John 14:8-21: After Dinner Conversation Starters No 4: Philip's Question: I will send an Advocate, You Must Love, You Will Do Greater Things

Introduction: Promises For The Vulnerable

I now work in a residential care facility. They used to be called ‘nursing homes’. They are still called ‘nursing homes’, because they are still run by nurses, who wonderfully, beautifully, and self-sacrificially serve people by caring for their needs. They nurse people who can no longer look after their own basic physical needs.

Now, at our particular nursing home, all the residents are high care. And they all have various and different needs that must to be attended to.

But it is not easy for the nurses or any of the carers to juggle all the residents needs. And so sometimes several residents are calling out for help at the same time. All need to be tended to, but promises need to be made to get to all—because the carers are only human. “I’m sorry, I’m with Iris, but Bec will be around in a little while to help you. I’m tending to Fred, but I will be there in a minute once I’m done.” And of course, this is true of relations at other work places, or in business, or in our families.

Our world runs on promises. Promises for us able body and relatively independent people make our society liveable. We depend on each other telling the truth and keeping our commitments. But for needy and vulnerable people, promises are even more important. They cannot help themselves, and so they are even more dependent on the promises given to them.

Context

Jesus’ disciples at this point of their lives can be classed as vulnerable people. That sounds strange, to describe burly salty fisherman as needy and vulnerable, but they are. Big boofy men get afraid too, and especially when you take their leader away and tell them to go into the world to do a seemingly impossible task.

In our passage, Jesus is speaking to his eleven disciples on the night before he died. They have just finished the Passover meal—lamb roast, with bread and bitter herbs. Jesus has washed his disciples feet, as an acted parable of his love for them. He has told them to do the same. He has sent out his betrayer, Judas, to do his foul and loathsome task of treachery. And he is preparing his disciples for his own death and departure. So Jesus is under a fair bit of pressure—he is human, after all. And the disciples are grief stricken and confused—they are fallible, human, and sinful, just like you and mean.

And John continues to record for us the conversation around the dinner table. As the utensils are being cleared, Jesus has dropped such a bombshell—I’m going to die and one of you will betray me—that he delays his departure from the upper room to continue his discussion with the eleven disciples that remain with him.

Jesus recognizes that they are in a needy and vulnerable position. Jesus says as much, when he compares them to ‘orphans’. Orphans are perhaps the most vulnerable group in any society. But before they go out together in the cold night air, Jesus will respond to two questions, and the first one is from Philip. Today’s passage records for us Philip’s question, and Jesus’ response to it.

Philip’s Thoughtless Question, “Show us the Father?” (v. 8)

Philip’s question is a thoughtless and somewhat insensitive one, and Jesus will spend from verses 9 to 21 responding to it. Verse 8:

14:8Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and that is enough for us.”

Philip wanted what Moses wanted (Exod 33:18)—to see what no sinful human has ever seen nor can see—God himself. Philip wants to see God the Father, he who is pure spirit, the font of all divinity, the one from whom all fatherhood is named and derived.

While in the incarnation, God has come near to us in the person of the Son, Jesus Christ, the Father did not become incarnate, but dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see (1 Tim 6:16). The hymn, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty” reflects this reality. When we sing “though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see”, we are reaffirming this reality. Likewise, we read in John 1:18, we read that “no one has ever see God.”

But this is the wonder of the incarnation, of God becoming flesh and pitching his tent among us. God has condescended to show himself to us. For John 1:18 also says that God the only begotten has made this unseen God visible to humanity. God has chosen his method to reveal himself to us—a method involving him becoming everything we are, except sin. God stoops down to become one of us, so that he might not only reveal himself to us, but be united to his creation permanently, in the incarnation.

People want to look at the sun, especially if there is an eclipse. But they must not look directly at the sun with the naked eye, or they will burn their eyes out and go blind, such is the heat and light emitted by the sun. Sun glasses and beer bottles aren’t adequate for safe observation of the sun. A reflection of the image is required, if you want to both look at the sun, and keep your sense of sight.

God has provided the safety equipment, the personal protective clothing to gaze at God. The safe way to do it is Jesus. Jesus as God the Son is the very image, reflection, and effulgence of God the Father. But he is safe to look at, because he is God become human. He is one of us.

Now what Philip wants, at one level—to look full in the face of God—is a good thing. He wants what the created human heart should naturally long for—to know ultimate meaning in life, to know its creator, and to look at the one in whose image we have been made. Part of us as humans wants to lay eyes on God. We want to see our creator. That is understandable.

Of course, the other half of us as sinful humans wants to run away from God, and wants to take what is God’s for ourselves, and wants to be God. But exposing this aspect of sinful human nature is for another time.

Jesus’ Shocked Response: “How Can You Say That?” (v. 9)

But what makes Philip’s request so dull, so thick, so lacking in perception, and if I might say so, so thoughtless to our Lord Jesus Christ, is that for the last three years, he has been staring with safety into the very face of God himself, with his eyesight preserved and protected by the incarnation. Philip is the beneficiary of God’s decision to approach us and make himself known to us in a way that is safe for us, because God became one of us (John 1:14). But clearly that is not enough for Philip, because he doesn’t understand what he has been looking at.

We must understand Philip’s lack of understanding. That is how we will understand Jesus’ response. Jesus’ astounded response to Philip is in verse 9:

14:9Jesus said to him, “I have been with you for such a long time, and you do not know me, Philip? The one who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

Jesus exclaims, “Don’t you know me?” It’s a question that many children end up saying about their parents, or sons to their fathers. CS Lewis said of his father, “After having known me for so long, he knew me so little.” It’s sadly what many people can say after 30 years of marriage: “Don’t you know me even after I’ve been with you such a long time.”

