John’s Gospel contains a record of seven signs that Jesus did. These signs were miraculous works of power. They were written down by John so that we can see that Jesus is the Christ, and the unique, only begotten Son of the Father (John 2:30). That is the whole purpose of the ‘signs’. They point to a unique, divine person, the only one who has seen God, been at the bosom of the Father, and has made God known. They are amazing. A unique person does unique signs to show that uniqueness. And so Nicodemus said to Jesus, “you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could do these signs which you do, except God was with him” (John 3:2).
So it is surprising, then, that Jesus would promise that his disciples would do the same works, and greater works than what he was doing. Verse 12:
14:12“Truly truly I say to you, the one who believes in me will also do these works which I am doing, and will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.
The object of this talk is to work out what Jesus means when he says this. What are “these works” that the believer will do? What are “the greater works” that the believer will do?
The fact that the Father is ‘in’ the Son is important. The indwelling of the Father is the reason or basis for Jesus’ claim that he is doing the works of and speaking the words of the Father. So in verse 10 he says, “I am in the Father and that the Father is in me” and so he says, “the words which I am saying to you, I am not speaking from myself, but the Father who remains in me is doing his works”. This phrase in verse 10 is significant for understanding what follows. Notice how easily Jesus relates “the words” he is saying and “the works” the Father is doing. And also observe that if Jesus speaks words, they are the Father’s words, and if Jesus does works, they are the Father’s works. And then in verse 11, Jesus bids Philip to believe, if not on the basis of the claim that his words convey, then on the basis of the works themselves.
In John’s Gospel, the miracles or works of power are actually specifically called ‘signs’—they testify that the Father is in the Son and that the Son is doing the Father’s works, and that the Father is working in and through the Son. Having come this far in John’s Gospel, we know that believing in Jesus because of “signs”—a spectacular subset of the “works” that Jesus did—is always and only ever a starting point for believing. It is not the mature believing of hearing Jesus’ words. The sheep hear the voice of the shepherd, and come to him. But it is the immature believing on the basis of Jesus’ ‘signs’, the amazing and attention-grabbing things that can be seen, that Jesus is not frequently impressed with (cf. John 3:1-2). However, believing in Jesus on account of his signs is certainly better than not believing at all.
A ‘sign’ points away from itself and to something or someone else. That’s just what ‘signs’ do. And so if people get stuck in looking at the sign, they have missed the point. They are like children at Christmas time who play with the wrapping paper and the box in which the present has come, but ignore and forget about the present itself. So it is with those who are fascinated with the ‘signs’ and spectacular works of Jesus, but do not enter into believing in the words of Jesus. But, as we shall see, in this verse the difference between the ‘works’ of the Father and the Son, and the ‘words’ of the Father and the Son, is not really as great as it first appears.
As amazing and fantastic as the works and signs that Jesus has done in John 1-12 surely are, Jesus makes an astounding promise for all believers in verse 12:
14:12“Truly, truly I say to you, the one who believes in me will also do these works which I am doing, and will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.
This is a promise not just for the apostles. It is specifically given to “the one who believes in me”. It is a broad and general promise to any and every believer. Jesus declares that those who believe in him will first “also do these works which I am doing” and “will do greater works than these”. Here is a promise for the believer, any believer, will do two classes of works—first, the same works that Jesus is doing, and second, greater works than these.
Ironically, I find the “greater works” easier to understand than “these works” which Jesus was already doing. However, with a little bit of careful Bible reading, we can accurately identify both of these classes of ‘works’.
Jesus solemnly promises, in the first part of verse 12, “Truly, truly I say to you, the one who believes in me will also do these works which I am doing”. Is this a blank cheque for every believer to be able to walk on water, feed thousands, heal the sick, and raise the dead?
Our experience certainly says that this is not true. But for Bible believers, we can never rest there, when our experience contradicts the promises of Jesus. This incongruity inevitably must raise the question that the problem is not the promise, but ‘our believing’ that has led to ‘our experience’ of not seeing the fulfillment of the promise. If we don’t experience what Jesus promised, is ‘our experience’ deficient, sub-Christian, and therefore indicative of our ‘unbelief’? And if our experience indicates that we are so unbelieving that we cannot do the miracles that Jesus promised believers, what makes us think that our believing is adequate to save us from God’s wrath, or that our believing will enable us to take hold of the eternal life that Jesus promises us?
