As I was growing up in the 80s, most days Harry Potter would be part of my life. Harry Potter was a reporter on Sydney’s channel 10’s eyewitness news, married to the female anchor, Katrina Lee. He was famous, at least in my world, a household name in Sydney. He was real. And he had a quaint, though unremarkable, name. That is no longer the case. Harry Potter lost his name, even though it was his name first. I wonder how he learned to cope with being gazzumped, and having someone else pinch his name.
At church we used to have a fellow called ‘Adolf’, who would come to church. He would comment that our church, which met in a local Christian school’s classroom, was a ‘mickey mouse’ church. Adolf was probably the same age as my father, born during the second world war. It was not his fault that he was called ‘Adolf’. When his parents gave him the name ‘Adolf’, it was probably an unremarkable name. I don’t know what he had to endure, but if he spent any time in post-war Australia, and particularly at school, I would understand it if he had wanted to change his name by deed poll.
The name ‘Judas’ was a popular name. It was a form of the name Judah, the son of Jacob, the progenitor of Jesus’ tribe. The word ‘Jew’ likewise is derived from the name Judah. Jesus had a brother called Judas, whose letter is the book of Jude in our New Testaments. Syrian church tradition tells us that Thomas Didymus had ‘Judas’ as a first name. Another Judas lived in Damascus on Straight Street, and Paul regained his sight in his house. Judas Barsabbas was a companion to the apostle Paul. And then there was Judas Thaddaeus, the son of James who was also was one of the twelve. There were lots of Judases in the early church.
But the traitor had to be called something. And I guess it was appropriate that the son of Simon Iscariot had been given the name of the progenitor and ancestor of the whole tribe of the Jews. For it was the Jewish leadership who had turned against Jesus.
But now for the rest of church history, Judas Thaddaeus would be known as the ‘not Iscariot’ Judas. And it wasn’t even his fault. Sorry about that, Judas Thaddaeus, the not Iscariot Judas.
Jesus has delayed his departure from the upper room to discuss the future with the eleven disciples that remain. And before Jesus leads them out into the cold night air, Jesus will answer a final question from the little known other Judas.
John, the disciple who Jesus loved, is the only Gospel writer to record anything that Judas did or said, and then attributed it to him. (This is true, even if Judas Thaddaeus is the one who wrote the letter of Jude in our New Testament, which I do not concede or assume.) So here is Judas Thaddaeus’ five minutes in the sun, so don’t miss it. Verse 22:
14:22Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, what has happened, that you are going to reveal yourself to us and not to the world?”
Judas has picked up what Jesus has said in verse 21, that the one who obeys him will receive Jesus’ self-revelation. And he seems to have put this together with the fact in verse 19, that the world will no longer see Jesus, but the eleven will see the resurrected Jesus. And so Judas’ question is, “What’s changed? Why will you show your bodily resurrection just to us and not to the world?”
And the answer to that question in the first instance is ‘nothing has changed’. But Jesus doesn’t explicitly say it. But it is implicit in verse 24, where Jesus reasserts that “the word which you hear is not mine but is the Father’s who sent me”. This reminds us that Jesus is only and always does the Father’s will. Nothing has changed about that. Jesus never intended to appear publicly after his resurrection. He always intended to gospel to go out not through his personal testimony, but through the apostles’ testimony. For the Scriptures long ago said that the Christ, the Son of David would sit at God’s right hand, until God had placed all his enemies under his feet (Psalm 110:1). That is the Father’s ancient plan. And so the apostles must go out to bring everything under Christ’s feet, while he sits at God’s right hand.
But I can understand Judas’ question. Remember that Judas Not Iscariot has been asked with another ten men to tell the Graeco-Roman world—which has an emperor and numerous lesser despots, kings, and governors, all with their egos and enough power to avenge them—that Jesus is risen Christ and Lord and they need to get rid of their gods.
And if that is what Judas has in the back of his mind, then the question is, “Jesus, why don’t you show yourself publicly after you rise from the dead? That would make it a fair bit easier, wouldn’t it?”
Think about our work of evangelizing and making Christ known. Imagine if Jesus turned up on the nightly news, and gave media interviews 24/7 to the world’s media for a week. Wouldn’t that get rid of a whole lot of stupid objections to faith in Jesus?
