“‘And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.’ Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, ‘Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?’ Jesus answered him, ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me. These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, “I am going away, and I will come to you.” If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here.’”

The Bible is filled with contrasts that many non-believers look to and call contradictions. Humanity, incapable of fully comprehending the nature of God, looks to our creator through an earthly lens, and in their lack of understanding, either twists God into something He’s not, or disregards Him altogether. One such contrast is Jesus on the cross. From one perspective, this is the darkest hour humanity has ever seen. In our wickedness, we were given God among us, with us, and beside us, and we sought to kill Him. We took the only Man who has ever lived perfectly, without sin and entirely in the Spirit and will of God, and in our love and obsession with sin and worldliness, we desired His death in the most brutal and shameful way possible. The worst possible sentence for the One least deserving. From another perspective, this is the brightest hour for humanity – not because of us, but because of God. This is the hour of glory, the fruition of God’s plan, the ultimate sacrifice of our Creator by paying the debt we could never pay, bridging the gap that was infinitely wide, and opening the door so that we might be made clean and approach His throne with confidence. As we’ve read through the last few sections of John’s gospel, we’ve seen Jesus gathered together with His disciples to celebrate the Passover. While the Passover is not described as a loud or exuberant event, eaten with “unleavened bread and bitter herbs,” and commemorating the final plague God brought against Egypt, it is still a celebration. It acknowledges the freedom that the people of Israel were given, honors God’s power and sovereignty, and draws our attention to the protection He placed on the sacrificial blood of the lamb, foreshadowing the cross. In the midst of this shared, celebratory meal, Jesus turns the attention of the disciples to a subject He’s shared with them before, though the message never sank in – His approaching death. This news, coupled with the revelation that it is one of their own who will betray Jesus into the hands of their enemies, does not sit well with the disciples. The questions asked show us their anxiety and unrest. But what we see offered as Jesus continues to explain and teach, is the same offering that we’re all given. As Christians in a fallen world, we are going to suffer under the weight of the cross. We are going to be mocked, and hated, and face trial after trial as we war against the world and the sins of our flesh – but this is a war that has already been decided. As the disciples worry and despair over what will be, Jesus doesn’t heap further concerns on them, but rather offers them hope. It is the sorrow that is temporary, but the delivered victory that endures to eternity.

Assurance Afforded Through God’s Provision

 “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”

1.      Assurance in our Adoption

We ended the last section with John 14:15 where Jesus says,

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

This both serves to give closure and context to the previous statement, “If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it,” as it gives us a lens to see what it means to truly ask something in His name. It also serves to guide us into this week’s passage, as we see what it means to keep the commandments of Christ and to work in the Spirit of the Living God. I’ve talked before about the “filioque.” The addition to the Nicene creed made by the Catholic church that so heavily contributed to their schism from the Orthodox church. The problem was that the original wording of the creed stated that the Holy Spirit, “proceeds from the Father,” and that Catholic church, without holding any council or reaching consensus added, “and the Son.” The Orthodox church was not okay with this addition, and it was a contributing factor in their split into becoming their own church. If you read the start of this passage on it’s own, it sounds like the Orthodox church has it right – Jesus will ask the Father to send them a Helper. That, isolated, shows Jesus as subservient, not exuding the Spirit, but going to the Father so that He who is seated on the throne might send forth the Helper of the Holy Spirit. While I take issue with certain beliefs and doctrines of both churches, this passage stands to unify the positions and natures of the Father and Son and Spirit, more than to separate them. Breaking this down line by line helps us see the depth of what’s happening. “And I will ask the Father,” does show a picture of Jesus as the servant Son, deferring to the will of God the Father. But we know that the authority and will of the Father and Son are one in the same. Matthew 28:18–20 says,

“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’”

“All authority in heaven and on earth,” shows Jesus, the Son as holding entirely equal standing with God the Father. He closes by telling the disciples, “and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age,” but if we cross reference this with today’s passage in John, we see Jesus saying that He is leaving, and the helper of the Holy Spirit will come in His stead. But this helps us see that Jesus is in the Spirit and the Spirit is in Him. He does not leave us in the care of another, but remains with us, simply in a different form. This is affirmed in today’s passage in John when Jesus says that the Helper will be with them forever, “even the Spirit of truth.” Jesus just stated in last week’s passage, in John 14:6

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

The Spirit of Truth is the Spirit of Christ, which is the Spirit of God. They are separate, yet They are One. Jesus is fully God and fully Man, and in being fully Man, He acts out the perfect aim of humanity – to seek the will of God fully and completely. He is our model of how to pray, how to worship, how to love, how to mourn, and how to rebuke. Yet He is more than a man, in that He is fully God, and while there is great comfort in His humanity, in that we know He truly sympathizes and understands the challenges and temptations we face in our flesh, it is in His oneness with the Father and His Spirit that we have our greatest assurance. We see the divide this creates between us and a world that is steeped in wickedness and cannot understand God. Paul writes in Romans 8:16–17,

“The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”

While Jesus, contesting with the ruling Jews, says in John 8:43–45,

“Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.”

