, it is impossible to miss the fact that Jesus says that He will give us “whatever” and “anything” we ask of Him. Those statements seem pretty wide open, don’t they! In fact, it’s statements like these that lead immature believers to assume that they can just waltz into the throne room of the Most High and order whatever happens to be on the menu of their heart at the time. Of course all the while claiming this promise, and fully expecting their demands to be met.

After all Jesus says here just “name it and claim it” right?

Then they are disappointed that their requests are not answered. What’s worse, they chastise other believers who try to correct them on their misunderstanding of the promise. They say, “You just don’t have enough faith!  Don’t be such a hater. Jesus promises this so I’m claiming it – you just don’t have the faith necessary, so don’t hate on me for asking of the desires of my heart!”

In fact, many people take this a step further into the extremely inane and silly by posting “blessings” on Facebook, Twitter and via email.  The thought is that if you tweet, forward, or repost these “blessing” messages that you will be blessed. These messages often make great claims that cannot be substantiated. One such message I read recently said this:

REPOST:

Please read this…Not Joking…

God has seen you struggling with something. God says it’s over! A blessing is coming your way. If you believe in God, send/post this message on and please don’t ignore it, you are being tested. God is going to fix two big things tonight in your favor. If you believe in God, drop everything and pass this on.

Now where in the world do things like this come from? From the pit of Hell. Let me explain why using this, rather typical message, as an example.

Note that the message above claims that God will “fix two big things tonight in your favor.”  It presupposes that the person posting has the power (not merely the faith) to assert that God is going to “fix” these things (whatever that may mean). Of course this will ONLY happen if you repost the message. As if God wants to see that you love Him by reposting this error-filled tripe. The arrogance of these little blessing messages can easily be missed. This one even claims that God will “fix” specifically TWO things “in your favor” – which presupposes that by reposting, your subjective opinions and desires will be immediately bowed to by the God of the universe. He will see your post, and immediately snap into action!

This isn’t new my friends. This is superstition masquerading as true spirituality, and it preys on the uneducated and easily manipulated. The fool in his folly not only reposts, but chastises others for correcting his idolatry! This same superstitiousness was used in the medieval ages to manipulate the uneducated poorer classes to support crusades, despotic and evil popes, corrupt kings, and twisting of church doctrine until it was used to justify every wish of those in power.

And what is worse, we commonly wink at this. We let it go. We see someone we know posting it, and don’t say anything. For those who do stand up and correct a brother or sister, be warned, there will be consequences. There will be backlash. Superstitious, uneducated foolishness parading as Christianity is Satanic. Period.

As we examine how to correctly understand the passage, it will become clear why this is such a distortion of the passage, and how Christ expects us to understand fellowship with Him.

How to Rightly Understand this Passage

First, I want to remind us that these great promises of Christ are not new in the sense that they are tied to His character, for God has always been desirous that we have a heart which mirrors His. In fact, we are reminded of how closely aligned with Christ’s words are those from Psalm 37:4-5, which says:

Delight yourself in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him, and he will act.
 

That verse first says “take delight in the Lord” and the consequence of this is that he will give us the desires of our hearts – in other words, he will give us Himself if we first are delighting in Him, because it is presupposed that the delight of our heart and its chief desire is “the Lord.” Therefore, He will bless us with our greatest desires when those desires match His!

For more evidence of this, look at what John says in his first epistle:

Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22 and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. (1 John 3:21-22)

We’ll speak more to this keeping of the commandments a little later on, but note that we have confidence to ask “whatever” we need and know He will give us these requests if we are keeping His commandments – we keep His commandments if we are walking in the Spirit. If we are acting this way and in this mindset then necessarily what will occur is that we will be asking for things that accord with His will.

Now turning back to the passage in John 14…we cannot isolate this from verse 12, which says that we will do “greater” works than what Christ did on earth. It is in the context of Christ carrying out His work in us that He gives us the reassurance of His fellowship with us. The idea is that as we are doing His works, not greater in power but in number, He is the one working through us.  If we need help (and we do), then we are to come before His throne to ask for that help.