But even if Jesus appeared publicly, that doesn’t mean that evangelism would be easier. Jesus himself said that if people “do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31). Publicly appearing as risen from the dead will not convince people who don’t want to be convinced, just as hearing a voice from heaven won’t convince the people who hear it if they don’t want hear it (John 12:27-30).
So Jesus answers Judas’ question by not answering it, but by re-iterating his previous point about love and obedience.
Over twenty years ago, there was a youth ministry book called ‘No Guts No Glory’. As a student minister, it became my go-to resource for how to run a youth group. There was an excellent illustration in it. It talked about two different ways to attempt to build a youth group.
The first was the ‘dump truck’ method. The idea was basically that you put on some extravaganza or attraction—water slides, outings, free food—and try and have enough crowd control and gospel to convert at least some in the crowd. It was essentially ‘bait-and-switch’—come to youth group for fun, and get Jesus. There are so many problems with this model that I will just say to just avoid it.
But the second approach, the one that I think is basically correct, is the ‘pearls on a string’ method. This involved settling with a smaller, more sedate youth group which put the bible and the gospel at the centre of their time together. And as churched young people were won over to Christ and his gospel, they would bring their friends to youth group bible study one person at a time. They were inviting their friends not to be part of some crazy and out-of-control youth fun-fest, but to discover from the Bible what God said, and for us to work at living it out together. And surprise, surprise, we got to have fun with each other as well, but a more rewarding, satisfying joy from real relationships and shared fellowship, not a never ending search for a new youth high.
It was this method, the pearls on a string method, and not the dump truck method, that actually worked to produce genuine conversions and long lasting results. It worked! The pearls on the string method saw young people converted, and go to Bible college, and still be Christian almost 20 years down the track, contributing to churches and being thoughtful Christians as they head into middle age. Hey, some even became youth ministers themselves, and some that I least expected.
When confronted with Judas’ ‘show yourself to the world’ question, Jesus shuns the ‘dump truck’ method but adopts the ‘pearls on a string’ method. For the risen Jesus will not make a spectacle of himself before the world in the hope of winning the masses, but will give the apostles the model of winning the world one person at a time. Verses 23 to 24:
14:23Jesus answered and said to him, “Anyone who loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love that person. We will come and make our dwelling with that person. 14:24The one who does not love me does not keep my word.
Jesus here divides the world up into two groups of people—those who love and obey him, and those who don’t. Father and Son by the Holy Spirit will come to indwell that person—a reference to the union with Christ by the Spirit that John mentioned in chapter 14 verse 20. And the one who doesn’t love Jesus is known by their disobedience to Jesus’ word. The one not believing will not have union with Christ, and thus not have the indwelling Spirit, Son, and Father.
As part of his answer to Judas Not Iscariot, Jesus also reiterates the promise of the coming of the Spirit which he gave in John chapter 14 verse 16. Verses 25 and 26:
14:25“I have spoken these things to you while I remain with you. 14:26But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and will enable you to remember everything which I have said to you.
In verse 26, Jesus promised the disciples as apostles that the Holy Spirit with teach the disciples and enable them to remember. The Holy Spirit will ‘remind’ them of everything Jesus has said to them. This promise must be for the eleven, as we as twenty-first century believers can’t be reminded of anything Jesus said to us. Jesus didn’t say anything to us personally that we witnessed in the flesh, but he did say a lot to the eleven face to face that they needed to remember. So John 14:26 is not a promise for us. Rather, it is a promise for the apostles.
Now, we use diaries, and alarm clocks, and post it notes, and do lists, and cue cards, and planners, and secretaries, and wives, to remind us of important things. And no one likes to be thought of as merely a diary or post it note. It’s hardly the sexy ministry option. “Hey guys, on the ‘gifts inventory’, I got ‘reminding’ people about stuff. Cool, huh?” The person who reminds people of stuff is in danger of being accused of nagging. It’s just annoying. Who ever thanks an alarm clock?
But that is the very spiritual ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit reminded the apostles of everything that the Lord Jesus taught them while he was with them on earth. That is why we can trust John’s Gospel. It is a Spirit empowered and a spiritually remembered Gospel. In this sense, the promise of John 14:26 belongs to the apostles alone. They were with Jesus from the beginning of his earthly ministry. They saw the signs of his glory. They saw and touched and heard him.