This paints a picture that the provision of the Father is the provision of the Son, and that the promises of the Son are the promises of the Father. The disciples were not abandoned, but were cared for more greatly, raised to new heights of understanding and work in the Spirit in the aftermath of the ascension.

“Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”

This again strengthens the same message as before – the world cannot see or comprehend the Truth of God, but by submission in the Spirit, we are blessed to see and know His Truth. Our lives are no longer dependent upon our own flesh, but are tied to and preserved in the Spirit. I usually try to start each day with at least a few minutes of quiet meditation and prayer while I watch the sun rise. I start this out by praying the Lord’s prayer – not in a rigid, ceremonial way, but with sincerity and contemplation of the implications of each line. What that prayer highlights is the same unity that Jesus speaks to here. Matthew 6:9–13 says, 

 “… Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

You start by addressing God, not as a distant, impartial God, but respectfully with the comfort and assurance of addressing your Father, and first seeking to glorify His name. You set the highest priority, before asking of anything for yourself, in God’s will coming to fruition, placing your faith in His designs above your own. You place your faith in God’s ability to provide you with what you need, not setting your sights into the future, but looking to the day ahead (a principle supported by Matthew 6:33 and James 4:14-15), referencing back to the manna He gave to Israel in the wilderness, sustaining them a day at a time by His hand. You ask for forgiveness, acknowledging that you yourself are operating in a spirit of forgiveness, and not asking this of God hypocritically. And finally you acknowledge that it is God who guards and tempers us against temptation, and He alone who holds the power to defend us from the darkness of the enemy. In short, this model of prayer that we’re given by Jesus has nothing to do with asking for what we want and everything to do with God providing us with beyond what we need in Him. It is by the Spirit that we’re progressively drawn closer and closer in line with the will of God. As Paul wrote in Galatians 2:20

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

2.      Assurance in the Love of God

“Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, ‘Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?’”

There are times where the disciples show an improper aim, or a lack of faith. This often provides us with examples to sympathize with them as our brothers, and learn from areas where they may have fallen short, to sure up our own aim. But what Judas (called “Thaddeus” in Matthew and Mark’s gospels, “Judas the son of James” in Luke’s gospel and Acts, and whom John simply gives the identifying marker, “not Iscariot”), asks here actually strikes me as a particularly practical question. We struggle to this day with the concept of understanding Jesus in both flesh and Spirit. While we have excellent and profound explanation through the Word, there are still elements that we can’t wrap our minds around. Bearing in mind what Jesus is explaining here, it seems perfectly reasonable to ask this question. I hope I’m not projecting my thoughts onto the passage here, but this reads to me as a question of logistics as opposed to questioning Jesus’s accuracy. Jesus says that He will no longer be in the world, yet He will be manifested in them – to one who doesn’t have an understanding of what the indwelling of the Holy Spirit will bring, it seems perfectly reasonable to ask.

“Jesus answered him, ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.”

The answer to something so immensely complex is actually incredibly simple. 1 John 3:16 says,

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”

While 1 John 4:8 tells us,

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

And finally, 1 John 4:19 says,

“We love because he first loved us.”

We know what love is – true love, Love in which God is manifested – because He first loved us. He took on flesh, came into a fallen world and offered Himself up that we might be returned to Him. This illustration of supreme Love, through which we’re given the Spirit, draws us closer to the will and the Love of the Father. To love God is to obey God, to be filled with His Spirit, to the point that we can say relate to what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 3:16,

“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”

On the other hand, to reject and deny Christ, loving the world instead, is to reject His commands, and rebel against the Word of the Father. For a question with such depth and implication as Judas’, the answer is remarkably straightforward and simple.

“These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.”