The first thing we should notice is the astounding arrogance of what Jesus says—if it were not true. Jesus says, “if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father”—that is, God. No wonder the Jews elsewhere picked up stones to stone him (e.g. John 8:58-59).

However, from the mouth of Jesus, such words are only the unalloyed, simple truth, spoken with utter sincerity and genuine surprise. So pure, honest, and open is Jesus Christ with his disciples, that as he freely speaks with them of his intimate relationship with the Father. That is reality as Jesus experiences it. This is why Jesus is genuinely shocked that Philip cannot appreciate what is just normal and everyday for him—that he is the very image of God himself, Son of the Father, making God known.

But the second thing is that I as a sinful human cannot be too critical of Philip, because I’m really no different from him. I don’t like to see scary things, but like Philip I want to see more than what God has deigned to give me at this time. I don’t appreciate what I’ve been given, just as Philip didn’t. I don’t thank God for the safety equipment of the incarnation he has given me to keep me safe. I’m too am slow to believe, and thick headed to understand what has been given me in Jesus, just as Philip was. So we need to be careful in our condemnation of Philip.

But third, there is a poignant sadness in Jesus’ words here: “I have been with you for such a long time, and you do not know me, Philip? […] How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”

Philip knew Jesus well enough to get Nathaniel to come and see him. Philip told Nathaniel as soon as he met Jesus that he had found the one written about in the Scriptures (John 1:43-46). The feeding of the 5000 would have spoken loudly to Philip, given that Jesus had first tested him specifically about it (John 6:5-7). Philip has been there and seen it all. And yet, knowing so much, and seeing so much, he still knows so little.

Philip’s question was about the Father—“Show us the Father!” But Jesus’ answer ends up being about Jesus—“Don’t you know me.” At first, it looks like Jesus is not answering the question. He is deflecting. But his answer is perfectly relevant and on point, because seeing Jesus does reveal the Father.

So seeing Jesus in the flesh does not necessarily lead to understanding what we are seeing. Jesus might rightly have retorted, “Philip, what do you think you have been looking at for the last three years.” Philip still doesn’t recognize the full divinity of the man in front of him. And again, this is understandable, and we are no better. This only shows how widespread and normal our sinful human thinking is, and our dullness of heart.

We humans should be able to recognize our creator when he turns up and comes into our world, just as a radio we buy from the shop should pick up radio signals. It is what we, as humans made in the image of God, should be fitted and able to do. A radio that doesn’t pick up radio waves is malfunctioning. But because of our sin, because we have been handed over to our disobedience, because we’ve wrecked ourselves, we can’t do what we were designed by God to do—recognize God when he shows up to walks with us in his world in the cool of the day.

When we encounter Jesus, we encounter God. People who say they know God but refuse to know Jesus—who is the only way to know God—actually know nothing at all.

But the good news for those who believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), is that having looked full into the face of God in the person of Christ, there will be no surprises on the last day. If you have known Jesus here and now—for us, through the Scriptures illuminated by the Holy Spirit—you will not be surprised when you meet the Father. This is because you have already met the full and perfect image of the Father in God the only begotten Son. God has made God known, the one in the bosom of the Father has fully exegeted and explained him (John 1:18).

One of the problems with many people who complain that they cannot see or sense God, and therefore he is not there, is that they are looking in the wrong place. And when they see him, they don’t recognize him anyway.

During the post-world war 2, cold-war space race, when the communist Russians sent their first space capsule, the sputnik, into space, the astronauts made the point of saying that they went into the heavens and did not find God. So there’s no god, and atheism is right. “Oh wow, that’s sorted out that perennial problem out, hasn’t it? Now theology is unnecessary, because atheist astronauts didn’t find God in the sky”—I’m being sarcastic, of course.

All those cosmonauts really showed was that people find in space what they take up with them, just as people find on earth what they want to find. For when the American astronauts went into space, they took up a Bible, and read out Genesis 1 as they looked back at the earth. They looked at our blue planet and said, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”. For to the eye of faith, the evidences of God are everywhere, but to the unbeliever, God is nowhere to be found, because we don’t want to see him.

But either way, you don’t find what you’re looking for when you look in the wrong place. The place to find God is not in space—although there are the evidences of God’s creation all over what we see from there—but the place to see God is in Jesus.

Now the thing about asking a good teacher a question is that you might not get what you think is a direct answer to your question, but you will learn what you need to know. You see, the question you ask might be mistaken. Your question might be based on a wrong assumption. The question you asked might reveal your lack of understanding of other things the teacher has taught.

So what’s more important than Philip’s question is Jesus’ answer and response. And Jesus will use the question as a launching pad not only to answer the question, but to correct the questioner, and tell them the disciples the things they need to know to survive and thrive in the days, weeks, and months to come.

Mutual Indwelling Of Father And Son (vv. 10-11)

Philip wants to see the Father. But both we and he must look for God not where we want to find him, not where we arrogantly demand him to be, but where he has revealed himself. And God is found in Jesus.

And you don’t have to be really clever to find him, because God has used neon lights to point out where to search, with arrows saying “Look Here”.

John the Baptist sees Jesus walking past and says, “Look, the lamb of God”. We must come to Jesus to find God, and we can follow the signs and the pointers—the Old Testament, John the Baptist, the signs he performed—to find Jesus.

So Jesus is challenging Philip—and you and me—to trust that he and the Father are one. Jesus is also challenging us as readers that the revelation of God in himself, Jesus Christ, is not only adequate for us to know God, but it perfectly reveals God in the safest and most appropriate way for us. And the reason this is the case is that both Father and Son mutual indwell one another. Verses 10 to 11:

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.