But in a secondary, derivative sense, the promise is for us, because the promise of John 14:26 is the reason why we can believe what the apostles wrote. Their memories were enhanced and enabled by the Holy Spirit. When they received the Spirit after the resurrection, the apostles were able to compile their accounts of Jesus. They were able to recall everything that Jesus said—even to the point of remembering the question Philip and Judas Not Iscariot asked, and the answers (or non-answers) Jesus’ provided.
We saw an example of this in John 2, where John and the other apostles remembered the incident and the specific words Jesus had said after he rose from the dead. John 2 verse 22:
2:22So when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus said.
Jesus left it up to the apostles who were with him from the beginning to bear witness to what they had seen and heard. The Spirit of truth enabled them to bear witness, both in their oral and written testimony. He will not only remind the apostles of what Jesus said, but the Holy Spirit will show them what is yet to come.
Jesus is really going away. And so he gives what looks like a traditionally farewell of peace in verse 27:
14:27“I leave you peace, I give you my peace. I don’t give you peace like the world gives it. Do not let your heart be troubled or afraid.
Jesus is different from the world, so his peace that he leaves is different from the world. In the first place, Jesus’ peace is sincere, but the world’s is hypocritical, because the world hates Jesus and his disciples. In the second place, Jesus leaves the Holy Spirit who can enable and empower peace—peace with God, peace with others, and the inner peace of a quite mind. And in the third place, it is a permanent peace which issues in eternal life—an abundant life with his provision for us as our good shepherd.
The peace that this broken world brings, under the rule of Satan, is only ever transitory. And just as earlier in John 14, Jesus comforted his disciples on the basis of their trust in God, and he encouraged them to similarly to trust in him, so here Jesus comforts them by giving and leaving them his peace.
In verse 28, Jesus gives a reason why the disciples can rejoice that he is going away:
14:28If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than me.
The Father is greater than Jesus, so the disciples should rejoice that Jesus is going to the Father.
At first glance there appears to be a conflict between this statement and Trinitarian orthodoxy. Jesus says that the Father is greater than him. Yet the Athanasian Creed says of the persons of the Trinity, that “none is greater, or less than another”.
So is Jesus himself excommunicated and anathematized by the Athanasian Creed? Is the Creed more Trinitarian than Jesus? Or is the Athanasian creed just plain wrong?
No, none of these is the explanation for the supposed contradiction. Once both statements are understood properly, the contradiction is seen to be strictly formal, not real or substantial, and both statements express different aspects of Trinitarian theology.
Jesus is only ever the Son of the Father, and as every Father knows, Fathers are greater than sons. Just ask my sons. They know that I am in a sense ‘greater’ than them (I wish, but let’s keep going with my fantasy). I am the alpha male. I am the head of the house, not them. But my sons and I are equally human. We share not only human nature in general, but we also share each other’s DNA. My sons came from my body, and are bone of my bone, and my flesh and blood. Yet in my relationship with them, I am greater, and they are less. And indeed, I only will ever be my sons’ father, and I will expect them to respect me as such, even if and when they’ve grown up and have homes and children of their own.
In the same way, Jesus the Son is fully God, and equal with the Father. He is just as eternal as the Father. But he also willingly submits the Father and obeys him. It is not nor can it be the other way around, because fathers don’t obey sons, but sons obey fathers. That is expressed in Jesus becoming human. But it also is expressed in the fact that Jesus always has obeyed the Father, even before he was human. And afterwards, the Son will put everything under the Father’s feet, because he loves the Father.
The reference in verse 29 is to Jesus returning to the Father in verse 28—that is, the ascension. So John 14:29, “And now I have told you before it happens [Jesus going to the Father: v. 28], so that when it happens you might believe.
But Jesus is not simply returning to the Father. For to be exalted to the Father’s right hand, Jesus must be lifted up high on the cross. And Satan has gone out to put the events that culminate in such a grizzly glorification in train—in the person of the notorious, name shaming, Judas Iscariot. And so in verse 30 he points out that this also is about to occur.
14:30I will not speak with you much longer, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he does not hold anything in me […]
The first point about Satan is that he is coming. Now, Satan in a sense has gone out in the person of Judas, when night and darkness fell. But Judas will come back with a posse under the cover of darkness. For darkness is Satan’s time. And so Satan is coming back in that way.
