John 14:15-26
Leaving Behind
Jesus said in the previous verses that He is IN the Father and the Father is IN Him. This was in response to Philip’s statement that he wanted to see the Father. But in verse 15 Jesus returns to the issue that He is leaving them, and in doing this He is continuing to comfort them. It’s hard for them to process how He could be leaving. In this passage I want to point out 3 things Jesus is leaving His disciples with as He leaves them. They are 1) His Commandments, 2) The Counselor, and 3) His Commitment to Return.
His Commandments (v15, 21, 23-24)
The first thing Jesus leaves His disciples with is His commandments. Three times in this passage He links love and obedience. Loving Jesus means to obey His commands. Notice verse 15, “If you love me you will obey my commandments.”
This love is agape love. The Greek word for love is agape and it means the unconditional kind of love. Agape love is 1st class, 1st rate, superior love. Worldly human love is 2nd rate, inferior love. Agape is intelligent love, not unintelligent. It is tough, not on the receiver, but, on the giver. It’s the difference between self-serving and self-sacrifice.
Human love is self-serving because we love that which makes us look better and feel better. We associate ourselves with that person or thing we love and pride ourselves on it. It becomes representative of us. It’s difficult to love someone who we feel doesn’t make us look or feel better. Therefore, when we are looking at someone who we should love, but we see that loving them doesn’t really benefit us in any way, that’s when we are looking down the agape love road. We are faced with the choice to love someone for their benefit, for their well-being, and for their gain, and not our own.
That is galaxies away from our concept of love. It’s the brand of love that only God can give, and only people who get it from God can give it. It is impossible for humans to conceive, much less carry out that kind of love. It is God’s love, and it requires his power to do it.
Now this kind of love is what we are to love Jesus with. He doesn’t want a dumb, mushy, sentimental kind of love. You know why? Because sentimental love is self-centered and based on feelings. It serves self. When it doesn’t feel good anymore that kind of love passes away. One writer put it this way, “John never allowed love to devolve into an emotion or sentiment. Its expression is always moral and revealed in obedience.”
Jesus wants tough, intelligent, determined love that is proven in commitment to Him over all else. “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” In other words, “Do you love me? The proof that you love Me more than anyone and anything else is that you obey Me over everyone and everything else.” Or to put it another way, “Do we practice what He preaches? Do we perform His teachings in our lives? Do we do what He says?”
He says it a second time in verse 21, “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.” Notice then the promise Jesus gives in connection here, “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”
Jesus promises that those who love and obey Him He will reveal more of Himself to them. This takes learning about Jesus far beyond reading the Bible and into obeying the Bible. Learning and realizing more about Jesus is impossible apart from the doing what He says.
When we experience His teachings by performing them in our lives we come to know His ways.
Illustration: Think of obedience as experience. How many of you know how to drive a car that has a manual transmission? Annie and I have this ongoing joke in our marriage where I complain because she hasn’t learned how to drive a manual transmission yet, and, she complains because I’ve never taken the time to teach her. (This really is just a joke and not symptomatic of other marital issues). Well, I did try to teach her one time and EFC was almost ended up without a pastor. There was the danger of her driving that could have killed me and there was the danger of her killing me with her own bare hands. So if any of you have the guts to get into a car and teach her I would be indebted to you. Anyway, she heard me tell her that you have to push the clutch in, put it into gear, and then let the clutch back out as you GENTLY push on the gas. See the difference? There is someone who has knowledge on how to drive a stick because someone told them, and, then, there is having the knowledge because you have actually driven one before. One comes by experience, the other is just awareness.
Obedience to Jesus is not awareness of what He said, it is when we take what commanded to do and we make it our experience in our own lives. Obedience is the road that reveals the person of God in the most personal way. That’s because we come to learn how He lives by living that same way. That is how we understand Jesus in the fullest sense. “If any man chooses to God’s will he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.”
Experience humility by obeying Jesus command to serve others and think of them as better than you. Experience loving your fellow brothers and sisters by forgiving them for their sins and honoring them.
When you’re living the way God lives then God can live with you. You’ll notice in verses 23 Jesus is talking again about love and obedience for the 3rd time. And in this 3rd time he mentions another promise, notice verses 23, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”
That word “home” is the same word “rooms” used in verse 2. It’s the word that means dwelling place, or, abode. It’s where someone resides. Jesus says that the Holy Spirit is going to live in them in verse 17. And, then, Jesus says here that He and the Father will live in them as well. The mind-blowing truth of the NT teachings are that God Himself is taking up residence in us.
In verse 21 Jesus says, “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, that you are in me, and, I am in you.”
In Romans 8:10 it says, “But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.”
In 2 Corinthians 13:5 it says, “Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you?”