Father and Son are distinct divine persons, but each person indwells the other—the Father indwells the Son, and the Son indwells the Father. They are distinct persons of God, but not separate or distinct gods. And as eternally distinct persons, they mutually indwell each other. That is why when we see the Son, we also see the Father. And of course, the Spirit indwells the Father and the Son as well, and the Father and Son indwell the Spirit—and thus the Spirit is both the Spirit of the Father, and also the Spirit of Jesus or the Spirit of Christ.

“I am in the Father and that the Father is in me.” That is why when you see Jesus, you see the Father. It is not modalism, which would say “I am the Father, and the Father is me”. Modalism—or Sabellianism or Patripassianism—is still held by ‘United’ or ‘Oneness’ Pentecostals’ today. They do not hold to a permanent distinction of the persons of the Godhead (e.g. http://calvarychapel.com.au/foundational-truths/).

Instead, there are permanent personal distinctions within the Trinity, that each divine person has from eternity. The Son is still, only, and always the Son, and never the Father, from whom he is personally distinct. So the Son is not the God. The Son is in very nature God, and God himself, but to say that the Son is the God excludes the Father and the Spirit from being distinct persons of the Godhead. That is why John 1:1 says that “the Word was God” not that “the Word was the God”.

However, here Jesus is saying that the Son is indwelt by the Father. Theologians have described this reality as the mutual inter-penetration or indwelling or circumincession of the persons of the Trinity.

Another ancient description of this teaching uses the metaphor of ‘perichoresis’, a choreographic term describing a dance. But this dance is not the solo, head-banging, individualistic dancing of the modern Western rock concert. Such dancing is a bastardized and frankly selfish expression of western individualism. The logical extension is the violent slam dancing of punk rockers, or the self-destructive head banging of heavy metal.

Nor is it the dancing that we see in movies like ‘Strictly Ballroom’ or in shows like ‘So You Think You Can Dance’, where there is a man and a woman who are romantically and erotically entwined in their dancing.

Nor is it a dance like in ‘High School Musical’ or ‘Grease’, where a great chorus line of dancers face the camera, high kicking in time.

Rather, it is more like the dancing in ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’. It is the Middle Eastern or Mediterranean traditional dancing, where three or more people hold hands, and focused on one another (they are facing and oriented inwards) and on where they put their feet, they move around in a circle, in step, in harmony, in perfectly choreographed unity. That is the image evoked by Trinitarian theology when it talks about ‘perichoresis’.

Believe The Father’s Words Or, If Necessary, Works (vv. 10-11)

The fact that the Father is ‘in’ the Son 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, and we will come back to it. For now, just notice in passing how easily Jesus relates “the words” his 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.

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, hearing the voice of the shepherd, and coming to him, but it is the immature believing on the basis of Jesus’ ‘signs’, the amazing and attention-grabbing things that can be seen. But believing in Jesus on account of his signs is certainly better than not believing at all.

In John’s Gospel, the miracles or works of power are actually specifically called ‘signs’—they testifies 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.

A ‘sign’ points away from itself and to something or someone else. And so if people get stuck in looking at the sign, 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.

The Believers’ Works And The Disciples’ Prayers After Jesus Leaves (vv. 12-14)

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 these works.

Believers Will Also Do Jesus’ Works (vv. 10-12)

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 following Jesus at the end of John chapter 6.

Even more serious is the problem that such an understanding of the promise 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 it is 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.

So we need to reassess what are “the works” that Jesus is doing in verse 12, and 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. 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 the ‘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.

Greater Works Than What Jesus Is Doing (v. 12)

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. 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 on unbelievers, and people actually begin believing in the risen and ascended Jesus and coming 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.

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 a believer 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.

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).

The Apostles’ Prayers And The “Works” and “Greater Works” (vv. 13-14)

Jesus places together the “works that he is doing” and the “greater works” with another promise to his disciples about their prayers. Again, Jesus gives a broad and wide promise, but it is to a more limited group than the promise in verse 12. Verses 13 and 14:

14:13And whatever you ask for in my name, I will do, so that the Father might be glorified in the Son. 14:14If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.

While verse 12 is set next to verses 13 and 14, the link between them is not explicitly logical, or explanatory. They might simply be two unrelated promises, or they may have a general relationship by virtue of their juxtaposition or colocation, or they may have a causal relationship. But the conjunction translated ‘and’ at the beginning of verse 13 does not tell us what that relationship is. The important thing to realize is that there is no explicit causal relationship. So verses 13 and 14 might have no necessary explanatory relationship with verse 12.

Verses 13 and 14 show that Jesus is boldly appropriating God’s prerogatives. Jesus thinks that he can behave like God, and do what God does. Jesus thinks that he has the power to answer his people’s prayers. It is a practical application of his claim of equality with God. If Jesus only does his Father’s will, and does his Father’s works, he can answer prayers just like the Father can. Moreover, if the Father really indwells him, his answer to those prayers will be exactly the same as the Father’s. He will freely give only what the Father wants.

There are two conditions attached to this promise—one is a limitation of whose prayers will be answered, and the other is a limitation of what those prayers which are answered can ask for.

The first is the ‘who’ question: who is this promise made to? And the ‘who’ is ‘you’. It is ‘you’ plural, ‘youse’, and thus it is a promise given in the first instance to the disciples, the eleven who are with him. Judas is excluded from this promise. That is, in the first instance, this is a promise directly for those to whom it was made, the eleven. It is not like the promise in verse 12, made to the one who believes. It is to the eleven in the upper room. It is not explicitly limited to the disciples there with him, but neither is it explicitly broadened out to disciples who are not there with him, or like us. Jesus could have explicitly made it a general promise to any believer (cf. v. 12), but he did not do so. Therefore, we must have very good reasons before we broaden out the promise and apply it to other believers beyond the eleven. And there are none apparent in the text itself.