So the pastoral consequences of our inability to do Jesus’ ‘signs’ is stark, and eventually, destructive of believing in Jesus. I can’t walk on water or feed the 5000, heal the sick or raise the dead—so I don’t have eternal life. What’s the point? And off we go, with those disciples who stopped believing and ceased following Jesus at the end of John chapter 6.
Even more serious is the problem that such an understanding of the promises in verse 12 does not seem consistent with Paul’s view of the spiritual gifts. Paul clearly says that not all true Christians have each gift, and particularly not all Christians have the gifts of healing or are workers of miracles (1 Cor 12:4-11, 27-31). And such an expectation is also not consistent with the fact that the signs of Jesus were unique acts even in the Bible, pointing out that Jesus himself is unique—he is God the only-begotten. Nor is this view consistent with the fact that the miracles of the apostles were unique as vindications of the eyewitnesses testimony they bore.
Moreover, it is clear that the idea of ‘works’ is much broader than the idea of ‘signs’. We see this in John 6:28-29, where the crowd ask, “What should we do to work the works of God?”, and Jesus answered, “This is the work of God, that you believe in he whom that one has sent.” So ‘works’ can include a number of different human responses to God and Jesus, including ‘believing’.
So we need to reassess what are “the works” that Jesus is doing in verse 12. We certainly need to question the assumption that “the works” there are the ‘signs’. And for this, we must go back to verse 10.
In response to Philip’s request to Jesus to “show us the Father” (vv. 8-9), Jesus in verse 10 makes two points. The first is about who Jesus is, his identity. Jesus says that “I am in the Father” and “the Father is in me”. The second point follows from this, and talks about what Jesus actually did, his actions. “The words which I am saying to you, I am not speaking from myself, but the Father who remains in me is doing his works”.
What is essential to perceive if we are to crack this exegetical ‘tough nut’ is to realize that at first glance we think that Jesus is ‘mixing his categories’. We have assumptions when we come to Jesus’ words here—and they might be wrong! In verse 10b, Jesus says that ‘the Father’s works’ are shown in his own ‘words’. This is troubling if we come to this passage expecting to see a strict distinction between Jesus’ ‘works’ and his ‘words’, and particularly Jesus’ works as ‘signs’. But since the Father indwells the Son, ‘the words of Jesus’ are rightly categorized by Jesus as ‘the works of the Father’. The words of Jesus are an outworking of the reality of the Father’s indwelling in the Son.
That is, the Father’s ‘works’ are Jesus’ ‘words’.
And in any case, ‘words’ are and can be ‘works’, just as much as ‘signs’ are. Modern theologians call them ‘speech-acts’.
This observation then opens us up to the probability that the works of the Father in verse 11, and to which Jesus is referring Philip, are in no way to be confused or equated with the ‘signs’ that Jesus has performed, and that John has recorded, in the so-called “book of signs” in John 1-12. Rather the ‘works’ the Father is doing are in fact the ‘words’ that Jesus is speaking there and then to Philip. The “works themselves” in verse 11 are nothing other than the ‘words’ that Jesus is here saying—because paradoxically Jesus himself says that they are not his, but the Father’s.
If I am correct in this, then two important consequences flow for our explanation of the nature of the promise in verse 12.
The first is that the phrase “these works which I am doing” can refer to the words of each and every believer after the coming of the Spirit. Their words will actually be the Father’s works, just as the Son’s words here are the Father’s works. The words in both cases express and reflect the indwelling Father. The key to understanding the nature of the works of which Jesus is speaking (v. 12), is that they are the product of the Father’s indwelling. After the ‘coming’ of the Spirit at Pentecost, each and every believer will do the works of the Father and that are the result of the Father’s indwelling. This is because each and every believer will have the Spirit, and will thus have the Father indwelling them also through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, in whom the Father dwells. So the works of the Father in the believer are “these works” that the Son does, and they are words that express the Father’s indwelling.