This principle of greater understanding in the Spirit, of a deeper comprehension coming in the aftermath of Jesus’s death and resurrection, was laid out early in John’s gospel. In the aftermath of Jesus cleansing the temple, John 2:18–22 says,

“So the Jews said to him, ‘What sign do you show us for doing these things?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”

The Jews did not know at the time of the first Passover that the Lamb they sacrificed, consumed all in one night, with none of its bones broken gave an image that would be fulfilled one day in Christ. They didn’t know that the bread from heaven, or the water from the rock in the wilderness were foreshadowings of what would be given to them as the Bread of Life and the source of Living Water. They couldn’t imagine that the rest they knew once delivered into the promised land, which they lost as a result of their complacency and idolatry, was just a precursor to the peace that would be delivered and offer up to them through God coming into the world to ransom them. God has shown again and again, and Jesus follows suit through His ministry, a pattern of gifts, miracles, and teachings that go beyond the understanding of those who receive them, so that in the aftermath, when all the pieces line up, the hand of God can be seen, and you might believe.

3.      Assurance in the Son of Man

“Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

We saw this at the start of John 14 – we know that Jesus is troubled as He approaches His betrayal and facing the wrath of God on the cross – it says so in John 13:21, but He tells the disciples repeatedly not to be. The stress over the agony that is coming is His, the burden will be borne by Him and Him alone. There is no need for them to be distressed, as what is coming is for their good and the good of all mankind. They don’t need to be afraid, as there is never a point where God is not in control. Though they may not have eyes to see it yet, what is unfolding is not a loss, but the greatest victory.

“If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.”

Jesus is not abandoning them, but is leaving as part of the plan, the divine will of God, and in this plan, the children of God are cared and provided for beyond what the world can cast against them. The fact that Jesus goes to God, to be seated at His right hand, His work of salvation finished, is the completion of a victory beyond the greatest hopes of a fallen world. This section again shows us wording, “for the Father is greater than I,” that can lead some to separate Jesus from God in a heretical sense, failing to acknowledge the deity and unity of both the Father and the Son. Jesus shows us the submission of the Son before the Father, but we must also remember that the Son is given all authority by the Father. Daniel 7:13–14 tells us,

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”

Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, the prophesied Son of Man, is distinct, and yet is One with the Father.

“And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here.’”

As Jesus hangs on the cross, both Matthew and Mark’s gospels record Him quoting the opening of Psalm 22,

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The first half of this Psalm paints a picture of the deepest despair, and shows prophetic foreshadowing to what Jesus would endure on the cross. Lines like, “All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; ‘He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!’” “For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet,” and “they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots,” all speak explicitly to the crucifixion. But midway through the Psalm, we see a change, as David, still in despair, throws his hope and confidence entirely upon God, with verses 19–21 saying,

“But you, O LORD, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid! Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog! Save me from the mouth of the lion! You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen!”

From here the Psalm turns to one of praise and triumph, his aim fixed entirely on God and the hope He provides, rather than the trials and torments that surround him. Verses 24–26 declare,

“For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him. From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will perform before those who fear him. The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD! May your hearts live forever!”

I point all this out so that you may consider something – Satan wanted Jesus to go to the cross. “The ruler of this world,” “the god of this world,” the prince of the power of the air,” are all things that Satan is called, showing us explicitly that the sway of the spirit of worldliness, the aims and desires of the flesh are entirely his. It was this aim, of greed and selfish gain and grew and festered in the heart of Judas Iscariot. It was this that Jesus spoke of when He said to the ruling Jews who sought to preserve their own power, in John 8:44,

“You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

Satan, the enemy, the serpent and the father of lies, wanted Jesus to die. To him, the betrayal, the mock trial, the brutal beatings, the mockery and the execution were seen as a victory. There’s a worship song called “Living Hope,” that has a line that always strikes me. “Then came the morning that sealed the promise, Your buried body began to breathe.” It does something to remind me that Jesus wasn’t sleeping in the grave. He wasn’t knocked out, He wasn’t sedated, He wasn’t in a coma, He was dead. And then, there was a moment, where He breathed. There was a shift where He went from being dead to being alive again, and the power of God was revealed to us in that even the inescapable permanence of death is cast off before His might. The power of our God is so great, the force of His providence is so mighty, that even in doing exactly what the enemy wanted, in being brought as low as anyone could possibly be, God’s plan was perfect, and His victory was complete. The ruler of this world, the authorities, the cosmic powers over this present darkness, the spiritual forces of evil – nothing of this world holds claim on the Son of Man, for His will is the Father’s will. It is this victory that we are delivered into – Christ’s example is our model, His Spirit becomes our Spirit, and the will of the Father becomes our aim, as we are liberated from the chains and shackles of a sin-stained world. It is in God, in Christ, in the Helper of the Holy Spirit that we are strengthened and given assurance – assurance for today, reaching on into eternity.

Pastor Chris’s sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSWe3XP8h78