The second limitation is the ‘what’ question: what might the ‘youse’ ask for. The disciples may ask for “whatever” or “anything” that is also “in my name”. And there is nothing yet that suggests that the promise is wider than the apostles. That is not to say that there is nothing that we as twenty-first century believers can learn from this, or even that we cannot apply Jesus’ words and promises directed to the eleven to ourselves as twenty-first century Christians in a secondary sense, if other parts of John’s Gospel or other passages of Scripture justify us so doing. However, it does mean that in the first instance and without otherwise good reasons, we will restrict our expectations of who can name and claim this promise to the eleven. If other passages give the same or similar promises more generally, it may be possible to view the promise in verses 13 and 14 as a subset of that wider promise, but that is not yet our task. Our task is to understand Jesus’ promises in John 14.

So the disciples as apostles must pray in Jesus’ name to receive the promised benefits. Now, we know that it is an easy thing to add to each of our prayers the four syllables, “in Jesus’ name” in a mechanistic or quasi-superstitious way. On the other hand, it is appropriate that we formally end our prayers by referring to the intercession and mediation of Jesus Christ (cf. Eph 5:20, Col 3:17). But is that all that praying “in Jesus’ name” involves?

It is generally held that praying in the “name” of Jesus forces us to consider the character of Jesus as we ask him for the things we want. The popular understanding of the meaning of the phrase is that we ask for things that are consistent with the character of Jesus, and while the evidence does show this to be a true factor, we also much consider some other issues. We must also think about the fact that the person asking Jesus has or should have the status of his representative. We should also work out the effect that the alleged representative, or his prayers or actions, has on the reputation of Jesus’ name. Also, is the person asking Jesus truly owned by Jesus.

All four factors—whether the praying person is a true representative of Jesus, that person’s effect on Jesus’ reputation, does Jesus ‘own’ that person, and what is the character of Jesus Christ as the divine name bearer—must be considered to determine whether a prayer is “in Jesus’ name”.

The eleven genuinely represented Jesus’ name, having been appointed by Jesus himself as witnesses during his earthly ministry. This is a factor which at first glance might limit the promise. So too does the related issue of the impact of the apostles’ conduct on the name of Jesus. So too does the appropriateness of their request, given its effect on Jesus’ reputation. Is the request consistent with their representation of Jesus? Is the request furthering the reputation of Jesus? Is the request reflective of the ownership of Jesus—that Jesus owns both the one who is praying and the world? And of course, is the request consistent with the character of Jesus? These are all legitimate issues in determining whether the request is made truly “in the name” of Jesus.

What this means is that this wasn’t a promise to the eleven that if they prayed prayers ‘in Jesus name’ for things that fall short of these standards—a brand new four horse cherry red convertible chariot, or a fresh concubine or three, or an all expenses paid Mediterranean cruise, or revenge upon their enemies as John and his brother in thunderousness had done when they wanted to call down God’s judgement on unbelievers (Luke 9:54)—that the disciples would receive these things if they perfunctorily tacked the name of Jesus onto the end of their request. Nor was it a promise that if they prayed for something really hard they would get it if they tacked Jesus’ name on the end of the prayer. Nor was it a promise that if they prayed for an end to persecution, or the cessation of the suffering of the church, that they would get that either, just because the name of Jesus was added as a verbal postscript. Nor does it mean that if the apostles prayed for it, the church would necessarily be spared from heresy, division, or schism (cf. Acts 20 and Paul’s warning to the Ephesian elders). For it seems that the heresy, schism, and division that exists and has always existed in the church is in accordance with Jesus’ secret will, and for his good purposes.

What it does mean, however, is that the eleven, because they are authorized representatives who are owned by Jesus and in a relationship with him (so who prays it matters, and for what purpose), when the prayer is for the advance and progress of the reputation of Jesus’ name (so the motive and effect of the request matters), and the request is consistent with the identity, character, and mission of Jesus (so the person, work, and will, both secret and revealed, of Jesus matters), then Jesus is always favourably disposed to and is both able and willing to answer that prayer of the eleven by granting it—Jesus will honour and fulfill such a request.

Remember, the prayers promised to be answered and honoured are for a specific purpose—verse 14, “so that the Father might be glorified in the Son.” Anything that derogates from that purpose, the glory of the Father, will not be answered positively, because they are not really in Jesus’ name. And the Father’s glorification of the Son will be in his suffering, death, and rising again. So suffering is part of God’s will for both his Son, and also the church.

The Disciples’ Love and Obedience (v. 15)

We are so used to believing that God’s love is ‘unconditional’ that we might be a bit surprised to read verse 15:

14:15“If you love me, you will keep my commands.

God’s love is and can only ever be unearned, unmerited, and undeserved—at least as far as we are concerned. But to say that there are no conditions attached—or better, that there are no inevitable fruits and consequences of that love for Jesus—is simply not true. Obedience to Jesus’ commands inevitably, always, and universally follows from love for Jesus. If you love me, you will obey me.

But we must observe first that this word is again a word in the first instance directed to the disciples as apostles. The word ‘you’, or more literally, ‘youse’, is important to notice.

There is a condition stated—notice the ‘if’. ‘If you love me, you will keep my commands’. The claim to love Jesus will be vindicated by the obedience to the commands that Jesus gives. The claim to love Jesus will and must issue in obedience.

Later, after everything is accomplished, Jesus will ask Peter, ‘Do you love me?’ There, Peter’s love for Jesus is explicitly linked to Peter feeding Jesus’ sheep. Here, love for Jesus is explicitly linked to obeying Jesus’ commands. The two things really aren’t that different. After all, Jesus’ commission to the eleven will eventually involve them being under-shepherds to his flock. For the eleven, obeying Jesus meant shepherding his flock.