The second consequence is closely related, but is well worth spelling out explicitly, and it is that the “works” which Jesus is doing—and that therefore the believers will do—constitute a revelation of the reality of the indwelling Father. Each and every believer likewise reveals the indwelling Father, who lives in them by the Spirit of truth given to them. This understanding of Jesus’ words best accounts for the breadth of Jesus’ promise.
So “these works which I am doing”, which are done by any and every believer, is the speaking of words that reveal the Father. This every believer can and will do.
Once we have worked out what “these works which I am doing” refers to, the phrase “greater works than these” in verse 12 should not cause such great problems to us. We have found that the phrase, “these works which I am doing” refers to the revelation of the Father who indwells the person (either Jesus or the believer) through the words that they say. Believers will do this by their speaking the very words of God from the Father, showing that the Father indwells them. It would be fitting, but not necessary, to find that there is an organic relationship between “the works that Jesus is doing” as he speaks to Philip (and which all believers will do), and the “greater works than these” which all believers will also do, but that Jesus is not at this stage of either the narrative or salvation history is doing.
Jesus really and truly revealed the Father to Philip by speaking only what the Father worked in him. What was frustrating and disappointing for Jesus was what was at best Philip’s ‘imperfect’ believing, or what at worst was Philip’s inability to believe at that time that the Father was in the Son as Jesus spoke to him. Jesus must command Philip to do this believing, which conceivably he is not doing, or is at risk of not doing. It is likely, then, that “the greater works than these” are a revelation of the indwelling and works of the Father that not only truly reveals the Father’s indwelling and outworking by one’s words (this Jesus does, and all believers will be enabled to do), but also by bringing this revelation to saving effect in those who hear those words by the hearers actually believing them.
That is, the “greater works” are not just truly revealing the Father (Jesus did that!), but are greater because they have produced ‘believing’ and thus ‘believers’ as a result of that revelation. At the time of Jesus saying these things, he was struggling even to have the eleven believe his words. He is, after all, talking to Philip, one of the twelve (now reduced to eleven), bidding and exhorting Philip to believe. Judas Iscariot has just left to betray him, Peter will not long after deny him, and all the others will be scattered and run away from him. But on the day of Pentecost, as narrated in the Acts of the Apostles, the disciples are transformed into apostles, they really do believe, and there are real conversions of unbelievers, and people actually begin believing in the risen and ascended Jesus and come to have eternal life. That by far is greater than what Jesus in fact had achieved by the night before he died, when he was effectively left all alone to suffer for our sins.
And successful evangelism is open to any believer to experience in accordance with God’s secret will. After Jesus’ resurrection, the eleven are regathered. Then the believers in Jerusalem are regathered and number 120. Another 500 are regathered in one place, possibly in Galilee. The Jerusalem gathering of 120 grows to 3000 on the day of Pentecost, and continues to grow thereafter. This is greater than what Jesus achieved before his lifting up in death and resurrection.
When Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared to the disciples and we read, in John 20:22-23:
20:22And having said this, he breathed and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 20:23If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven them. If you retain anyone’s sins, they are retained.
This work of forgiving and retaining sins is part and parcel of the greater work. The fact is that John has narratively linked forgiveness with the death and resurrection of Jesus by the placement of the commissioning in John 20:22-23. The ministry of forgiveness—the greater works inherent in the successful mission and ministry of the disciples—is inextricably linked to the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Of course this ministry of forgiveness given to the disciples is greater than the works that Jesus is doing as he speaks the Father’s words to Philip—because in John 14:12, Jesus hasn’t yet been lifted up and glorified! His work has not yet been accomplished. The foundation of forgiveness—Jesus being the sacrificed lamb of God to take away the sins of the world—has not yet been laid and does not yet exist in time and space at the point of John 14:12.