But the second point is that Satan’s return marks a horrible injustice. For the judicial execution of Jesus Christ is a disgusting obscenity, a vile and putrescent abomination, on the face of God’s earth. And Satan is front and centre in bringing it about, inspiring Judas and organizing the hatred of the religious leaders. It is for this reason no less an act of God, for ultimately Satan is merely a tool for the achievement of God’s saving purposes. But in another sense this is the hour of Satan’s ‘coming’. Of course he has been involved up until now—he entered Judas after all. But his ‘coming’ points to his ‘time’, his prominence, his unveiling himself and his malice, and this is his glory, when he appears to have won a great victory.
(This presence of Satan prior to his ‘coming’ shows again that a simplistic view of the ‘coming’ of the Holy Spirit that does not acknowledge his ministry in the disciples prior to Pentecost should be rejected. )
But though Satan will appear to win a battle, he will not win the war. In fact, his supposed victory in the crucifixion of Jesus will be the decisive act that loses him the war.
Satan has nothing on Jesus and thus has no hold on Jesus. Jesus cannot be accused of sin. Jesus has only ever spoken the truth from his Father. Jesus has only ever obeyed the commands of his Father. So the judicial threats Satan uses, so effective against us because of our sin, have no carriage with Jesus. Jesus is the Teflon man. The accusations of the devil simply don’t stick to him.
Moreover, Jesus is the resurrection and the life. He has life in himself, and he gives life to whoever he wants. He is the general resurrection brought into the present. So Satan’s normal ‘tricks’, his holding humans enslaved to the fear of death, will not work. Death and Satan have no hold on Jesus. You’ve got nothing on Jesus, Satan.
And the wonderful thing is that Jesus shares his ‘teflon’ qualities with us. Though Satan has much on us, and we rightly fear death as the wages of our sin, Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. His death will be the means of us overcoming Satan—by the blood of the lamb and the word of his testimony. Satan has now been cast down out of heaven, and no longer has any standing to accuse us. And all of this is about to be achieved on the cross, and by the resurrection, when Jesus bears our sins and defeats death.
Jesus will endure all of this not only because of his love for us, but far more importantly, because of his love for the Father. Verse 31:
14:31but so that the world might know that I love the Father, what I am doing is just what the Father has commanded me. Arise, let us go from here.”
Being beneficiaries of Jesus’ sufferings and death, of course we rightly think that Jesus died for us. And this is true. But it is not the only truth, nor is it the most important truth for Jesus as he looks ahead to his suffering. It is not his love for us that he mentions here that is driving him to the cross, but his love for the Father. Of course Jesus loves us. But it is not all about us. Jesus’ death is first of all about the Father, before it is about us. It is about the Father, and his will. The work Jesus does is commanded by the Father, and he does it willingly, because he loves the Father.
So Jesus and his eleven disciples leave the upper room. They have a short evening walk across the Kidron Valley, to an olive grove that they frequented many times before. But now, as they head into the night air, Jesus will take the opportunity to further teach the disciples. For Jesus only has a matter of hours with his disciples, and he knows it.
My Translation
14:22Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, what has happened, that you are going to reveal yourself to us and not to the world?”
14:23Jesus answered and said to him, “Anyone who loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love that person. We will come and make our dwelling with that person. 14:24The one who does not love me does not keep my word. And the word which you hear is not mine but is the Father’s who sent me.
14:25“I have spoken these things to you while I remain with you. 14:26But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and will enable you to remember everything which I have said to you.
14:27“I leave you peace, I give you my peace. I don’t give you peace like the world gives it. Do not let your heart be troubled or afraid. 14:28You have heard that I said to you, ‘I am going away and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than me. 14:29And now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens you might believe. 14:30I will not speak with you much longer, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he does not hold anything in me, 14:31but so that the world might know that I love the Father, what I am doing is just what the Father has commanded me. Arise, let us go from here.”
Concerning the grammatical gender of ὁ παράκλητος in verse 25, and the masculine demonstrative which refers to it, ἐκεῖνος, see Exegetical Note on John 14:17.
Regarding Jesus’ statement in verse 28b, “If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than me”, at first glance there is conflict between this and Trinitarian orthodoxy. Jesus says that the Father is greater than him. Yet the Athanasian Creed says of the persons of the Trinity, that “none is greater, or less than another”. So is Jesus himself excommunicated and anathematized by the Athanasian Creed? Or is the Athanasian creed just plain wrong? None of these extreme positions is necessary, once both are understood properly. The contradiction is formal, but not real or substantial.