Jesus in John’s Gospel frequently reveals that he himself is obeying the commands of his Father. That is how Jesus explains what he is doing. He is obeying the Father’s commands (John 12:49-50, 14:31). Obeying the commands of his Father is how Jesus shows his love for the Father, and even how Jesus remains in his Father’s love (John 14:31, 15:10). And Jesus expects no less from his friends. Just as Jesus obeys his Father, his disciples, whom he has called his friends, must obey him also.

Jesus uses the plural word, ‘commands’. There are not many commands of Jesus to his disciples that are recorded in John’s Gospel. In this, Jesus is very different from Moses, who imposed the burden of the law—a burden that the apostles confess cannot be born by sinful mortal man.

However, Jesus does give many commands during his earthly ministry. For example, he commands us to forgive each other from the heart, so that we might be forgiven. He commands us to love our enemies, to love God with our whole heart, to love our neighbor as ourselves. And in the sermon on the mount there are many commands for us to obey that bind our consciences and show us the searching nature of the law of God and Christ (Matthew 5-7).

But remember that John gives us the view of Jesus from the inside. As a generalization, while Matthew, Mark, and Luke give us the public Jesus, John gives us the private Jesus, Jesus alone with the eleven, with the disciple whom Jesus loved lying at his belly and leaning on his breast. And John, the one at the belly of the Lord leaning back in his breast, gives us insight into the command of Jesus to the inner circle.

And for John, Jesus, clear as crystal, gives his eleven one main and over-riding command, the single command that explains every other command to govern the relationships within the church. John 13:34-35:

13:34A new command I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, so also you must love one another. 13:35In this way everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (cf. John 15:12-14)

The essential command is to love one another.

Indeed, Jesus goes so far as saying, in verse 21 of this passage, “The one who has my commands and keeps them loves me.” (cf. John 15:10-12, 17).

The ‘love’ command in John, while not unique in its general shape, takes a particular form. John almost certainly assumes the teaching of Jesus in the synoptics, that the two greatest commandments are to love God with all one’s heart and love your neighbour as oneself. But because John presents to us the ‘inside view’ of the private Jesus, the ‘love’ command takes the particular form of ‘love one another’. For while the ‘love God’ command always is the most important, and the ‘love your neighbour’ command embraces the unbeliever and the enemy, the ‘love one another’ command applies the second greatest command to within the church, relations within the community of Jesus’ disciples. That is the difference with Jesus’ command to love in John’s Gospel.

Another Advocate, the Spirit of Truth Will Come Forever (vv. 16-17a)

With Jesus’ invitation for the eleven to pray in his name (vv. 13-14), and Jesus’ reminder to them that love for Jesus requires obedience (v. 15), also comes the promise and assurance that Jesus will not leave the disciples to do their appointed task alone. Verses 16 to 17a:

14:16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, so that he might be with you forever, 14:17athe Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see nor know him.

While his disciples are here on earth obeying him, and showing that they love him, Jesus will show his love for the disciples by, firstly, asking the Father (for Jesus only and always honours and obeys the Father), and then, being so certain of the answer, here and now promising that the Father will indeed say ‘yes’ to his request and send the Spirit (v. 16).

This is not merely presumption by Jesus. He so thinks the Father’s thoughts after him, and so knows his Father, that he can say what the Father will say without a shadow of a doubt. They are of one will and purpose.

Notice that the one to be sent is “another advocate” (v. 16). “Another” suggests that there is more than one advocate. What sort of advocate the other advocate he sends is depends on the sort of advocate the first one referred to is.

The word ‘advocate’ is a translation of the Greek word, ‘paracletos’ or ‘paraclete’. The word in its most literal and basic meaning describes one who stands beside and speaks on behalf of those he represents. Other translations render it using the idea of ‘helper’ or ‘counselor’. But what is meant is a lawyer, a legal counselor, hence an ‘advocate’. An advocate is a barrister or solicitor who represents someone who has legal testimony to give.

In his first letter, John says that we have a ‘paracletos’ with the Father—Jesus Christ the righteous one (παράκλητον ἔχομεν πρὸς τὸν πατέρα Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν δίκαιον: 1 John 2:1)

There’s our first advocate—Jesus. He is a righteous advocate. That means we have an honest lawyer representing us. But he is going to be “with the Father”. Jesus is going up to represent us and do his advocacy work in the highest court.

But that’s not all, because Jesus is an advocate who also is our wrath removing sacrifice (1 John 2:2). Jesus takes away our sin (John 1:29, ‘expiation’) and thus also removes God’s anger from us (‘propitiation’).

This ‘other’ advocate has a name—verse 17, “the Spirit of truth”. Unlike Jesus, the Spirit of truth will stay with the disciples “forever”. Jesus is an advocate who leaves the disciples to represent them in the highest court of all. But the Spirit of truth is an advocate who stays with the disciples forever, to represent them in the lower, earthly courts.

The ‘Spirit of truth’ is a person, because advocates are always and can only be persons.

The Spirit’s name, the Spirit of truth, tells us the sort of advocacy that the Spirit will be doing—the Spirit only does truth telling. Yet another honest lawyer to represent us!

In verse 17, the Spirit’s relationship with the world is outlined. He is the one “whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see nor know him.” Jesus’ own people, the Jews, did not receive Jesus himself (John 1:11, 5:43), and nor did they receive his testimony (John 3:32, 12:48). So I guess it’s not surprising that they cannot receive the Spirit of truth he sends, either.