In Ephesians 3:20 it says again, “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”
Now I want to make a point here. When we lead someone to faith in Christ, let’s not do them a disservice by using the phrase, “accept Jesus into your heart.” First of all, that phrase is never found in the Bible. And it is never used to describe what you must do to be saved. Rather, it is something that happens as a result of being saved. You don’t ask to be baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ to be saved, but, when you are saved that is true for you.
The problem with this phrase is that good-hearted Christians often make the error of stressing to unbelievers that they should accept Jesus in their hearts, but, that is often to the neglect of the issue of sin and the cross. Salvation gets garbled up into some mystical receiving of Jesus into their hearts. But, the point that they are lost in their sin, and that Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty for their sin, and that salvation is by believing in His sacrificial death on the cross for them, it is all totally missed. In other words, the Gospel is ignored.
Obeying Jesus starts with obeying the Gospel. That means that a man must believe in Jesus Christ as His Savior, as the One and Only Savior who died for his sins. Have you obeyed Jesus?
The Counselor (v16-17, 26)
So first we see Jesus leaves His disciples with His Commands. Second, we see Jesus is going to leave them with the Counselor. Notice verse 16, “And I will ask the Father and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth.”
Jesus promises that when He goes back to the Father He will ask the Father on the disciple’s behalf and the Father will give the disciples the Holy Spirit. Notice first the intercessory work of Jesus here. Romans 8:34 says Jesus “is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” Hebrews 7:25 says that Jesus “always lives to intercede for us.” Jesus is alive right now and He praying is what the New Testament tells us Jesus has been doing since He was raised up to heaven.
Now, the word, “Counselor”, or, if you’re reading another version it may say, “Comforter” or “Helper”, comes from the Greek word “Parakletos”. The meaning of this word cannot be captured in one English word. It essentially means “one who is called alongside to help”. The Greeks used the word in a variety of ways:
-Someone called in to give a witness in someone’s favor
-Someone called in to plead the cause of someone in a court of law
-Someone called in to give expert advice in a situation
-Someone who was called in for soldiers who were depressed or dispirited and gave them new courage.
The Holy Spirit’s work involves the comforting, encouraging, and strengthening of those whom He indwells, believers.
The word in verse 16, “another”, is a very important word. It’s the Greek word, “allos”, and it means another of the same kind. It means that Jesus was sending someone else to the disciples and this someone else would be of the same kind as Jesus – the same essence, the same nature, the same quality.
That meant two things. First of all it was a comfort to the disciples. They were losing their beloved Master after 3 years. They were sad that Jesus was leaving but His encouragement to them was that His same ministry would be continued by the Spirit, someone who was equal to Jesus for the task; someone who would comfort and teach and lead them as Jesus had been doing. Jesus would not entrust them into anyone else’s hands but One who was fit as Jesus was for their care.
Illustration: Gordon Brownville's Symbols of the Holy Spirit tells about the great Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. He was the first person to discover the magnetic meridian of the North Pole and to discover the South Pole. On one of his trips, Amundsen took a homing pigeon with him. When he had finally reached the top of the world, he opened the bird's cage and set it free. Imagine the delight of Amundsen's wife, back in Norway, when she looked up from the doorway of her home and saw the pigeon circling in the sky above. No doubt she exclaimed, "He's alive! My husband is still alive!"
So it was when Jesus ascended. He was gone, but the disciples clung to his promise to send them the Holy Spirit. What joy, then, when the dovelike Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost. The disciples had with them the continual reminder that Jesus was alive and victorious at the right of the Father. This continues to be the Spirit's message.
Not only did it mean comfort for the disciples, but, it was confirmation of the Deity of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is “another” like Jesus, like Him in essence and nature and quality – that is, the essence and nature quality of Deity. The Holy Spirit is the 3rd person of the Trinity. He is mentioned in the baptism formula of Matthew 28:19. He is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. He does the works that only God can do.
His Commitment to Return (v18-20)
So first, Jesus leaves them with His Commands, second, the Counselor, and, lastly, He leaves them with His Commitment to Return. In verses 18-19 He says, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live you also will live.”
Jesus didn’t come into the world, spend 3 years with His disciples and then only to leave them forever. He came to them, He will continue with them, and He will come back for them. He started this point earlier in the chapter in verse 3, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”
He will return. He will not leave them as orphans. Some of you may have a Bible version that reads, “I will not leave you comfortless”. But the Greek word is “orphanos” which literally means “without a father.” It is also used to describe students and disciples who do not have the presence of their master. The disciples were no doubt afraid and discouraged to hear that Jesus was going to die and be leaving them. But Jesus says that they will see Him again.
This is first a reference to His appearances to them after His resurrection. He is going to come to them after He is raised up from the dead. He will return to them so that they will see Him. Jesus prayed for this in 17:24, “Father I want those you have given me to be with me where I am and to see my glory..”