The last line of verse 12, “because I am going to the Father”, is an allusion to the consequence of Jesus going to the Father, which is the sending of the Spirit. The sending of the Spirit to the apostles on the day of Pentecost from both the Father and the Son is the reason the disciples will be enabled to do both “the works” of the Father which Jesus was doing and also “the greater works’. This too applies to us, because the Spirit comes to and indwells every believer, as the other Scriptures say (e.g. Luke 11:13, Rom 8:5-9).
Since in verse 12, all who trust in Jesus are given the privilege to continue and exceed the work of Jesus, this therefore is your privilege, too, and mine also, as believers in Jesus Christ.
Are your dreams tied up with doing the “works that Jesus is doing” when he talks to Philip, and the “greater things that these” which we can now be a part of, through the Spirit?
It is true that these words are spoken directly to the eleven, but they are spoken about every believer (v. 12). Both the apostles and us are believers, and thus both the apostles and us are promised an effective ministry of creating believers through our preaching of Christ just as they did. It is promised us that we too will do greater works than Jesus, just like the apostles—for it all depends on ‘believing’. I believe, therefore I have spoken. It is open to us to believe, and therefore to speak. So undoubtedly, we too can do “the greater works” that Jesus talked about.
The life in this world which you have left is one in which you can give yourself to the greater things than Jesus himself did. You can have an effective ministry of bringing the lost to Jesus Christ who has gone to the Father. Are you up for it? Are you going to do the “greater works”? Or are you going to waste your short life on ‘lesser’ things, ‘lesser’ works, ‘lesser’ pursuits? Now is the time not just for ‘the good’, or even ‘the great’, but for the ‘greater than Jesus’ things.
Let’s pray.
My Translation
14:10You believe, don’t you, that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me? The words which I am saying to you, I am not speaking from myself, but the Father who remains in me is doing his works. 14:11Believe me that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me. But if not, believe because of the works themselves.
14:12“Truly truly I say to you, the one who believes in me will also do these works which I am doing, and will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.
According to many commentators on verse 12, and certainly at first glance, believers doing the same works which Jesus is doing seems an obvious reference to the ‘signs’ that Jesus has done in John chapters 1-12. The promise seems a bold and broad promise that all believers will do all the works which Jesus has done—and by “works”, we think of the “signs” of turning water to wine, paralyzed to walking, multiplying bread and fish, walking on water, bringing the boat back to base, once blind now seeing, once dead now living. It would seem to be these works that are “the works which I am doing”. And the promise seems to be that believers—any believer, “the one who believes”, and not just extra special believing believers or apostles—will also do these works.
It is clear that no disciple himself or herself is greater than Jesus. For we read in John 13:16, that Jesus says, “a slave is not greater than his Lord, neither is an apostle greater than the one sending him.” So we are not greater, but these category of works apparently are the same, and indeed we will do greater works than these.
Nevertheless, immediately we are confronted with a first conundrum. These signs and works that Jesus did have been written down by John so that we can see that Jesus is the Christ, and the unique, only begotten Son of the Father. The whole purpose of the ‘signs’ is that they point to the unique, only begotten Son who only has seen God, been at the bosom of the Father, and makes God known. Yet, Jesus seems to be saying that these works will not be so unique after all, at least after his ascension. It is not immediately obvious how this is so.
The second conundrum we need to solve—as we test whether the reference is to ‘works’ as ‘signs’ or ‘miraculous powers’ is whether as a matter of fact the apostles’ works recorded in the Acts of the Apostles and elsewhere are of the same order (or greater) as those worked by the Lord Jesus.
Undoubtedly, they were astounding miracles worked by the apostles after Jesus ascended and sent the Spirit. The judgement on Ananias and Sapphira is certainly miraculous, supernatural, and indicative of God’s judgement, but it is not the same as what Jesus did—for none of Jesus’ signs or works of power were associated with taking anyone’s life (Acts 5:1-10). This might be an example of a work that is greater, or it might be a work that is less, but it is difficult to see that it is the same. The same might be said of the judgement of blindness for a time upon Bar-Jesus or Elymas the magician of Cyprus at the hand of Paul (Acts 13:4-12). This is indeed similar to the chastisement the risen and exalted Lord Jesus visited upon Paul himself (Acts 9), but again, Jesus during his pre-passion earthly ministry didn’t not exercise this kind of disciplinary ministry—at least, none of the Gospel accounts record this sort of ministry of judgement at the hand of Jesus upon his professing believers during his three year ministry to Israel. The reason for this omission is readily at hand—Jesus came not to condemn the world but to save the world during the period recorded by the Gospel accounts. However, his ministry during his exaltation and session (that is, when he is seated at God’s right hand) does involve this aspect of chastisement of the saints (cf. Acts 1-3 and his warnings to and discipline of the churches of Asia Minor).