Furthermore, Jesus says here that he will give us what we ask in order that “the father may be glorified in the son.” This statement qualifies our requests – it shows us the purpose for the request.  Jesus is saying that the whole purpose of Him giving you “anything” or “whatever” you ask is that the Father might be glorified!

This happens in the following ways:

  1. When we ask for things in the name of the Son the Father is glorified in the lordship of the Son, because this lordship exhibits our desire to please Him, and mirrors the relationship that the Father and the Son have together. In other words, the Father is glorified in the Son because Christ is glorified in us. The Trinitarian relationship is made manifest, and it reflects back the Father’s own glory (Heb. 1:3).
  2. The Father is glorified in the Son because when the Son answers our requests He exhibits his power, mercy, grace, kindness and love – all of which are character qualities shared with the Father. Therefore, by His acts of love on our behalf, the Son exhibits the heart of the Father.
  3. The Father is specifically glorified in the Son because “whatever” He grants will be in accordance with the “greater works” (vs. 12) of the Son. In other words, when we ask for “whatever” we need, it is in the context of verse 12 and doing His works, which is to say that we are asking for His help to do His work. We are basically bowing before Jesus and saying, “this is Your work Lord, give us help to do this work of Yours.” The Father is glorified in this because it is the Son doing the work and it magnifies the Son’s work and the Father’s plan and character as (again) mirrored in the Son and His creation (us).

In sum, when the Son is glorified, the Father is glorified because the Son acts according to what he knows will delight His Father. The Father’s supreme plan and headship over all things is brought to glorious revelation before his creation and within the Trinity itself when the Son acts on behalf of his creation.

Ridderbos affirms this view, and though these comments are extensive, I think they are right on point, and worth soaking in:

…the saying here is not intended as an unconditional pledge that every believing prayer, of whatever content, will be heard. The saying must be understood in immediate connection with what precedes: it ties in with ‘for I go to the Father’ and explains the ‘for’ by suggesting that from his position in heaven Jesus will do whatever the disciples ask with a view to the glorification of the Father in the Son. This saying must always, in fact, be understood anew in this context, with regard to both what Jesus’ disciples may ask of him, the Exalted One, and what they may expect as answers in this earthly dispensation. The main point is that by putting so much stress here an in what follows on prayer in his name, Jesus is pledging to his disciples that he is not withdrawing from them by his departure but will be able, because of his heavenly glory, to give them everything they will need for the continuation of his work on earth, and he refers them to prayer as the way of his continuing fellowship with them.

Therefore, the Son would never grant us “anything” that did not conform to His ultimate desires and plan for our lives. He will not just give us “whatever” if “whatever” does not first conform to His plan for us. In fact, we must admit that there are times that the Son give us things we do not want in order to prepare us for the thing we want most, namely Himself and heaven. So that in all things the Son is acting on our behalf and for our best interests, even when we stray from asking the things that accord perfectly with His will. This is why, by the way, it is so very important that Christ be fully divine and fully God.  He must know all things because if He didn’t know all things, then our theology would be mangled, and our hope would be in ourselves rather than in Christ’s omniscient all-powerful guiding hand.

When we replace superstition for true spirituality, we replace Scripture with myth and exchange Christ’s authority for a false authority (for there is no other true authority in the universe, only pretenders, i.e. Satan, and ourselves). When you “name it and claim it” or “repost to get blessed” you make God your cosmic butler who will “fix” things in conformity to your plan and not His.

He has a purpose, and His purposes will be carried out in and through us because He is here with us. “The Son’s purpose does not change: he enables his own to do ‘greater things’: in order that he may bring glory to the Father” says Carson.

D.A. Carson gives a wonderful summary of verses 12-14 and prepares us for the following passage:

Glorified with the glory he had with the Father before the world began (17:5), the Son is no longer limited by the pre-death humanness that characterized his ministry. At that point redemption is won, the kingdom of God is triumphantly invading the nations with saving and transforming power, the locus of the covenant community stretches outward from its Jewish confines to embrace the world, and the disciples themselves are empowered and equipped to engage in far-reaching ministry. The latter turns on the first of the Holy Spirit, which gift is about to be introduced into the discussion (vv. 15ff.).