Leaving us with
1. His Commands
2. The Counselor
3. The Commitment to Return
Leaving Behind
Jesus said in the previous verses that He is IN the Father and the Father is IN Him. This was in response to Philip’s statement that he wanted to see the Father. But in verse 15 Jesus returns to the issue that He is leaving them, and in doing this He is continuing to comfort them. It’s hard for them to process how He could be leaving. In this passage I want to point out 3 things Jesus is leaving His disciples with as He leaves them. They are 1) His Commandments, 2) The Counselor, and 3) His Commitment to Return.
His Commandments (v15, 21, 23-24)
The first thing Jesus leaves His disciples with is His commandments. Three times in this passage He links love and obedience. Loving Jesus means to obey His commands. Notice verse 15, “If you love me you will obey my commandments.”
This love is agape love. The Greek word for love is agape and it means the unconditional kind of love. Agape love is 1st class, 1st rate, superior love. Worldly human love is 2nd rate, inferior love. Agape is intelligent love, not unintelligent. It is tough, not on the receiver, but, on the giver. It’s the difference between self-serving and self-sacrifice.
Human love is self-serving because we love that which makes us look better and feel better. We associate ourselves with that person or thing we love and pride ourselves on it. It becomes representative of us. It’s difficult to love someone who we feel doesn’t make us look or feel better. Therefore, when we are looking at someone who we should love, but we see that loving them doesn’t really benefit us in any way, that’s when we are looking down the agape love road. We are faced with the choice to love someone for their benefit, for their well-being, and for their gain, and not our own.
That is galaxies away from our concept of love. It’s the brand of love that only God can give, and only people who get it from God can give it. It is impossible for humans to conceive, much less carry out that kind of love. It is God’s love, and it requires his power to do it.
Now this kind of love is what we are to love Jesus with. He doesn’t want a dumb, mushy, sentimental kind of love. You know why? Because sentimental love is self-centered and based on feelings. It serves self. When it doesn’t feel good anymore that kind of love passes away. One writer put it this way, “John never allowed love to devolve into an emotion or sentiment. Its expression is always moral and revealed in obedience.”
Jesus wants tough, intelligent, determined love that is proven in commitment to Him over all else. “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” In other words, “Do you love me? The proof that you love Me more than anyone and anything else is that you obey Me over everyone and everything else.” Or to put it another way, “Do we practice what He preaches? Do we perform His teachings in our lives? Do we do what He says?”
He says it a second time in verse 21, “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.” Notice then the promise Jesus gives in connection here, “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”
Jesus promises that those who love and obey Him He will reveal more of Himself to them. This takes learning about Jesus far beyond reading the Bible and into obeying the Bible. Learning and realizing more about Jesus is impossible apart from the doing what He says.
When we experience His teachings by performing them in our lives we come to know His ways.
Illustration: Think of obedience as experience. How many of you know how to drive a car that has a manual transmission? Annie and I have this ongoing joke in our marriage where I complain because she hasn’t learned how to drive a manual transmission yet, and, she complains because I’ve never taken the time to teach her. (This really is just a joke and not symptomatic of other marital issues). Well, I did try to teach her one time and EFC was almost ended up without a pastor. There was the danger of her driving that could have killed me and there was the danger of her killing me with her own bare hands. So if any of you have the guts to get into a car and teach her I would be indebted to you. Anyway, she heard me tell her that you have to push the clutch in, put it into gear, and then let the clutch back out as you GENTLY push on the gas. See the difference? There is someone who has knowledge on how to drive a stick because someone told them, and, then, there is having the knowledge because you have actually driven one before. One comes by experience, the other is just awareness.
Obedience to Jesus is not awareness of what He said, it is when we take what commanded to do and we make it our experience in our own lives. Obedience is the road that reveals the person of God in the most personal way. That’s because we come to learn how He lives by living that same way. That is how we understand Jesus in the fullest sense. “If any man chooses to God’s will he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.”
Experience humility by obeying Jesus command to serve others and think of them as better than you. Experience loving your fellow brothers and sisters by forgiving them for their sins and honoring them.
When you’re living the way God lives then God can live with you. You’ll notice in verses 23 Jesus is talking again about love and obedience for the 3rd time. And in this 3rd time he mentions another promise, notice verses 23, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”
That word “home” is the same word “rooms” used in verse 2. It’s the word that means dwelling place, or, abode. It’s where someone resides. Jesus says that the Holy Spirit is going to live in them in verse 17. And, then, Jesus says here that He and the Father will live in them as well. The mind-blowing truth of the NT teachings are that God Himself is taking up residence in us.
In verse 21 Jesus says, “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, that you are in me, and, I am in you.”
In Romans 8:10 it says, “But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.”
In 2 Corinthians 13:5 it says, “Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you?”