So we might say that the apostles at times in Acts did the same sort of ministry as the glorified Jesus did. But was Jesus referring to his glorified ministry of chastisement when he promised they would “also do these works which I am doing”? The “works themselves” in verse 11, which are referred to in verse 12, are almost certainly that which were done before Philip’s eyes and in his presence during Jesus’ earthly Palestinian ministry, because Jesus bids Philip there and then to believe on account of them. So it cannot be a reference to Jesus’ works as exalted and ascended Lord.
The miracles at the hand of Paul, and via handkerchiefs and aprons he touched (Acts 19:11-12) are certainly akin to that of Jesus for the benefit of, for example, the bleeding woman (Mark 5:25-34 and parallels). As a matter of fact, we are not told whether Peter’s shadow falling upon a supplicant was adequate to heal (Acts 5:15-16)—it might have been, and if it did, this is similar to, and arguably greater than, Jesus’ healings and that of Paul.
Peter heals Aeneas from his 8 year paralysis (Acts 9:32-35), which is similar to John 5, but the degree of difficulty with Jesus is greater. Nevertheless, only a pedant would say they are not of the same class with Jesus’ raising of the paralysed. Moreover, certainly Paul raised Eutychus (Acts 20:7-12) and Peter raised Dorcas/Tabitha (Acts 9:36-43) from the dead, but when compared with the raising of a four-day-dead Lazarus, the degree of difficulty of Jesus’ miracle as recorded by John is greater (John 11). But that does not mean that in kind or genus they are not the same. Nothing like the feeding miracles is recorded of the apostles. Moreover, the apostle Paul himself became sick in Galatia, he left Trophimus sick in Miletus, and Timothy had frequent ailments. So the promise of the same works or greater works do not exclude the normal sickness or sufferings of life that affected even the chosen missionaries.
Even if we were to grant the above, however, and that the apostles did the same works or even greater works by the miracles wrought at their hands, the nature of the promise Jesus makes, being to “the one who believes in me” requires that the promise of doing the same sort of works not be limited to the apostles. That is, certainly the apostles may be examples of the fulfillment of the promise of doing the same sort of works as Jesus did, but the promise requires more—nothing short of every believer doing the same works as Jesus was doing. So an analysis of the Acts of the Apostles and the miracles of the apostles and others there does not take us very far.
A third conundrum is that there are few if any credible reports of believers in the Lord Jesus down the centuries doing the things that Jesus did in John 1-12. And even if we were to multiply the examples of miracles by especially gifted healers in every generation after Christ, and accepted them all as genuine and proven (which I do not concede), even this does not satisfy the strict bounds of the promise—for the promise extends to any and all who believe. The promise is of such breadth that, prima facie, any and every believer should do the same works as these, and therefore over the history of the Christian church and in every generation, and by no less than every believer.
Such a universal understanding of the promise—that it applies to every believer and it involves the spectacular signs Jesus did—does not seem consistent with Paul’s view of the spiritual gifts, that not all have gifts of healings or are workers of miracles (1 Cor 12:4-11, 27-31).
So these realities send us back to the beginning of our process of exegesis. We need to reassess what are “the works” that Jesus is doing in verse 12. For this, we must go back to verse 10.