Now, it’s interesting that Jesus says that the world “does not see” the Spirit of truth. No one sees “the Spirit”, in one sense. The church and believers in one sense don’t see the Spirit either. That’s the nature of the Spirit being spirit. He is not to be seen, except in his effects (cf. John 3:8). But probably Jesus means that the world does not recognize or acknowledge the Spirit of truth’s testimony as the true testimony of God. The world sees, but does not properly perceive what they are seeing.

The Disciples Know The Spirit (v. 17b)

The disciples, however, will know and recognize the Spirit. Just as they know and recognize the voice of the good shepherd (John 10:14-15, 27, cf. John 6:69, 7:17), so they will know the Spirit of truth. The second part of verse 17:

14:17bYou know him, because he remains with you and will be in you.

Two reasons are given as to why the disciples will know and recognize the Spirit of truth. The first is that “he remains with you”. The second is that “he will be in you”. The first indicates that the Spirit in some sense is currently and presently ‘with’ the disciples. This is certainly the case with Jesus. Jesus is the Spirit filled Messiah (John 1:32-33). So wherever Jesus is, there is his Spirit. And the disciples have been with Jesus. The eleven has been soaked in the teaching of the Spirit filled Christ. Jesus is saying that even though he himself as the Christ is going to leave them, the Spirit who empowered his ministry with them is staying with them. Jesus at least means this.

However, it also may be that Jesus is alluding to something more—that the disciples know the Spirit personally and experientially. That is suggested by the next part of the verse.

Now, some of our best manuscripts read Jesus’ words as we have them in our version, that the Spirit “will be in you”. Notice the future tense, and this would clearly be a reference to the future coming of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. However, some of our earliest and best manuscripts (i.e., P⁶⁶*, B, D*) say that the Spirit “is in you”. This would be a reference to the present indwelling of the Spirit in Jesus’ disciples. This is strange, because elsewhere in John, the coming of the Spirit is clearly and unambiguously said to be future (John 7:39, 14:16, 16:7). But if the present tense is correct, it shows that Jesus did acknowledge a present ministry of the Holy Spirit subsisting and living within the disciples even while he was with them. The future coming of the Spirit, then, on the day of Pentecost, is not a first coming, but a new and different sort of coming in power. That is, the coming of the Spirit to the disciples on the day of Pentecost is a bit like the coming of Jesus on a donkey to Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday—neither could be said to be a first coming by any stretch of the imagination, but the nature of each coming is so new, so significant in salvation history, and for such an important purpose for the salvation of humanity, that it is this particular coming that puts in the shade all Jesus’ previous visits to Jerusalem—or the Spirit’s work on earth—and so is rightly termed ‘the coming’ par excellence.

This is undeniable to some extent, because the Holy Spirit has been active in various ways on earth in Old Testament since the first verses of Genesis. So the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, while a new and unprecedented salvation historical moment, was not the first time the Holy Spirit has worked with and in humans. But what is new, is that the Holy Spirit will be testifying that Jesus is the incarnate Christ through the eleven.

With The Spirit, Christians Are Not Orphans (vv. 18-20)

Orphanages are a thing of the past in modern Australian society—at least as far as I know. They are only grey decrepit empty sandstone buildings of misery and history. For us now, they exist only in fantasy novels, mentioned in royal commissions, thought of in the context of child abuse and convict institutions, and dubious third world enterprises.

Real orphanages nowadays are only found in the developing world, places like Cambodia, which are too poor to have dispensed with them. They are the places set up by young western idealists, visited by rich western tourists, paid for by generous western benefactors, and used by local parents who are very much alive who send their children there because they get better education and life opportunities, and then manipulated and controlled by local organized crime gangs to gain western money and enable sex slave trafficking. The picture that is painted is pretty horrible.

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3615065/Sydney-woman-opened-Cambodian-orphanage-reveals-turned-tourist-trap-NGO-offering-new-way-life-children.html,

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-02/exploited-cambodian-children-orphanage-tourism-trade/8668506,

http://www.news.com.au/world/cambodia-shuts-australian-run-orphanage/news-story/73f64eeacaa7f8668b2d00053d15ef18)

In movies and novels, they are dark, dank, grey, joyless institutions of steel and mould, where the orphans are abused verbally by harsh matrons and sexually by deviant men. Orphanages don’t rescue. They are places from which people are rescued. Orphanages ring of ‘stolen generation’, and poverty. In the ‘minions’ world, Gru’s three adopted orphan children are rescued from selling cookies for the money hungry matron. In the Harry Potter world, Voldermort lived in an orphanages and look how he turned out! Even Harry was better off, with his life in his Aunt’s house under the stairs. But he too is an orphan, abused by his unloving relatives.

So being an orphan in our culture is pretty bad. You are vulnerable, probably abused, and poor. It could turn out very bad.

Remember, Jesus is speaking to the eleven. He is about to go away. They are, at core, disturbed and troubled. And you and I would be too. We too would be unsettled by Jesus’ words, if we were in their situation. And Jesus says that he won’t leave them as orphans. Verses 18-20:

14:18I will not leave you orphans; I am coming to you. 14:19Yet a little while and the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, that I am living and you will live. 14:20On that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.

‘Orphans’ is at first glance an unusual phrase for Jesus to use. These are eleven grown men. They were doing quite alright before Jesus came along and convinced them to give up their day jobs. They were fishermen in partnerships with family businesses, like Peter and James and John and Andrew, or well paid public servants like Matthew. They could simply go back to what they were doing before, couldn’t they, if the whole Jesus thing fell through? Does Jesus really think of these big hairy hardened Galilean fisherman—who’ve traipsed backwards and forwards across first century Palestine for three years with him, and who have remained alive while the did so in the context of a brutal Roman occupation, and who even now carry with them and have in their possession two swords as they dine in the upper room—as needy vulnerable children?