In Ephesians 3:20 it says again, “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”
Now I want to make a point here. When we lead someone to faith in Christ, let’s not do them a disservice by using the phrase, “accept Jesus into your heart.” First of all, that phrase is never found in the Bible. And it is never used to describe what you must do to be saved. Rather, it is something that happens as a result of being saved. You don’t ask to be baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ to be saved, but, when you are saved that is true for you.
The problem with this phrase is that good-hearted Christians often make the error of stressing to unbelievers that they should accept Jesus in their hearts, but, that is often to the neglect of the issue of sin and the cross. Salvation gets garbled up into some mystical receiving of Jesus into their hearts. But, the point that they are lost in their sin, and that Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty for their sin, and that salvation is by believing in His sacrificial death on the cross for them, it is all totally missed. In other words, the Gospel is ignored.
Obeying Jesus starts with obeying the Gospel. That means that a man must believe in Jesus Christ as His Savior, as the One and Only Savior who died for his sins. Have you obeyed Jesus?
The Counselor (v16-17, 26)
So first we see Jesus leaves His disciples with His Commands. Second, we see Jesus is going to leave them with the Counselor. Notice verse 16, “And I will ask the Father and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth.”
Jesus promises that when He goes back to the Father He will ask the Father on the disciple’s behalf and the Father will give the disciples the Holy Spirit. Notice first the intercessory work of Jesus here. Romans 8:34 says Jesus “is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” Hebrews 7:25 says that Jesus “always lives to intercede for us.” Jesus is alive right now and He praying is what the New Testament tells us Jesus has been doing since He was raised up to heaven.
Now, the word, “Counselor”, or, if you’re reading another version it may say, “Comforter” or “Helper”, comes from the Greek word “Parakletos”. The meaning of this word cannot be captured in one English word. It essentially means “one who is called alongside to help”. The Greeks used the word in a variety of ways:
-Someone called in to give a witness in someone’s favor
-Someone called in to plead the cause of someone in a court of law
-Someone called in to give expert advice in a situation
-Someone who was called in for soldiers who were depressed or dispirited and gave them new courage.
The Holy Spirit’s work involves the comforting, encouraging, and strengthening of those whom He indwells, believers.
The word in verse 16, “another”, is a very important word. It’s the Greek word, “allos”, and it means another of the same kind. It means that Jesus was sending someone else to the disciples and this someone else would be of the same kind as Jesus – the same essence, the same nature, the same quality.
That meant two things. First of all it was a comfort to the disciples. They were losing their beloved Master after 3 years. They were sad that Jesus was leaving but His encouragement to them was that His same ministry would be continued by the Spirit, someone who was equal to Jesus for the task; someone who would comfort and teach and lead them as Jesus had been doing. Jesus would not entrust them into anyone else’s hands but One who was fit as Jesus was for their care.
Illustration: Gordon Brownville's Symbols of the Holy Spirit tells about the great Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. He was the first person to discover the magnetic meridian of the North Pole and to discover the South Pole. On one of his trips, Amundsen took a homing pigeon with him. When he had finally reached the top of the world, he opened the bird's cage and set it free. Imagine the delight of Amundsen's wife, back in Norway, when she looked up from the doorway of her home and saw the pigeon circling in the sky above. No doubt she exclaimed, "He's alive! My husband is still alive!"
So it was when Jesus ascended. He was gone, but the disciples clung to his promise to send them the Holy Spirit. What joy, then, when the dovelike Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost. The disciples had with them the continual reminder that Jesus was alive and victorious at the right of the Father. This continues to be the Spirit's message.
Not only did it mean comfort for the disciples, but, it was confirmation of the Deity of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is “another” like Jesus, like Him in essence and nature and quality – that is, the essence and nature quality of Deity. The Holy Spirit is the 3rd person of the Trinity. He is mentioned in the baptism formula of Matthew 28:19. He is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. He does the works that only God can do.
His Commitment to Return (v18-20)
So first, Jesus leaves them with His Commands, second, the Counselor, and, lastly, He leaves them with His Commitment to Return. In verses 18-19 He says, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live you also will live.”
Jesus didn’t come into the world, spend 3 years with His disciples and then only to leave them forever. He came to them, He will continue with them, and He will come back for them. He started this point earlier in the chapter in verse 3, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”
He will return. He will not leave them as orphans. Some of you may have a Bible version that reads, “I will not leave you comfortless”. But the Greek word is “orphanos” which literally means “without a father.” It is also used to describe students and disciples who do not have the presence of their master. The disciples were no doubt afraid and discouraged to hear that Jesus was going to die and be leaving them. But Jesus says that they will see Him again.
This is first a reference to His appearances to them after His resurrection. He is going to come to them after He is raised up from the dead. He will return to them so that they will see Him. Jesus prayed for this in 17:24, “Father I want those you have given me to be with me where I am and to see my glory..”
Leaving us with
1. His Commands
2. The Counselor
3. The Commitment to Return
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