In response to Philip’s request to Jesus to “show us the Father” (vv. 8-9), verse 10 makes two points. The first is ontological, in verse 10a: Jesus says that “I am in the Father” (ἐγὼ ἐν τῷ πατρὶ) and “the Father is in me” (ὁ πατὴρ ἐν ἐμοί ἐστιν). This is the teaching of the mutual indwelling of the Father and the Son, which we have already looked at. The second point follows from the ontological, in verse 10b, and refers to the acts of Jesus in the economy of salvation, which spring from the ontological reality. “The words which I am saying to you, I am not speaking from myself, but the Father who remains in me is doing his works” (τὰ ῥήματα ἃ ἐγὼ λέγω ὑμῖν ἀπ’ ἐμαυτοῦ οὐ λαλῶ, ὁ δὲ πατὴρ ἐν ἐμοὶ μένων ποιεῖ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ).
What must be noticed, and what is essential to perceive if we are to crack this ‘tough nut’, is what we would at first glance think of as a ‘mixing of categories’ in verse 10b. That is, Jesus says that ‘the Father’s works’ (ὁ δὲ πατὴρ […] ποιεῖ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ) are shown in his own ‘words’ (τὰ ῥήματα ἃ ἐγὼ λέγω). We normally have a strict distinction between Jesus’ ‘works’ and ‘words’, and particularly Jesus’ works as ‘signs’. But given the reality of the indwelling of the Father in the Son (ἐν ἐμοὶ μένων), ‘the words of Jesus’ are rightly categorized by him as ‘the works of the Father’. The words of Jesus are an outworking of the reality of the Father’s indwelling in the Son. The Father’s works are Jesus’ words. And in any case, ‘words’ are and can be ‘works’, just as much as ‘signs’ are.
This observation then opens us up to the probability that the works of the Father in verse 11, and to which Jesus is referring Philip, are in no way to be confused or equated with the ‘signs’ that Jesus has performed, and that John has recorded, in the so-called “book of signs” in John 1-12. Rather the works the Father is doing are the words (τὰ ῥήματα) that Jesus is speaking. The “works themselves” (τὰ ἔργα αὐτὰ) in verse 11 are the words that Jesus is saying—because paradoxically Jesus himself says that they are not his, but the Father’s.
This then allows us to make another observation, that Jesus’ uses the present tense forms to refer to his Father’s works and his own works and words (v. 10: λέγω, ‘I am speaking’, λαλῶ, ‘I am saying’, ποιεῖ, ‘he is doing’, v. 12: ποιῶ, ‘I am doing’). This use of the present tense forms is quite consistent with them in fact referring to the contemporaneous verbal acts of Jesus that John is narrating, and not the ‘signs’ that have now at this stage of John’s Gospel been left long behind in the narrative past. That is to say, Jesus is showing the Father in the narrative present as he speaks to Philip. He need not be referring back to the previous signs that showed the Father earlier in chapters 1-12 in John 14:12 at all. He is in all likelihood referring to his words at the very time he is speaking, that they are the works of the Father and reveal the Father to Philip, because the Father indwells the Son. The Son’s words as he speaks them to Philip are the Father’s works who indwells the Son.
These observations and the understanding that flows from them have two important consequences for our explanation of the nature of the promise in verse 12.
The first is that it follows that the phrase “these works which I am doing” can refer to the words of each and every believer after their receipt of the Spirit. Their words will actually be the Father’s works, just as the Son’s words here are the Father’s works. The words in both cases express and reflect the indwelling Father. That is, the key to understanding the nature of the works of which Jesus is speaking, “these works which I am doing” (v. 12), is that they are the product of the Father’s indwelling. After the receipt of the Spirit, each and every believer will do the works of the Father, that are the result of the Father’s indwelling, because each and every believer will indeed have the Father indwelling them also through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, in whom the Father dwells.
So the works of the Father in the believer are “these works” that the Son does, and they are words that express the Father’s indwelling.
The second consequence is closely related, but is well worth spelling out explicitly, and it is that the “works” which Jesus is doing—and that therefore the believers will do—constitute a revelation of the reality of the indwelling Father. Each and every believer likewise reveals the indwelling Father, who lives in them by the Spirit of truth given to them.
This understanding of Jesus’ words best accounts for the breadth of Jesus’ promise and most satisfyingly accounts for the present tense forms.