Yes, he does. Without Jesus, they are orphans. For Jesus is not just wanting them to keep their heads down and live out their otherwise meaningless lives. He is preparing them for and is about to commission them to go out and overturn the world order. They will be sent out with the news that Jesus is Christ and Lord, and that forgiveness of sins is found in his name. This task will call down upon the disciples all the fury and animus of the world and its ruler Satan. They will be hated by all people on account of Jesus’ name—and now he is going! I don’t care how many fish you’ve pulled in, how many late nights you’ve spent in the cold, or how many storms you’ve survived. Eleven men set against the world, the flesh, and the devil is ‘orphanage’ material, if Jesus does a runner. But Jesus is not about to do a runner.

Is Jesus referring in verse 18 to his resurrection and return from the dead? Jesus’ return to the disciples from the dead hardly satisfies the requirement that the disciples be not left as orphans. Sure, Jesus will spend 40 or so days with the disciples. But at the very beginning he tells the disciples not to cling to him—indeed, it’s the first thing he says to Mary! The resurrection appearances prior to the ascension don’t fulfill Jesus’ promise, “I will not leave you orphans; I am coming to you.”

What about Jesus’ second coming, at the very end of the age, to bring in the new heaven and the new earth? Does that fulfill the requirements of verse 18? Not really. This is a real word spoken to real people, people Jesus called his friends, the eleven. They never got to see Jesus physically and bodily return. It is hard to believe that Jesus meant his second coming, which would then now be nearly two thousand years overdue, and still counting. John, the oldest of the apostles, didn’t get to see Jesus’ bodily return, and yet he still recorded this promise that Jesus made in his presence—and he was one of the ‘you’. So it is not a reference to Jesus’ second coming.

The answer, I think, lies in the coming of the Spirit. While Jesus the Son will physically be going away, the nature of who Jesus is, as the eternal logos, the mongones theos, God the only begotten, and who the Spirit of truth is, means that Jesus is not in another important sense going away, but in a significant sense can be said to come to these very disciples in their life times. Jesus will not physically come to these disciples in their lifetimes after his ascension, but he will spiritually and by the Holy Spirit come to them, certainly and for sure. Jesus is spiritually not going away, because the Spirit of truth will be sent to them.

Jesus says, “I am coming to you”. Notice Jesus says that he is coming, not the Spirit of truth. Which one is coming, then? Is Jesus coming, or is the Spirit coming? Both are true, in their own way.

This statement might, of course, be understood in a modalist fashion. Jesus becomes the Spirit, and so comes to the disciples as the Spirit. But that would be a terrible mistake. That doesn’t understand the nature of the mutual indwelling of the persons of the Godhead. That fails to reckon with the permanent distinctions between the divine persons, though they share the essence and nature of God.

Verse 20 points us to this mutual indwelling that explains how Jesus is both really coming to his disciples, and yet is a distinct person of the Godhead to either the Father or the Spirit. Just as the Son is in the Father, and the Father is in the Son, so the Son is in the Spirit.

Of course, the Spirit has been in the Son all through Jesus’ earthly life, and not just when the Spirit visibly descended onto him as a dove at his baptism at age 30. From the very conception of the human named ‘Jesus’, the Holy Spirit has indwelt and filled him. This is yet another reason why we must pause before we say that the Spirit was not indwelling his disciples before Pentecost, or that the Spirit in no sense had ‘come’ to God’s people more generally before Pentecost. For Jesus could both be indwelt as ‘incarnate of the Holy Spirit’ as a one milli-second old zygote, and yet also at the age of thirty in another sense visibly ‘receive’ the Spirit by descent and dwelling upon and remaining with. The Spirit who remained with Jesus after his baptism was the same Spirit who had energized his conception and had indwelt him ever since.

The Spirit of truth is the Spirit of the Son (Rom 8:9-11) as much as he is the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of the Father. This is because the Son indwells the Spirit, just as the Son indwells the Father, and the Father indwells the Son.

So Jesus will not leave the eleven—or indeed any believer—as orphans. He did indeed come to them, as he has come to us, by the Spirit. And Jesus will also likewise come to any who believe in him from now on, by and with and in the person of his Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth.

In verse 19, however, we see Jesus move from talking about his coming to the disciples in the person of the Spirit of truth (v. 18), to a reference to his coming to the disciples physically and bodily after his resurrection on the third day.

14:19Yet a little while and the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, that I am living and you will live.

Verse 19 seems to refer to something different to verse 18. The reference to ‘seeing’ Jesus, and that he is ‘living’, seems to strongly suggest a reference to Jesus’ bodily resurrection. Thus, the little while is truly ‘a little while’—only two sleeps and a portion of three days—and Jesus will appear to Mary, and then be with most of them again in the locked room.

The reference to “the world will no longer see me” is a reference to the fact that Jesus’ appearances were exclusively and only to the disciples. As Peter would later say:

40But God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, 41not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. (Acts 10:40-41 ESV)

And the resurrection of Jesus is the guarantee—the downpayment, deposit, earnest, firstfruits, token—that both the apostles and indeed every believer will live. Jesus has been saying that he is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25-26). His own resurrection will be the opportunity to prove it.

The word to the disciples about the coming Easter Day is “you will see me, that I am living and you will live” (v. 19), and their seeing Jesus, touching him, hearing him, smelling him again, will demonstrate and provide the evidence to their senses that they too will rise from the dead and receive eternal life from his hand.

Again, there will be another confirmation of Jesus’ teaching on Easter Day, one germaine to Philip’s question. Verse 20:

14:20On that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.