The first (to my mind, partial) solution lies explicitly within the Athanasian Creed itself, and that is that Christ is speaking of his human nature: “Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead: and inferior to the Father, as touching his manhood”. And that is a true statement. That is, the Creed recognizes that in the economy of salvation there is an inferiority (and presumably a superiority) in the personal relations subsisting between Father and Son. So Jesus as a true human regards the non-incarnate Father as greater because the Father never became man. And that is true as far as it goes.
But a second solution which moves us a step further and moves to the heart of the issue lies not in the incarnation but in the ontological permanent personal distinctions that distinguish the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. These personal distinction are indeed outworked in the incarnation—that it was the filial nature of the Son that meant that he, and neither the Father nor the Spirit, was incarnate. Indeed, these personal distinctions too are taught by and held in the Athanasian Creed. The Son is begotten of the Father not made, but the Father is neither, and the Spirit is neither begotten nor made but preceeding, or spirated, from the Father and the Son.
So there is a link between the explanation based on incarnation, and that based on personal distinction. This solution and the first can co-exist and provide a resolution to the tension we have observed, but this second point on personal distinction explains and is foundational to the incarnation.
So it is clear then that the reference to “none greater, or less than another” in the Athanasian Creed does not refer to the taxis or order within the Trinity—which has certainly been part of orthodox Trinitarian thinking from the first—but to the unity of essence or substance of the persons of the Godhead. Each person of the Godhead is equally eternal and fully God, and neither is before or after in the sense that each is utterly eternal, and none were created or made. However, each is a distinct person with personal distinctives that cannot be communicated to the other and that are unique to that person. The Son is Son, not the Father, and is begotten eternally, which the Father is not, nor cannot be.
These personal distinctives are reflected in the order inherent in the relations between the persons of the Trinity. The Father is regarded as the font of divinity, which does not mean that Son or Spirit are made or created, but does mean that he is the source of begottenness of the Son and the source (with the Son) of procession or spiration of the Spirit, The Son is begotten from eternity. This does not mean that the person of the Son has a beginning or was created, made, or born as God the Son (though God the Son was incarnated in time). It means that the nature of his eternal relationship with the Father is that of Son. It is a filial relation. This is true of the ontology of the person of the Son, and in conformity with this, the Son in the economy of salvation submits to and obeys the Father. This submission to the Father is inherent to and consistent with his filial relationship to the Father. And it is a non-reversible filiation, which creates an asymetrical pattern in the relationship, for the Father does not obey or submit to the Son, despite the fact that Father and Son are completely equal as to their divine nature, essence, and eternality. Likewise, the Spirit proceeds or is spirated from the persons of the Father and the Son, and yet this is asymmetrical, because there is no such procession of the Father and the Son from the Spirit. And while there is a mutual indwelling of the persons, this does not relate to their order, but their essence, for the mutual indwelling of the persons is an aspect of their essential and substantial ontological unity.
We can call this a voluntary subordination of co-equal and co-eternal persons, and this is true, but there is more to be said, because there is also a sense where the nature of the relation is also fitted and appropriate to the divine person’s personal distinctiveness. That is, the submission of the persons in the economy is a product of the order and personal distinctions in the ontology. That is not to say that the Son is any less God, or any less eternal, or any less in majestic. There was never a time when the Son was not. But it is to say that the co-eternal person of the Son submits as Son to the Father, and this is native and appropriate to his eternal sonship and filial personhood.
The Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and the Spirit is spirated, or proceeds from, both the Father and the Son. The Father is begotten of none, and spirated of none. The Son is spirated of none. The Spirit begets none and spirates none. These relations are both expounded by the Athanasian Creed, and are also fitted to and appropriate to the personal distinctiveness of each divine subsistence. But each of the distinct Triune persons is of one being, one nature, one-substance, one essence, co-eternal, consubstantial, sharing of the one divine essence or substance, and in this sense, “none is afore or after the other” and “none is greater or less than another”. The glory of the persons is equal and the majesty is co-eternal.
The Father is greater than the Son, then, in the order that is appropriate to the Father being Father, and the Son being Son, and the Son’s actions being consistent with that. The incarnation is one of those actions consistent with the Son’s eternal filiation and sonship. But also the submission, obedience, and voluntary subordination of the Son to the Father is also fitted to the Son’s eternal personhood as Son.