Jesus has been saying that he is in the Father and the Father is in him (John 10:38, 14:10-11, cf. 17:21). Well, resurrection day will prove it. “Philip, if you really want to see that I am in the Father, hang around a couple of days. Wait till I walk through the locked door, and you can have your own sneak preview, a little interactive poke and prod session with my hands and feet and side. And as you prepare for the one with Thomas a week later, you can remember that I really spoke the truth to you Philip—that I reveal the Father. He is in me, and I am in him. If you see me, you’ve seen the Father. Remember what you asked me, “Show us the Father”. And on that day you will remember that we had this little conversation on the night before I died.”

But Jesus goes further in his statement in verse 20. Not only is the Son in the Father and the Father in the Son, but Jesus said to them, “you are in me, and I am in you” (v. 20).

Now, this is a strange statement. It is certainly not something that normal everyday people can say to one another. There is another mutual indwelling—the disciples are in Jesus, and Jesus is in the disciples. What does this mean?

This is almost certainly referring to the believer’s union with Christ. This is a rich umbrella idea illustrating and explaining how Jesus saves us that is found mainly in both Paul and John, but not exclusively there. In John, we see it particularly with his analogy of the vine and the branches (John 15). But it is here in propositionally form and in a typically Johannine style. And probably if we wanted an analogy of it, we would be best to refer to John 15.

However, what we should notice the time reference. It is to “that day” in “a little while” when they will “see” him and know that he is “living” (vv. 19-20). Jesus is still referring to resurrection Sunday in just two sleeps time—well, he won’t be sleeping again, two nights will pass until he rises again.

That is, on Easter Day, before the day of Pentecost, Jesus is already ‘in’ the disciples, and the disciples are already ‘in’ Jesus. Again, this points to the Spirit indwelling the disciples even prior to Pentecost—for the way Jesus indwells his people is by his Spirit (Rom 8:9-11).

Love Revealed, Love Reveals (v. 21)

Again, Jesus returns to the question of his disciples’ love for him. He has raised this matter in a direct way with the disciples in verse 15—“If you love me”. But now in verse 21 he clearly broadens out the principle to anybody who obeys his commands: Verse 21:

14:21“The one who has my commands and keeps them loves me. Now, the one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”

Good news! Jesus here is not just talking to the eleven. He is now talking to us as well. He has an eye to us. We have Jesus’ commands—particularly the one to “love one another” that John has so emphasized. If we keep it, we love Jesus.

That much Jesus has already said to the disciples, the eleven (v. 15). Their obedience to Jesus reveals their love for Jesus. And our obedience to Jesus reveals our love for Jesus. And our love for Jesus in this context is shown pre-eminently in our love for one another—in our context, brothers and sisters in Christ.

Jesus then gives us the consequence of loving one another as believers in Jesus. We will be loved by the Father.

This ‘conditional’ love of the Father—our enjoyment of which is explicitly said to be dependent on our love for one another which in turn shows our love for Jesus—does not deny that God loved us while we were still ungodly, sinners, and weak (Rom 5:8-9). We need to have a more nuanced understanding of the ‘love of God’.

Jesus is loved by the Father. One of the reasons the Father loves the Son is because the Son lays down his life at his command (John 10:17-18). But Jesus’ response is a very different response to what we think of as obedience to commands, because in another sense it is absolutely ‘free’—no one takes his life from him.

Suppose then that we disciples, sinful humans that we are undoubtedly are, begin to love one another. Sure, it’s all enabled by the Spirit of truth, who is the Spirit of the Son, but we really are doing it. We are becoming more like the Son in so doing, he showed us what loving one another really means.

If the Father loves the Son because of his free willingness, eagerness, and complete concurrence with his will, and this makes the son ‘loveable’, why wouldn’t these qualities found in us, by virtue of the Spirit of the Son, be recognized by the Father as those of the Son he loves, and thus love us commensurately and as a consequence? For the family likeness, through the Spirit of the Son, is beginning to make us ‘loveable’ to the Father.

Understand, I am not negating, downplaying, or contradicting the necessary unearned, undeserved, and unmerited love upon which our forensic Pauline justification depends, and to which we as sinful people must have continual recourse. I am simply saying that the ministrations of the Spirit to create Christ likeness in us really do evoke love towards us in the heart of the Father. The Father loved us first for nothing in us except his creation of us, his image in us, and the work of his Son for us. And in this instance, the Father loves us for the Son and Spirit he puts in us, and the love that they generate.

Not only does the Father love such a loving one, but likewise the Son loves the one who loves him and others. The last part of verse 21:

[…] and I will love him and reveal myself to him.

The revelation about which Jesus speaks cannot mean revealing to him the commands of Jesus—for the person to whom Jesus reveals himself already knows the commands of Jesus and is keeping them. His obedience is the reason why Jesus is revealing himself to him. But it does indicate that Jesus will indeed respond with self-revelation to those who ‘love one another’. We should probably not think of it as an ‘extra’, a ‘special revelation’ that only ‘special believers’ get. Rather, every believer must and will love one another, and thus every believer will receive this revelation of Jesus. And without that revelation of Jesus, the person is not a real believer in Jesus.

Conclusion

Jesus is preparing his friends for his departure by giving them promises. Of course words are cheap. But Jesus is not leaving them with empty words. He is leaving them with precious promises. And the promise is for another Advocate, the Spirit of truth, or the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit will turn the disciples from potential orphans into apostles, who will do the works Jesus did, and even greater works than what Jesus did. And they did. The Acts of Apostles records those greater works.

And we also who believe in Jesus will do Jesus’ works, and greater works that Jesus. For not only will our words truly reveal the Father who indwells us, but people will also receive forgiveness of sins through our words. This was the work Jesus didn’t do, because he hadn’t died on the cross yet. So now our works of effective evangelism and ministering forgiveness are the greater works than Jesus’ works.

(2) English Translation